PowerEdge R710 Optimise Power Consumption

[nader_awad]

PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN!

Few days ago I've purchased a certified refurbished Dell poweredge R710 from amazon with following specs :


Processors: 2 x 2.80Ghz X5660 Hex Core
Memory: 16 x 8GB PC3-10600R
Hard Drives: 6 x 2TB x 7.2K SATA 3.5"
Drive Bays: 6 hotswap 3.5"
Power Supplies: 2 x DELL 870W
RAID Controller: PERC H700
Network Interface: x Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet
Video Card: ATI Technologies Inc ES1000
Optical Drive: DVD-ROM Included
Remote Access Controller: iDRAC Enterprise

I've purchased this server for virtualization purposes (to install Vmware ESXi) in a home lab, however i stupidly forgotten to take in consideration the very basic electricity bill factor, the server runs at 1740 Watt (2PSU= 2*870Watt = 1740 Watt) in my country we are charged at a 0.8$/KWh rate (What a government haa :/ !) and hence we are speaking about 1036$ monthly bill for a 24*7 operation (1295 KWh * 0.8), if i manage to run it on a single PSU and do best effort keeping it idle (powering on VMs only when needed) we are speaking about 297$ (500 Watt per hour and that would 372KWh * 0.8) which is way more what one can afford !

anyone knows if this server can be optimized to operate on 200Watt Smiley Happy i think this is absolutely impossible but thought giving it a try.

 

[failboat]

It won't pull that much.

It's going to pull a lot. I would guess about 300-350W continuous.

You could research just running 1 cpu. I'm not sure if that is supported or not. There are low power editions you can put in, but they are much slower.
These old servers aren't great for running 24/7 power wise.
This dual cpu config benches about the same as intel i5 8400@65W
The only plus to these old servers is the cheap DDR3 ECCreg memory.
If you can return it I would consider that.

I built an inexpensive homelab using used sandy bridge e3 low power parts, but only 8G ECC unbuffered ram. It pulls 50W with 2 SSD, 3 HDD HGST megascale.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5660+%40+2.80GHz&id=1305&cpuCount=2