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Nader.Awad
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April 2nd, 2018 23:00
PowerEdge R710 Optimise Power Consumption
PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN!
Few days ago I've purchased a certified refurbished Dell poweredge R710 from amazon with following specs :
Processors: 2 x 2.80Ghz X5660 Hex Core
Memory: 16 x 8GB PC3-10600R
Hard Drives: 6 x 2TB x 7.2K SATA 3.5"
Drive Bays: 6 hotswap 3.5"
Power Supplies: 2 x DELL 870W
RAID Controller: PERC H700
Network Interface: x Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
Video Card: ATI Technologies Inc ES1000
Optical Drive: DVD-ROM Included
Remote Access Controller: iDRAC Enterprise
I've purchased this server for virtualization purposes (to install Vmware ESXi) in a home lab, however i stupidly forgotten to take in consideration the very basic electricity bill factor, the server runs at 1740 Watt (2PSU= 2*870Watt = 1740 Watt) in my country we are charged at a 0.8$/KWh rate (What a government haa :/ !) and hence we are speaking about 1036$ monthly bill for a 24*7 operation (1295 KWh * 0.8), if i manage to run it on a single PSU and do best effort keeping it idle (powering on VMs only when needed) we are speaking about 297$ (500 Watt per hour and that would 372KWh * 0.8) which is more than my monthly income :( !
anyone knows if this server can be optimized to operate on 200Watt :) i think this is absolutely impossible but thought giving it a try.
BonelessWater
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Posted January 18th, 2021 04:00
You guys have it all wrong.
1. PSU capacity =/= real world power usage. Typically hardware uses ~40-50% of max capacity (unless you have several capacity options, then you'd better get a calculator or a multimeter or some kill-a-watt tool). So, a device with, say 750w, will probably consume 250-350w. PSUs are most efficient at 50% load, too. So, you get headroom and best efficiency by having a PSU twice as powerful as your machine's needs.
2. Redundant PSUs don't somehow double the power draw. Electricity, power, it has to go somewhere, and a PSU isn't a battery, so it only draws as much as it needs, no excess. Thus, typically 2 PSUs (for redundancy) will split the load 50/50 or enter some fancy instant-takeover-upon-failure thingmajiggerbob mode. Even if 2 PSUs somehow drew twice the power (ignoring the fact that they'd have nowhere to send that power), you'd have a mob of angry IT guys lynching manufacturers for such inefficient design.
Please spend some time looking into PSUs, power draw, and how redudnacy works, so you'd avoid panicking like this.
Dell-Martin S
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Posted January 18th, 2021 05:00
Hi,
thank you for your posting, did you have any questions about this?
regards Martin
with kind regards Martin/ Liebe Grüße Martin
Did I answer your query? Please click on ‘Mark as Accepted Answer’. ‘Thumbs up’ the posts you like!
DELL-Martin S
Social Media and Communities Professional
Dell Technologies | Enterprise Support Services
#IWork4Dell
I just setup a R710 for unRAID and was checking this out with a kill-a-watt. These numbers might be a couple watts higher than actual and was ran at room temp.
These numbers are with this equipment.
Dell R710 w/8 2.5" drive slots
Dual Intel Xeon X5687 @ 3.60Ghz
72GiB DDR3 Multi-bit ECC RAM
8 300GB 10k RPM SAS drives in RAID0
1 PSU and off ~14w
2 PSU and off ~25w
1 PSU and on at idle ~156w
2 PSU and on at idle ~175w
(for no reason) top cover off like a jet ~205w system still at idle
I don't have a way to check it with an actual load at the moment, but the best I can do is adding drives to an array in unRAID. 4 600GB Velociraptor Drives powered separately.
1 PSU ~214W
2 PSU ~240w
Hope this could help with something. Best of luck
DELL-Josh Cr
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Posted April 3rd, 2018 09:00
Hi,
Can you private message me the service tag so we can get some additional information?
Have you tested the power draw? The 1740w is a max draw for the power supplies, not the actual draw. Using a single CPU and less memory will use less electricity. Still more than 200w though most likely.