Comment by nabilt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nabilt | Hacker News Reader

This is a pretty cool solution. I didn't know the capabilities of USB4 before this.

The comparison with the Dell r630 power numbers got me interested since I just purchased a Dell r430 to host my site so I decided to benchmark mine.

Specs:

  * 2x Xeon E5-2680 v3 (same CPU)
  * 64GB RAM
  * 2x power supply (can't remember if it's 500W or 750W each and too lazy to look)
  * 1 SSD & 1 7300 RPM HDD
  * Ubuntu server 22.04.3 LTS

Using a Kill-A-Watt meter I measure ~100 watts after boot. Running sysbench (sysbench --test=cpu --threads=12 --cpu-max-prime=100000 --time=300 run) I get up to ~220 watts.

If my calculations are correct that's 72 kW per day or $11.05 per month at idle:

  0.1 kW * 24 hours * 30 days = 72 kWh
  72 kWh * 15.34 cents/kWh = $11.05

and 158.4 kW or $24.3 per month during load:

  0.22 kW * 24 hours * 30 days = 158.4 kWh
  158.4 kWh * 15.34 cents/kWh = $24.3

I'm not sure of OP's use case, but these numbers are probably more realistic than using the max wattage of the power supply for most people. I will still be hosting in a co-location for the reliable internet and so I can sleep without the sound of a jet engine taking off. Those fans are loud!

> I'm not sure of OP's use case

Lack of understanding. Even comparing 65W to 1000W should had ring some bells, but.

> but these numbers are probably more realistic

Almost, depends on the load (hardware) and load (software), as someone who manages a fleet of 720/730/630, a standby server eats around 150W and under the load up to 300-350W, depending on the package.

> Using a Kill-A-Watt meter

You can use built-in measuring in iDRAC.

Thanks, good to know. I may need to request a 3A 1U in that case.

I didn't know iDRAC could measure real time power usage. Pretty amazing.

I inherited a few R420's from my work, and the coolest thing about it is the iDRAC. I'm not a SRE or anything of the sort, so don't get to see stuff like that much, but the utility of the iDRAC is fantastic.

The machines each have 192GB of ram, so I thought I'd set them up as LLM inference machines. I figured that with that much ram, I could load just about any model.

Then I discovered how slow the CPUs on these older machines is. It was so utterly slow. I have a machine I bought from Costco a few years ago that was under $1k and came with a RTX 3060 with 12GB of GPU ram. That machine can run around 20+/tokens per second on 13B models (I actually don't know - I stream the text, and cap it at 9 tokens per second so I can actually read it).

The R420? Its tokens per second were in the 0.005 to 0.01 range.

So, yeah, not a good CPU for that sort of task. For other stuff, sure. I thought I'd setup a small file server with one instead, but the fans are so jet engine loud that it's intolerable to have in any part of the house, even when managing fan speeds with software.

CPUs are slow in comparison to GPUs for lots of tasks. Comparing a 10 year old CPU vs. a 4 year old GPU only make that comparison "more offensive." That said, you pair your R420 with something like a RTX A2000 and you'll have a much fairer fight.

Does an RTX A2000 even fit? I'd consider trying to find a pair if so. It's hard looking at the two machines I have with 192GB each doing nothing.

Another data point - I'm running about 500w for my small rack. NAS (20 x 3.5HDD), ICX6610 (3 PoE APs), 2 x R630, and some small devices.

According to iDRAC, my R630's are drawing almost exactly 100w/each. Each with about 75 pods (k8s nodes).

My R730 with 14x 2TB NVMe, 8x 6TB SAS HDDs, 2x E5-2680 v4 eats 250W.

> You can use built-in measuring in iDRAC.

Does anyone know if ~modern HP iLO can show power usage too?

Looking through my Gen8 HP Microservers just now, I'm not seeing power usage info. :(

"Power Information" is just showing the state of the power supplies (aka "OK", "Good, In Use") and not much else.

Since iLO3 (~2010) and even more simple one (as in momentary) even at iLO2.

It's just your MicroServers are gutted so they wouldn't compete with enterprise gear and ML line (probably).

Try:

SNMP

IPMI

HPE Agents (Linux, Windows)

REST/RIBCLI interface for iLO (https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/softwaredetails?language=e...)

It certanly has some reading on the power but it's just don't display it in the interface.

At least https://www.storagereview.com/review/hp-proliant-microserver... says it has Power Meter menu entry?

Also check if you really running the updated firmware for the iLO.

Thanks. The Power Meter menu entry is there, but clicking on it just gives a blank page with this text:

    The Power Manager is unavailable for this configuration.

That's with iLO "Advanced" too. :(

Haven't bothered with setting up SNMP nor IPMI on the Microservers though, as it seemed like a bunch of effort for no real benefit (for a homelab). The HPE agents thing is an idea. I'll have to take a look at what that needs, can hook into, etc. :)

These Microservers are definitely running the latest firmware, and the latest iLO firmware too (released last year).

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