Power control of servers using advanced configuration and power interface (ACPI) states

A method of managing power consumption by a plurality of blade servers within a processing system. The speed of at least one of the plurality of blade servers is reduced in response to the processing system reaching a power or thermal threshold. At least one of the plurality of blade servers is identified as not being critical to maintain in a working state and the critical blade server is put in a sleep state. A satellite management controller may control blade server power consumption and heat generation in various ways that combine processor speed-stepping and control of processor sleep states. Known sleep states save more power than speed-stepping by turning off the processor and/or volatile memory. The processor speed and sleep-states of at least one non-critical blade server, and optionally the processor speed of a critical processor, may be changed in order to control the power consumption below a power threshold or control the temperature below a thermal threshold.