Performance metrics that affect the power consumption for a Switch

[GauravSharma]

Dear Cisco Community Members,

Please, can you help me to understand the different correlations between Power consumptions and performance metrics of Switches. Like CPU Vs power, number of active ports but not in use, POE active port Vs power and other use cases.

Many thanks in advance.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Performance metrics, generally, should not be impacted by (electrical) current usage.  However, (electrical) current usage might (possibly even much) be impacted by how "busy" the switch is.

[GauravSharma]

How does port state affects the power. What are the ways to reduce the power consumption for a given switch.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Generally, the "more" the port does the more power it's likely to use.

I would think a shutdown port would draw the least or even no power.

For PoE ports, if device allows, setting a power limit would reduce power, doing this also assumes PoE device can work with less power.

Possibly some newer devices might have some hibernation mode that might engage when device's ports are inactive.

I suspect without device minimizing it's power needs, dynamically, beyond enabling such features, probably not worth your time trying to manually micro manage power consumption.

BTW, being curious, why these questions, what's your goal?

[GauravSharma]

Thanks Joseph. I am working on a project to drive the reduction in power consumption of Switches and as a first step i wanted to understand what all can be optimized for example in Catalyst switch to reduce the overall power consumption.  

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Ah, well for "older" models, there might not be much you can do.  I recall (?) some newer switches do try to reduce their power consumption.  You might search Cisco's main site on the subject of "green".

[Joseph W. Doherty]

You might also search for EEE, energy efficient Ethernet.