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Power Consumption – Actual amp readings

Published February 13, 2007 by Brian Blood

Datacenter Power. It seems you can never have enough.

We have our colocation inside an Equinix IBX. It is an excellent facility. Unfortunately, about 2 years ago, our cage got a new neighbor. They have added rack after rack of new servers to accommodate their ever increasing traffic. Which means they have effectively used up all the allocated power feeds for our section of the colo.
So as we started to fill our own cabinets, we found that we were quickly using up the 2 x 20A 110V feeds they had allocated to each of our cabinets. Our partner in colocation, sell.com was also at this time upgrading their farm to the latest dual xeon models. These boxes were pulling a LOT more amps than the previous P3 generation.

Very quickly, we became experts on how much amperage we could squeeze out of our existing feeds and what systems required how much power.

Here are some anecdotal amperage readings we took from our fancy amp reading tool. Please note these readings are all taken with 120V feeds.

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SuperMicro SuperServer 1U Half-depth server with X7DCA-L motherboard.

Specs:

  • CPU: 2 x Quad Core 2.5GHz Xeon L5420
  • RAM: 16GB PC2-5300 ECC Registered
  • 1 x 120GB Intel 330 SSD
  • Single 280W Power supply

Readings:

  • Off – 0.06A
  • Cold boot spike: 1.16A
  • Booted/idle – 0.78A
  • Debian Squeeze installation – 1.04A
  • CPU Heavy Ops: – 1.13A
    • 9 threads of “cat /dev/urandom | md5sum > /dev/null”

Dell PowerEdge 1950 1U

Specs:

  • CPU: 2 x Dual Core 2.66GHz Xeon 5150
  • RAM: 16GB PC2-5300 Fully Buffered ECC DIMM
  • 1x 120GB Intel 330 SSD on PCIe card, 2x 1TB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
  • Dual 670W Power supplies

Readings:

  • Off – 0.33A
  • Cold boot spike: 3.33A

 

SuperMicro SC815TQ-R700UB 1U server with X8DTU-F motherboard.

Specs:

  • CPU: 2 x Hex Core 2.4GHz Xeon E5645
  • RAM: 48GB PC3-10600 ECC Registered
  • 1x 60GB Intel 330 SSD, 4 x 600GB WD 10k rpm Velociraptor SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
  • 1x OCZ RevoDrive3x2 PCIe 240GB SSD
  • Dual 650W Power supplies

Readings:

  • Off – 0.23A
  • Cold boot spike: 2.60A
  • Memtest scan – 2.22A
  • Heavy CPU – 2.58A

 

SuperMicro SC813 1U Half-depth server with X7DCA-L motherboard.

Specs:

  • CPU: 2 x Quad Core 2.5GHz Xeon L5420
  • RAM: 24GB PC2-5300 ECC Registered
  • 1x64GB Intel SSD, 4 x 1TB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
  • Single 280/340 Power supply

Readings:

  • Off – 0.13A
  • Cold boot spike: 1.91A
  • Booted/idle – 1.13A
  • Rebuild single drive from RAID 6 set built with the 4 drives. (3 reading, 1 being written to) – 1.31A
  • Same op as above plus: – 1.54A
    • 9 threads of “cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null”
    • 1 thread of “cat /dev/urandom > /tmp/ramdisk”  (16GB tmpfs ramdisk)
  • Same set of ops as above except “dd bs=1M if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/ramdisk count=16000” – 1.61A
    (FYI, this operation of writing zeros to a ramdisk resulted in a dd stat of 757MB/sec)

 

Dell PowerEdge 2950

Specs:

  • CPU: 2 x Quad Core 2.33GHz Xeon E5345
  • RAM: 32GB PC2-5300 ECC Registered
  • 1x40GB Intel SSD, 6 x 1TB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
  • Dual Power supplies

Readings:

  • Off – 0.25A to 0.37A
  • Cold boot – 2.83A (16GB RAM) – 3.12A (32GB RAM)
  • Warm boot – 2.94A

 

Dell PowerEdge 2850

Specs: Dual Xeon 3.6GHz/2MB; 2GB RAM; 6 x 73 GB SCSI Hard Drive (10K RPM); Dual Power supplies

