On Thursday 15 April 2010, Mathieu Baudier wrote:

Hi,

I have quite a few low-end development/test servers running continuously and I would like to better manage their power consumption. I have found interesting information on how to perform CPU scaling (e.g. [1] or [2]).

But I cannot find if there is a way to (software) monitor power consumption on CentOS (or other such data like CPU temperature, fan speed etc.).

Most machines simply don't have that hardware. Some laptops do and then, with proper kernel, you can run powertop (or read /proc/acpi/power...).

Some servers have power meters built in but uses tools specific to that vendor/server (like HP ppic).

What I read so far is that support is quite limited in this kernel (e.g. PowerTop not providing useful information).

Before I start tuning I would like to be able to measure whether my changes are having any impact at all.

I'd suggest that you buy an external power meter like kill-a-watt.

/Peter

Thanks in advance,

Mathieu

[1] http://www.lesswatts.org/tips/cpu.php [2] http://www.spencerstirling.com/computergeek/powersaving.html