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  1. #1

    How much power draw on Dell m1000e blade servers?

    I am thinking of replacing our aging PE 1950's with a new dell m1000e blade center. (Not right now, but as the 1950's come out of warranty)

    My initial setup would be the m1000e chassis with probably 4 or 5 blades, growing by maybe 1 blade every quarter.

    Can anyone give me just a ball park figure on the power draw of these units? I don't need anything super exact, but if you have a similar setup I'd love to know how many amps you are pulling with 1 blade, 5 blades, 10 blades, etc.
    (Not looking at watts, just want to know amps)

  2. #2
    I don't know what kind of power draw that they have, but I do know that they are power dense (IE, they require a good bit). You're fitting several servers in less space than you would have normally. I would think you'd be pulling 1-2 amps per blade. So, 5 = 10 amps or less, 10 blades = 20 amps or less.
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  3. #3
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    Dell's power calculator?
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  4. #4
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    (Not looking at watts, just want to know amps)

    Are you considering voltage in this statement?

    Watts, you dont really need to know, or care what the voltage is (to ascertain whether or not you can do it). With amps, you know nothing at all, until you know the voltage configuration (120/208/208[3ph]/etc.)
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  5. #5
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    I believe all of the Dell blades are 208V, but they offer some options within that:

    "Dell offers a wide range of Power Distribution options for the M1000e with 20A, 30A, 60A single phase, or 30A three phase options"
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  6. #6
    You would require three-phase power firstly in order to provision Dell's M1000e blade enclosure along with the blades and I believe it comes in 30A options. For a fully populated chassis with 2x procs, 16+GB RAM, 2x drives, you're looking at approximately 60+A
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  7. #7
    I *need* 3-phase?
    I currently have a 30amp single phase 208v circuit fed into the rack.
    Why the need for 3 phase?

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by intrikrakin View Post
    I *need* 3-phase?
    Just the typical WHT mis-information, this is incorrect, and is typical of the forums as of late (unfortunately).
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  9. #9
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    Dell m1000e uses variety of power depending on your requirement and redundancy. A Full chassis with 16 blades would draw 18 amps on a 208v 20amps circuit. Generally its recommended to use dual power strips each with 20amps for redundancy for not having a single point of failure for all blades at the same time, and in no way its cheaper than 1U's in terms of power. Our facility is full of blades and all type of them dell, hp, ibm.
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  10. #10
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    They are 208v. I have the 3 phase power supplies for these. If need them private message me. The M1000e has a feature to throttle the power draw. Of course at the expense of performance. One thing to mention with the M1000e, when you initially boot the chasis, all the fans spin up to full RPMs. Dell has told me they recommend using hearing protection as the dB level is ABOVE OSHA approved levels. Therefore, factor in a 10-20% power overhead if you ever need to reboot the entire chassis.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by IPStrada LLC View Post
    A Full chassis with 16 blades would draw 18 amps on a 208v 20amps circuit.
    Can others confirm this ballpark figure?
    If a loaded blade will only ever pull 18-20 amps I am fine then.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by IPStrada LLC View Post
    Dell m1000e uses variety of power depending on your requirement and redundancy. A Full chassis with 16 blades would draw 18 amps on a 208v 20amps circuit. Generally its recommended to use dual power strips each with 20amps for redundancy for not having a single point of failure for all blades at the same time, and in no way its cheaper than 1U's in terms of power. Our facility is full of blades and all type of them dell, hp, ibm.
    If you don't mind me asking what configuration are the individual blades that allow you to run your M1000e chassis along with the blades within 18A in total?
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  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by porcupine View Post
    Just the typical WHT mis-information, this is incorrect, and is typical of the forums as of late (unfortunately).
    Do you happen to have a Dell M1000e enclosure with blades running on anything else but a three phase power connection? If so, please let me know as it would be interesting and definitely advantageous for certain individuals/company's.