  • PS A & B – 2.35A

Specs: Dual Xeon 3.6GHz/2MB; 16GB RAM; 1 x 40GB Intel SSD, 6 x 300 GB SCSI Hard Drive (10K RPM); Dual Power supplies

  • Cold Boot – 3.34A

 

Dell PowerEdge 1750

Specs: Dual Xeon 3.2GHz – 4GB RAM; 3 x 146 GB 10K rpm SCSI Hard Drives; Dual Power supplies
Software: Debian 5.0 – MySQL 5.0 – InnoDB heavy

  • Off – 0.21A
  • Cold Start – 3.00A Peak
  • Nominal usage – 1.90A

 

Dell PowerEdge 1650

Specs: Dual PIII 1.4Ghz; 2GB RAM; 3 x 36GB SCSI 10K rpm; Dual 275W Power supplies

  • PS A & B both active
    • PS A – 0.7A
    • PS A & B
      • Nominal operation – 1.41A
      • Warm Boot – 1.44A Peak
      • Cold Boot (drives spinning up) – 1.56A
  • PS A only
    • Nominal operation – 1.37A

Apple Power Mac G4

Specs: G4/533 Dual – 1.5GB RAM – 2 x 18GB SCSI (15K rpm)

  • Peak Startup – 1.27A
  • Max load on SCSI drives – big copy operation – 1.18A

Apple Xserve G4

Specs: Dual 1.0 Ghz G4, 2GB RAM 2x60GB & 2 x 180GB

  • heavy cpu/disk load – 1.52A
    • simultaneous diskutil zero on all disks (booted from CD)
    • Max CPU – multiple threads of cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null & ssh/rsa keygen operations
  • all 4 disks idle – 1.37A
  • Insert 180GB ADM – peak 1.41A, settled back down to 1.32A
  • Insert second 180GB ADM – peak 1.48A, settled down to 1.38A
  • keygen and cat large data file generated by /dev/urandom, copied to Software RAID mirror 60GB – spikes to 1.56A

Apple Xserve G5

Specs: Dual 2.0Ghz G5, 3GB RAM, 3 x 80GB SATA

  • Nominal operation – 1.8A
  • Max Cold Boot – 2.16A

Specs: Dual 2.3Ghz G5, 1GB RAM, 2 x 500GB SATA

  • Nominal operation – 1.8A
  • Max Cold Boot – 2.07A

Apple dual Quad Core Intel Xserve

Specs: Dual Intel 2.8Ghz Quad Xeon (8 cores), 16GB RAM, 3 x 1TB SATA in RAID 5

  • Max Cold Boot – 3.23A
  • Nominal operation – 2.80A
  • Max cpu, disk activity – 3.68A
  • Powered Off – 0.27A

Apple single Quad Core Intel Xserve (Xserve2,1 – Early 2008 model)

Specs: Single Intel 2.8Ghz Quad Xeon, 4GB RAM, 2 x 250GB SATA

  • Nominal operation – 2.00
  • Powered Off – 0.28A
  • Max cpu, disk activity – 2.08 amps
    (calculated by adding all “watts” readings in Server Monitor and div by 115V)

Apple Intel Mac Mini

Specs: Intel 1.66Ghz Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 60GB E-Rated Hitachi drive E7K100 model

  • Nominal operation – 0.29A
  • Max cpu, disk activity – 0.37A

Apple G4 Mac Mini

Specs: 1.33Ghz PowerPC G4, 1GB RAM, no wireless, 32GB Transcend Solid State Disk

  • Idle – 0.13A
  • Book Peak – 0.26A
  • Nominal operation – 0.20A
  • Max cpu, disk activity – 0.26A
  • With added 1TB SATA laptop – massive dd ops – 0.21A

Apple Xserve RAID (Xraid)

Specs: 7 x 250GB (Hitachi) and 7 x 750GB (Seagate 7200.10)

  • Nominal operation – fluctuates around 2.00A
  • Max disk activity (as much as I could generate using Xserve G4) – 2.19A

SuperMicro SuperServer (PDSBM-LN2)

Specs: Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz – Single 200W Power supply – 2GB RAM – 80GB SATA 5400rpm 2.5″ drive

  • Cold Boot (drives spinning up) – 0.9A
  • heavy cpu/disk load – 0.97A
  • Nominal operation – 0.75A max

