Rack server system and power management method thereof

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016147276-A1
Application number	US-201514677352-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Apr 2, 2015
Priority date	Nov 24, 2014
Publication date	May 26, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

A rack server system and power management method is provided for automatically controlling work state of power supplies. The rack server system includes a plurality of servers, at least one rack management controller, and a power supply module. Each of the servers includes a baseboard management controller, which is configured to monitor a server information of the servers and transmits the server information to the rack management controller. The rack management controller calculates the server information to produce a sever work number so as to transmits a control signal including the sever work number to the power supply module. The power supply units are turned on by the power supply module as receiving the control signal.

First claim

We claim:

1 . A rack server system, comprising:
a plurality of server modules, each of the server modules having a baseboard management controller (BMC) for monitoring a sever work information to have the plurality of server modules generating and transmitting a plurality of monitoring signals; at least a rack management controller (RMC), electrically connected to the baseboard management controllers, for receiving the monitoring signals to access the server work information of the server modules so as to calculate a server work number corresponding to the server modules and generate a control signal with a turn-on number M according to the sever work number; a power supply module, which includes a total of N power supply units, electrically connected to the rack management controller to turn on M of the N power supply units after receiving the control signal; a plurality of fan control boards (FBC), electrically connected to the baseboard management controllers of the server modules through an intelligent platform management interface (IPMI); and a plurality of rack fan control boards (RFCB), electrically connected to the fan control boards through an inter-integrated circuit (I 2 C) interface, and communicated with the rack management controller through a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART); wherein, the server modules transmit the monitoring signals through the fan control boards and the rack fan control boards to the rack management controller, and M is not greater than N.

2 . The rack server system of claim 1 , wherein each of the server modules transmits the monitoring signal when the server module is working.

3 . A power management method, applied to a rack server system, which includes a plurality of server modules, at least a rack management controller, and a power supply module, wherein each of the server modules includes a baseboard management controller, the rack management controller is electrically connected to the server modules, the power supply module is electrically connected to the rack management controller and includes a total of N power supply units, and the power management method comprising the steps of:
(a) monitoring, by the baseboard management controller, a sever work information of each of the server modules to have the plurality of server modules generating and transmitting a plurality of monitoring signals; (b) receiving, by the rack management controller, the monitoring signals to access the server work information of the server modules so as to calculate a server work number corresponding to the server modules and generate a control signal with a turn-on number M according to the sever work number; and (c) receiving the control signal so as to turn on M of the N power supply units; wherein M is not greater than N.

4 . The power management method of claim 3 , wherein each of the server modules transmits the monitoring signals when the server module is working.

Assignees

• Inventec Pudong Tech Corp
• Inventec Corp

Inventors

• Chen Yung-Ying

Classifications

• G06F1/3206 Primary

  Monitoring of events, devices or parameters that trigger a change in power modality · CPC title

• G06F1/20

  Cooling means · CPC title

• H05K7/1458 Primary

  Active back panels; Back panels with filtering means · CPC title