Datacenter Power Consumption Table

Does anyone know of a good centralized resource that contains a consolidated list of server specifications relevant to the data center?

Looking for Rack U sizing, power consumption, etc. for different branded servers directly from vendor web sites proves difficult - especially for legacy equipment.

Solution 1:

Vendor provided information is usually "absolute maximum", and therefore is largely useless. You need to measure under your conditions and workloads.

Solution 2:

It would be very, very hard to tell as so much of power consumption depends on the specifics of your server hardware.

That said, I highly recommend every sysadmin have a wattmeter in their toolkit, like the kill-a-watt.

Only twenty bucks and it makes this kind of stuff so easy to figure out!

For example, I learned that the web tier servers this very website is running on (Lenovo RS110, specs here), pull:

Idle: doing nothing at windows desktop (unusual, but depends on the server role.. some are light)
96w, 0.85 amp

Full New Install Windows Update: 20% on CPU, plus lots of disk activity (I would consider this more or less a typical load)
120w, 1.0 amp

Full Load: Prime95 + Update. 100% all 4 CPU cores, plus disk activity (this would be extraordinary load, rare)
175w, 1.55 amp

Of course you need to own the server to turn it on and use this tool on it, but perhaps you can use the tool on similar servers you already own to get an idea of what the power consumption might be of other servers you're planning to buy.

Solution 3:

I've seen hardware and Datacenter technicians use Clamp-on Ammeters to measure the actual amperage on a circuit. It will clamp around a wire, so no need to unplug a wire.

Craftsman sells one for $40. I haven't tried this in a Datacenter myself, but I used one to measure the energy used by my fridge, toaster & microwave.

For server rooms and datacenters, I like to use a metered PDU (power strip) which shows current power usage. Yes they are expensive, but it saves staff time and reduces the need to move power cables from circuit to circuit. They are very handy after racking 20 new servers, or when moving the SAN from one circuit to another.

Some of these are network-capable, so you could monitor power usage over the network (Perhaps using Cacti). Again, I haven't done this myself--- but I've seen others do this, and I wish I had the time.