When replacing your physical Alpha by its virtual equivalent in vtAlpha you will cut down your energy bill quite some since the Alpha computers were not exactly ‘Green Machines’. You can cut the energy bill even more by combining multiple virtual Alpha’s on a single host system.
To further cut down the energy consumption we developed the vtAlpha Eco App (Energy Conservation Application).
The vtAlpha Eco App (freeware) detects inactivity in the virtual Alpha CPU-usage and releases the host CPU(s) when this is the case. This downsizes the energy consumption (power, fans, cooling, heat dissipation) a great deal. Running the Eco App has no negative side effects and we recommend to install and activate it at all times.
Other virtual Alpha products run the Host CPU at full throttle, consuming lots of energy and wearing down the physical host fast, forcing early replacement. Using the Eco App on vtAlpha prevents this from happening.
The installation and activation method depends on the type and version of the guest operating system (OpenVMS/Tru64). For Tru64 v5 installations the Eco App can be activated by executing the ‘set ecoapp‘ command in console mode. For OpenVMS we developed a client package that needs to be installed in OpenVMS. A similar client for pre-v5 Tru64 versions will become available in the near future.
Ask your vtAlpha provider for the vtAlpha Eco App or contact our support people for more details.