By Richard Grivalsky, Comcast Cable; Brian Allen, Comcast Cable; Budd Batchelder, Comcast Cable
Operational practices have long been to rely on both power supplies, in network equipment, to prevent service interruption in the event of a single power supply unit (PSU) or input failure. Leveraging platform-level controls, such as hot standby, allows for fully redundant powering schemas while reducing energy consumption. With an eye to a greener future, Comcast has set goals to double network energy efficiency by 2030 and to be carbon neutral (Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions) by 2035. Hot standby presented an opportunity to apply platform-level configuration changes to save power while maintaining reliability. While cable operators can benefit from hot standby at a platform level, when it comes to full-scale solutions some elements in the hardware stack need to be addressed as they do not support hot standby today. The use of hot standby has the potential to impact 34-50% of the energy pyramid (critical facilities & data centers) by reducing platform consumption by ~6%, which could potentially reduce a cable operator’s total consumed electricity by 1.4-3% as more manufacturers integrate the option in additional hardware platforms. Comcast began evaluating energy savings, with hot standby enabled, on several platforms in 2021. Identifying platforms in our next-generation hardware stack and then quantifying the power savings allowed the next phase of conversations to be had, specifically around piloting the energy-saving setting in production equipment. Our current generation of distributed access architecture (DAA) is put into production with hot standby enabled, reducing power consumption for the hardware stack by ~2%. Today, not all platforms in the stack have the required BIOS or configuration settings that allow for hot standby implementation.