Specifications

Intel® Cloud Builders Guide: Dell* OpenManage* Power Center

Let’s review the power scaling in building

a rack full of these Dell PowerEdge

R720xd Servers. Each server has twin

750W Power Supplies, and if we were

using the nameplate value of these

systems to deploy into a rack, we would

simply take the rack power capability

of 6kW and divide by 750W to get the

number of servers we could put into the

rack. That equates to only 8 servers.

We also know from measuring the power

data directly from the server using Intel

Node Manager in conjunction with the

Dell iDRAC7 with Power Center that each

system shows a maximum power limit of

489W. So we do the math again, this time

the same rack power of 6kW divided by

489W to get the number of servers that

we could put into the rack. Now we can

put in 12 servers.

In this power capped scenario, we have

782W per two servers which breaks down

to 391W per system. Just a reminder, this

is a test-bed scenario and you will have to

test your own conguration to ensure

the workloads are not impacted. We run

the numbers again, with the 6kW rack

power and divide by 391W per server.

We can now squeeze 15 servers into the

same rack where we could originally only

put 8 servers.

Figure 4: Rack Density Increase using Nameplate, De-rated, and Dynamic Capped Power