Hi, Agree, it does make sense to add counters carrying this energy/power related information.
Assuming the target networks to monitor for power/energy measurements are Data-Centers. A little digging would reveal that there is more info besides the basic counters of KWhr & Temp which sFlow needs to carry. A typical Data-Center consisting of UPS, switches, routers, storage, servers, base power meters has much more amount of information to be assimilated. "Smartmeters" carry at least these information; (i) on-peak kWhr (ii) off-peak kWhr (iii) Time of Use(TOU) (iv) Outage counts (v) Voltage (vi) Current (vii) Polling frequency - (how frequently the volt/current is polled and stored) ( This is not a complete list but more or less sufficient, there are quite a few IEC & ANSI specifications which talk about accuracy, measurement and testing for the above) On the device level, modern day Digital Power Controllers used in UPS, power supply units in routers, switches, storage measure and provide the following information; ( these are also often present in proprietary MIB's) (i) overvoltage/undervoltage info - fault/warnings (ii) overcurrent/undercurrent info -fault/warnings (iii) overtemperature/undertemperature info -fault/warnings (iv) fan fault (v) manufacturer specific device error. (vi) realtime(or almost) voltage (vii) reatime (or almost) current (viii) realtime( or almost) temperature- sub-unit wise ( Refer to PMbus specifications,http://pmbus.org/ ) Having said that, both the above lists are not complete but mostly sufficient, IMO also there are no strict standards being followed all across, it seems to be varying with country, vendor & their partners. So, if sFlow were to carry power /energy information it should be sub-set or a smart aggregation of them. Another interesting point is the applications which monitor the above not only give gross-data,sometimes they also provide fault prediction.(that gives a perspective into the type of data sFlow should mine) BR, -Sujay On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Peter Phaal <peter.ph...@inmon.com> wrote: > Power management is an increasingly important consideration in managing > networks. > > Adding sFlow counters to allow agents to report on power and temperature > would provide useful information for power optimization. > > /* Energy consumption */ > /* opaque = counter_data; enterprise = 0; format = 3000 */ > struct energy { > unsigned hyper mJ; /* energy in millijoules */ > unsigned int pf; /* power factor (expressed as a percent), 0 for > DC power */ > } > > /* Temperature */ > /* opaque = counter_data; enterprise = 0; format = 3001 */ > struct temperature { > int oC<>; /* array of temperatures (1 for each thermometer) expressed > in degrees Celsius */ > } > > Each measurement is scoped by the data source reporting it. In the case of > energy, a switch might report total energy for the whole box (as measured by > its power supply) and may also report energy for each of its PoE ports. > > Adding these counters to sFlow (currently contained in proprietary SNMP MIBs > if available at all) would provide an efficient, multi-vendor way to track > power usage and temperature across all the devices and links in the network. > SFlow counter polling is very efficient, providing a scalable way to monitor > the large numbers of devices in a data center. > > Peter
