Patent ID: 8051316

Claim:
A method for managing power supply units comprising: determining a power requirement of resources configured to receive power from a plurality of power supply units including one or more online power supply units, one or more redundant power supply units, and one or more standby power supply units; determining a power capacity of the one or more online power supply units; determining if the power capacity of the one or more online power supply units exceeds the power requirement of the resources; transitioning at least one of the power supply units, wherein the transitioning includes at least one of: transitioning at least one of the one or more online power supply units to a standby power supply unit in response to a determination that the power capacity of the one or more online power supply units exceeds the determined power requirement of the resources; and transitioning at least one of the one or more standby power supply units to an online power supply unit in response to a determination that the power requirement of the resources exceeds the determined power capacity of the one or more online power supply units; determining if a redundancy policy for the plurality of power supply units will be satisfied in the event that at least one of the redundant power supply units is transitioned to a standby power supply unit; and transitioning at least one of the one or more redundant power supply units to a standby power supply unit in response to a determination that the redundancy policy for the plurality of power supply units will be satisfied in the event that the at least one of the redundant power supply units is transitioned to a standby power supply unit.