    From what I have been told by Dell reps including documents provided, their blade enclosure can only run on three phase power.
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    Quote Originally Posted by antony_m View Post
    If you don't mind me asking what configuration are the individual blades that allow you to run your M1000e chassis along with the blades within 18A in total?
    Those would be half heights m600's.
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  15. #15
    I have a m1000 chassis with 16 m600s, 4 6220 switch blades and 2 fc passthrough cards running in my dc. 14 of the 16 blades are powered and it's pulling 16.5amps on 208v. We have it set up on 3 30A circuits because of the bad layout of the DELL c19 pdus and we are trying to have two chassis sharing curcuits for redundancy. Really should have only needed 2 curcuits had dell chosen pdus better.

    BTW - ordering the thing was a NIGHTMARE!!! their configurator dumped hbas, fiber passthroughs, switch stacking modules and the 10gb ethernet gbics. took 5 orders to get this pair of chassis complete!

  16. #16
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    IPStrada and PeteT's figures sound accurate. FB-DIMM and Xeon E5xxx CPU's suck so much power, luckily it's cancelled out by the insane efficiency ratio when you load up a full enclosure.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by intrikrakin View Post
    I *need* 3-phase?
    I currently have a 30amp single phase 208v circuit fed into the rack.
    Why the need for 3 phase?
    From reading the specs, you do not need 3-phase.

    However, a full-loaded system can draw more power than a single PSU can provide. So, for PSU redundancy on a fully-loaded system, you need 3 power supplies.

    But that does not provide redundancy for power strip failure. If two supplies are plugged into the A-side strip, and one into the B-side, then if the A-side fails, the single B-side power supply will not power a fully populated server.

    You can install a static switch - so connect one PSU to the A-side, one to the B-side, one to the static switch, and connect the static switch to the A-side and B-side.

    But it's simpler to install four PSUs rather than three.

    One organisation I worked eventually banned the use of servers with three power supplies.

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    Yep, just load it up with PSU's. They cost next to nothing compared to the other components.

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    According to some old(ish) emails from Dell:

    "Configuration Totals for 220 AC Input Voltage and 25°C
    100% Transactional on all blades: 6230.0 watts
    Idle on all blades: 2298 watts
    CPU intensive: 5815 watts

    The figures are very high as they have taken X series processor. E series would reduce this by >1000 watts per chassis.

    This power consumption is for the blade chassis (M1000e) along with 16 blade servers (M610’s)

    "

    As far as I remember, the M610s where Dual x5550 with 48GB of RAM.

    Might be work checking out: http://solutions.dell.com/dellstaron...unch.aspx/ESSA
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  20. #20
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    I loved the blades untill i saw their real power consumtion. Its no power saving at all.
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  21. #21
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    I agree. We had an M1000e and while it was really cool when we first got it, we realized it wasn't saving us any time/money as we started to really use it and learn all the quirks with it. The network modules cost an arm and a leg as well.

    It has great features. It would be hard to outgrow the thing requirement-wise. The blades hold a ton of RAM, have options for messanine cards and other great add-ons. It just didn't save us the time/money like we thought it would. Dell actually gave us the chassis and 3 blades. Buying more blades wasn't cheap, and adding things like the SPF cards in the back was very expensive.

    I also had trouble graphing the 6220 switches with Cacti. Took me several hours to get a working template for it. I also didn't like how the DVD drive was external. All Dell's are like that, but the IBM ones have had shared drives in their chassis for years.

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by skullbox View Post
    I agree. We had an M1000e and while it was really cool when we first got it, we realized it wasn't saving us any time/money as we started to really use it and learn all the quirks with it. The network modules cost an arm and a leg as well.

    It has great features. It would be hard to outgrow the thing requirement-wise. The blades hold a ton of RAM, have options for messanine cards and other great add-ons. It just didn't save us the time/money like we thought it would. Dell actually gave us the chassis and 3 blades. Buying more blades wasn't cheap, and adding things like the SPF cards in the back was very expensive.

    I also had trouble graphing the 6220 switches with Cacti. Took me several hours to get a working template for it. I also didn't like how the DVD drive was external. All Dell's are like that, but the IBM ones have had shared drives in their chassis for years.
    Absoutely agreed on all the points. Infact IBM chasis are compatible with all their blade series so you can fit in all the configuration along with old and new ones. But i hate the power consumption and management on blades, it would have been more successful it they were in 120v.
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