Authored by Bruce Wagner, Solutions Performance Analysis
As brought to attention by this blog, the 2U, two-socket PowerEdge R720 server delivers superior power efficiency over its direct competitor, the HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8. Today I want to highlight the results of a comparable power efficiency study focused on the 1U two-socket form factor.
While Dell has published SPECpower_ssj2008 results across a range of systems in our 12th generation server lineup, results for any equivalent HP ProLiant Gen8 have yet to be published. Given the lack of publicly available data, customers have been asking how Dell and HP compare in 1U rack energy efficiency.
The PowerEdge R620 and ProLiant DL360p Gen8 were configured to closely resemble each other with similar hard drives and RAID controllers, and the same Intel Xeon processors and memory DIMMs.
Our testing showed that the PowerEdge R620 has 19% better overall power efficiency than the ProLiant DL360p Gen8. The DL360p Gen8 consumed significantly more power at idle, at full load, and at all load levels in between. See the full whitepaper for the detailed test configuration, methodology and findings.
The 70% load level is an important utilization level to customers, as it allows datacenters to preserve sufficient capacity for absorbing spikes in demand; at that level, the DL360p Gen8 drew 50 watts more than the R620:
In even a small to medium-sized datacenter, 50 watts per server adds up over time in total cost of ownership (power and cooling costs). It’s clear that the PowerEdge R620 has significant performance/watt advantages versus the HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8, which is a direct result of Dell’s investment in R&D around energy efficiency.
Required SPEC disclosure information: PowerEdge R620 scores: (1,417,8309 ssj_ops and 301 W) @ 100% target load and 4104 overall ssj_ops/watt vs. ProLiant DL360p Gen8: (1,391,672 ssj_ops and 305W) @ 100% and 3440 overall ssj_ops/watt. Comparison based on results by Dell Labs Sept 2012. SPEC® and the benchmark name SPECpower_ssj® are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For more information about SPECpower, see www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/.