Energy Star 3.0 Certifications for ThinkSystem Servers

Energy Star is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency voluntary program that helps business and individuals maximize energy efficiency with their electrical and electronic equipment. Energy Star 3.0 is the newest version of the standard.

The timeline for implementation of Energy Star 3.0 is as follows:

• 17 September 2018: U.S. EPA published Energy Star for Computer Servers v3.0. New active efficiency criteria released with expected passing rate: 24% among 2014~2017 server portfolio.
• 1 February 2019: Only Energy Star 3.0 submissions will be accepted. Existing Energy Star 2.1 certificates are still valid however, new 2.1 submissions will be rejected.
• 17 June 2019: Energy Star for computer server v3.0 is now in effect. Existing 2.0 and 2.1 certificates are not longer valid

The key difference between Energy Star v2.1 and v3.0 is as follows:

• Energy Star v2.1 required only system idle state power
• Energy Star v3.0 requires active state efficiency in addition to system idle state power

To certify for Energy Star 3.0, a computer server product family must be evaluated and submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for certification. The following system configurations must comply with the Active State efficiency criteria:

• High-end performance configuration:

  The combination of Processor Socket Power, PSUs, Memory, Storage Devices, and I/O devices that represents the highest-performance computing platform within the product family. This configuration shall include the highest processor performance per socket, as represented by the highest numerical value resulting from the multiplication of the core count by the frequency in GHz, offered for sale and capable of meeting the Energy Star requirement.

• Typical configuration:

  A product configuration that lies between the Low-end performance and High-end performance configurations and is presentative of a deployed product with high volume sales.

• Low-end performance configuration:

  The combination of Processor Socket Power, PSUs, Memory, Storage Devices, and I/O devices that represents the lowest-performance computing platform within the product family. This configuration shall include the lowest processor performance per socket, as represented by the lowest numerical value resulting from the multiplication of the core count by the frequency in GHz, offered for sale and capable of meeting the Energy Star requirement.

The following table provides more details regarding processors for each configuration.

Lenovo ThinkSystem servers meet all the criteria for Energy Star 3.0 when using these configurations:

• High-End Performance configuration
• Typical configurations

For the Low-End Performance configurations, some low-end processor models (SKUs) with a low number of cores and/or low frequency that do not meet the minimum criteria for Energy Star 3.0. The processor SKUs listed in the following table cannot achieve a high enough performance/watt efficiency metric to meet the Energy Star 3.0 criteria.

If the server has one of the processors listed in the table, then the server is not certified for Energy Star 3.0.

For more information, see these links:

• Lenovo Energy Star Certification Reference
  https://lenovopress.com/lp0630-energy-star-certification-reference
• Energy Star certification results (SERT Version 2.0.1 corresponds to Energy Star 3.0)
  https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-enterprise-servers/results