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Thread: Power consumption
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08-13-2006, 10:13 PM #1Newbie
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Power consumption
Hi Guys, Im looking to get some feedback on the power consumption of our servers prior to installation.
We have a half rack with a power allocation of 8amps. Were planning to run dual core Optrons, obviously
we need to get the most from the space and were planning to use each rack space.
CPU: Dual Core Dual Opteron 270' (WITH 1MB of L2 Cache on each core.)
Chassis: 1U Supermicro
Memory: 4GB DDR
Storage: 4x 160GB WD SATA RAID5
Some of the servers will be dedicated to mail, others to DNS, actual web content, and others to database.
1) How much power do you think well require during the boot process for these servers.
2) For these servers to run close to capacity during peak hours, what do you think our power consumption will be per half rack.
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08-14-2006, 01:15 AM #2Web Hosting Master
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1) During the boot process, expect about 4amps to start up.
2) After boot up, each server of this type would draw about 2 to 2.5amps each. We have a similar system with 2 x 146GB 10K hdd, and they do about 2.2 when booted up.http://Ethr.net jay@ethr.net
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08-14-2006, 02:00 AM #3Newbie
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Originally Posted by Mfjp
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08-14-2006, 03:12 AM #4Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by supremehostingMyles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
http://www.prioritycolo.com
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08-14-2006, 03:36 AM #5Newbie
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Do the agree with the power requirements stated above.
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08-14-2006, 03:43 AM #6Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by supremehostingMyles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
http://www.prioritycolo.com
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08-20-2006, 06:17 AM #7Junior Guru
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I would budget for at minimum 3A during bootup and ~2.5A during normal operation. That is, don't boot everything up at once if you're at your upper limit for the circuit.
A couple other items to remember however, and these are very important.
- Circuits don't really come as 8Amps, so you're likely going to be on a shared 15A or 20A circuit. That means you may or may not have someone else on the circuit who could be using more or less of their half allotment. Could work to your benefit or not.
- As an electrical code you never use your entire circuit, you use 80%. That means you don't have 8Amps available, you have 6.4Amps. Using more means your circuit is more prone to trip and is also more likely to fail pre-maturely--circuits over 80% sustained usage are prone to damage due to heat.
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08-20-2006, 03:23 PM #8Formerly orange-y
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Well, it also depends on how much usage you expect on those systems. We're doing 1.6A-2A on systems with very similar specs, just SCSI drives instead of SATA.
Former owner of A Small Orange
New owner of <COMING SOON>
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08-23-2006, 02:38 AM #9Newbie
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Originally Posted by RoryErickson
I second Rory's statement on the first part. However, on the second part, I am pretty sure that you can use the whole 8 amps for a 1/2 rack because a regular cabinet usually comes with 20 amp of power @ 120v. So a half rack will usually comes with 10 amp of power and at 80% utilization (fire code), that will give you a usable of 8 amps. (check with your provider to make sure weather the 8 amps is net or gross utilization)
If you have access to the server and can monitor the power usage before putting your server online, you can consider using kill a watt device as seen here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/7657/
This will give you the amperage of your server utilization.
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08-23-2006, 02:52 AM #10Junior Guru
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Originally Posted by jimmy
It's a good point that they may have brought a 20A circuit to the full cabinet and have already calculated for the 80% utilization, I suppose the only way to know for sure would be to ask them.
If you want to know your usage at all times, you could even go for an APC Zero-U Metered Rack PDU. They're not 100% accurate, but would be close enough for your purposes.
- Rory