Supermicro complete system power usage evaluation
System
|
Startup
|
Idle
|
openssl
|
badblocks
|
openssl+bb
|
L5410 / WD Green / 4x4G
|
2.98A
|
1.96A
|
2.65A
|
2.58A
|
2.94A
|
L5410 / Samsung / 4x4G
|
3.13A
|
2.29A
|
2.80A
|
2.76A
|
3.07A
|
L5410 / Samsung / 8x2G
|
3.42A
|
2.58A
|
3.09A
|
3.05A
|
3.37A
|
E5310 / Samsung / 4x2G
|
3.44A
|
2.62A
|
3.13A
|
3.17A
|
3.47A
|
Values listed are RMS AC amps at 118VAC; all measurements taken with
the same power supply unit and the same
set of 12 disks (except the run using WD "Green" drives)
All tests made using a SuperMicro X7DBN motherboard, 12 drive SATA
backplane, and a single 120VAC power supply unit. Each (redundant)
power supply unit costs a baseline of approximately 0.25A, even when
shut down.
Startup: peak current draw during
disk spinup
Idle:
linux booted, system idle
Openssl: all cores running
"openssl speed" - CPU intensive load
Badblocks: all disks running "badblocks" - disk
intensive load with reads + seeks
openssl+bb: both of the above workloads running at once
The system with WD "Green" drives and the L5410 CPUs never breaks 3
amps. This would allow 8 nodes per 30A, 120V circuit, or 16 per rack
with only two circuits. The configuration with 1.6GHz CPUs and
Samsung 1Tb drives safely allows only 6 machines per 30A circuit.
Note that this is still not the worst configuration, since the Samsung
drives use 30% less power at idle than the Hitachi 1Tb drives, which
have the highest power consumption
tested so far.
For a 1000 node cluster, very roughly speaking, the lowest power
configuration here (L5410 / WD Green / 4x4G) represents a savings of
about $22,000 per month in power over the highest power configuration
at Layer 42 / 3080 Raymond pricing. (according to a quote Joerg
collected)
-epv 9/10/2008