EXTENSIBLE POWER CONTROL FOR AN AUTONOMICALLY CONTROLLED DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING SYSTEM

The invention is directed to techniques of extensible power control for an autonomically controlled distributed computing system. In particular, control nodes of the distributed computing system utilize software power control modules to communicate with hardware power controllers within the distributed computing system. The power control modules are discrete software units that may be easily deployed and un-deployed while software on the control node is executing. Further, each power control module corresponds to one or more firmware versions of one or more types of hardware power controller. The power control modules are each implementations of a software interface common to every power control module. Because the power control modules share a common interface, the software on the control node that autonomically controls the distributed computing environment does not need to consider differences among types of hardware power controllers and versions of firmware installed on the hardware power controllers.