The Sun Blade Blog
Power calculators
The topic of power consumption metrics seems to be an issue
similar
to TCO - everyone has their own idea on what it is and how to measure it, but no standard way that everyone agrees
on. Since data center power and cooling constraints are such 'hot'
discussions these days - how would you answer these questions:
How do you compare power consumption and cooling/HVAC requirements
for different vendor blade server offerings?
It's a difficult task to make power consumption comparisons between vendors, as each
vendor has chosen different workloads to run on their servers. The ones
that can be compared are Dell (on some servers) and Sun because they
both use an industry benchmark (SPECjbb2005) to exercise the server while
measuring power consumption. IBM uses Prime95 (torture test). HP does not disclose what they use to
exercise the servers under test.
Do you use the name plate power metrics provided by vendors; or
the
vendor power calculators; or your own actual power measurements
(under your own workload)?
Vendor server nameplate ratings: For datacenter design, it is important to look at a nameplate - it
indicates the maximum amount of power a system can use at any given
time under any kind of workload and datacenter environmental condition.
This is the data that should be used to size the power allocation to a
rack or a datacenter room.
Vendor server power calculator ratings:
Power calculators provide a representation of a workload under normal
data center environmental conditions and may be useful to identify what
the estimated operational cost of the server will be. However, vendor power calculators are based on
different workload and test methodology, and measure power
differently.
Would you plan a server selection and
required power needs based on nameplate ratings?
Using vendor power calculators, is it possible to
create realistic server power consumption comparison that you can use
as a criteria in server selections?
Sun believes a very viable option for customers is to get a server through its Try and Buy Program and measure power
while running the application that server is expected to run. It
doesn't get more accurate than that.
Posted at 06:13PM Apr 21, 2008 by Douglas Wilson in Sun | Comments[1]
Do these comments regarding nameplates contradict the advice given by Sun here:
http://docs.sun.com/source/819-5730-10/powcool.html#49465
These specifications are the measured power ratings, which are calculated for the base server configurations as defined by Sun. It is important to realize the nameplate ratings are only a references to the servers' hardware limits that could accommodate future components. Do not use these values to calculate the servers' current power and cooling requirements.
Posted by 70.188.134.112 on July 29, 2008 at 08:50 PM PDT #