Specs: Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz (Q6600) – Single 200W Power supply – 4GB RAM – 80GB SATA 5400rpm 2.5″ drive

  • Cold Boot (drives spinning up) – 1.0A
  • heavy cpu/disk load – 1.25A
  • Nominal operation – 0.95A max

IBM 4000R

Specs: Dual 833Mhz PIII – Single Power supply – 2 x 18GB SCSI (10K rpm)

  • Cold Boot (drives spinning up) – 1.0A
  • heavy cpu/disk load – multiple instances of cpuburn and cat’ing /dev/urandom to a file – 0.9A
  • Nominal operation – 0.75A max

IBM eServer x330

Specs: Two Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) 864MHz processors, 1GB RAM, Single Power Supply, Single 36GB SCSI drive

  • Connecting Power Peak: 0.29A
  • Stdby Steady: 0.11A
  • Power On Peak: 0.78A
  • SCSI spinup: 0.98A
  • Powered low load: 0.63A
  • Loaded (6.0+ Load Average with disk): 0.80A
  • Disk activity only: 0.72 peakA
  • Reasonable Load + Disk Activity: 0.79A
  • heavy cpu/disk load – multiple instances of cpuburn and cat’ing /dev/urandom to a file – 0.82A

IBM eServer x336

Specs: Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon, 4GB RAM, Dual 575W Power Supplies, Dual 146GB SCSI drives

  • Connecting Power Peak: 1.06A
  • Stdby Steady: 0.79A
  • Power On Peak: 2.5A
  • Powered low load: 2.12A
  • Loaded (7.0+ with disk): 3.25A
  • Disk activity only: 2.40A
  • Reasonable Load + Disk Activity: 2.85A peak
  • heavy cpu/disk load – multiple instances of cpuburn and cat’ing /dev/urandom to a file – 3.2A

Some pieces of network equipment/drives I’ve tested:

  • Cisco CSS 11151 Load Balancing switch – 0.89A
  • Cisco CSS 11501 Load Balancer – peak startup: 0.69A – idle: 0.63A
  • Cisco 2621 Router – peak startup: 0.14A – idle: 0.13A
  • Cisco WS-3548-XL 48 port 10/100 switch – peak startup: 0.87A – idle (no ports connected): 0.61A
  • Cisco WS-C2924-XL-EN 24 port 10/100 switch – peak startup: 0.39A – idle (1 port connected): 0.36A
  • Cisco 1538M (8 port 10/100 hub) – 0.16A
  • Cisco 1601 T1 Router – 0.08A (nothing connected)
  • Cisco 2948G Catalyst – Boot peak: 1.0A – idle (no ports connected): 0.78A
  • ——-
  • Dell PowerConnect 5224 24 port GigE switch – peak startup: 0.43A – idle (no ports connected): 0.36A
  • Dell PowerConnect 3248 48 port 10/100 switch – peak startup: 0.40A – idle (no ports connected): 0.35A
  • Dell PowerConnect 3324 24 port 10/100 switch – peak startup: 0.22A – 8 ports connected: 0.2A
  • ——-
  • HP ProCurve 2848 (J4904A) – 48 port GigE switch – peak startup 0.69A – idle (no ports connected): ~0.51A
  • NetGear FS524 24 port 10/100 switch – peak startup: 0.24A – idle (no ports connected): 0.21A
  • ——-
  • Juniper NetScreen 5GT – 0.06A
  • NetScreen 10 – 0.06A
  • Netopia 3386-ENT – 0.05A
  • Adtran CSU/DSU – 0.01A
  • BayTech DS2-RPC – 0.05A
  • ——-
  • 500GB Seagate SATA drive – Spinup: 0.31A – Duplicate large files – 0.11
  • CoolMax NAS – Single SATA drive- Spinup: 0.26A – Duplicate large files – 0.16
  • Seagate FreeAgent 1TB USB drive – Spinup: 0.24A – Duplicate large files – 0.11
  • 4-Bay v2 Drobo with 2 x 5900 rpm 2TB Seagate drives – Startup – 0.35A

Dave from NetApp has some interesting things to say about power in the datacenter.

Published in Colocation, Hardware, Routers and Firewalls and Servers

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