A mechanism for controlling the hardware resources on a blade server, and
thereby limiting the power consumption of the blade server is disclosed.
The enforceable hardware resources that are controlled include the base
frequency of the central processing unit (CPU) as well as power to
individual banks of physical memory, for example dual-inline memory
modules (DIMMs). The hardware resources are tuned in dependence on actual
server utilization such that applications running on the blade only have
the allocated hardware resources available to them. Deactivated hardware
resources are powered off and are so `hidden` from the operating system
when they are not required. In this manner, power consumption in the
entire chassis can be managed such that all server blades can be powered
on and operate at higher steady-state utilization. The utilization of the
powered on resources in a blade center is also improved.