1. A method for managing power consumption in a system including computing devices in both active and one or more inactive states of readiness, the method comprising: receiving, at a processing unit, a request to one of: activate or deactivate one or more computing devices from a respective group of inactive or active computing devices, each said inactive or active computing device initially in a pre-determined state of readiness; activating or deactivating said one or more computing devices, said activating or deactivating resulting in a number of computing devices in one or more states of readiness i; computing an optimal configuration of said computing devices in said one or more said states of readiness i by minimizing an expected power consumption Σ i A i P i where i represents all inactive computing devices, A i represents a number of said computing devices currently in each state i, and, P i represents an average power consumption of a computing devices while in said state i; and, placing said computing devices in said optimized configuration, wherein a program using said processor unit is configured to perform one or more of said receiving, activating, computing and placing.