HP Insight Control Software for Linux - Manual (Page 49)

4 Managing power and cooling facilities in your data center
Task: Importing power configuration from external databases
HP Insight Control power management collects power utilization and capacity data from systems and devices
in a data center and allows an administrator to set a cap on the utilization. Before power management starts
monitoring or managing power consumption of systems and devices, it requires information on the physical
topology of systems and devices, and the power topology of the power delivery devices connected in a
data center. The power configuration information is available in the CMS database and you can import this
information available in text formats or Microsoft Excel worksheets using the available power management
CLI commands.
Importing from Excel worksheets
In Excel worksheets, the data is normally available in visual layout (VIS) and tabular (TAB) formats. For
example, the data in an Excel worksheet is shown below:
For a small data center, the data can be maintained manually in VIS format where a column in the Excel
worksheet represents a rack and each cell is a slot position for a system. The VIS format is limited to only
the physical hierarchy of the systems and devices in a data center. To convert data in the VIS format to text
format, you can follow the instructions included in the
ipmvis2txt(1M) man page.
For a larger data center, the data is normally maintained in the TAB format because of the volume of the
systems and devices. The TAB format includes both the physical hierarchy and power hierarchy supporting
additional complex information. The Excel worksheets in TAB format often begin with output from other
software vendors, even if they are maintained manually over the long term.
To import data from the TAB format into power management, perform the following:
1. Collect the required physical device descriptions for racks and rack devices in an XLS file. For example,
bnb2ipm.xls.
2. Collect the required power device descriptions for PDRs, PDUs, Breaker Panels, Branch Circuits, and
Rack PDUs.
3. Collect the powered by associations information between power strips and breakers.
Task: Importing power configuration from external databases 49