SPEC's
Feedback on the First Draft of the Energy Star for Servers
Specification
Re:
SPEC's feedback on the first draft of the Energy
Star for Servers Specification
Date: 13. March, 2008
Dear member of the
EPA and associated consultants,
The SPECpower
Committee welcomes this opportunity to review draft 1 of the ENERGY
STAR Specification Framework for Enterprise Computer Servers and is
proudly looking forward to continuing our association with the Energy
Star program. We applaud you for the progress made so far and would
appreciate the consideration of the following comments:
Draft_1_page_5:
E. Idle State
The state in which the operating system and other software have
completed loading, the server is not asleep, and activity is limited to
services that the system starts by default. During idle, the server
must be in a state in which it is capable of completing workload
transactions with response times that do not exceed those of normal
operation or service level agreements.
Reference: SPECpower_ssj2008 Run and Reporting Rules on Idle
Draft_1_page_7:
B. Idle Power
There is a dependency between the idle power consumption and the
performance of the server. In order to design a server with high energy
efficiency, both the power has to be low and the performance has to be
high. Therefore we believe that the evaluation of the idle measurement
in isolation of performance is not appropriate, because the industry
would need to optimize servers for the wrong state (just low power).
Draft_1_page_8:
C. Standard Information Reporting Requirements
We appreciate the
references to our SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark as an informational piece
and offer SPECpower_ssj2008 for potential use either in its current
form or some mutually agreeable solution. SPEC endeavored to establish
rules to fairly and consistently report results, including the
disclosure of the primary metric whenever any partial information is
used. The SPECpower chair will explain this situation and will work out
the details on how to include SPEC result information to Rebecca Duff
(icfi) the week of March 17th.
Reference:
http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/docs/SPECpower_ssj2008-Run_Reporting_Rules.html#3.1.4.
Draft_1_page9-10:
Tier 2 Requirements
SPECpower_ssj2008, the first SPECpower benchmark, is a leap forward in
the state of the art in power and performance analysis of Enterprise
Computer Servers. The SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark is only focusing on
one application. In order to represent a wide spectrum of applications,
a means for introducing additional work-loads must be a part of an
Energy Star for Server plan. SPEC is currently working on the
augmentation of additional benchmarks with a power attribute in order
to cover a wide spectrum of applications.
We look forward to
further work with the EPA in defining additional requirements to
enhance our benchmark suite to satisfy EPA needs where feasible and
welcome EPA's input in prioritizing our future work.
On behalf of the
SPECpower Committee,
Klaus-Dieter Lange
SPECpower Committee Chair
Additional
Comments:
Draft_1_page_3:
A. Definitions
In addition to services for client computers, servers also provide
services for other servers. Furthermore, the use of a list of
characteristics is problematic. Based on history, any distinguishing
characteristic based on features, capabilities or architecture will
quickly change over time making the discrimination obsolete. RAS and
manageability features are moving down into workstations and clients
(commercial first, then consumer) and lower cost points are moving up
into servers. It is also generally agreed that servers do not need two
processors. Suggest instead: A computer that provides various
processing, storage, and communication services in response to requests
that generally originate and are mediated by other client computers and
server computer systems. Computer servers generally have the following
characteristics:
- Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, and Manageability
(RASM) features
- Designed and certified to run Server Operating Systems
- Include some type of network communication (LAN or WAN)
capability
- Designed to operate in a commercial data center environment
Draft_1_page_3:
Blade Server
We believe that Blade Servers do not need to have a hard drive, e.g. in
cases when a network connected storage solution is used.
Draft_1_page_4:
Server category
SPEC does not categorize servers; SPEC results are submitted and
presented by the application space (e.g. Web server, Java Application
server, Mail Server). With the industry producing smaller, more
powerful servers, to set a lower limit for small servers would exclude
new advancements in this direction. Therefore, we suggest removing the
lower limits from the small server’s definition.
Draft_1_page_9:
D. Power and Temperature Measurement Requirements
During the life-time of Tier 1, many servers will not support this
requirement. In addition, a large amount of the current servers with a
SPECpower result would be ruled out.
