VMware is supposed to say today that Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and NEC will support its Distributed Power Management (DPM) to make their hardware more power-efficient.

DPM, part of the VMware vSphere 4 platform, lowers power consumption in the data center by aggregating unused capacity and powering off unused servers without disrupting service levels, lowering energy consumption by as much as 20% on top of what’s possible with consolidation.

According to VMware CTO Stephen Herrod (pictured below during a keynote given at SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo), “We saw an opportunity to save even more power for our customers by focusing on partially used servers in virtualized environments. VMware DPM essentially performs server defragmentation. VMware DPM determines the best way to consolidate workloads onto the fewest number of physical servers needed to meet the applications’ performance requirements. VMware DPM then powers off unneeded servers to reduce datacenter energy consumption, powering them back on when the performance needs require more physical resources. This is done automatically, without disruption, while ensuring application SLAs are satisfied. Combined with energy-efficient hardware from our server partners, customers have an opportunity to save costs and make a positive impact in their carbon footprints.”

DPM puts all virtual machines on the fewest number of physical servers. A typical use case would be powering down physical servers at night or on weekends when application loads decrease; as application loads increase, DPM powers on servers and again redistributes the applications.

The power savings with VMware DPM across all vSphere 4 customers over one year could power a country the size of Denmark for 10 days.