Watt Usage on Web Servers

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aagthosting

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I am buying some web servers to host sites for my hosting company. If possible I need these servers to use around .5 amps per server. How do I determine how many amps a server is going to use?

The servers will be on a 120V circuit.

The configuration on these particular servers will be 1 Dual Core processor and a single hard drive. I may have some larger servers soon. Is there a way to calculate the Watt usage for the processor, the motherboard, the hard drive etc?

Does anyone know about a particular server that uses around .5 amps?

Greg S. Tibbetts MBA, MPM


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Server Specs

I was thinking I would call Dell, HP and Super Micro and ask questions. I have a limited amount of power on a particular rack and need to put really efficient servers on that rack.

AAGT Web Hosting


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Yes, definitely call the manufacturer. Half an amp is easy to pull. I'm not familiar with what a server would pull but the producer will know. It usually isn't a measurement that is easy to find on the equipment. I would love it if you could post back here and give some additional details once you track down the specifics.
 
Talking to Super Micro

I talked to Super Micro on the phone. They asked me to send over a list of servers I was thinking of using and they would send me some info. About an hour after I sent some server configs to them they sent me a list of what each piece of hardware uses as well as a total watt usage.

They gave me specs for 80% usage and 100% usage.

I have a couple questions now. What percentage of usage does a server normally use? It seems to me that most web servers will use less than 50% of capacity.

Here is a list of the components in the server that they say use watts. The wattage may vary per server. This may also vary depending on what percentage of the resources for that component are being used. I also included the watt usage for this particular server at 100% resources used.

1U Supermicro H8SSL-i2 DC AMD 1212 2.0Ghz 1GB Server

- Motherboard 13.69 W
- CPU 71.28 W
- USB Peripherals 2.5 W
- RAM 5.51 W per 1Gig Ram
- PCI Cards 24.98 per PCI card Generic
- Fan 0059 19.2 W per fan
- Floppy Drives 7.5 per floppy drive
- CD Rom drives 7.5 per cdrom
- Hard Drives 15.4 per sata drive

Total wattage at 100% usage: 184.08

They also gave me some number of watt usage based on different percentages of usage for various components.

- CPU at 85% 60.59 W
- RAM 1GB Ram at 80% 17.63 W
- PCI Cards at 60% 14.99 W
- Fan 0059 19.2 W per fan
- Floppy Drives .75 W at 10% per floppy drive
- CD Rom drives at 30% 2.25 W per cdrom
- Hard Drives at 55% 8.47 W per sata drive

Total Watt Usage: 140.06 W
Total Amp Usage at 120V: 1.167 A
Total Amp Usage at 208V: .673 A

Keep in mind that the faster the processor is the more watts it uses. It also seems to me that there may be some XEON processors that use less watts than AMD. I only say this because I looked up specs on certain XEON processors and there is a 2.2Ghz that uses a total of 20W at 100% consumption.
 
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I guess that the percentage of usage would depend on a number of factors. I know I'm throwing out more questions for you but I'm curious. What causes a server to run at 50%, vs. 80% vs. 100%? I guess the load and the usage right? i think you said that anyway.
Thanks so much for the break down on components and how many watts they use. Some might not think it is important but I enjoy that type of information. I am looking forward to seeing how this tread plays out in a few days.
Also, I like knowing that xeon is more energy efficient than the AMD's.
 
XEON vs AMD

XEON is not always more efficient than AMD. This depends on the model of processor. I found a site on the Internet that has a list of XEON processors and the watt usage. I am pretty sure that for any type of processor or generation you can find a site that will list the model and watt usage.

Most processors seem to use between 60 watts and 110 watts. There is a particular 2.2Ghz XEON that uses 20 Watts.

If you want to know the watt usage of a processor look at the Max TDP.
 
Make sure to buy the ULV or LV versions of CPU's as well to save on precious amps and watts usage. Dont buy cheap stuff either that will generally tend to draw more power
 
AMD OPTERON Energy Efficient Processors

I just found out that when using AMD Opteron processors use HE or EE versions of the processor for better energy efficiency. For an example a processor that uses 103W (opteron 1214) with HE version uses 65W and EE version uses 45W.

Are the ULV and LV versions for Intel?
 
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I put a server in a HE data center. I found out that the Intel ATOM uses less wattage than other processors. On a 15 amp circuit I can run between 36 - 40 servers. Most of the time you can't run more than 20. The boxes are basicaly a 2U tower. You can fit them side by side on the rack. When you build an ATOM server with raid mirroring you can use around a total of 50 Watts of power per server. Keep in mind if you use a 7200 laptop hard drive you can use less wattage as well. Green drives tend to have some bottleneck issues, but they use less power.

The other processors that tend to use less power are the i3, i5 and i7.

I have a question about laptop (mobile processors). Can I use a Mobile Core 2 Duo in a server. I noticed that the mobile Core 2 Duo can use between 17W & 35W. They go up to 3.06Ghz.

I know the board has to be compatible with the processor, but id like to find a board I can use in a server to run Core 2 Duo Mobile processors.

Here is a link to a Wikipedia page that has a list processors with watt usage. Look at the Core 2 Duo mobile processors (laptop). I don't want to use a laptop motherboard in the servers.
 
For more accurate details you may need contact the vendor/HW provider. Better then running guess work. Especially while hardware revisions always changing and so it's specs.
 
I have another question about hard drives. I am considering using a 7200RPM laptop hard drive in my servers. The reason for this is because a 3.5" desktop hard drive uses around 12W. A laptop 2.5" hard drive uses about 2W. I also know that a desktop hard drive can use either 5V or 12V. A laptop hard drive uses 5V.

Here is my question.

Will the SATA connection on the laptop hard drive be compatible with the SATA connection on a server or desktop motherboard? I want to have 3.0Gbps of throughput capability on the drive.

I need to make sure a desktop or server board will be compatible with a laptop hard drive.
 
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I talked to tech support at Super Micro and they said not to use laptop hard drives. I figure I will end up using a 7200 rpm 3.5" SATA drive.

I have been told that Samsung drives tend to use less watts.
 
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