Green IT, Green IT, everywhere you turn there is something about Green IT.  With increased power and cooling costs a lot of people are using virtualization to reduce these costs but Windows Server 2008 R2 brings a new feature called Core Parking which helps as well.  It does this by moving all processing to a core (or cores) and putting the other cores to “sleep”.

Image courtesy of Microsoft Corporation

As processing power increases more cores “wake up” and take on the additional processing.  Considering Windows Server 2008 R2 supports up to 256 cores this feature can really provide some savings while not impacting performance.

Further to Core Parking, Windows Server 2008 R2 can also adjust the “P-State” to reduce the power consumption of a core.  In a nutshell this is like Intel SpeedStep which can “slow” down the CPU on your notebook to conserve power when you run on battery.

Image courtesy of Microsoft Corporation

All of this can be controlled via Group Policy in an AD domain or via the Local Policy on a standalone server.