Server Clash: DELL's Quad Opteron DELL R815 vs HP's DL380 G7 and SGI's Altix UV10
by Johan De Gelas on September 9, 2010 7:30 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- AMD
- Intel
- Xeon
- Opteron
Power Extremes: Idle and Full Load
Now that we have real OEM servers in the lab for all platforms, we can finally perform a decent power consumption comparison. All servers have 64GB and the disk configuration is also exactly the same (four SSDs). In the first test we report the power consumption running vApus Mark II, which means that the servers are working at 95-99% CPU load. Please note that although the CPU load is high, we are not measuring maximum power: you can attain higher power consumption numbers by using a floating point intensive benchmark such as Linpack. But for virtualized—mostly integer—workloads, this should be more or less the maximum power draw.
We test with redundant power supplies working. So the Dell R815 uses 1+1 1100W PSUs, the SQI Altix UV10 uses 2+2 850W PSU and the HP uses the 1+1 460W PSUs.
You might think that the four 850 W PSU (2+2) are a serious disadvantage for the SGI server, but they are an advantage. The DELL and HP servers split their load over the two PSUs, resulting in somewhat lower efficiency, while the redundant PSUs of the SGI server consume exactly … 0 Watt. The power distribution board of the SGI Altix UV 10 /QSSC-4R has a very “cool” feature called “cold redundancy”. Although the redundancy is fully functional, the 2 redundant PSUs do not consume anything until you pull the active PSUs out.
The Dell R815 consumes less than two HP DL380 G7s, so the performance/watt ratio is competitive with the dual Xeon platform and without any doubt superior to the quad Xeon platform. If you compare the R815 with two Opterons with the HP DL380, you will notice that the R815 server is very efficient . The dual Opteron is hardly consuming more than the HP dual Xeon server while it has an 1100W PSU (not ideal when you are consuming only 360W) and contains of course a slightly more complex quad socket board. The quad socket R815 server is thus very efficient as the difference with a dual socket Xeon server is minimal.
Comparing the dual with the quad Opteron 6174 power numbers, we notice a relatively high increase in power: 244 Watt. So for each Opteron that we add, we measure 122 W at the wall. This 122 W includes a few Watts of PSU losses, VRM and DIMM wiring losses. So the real power consumed by the processor is probably somewhere between 100 and 110W. Which is much closer to the TDP (115W) than the ACP (80W) of this CPU.
Idle power measurements are hardly relevant for consolidated virtualized environments but they are a very interesting point of reference.
As you can see, it is not only the 130W TDP Xeon 7560 that make the SGI Altix UV10/QSSR-4R consume so much. We measure 372W difference between idle and full load, which is about 93W per CPU. That is not a huge difference if you consider that the difference is 350W for the four Opterons, and 170W for the two Xeons 5670. The Xeon 7500 CPU is capable of power gating the cores and will not consume much in idle. So we may say that the difference is not made by the CPUs: all CPU will consume in the range of 90-110W.
The problem is the complexity of the server. The QSSC-4R/ SGI Altix UV 10 pays a price for its scalability and serviceability: the memory riser boards alone consume almost 20W per board. So eight memory boards can add up to 160W. Being able to power 11 PCIe cards means that your power budget grows even more as the complexity of the I/O board is higher and the engineers have to size the power supply for the use of many more I/O cards and memory. The result is that the performance ratio of the quad Xeon 7500 is rather mediocre: you need three times the power of an HP DL 380 G7 and you only get twice the performance. At idle, it is even worse.
The Opteron 6174 needs a bit more power than its 80W ACP tag promises, but the performance/Watt ratio is very good, on par with the HP DL 380 G7. You need almost two HP DL380 G7 to achieve the same performance, but the DELL R815 needs 10% less power than two HP DL380 G7. So the DELL R815 is definitely a match for two DL380 G7s in the performance/watt category. And it beats two HP DL380 G7 with a healthy margin in other departments: CAPEX ($14000 with 128GB versus 2 x $9000 with 64GB), OPEX costs (only one machine to set up and manage), and rack space (2U vs 4U).
But… maximum power and minimum power are not very realistic. How about a real world scenario?
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Exelius - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
So, the "product differentiators" from HP are because they primarily sell through partner channels. This is the model IBM used for years; and if you buy your ProLiants through an HP partner and not a mere reseller, they will know the product line and can configure the hardware however you want. HP does very well at making their servers extremely modular, but you do have to know how/where to find the part numbers. Often this information is not widely distributed outside of HP's partner sales trainings (which are very good.)If you're used to the Dell model of sales, it doesn't make much sense. But because Dell sells directly, their policies for channel partners are stupid (the wholesale price for a channel partner is often higher than the retail price for a direct customer.) But because partners have more pricing and configuration flexibility from HP, the partner can often beat Dell's direct price with HP hardware (which IMO is higher quality than Dell anyway.) Dell doesn't want their partners to compete with their direct sales and HP doesn't want to jeopardize their partner relationships by pushing direct sales too hard.
There are pros and cons to each approach, and it all depends on how you handle your IT. If most of it is in-house, but you're not quite big enough to have an internal buyer who would take in the HP sales training, Dell makes a lot of sense because, well, it's easy to understand and most HP partners make their money off implementation services, not hardware sales. Dell is willing to work with you a little more. But if you look at companies where IT is not a core competency (regional insurance companies, banks, etc) a lot of them use consultants to do IT projects/maintenance and HP is making an absolute killing in this market.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
insightful and enlightening comment. Still, there is a point where extremely modular increases the complexity and price too much. The result is a slightly higher price (which is still acceptable, but sometimes also small configuration mistakes which cause extra delays. The result is significant higher cost. And this happens regularly as even trained people make mistakes. So my first impression is that HP should lower the complexity a bit.Exelius - Saturday, September 11, 2010 - link
True; but without a "direct sales" option they have no way to offer flexible configurations without having a different part number for every possible configuration. Most HP partners will simply use a sales quote tool to build server configurations (in fact; this is exactly what Dell does if you order through their sales reps, which is how you get the best prices.) Again though; HP partners are unlikely to give you a sweetheart deal unless you're buying implementation services from them as well. They make 5-10% on the hardware and 80-150% on the labor,But I'll tell you now that HP was consistently able to beat Dell on price through channels over the last 5 years. IMO this is because Dell has the same sort of parts system internally; HP cuts costs by not bothering to make sense of it all and just pushing it off onto their resellers. They're pretty much not interested in selling direct to consumers because it's really just a small part of their business.
What's killed Dell's profits over the last few years has been that the economic troubles have pushed small/midsize companies to outsource their IT. The companies they outsource to are probably HP partners. Thus, when these companies need hardware, it's likely to be HP (used to be IBM as well; but IBM's support is pathetic and their prices are in the stratosphere.) Channel resellers are also used to dealing with complicated product lists (last I checked Symantec's product book had something like 25,000 individual SKUs) so it's probably not going to change. If anything, it's likely to get worse. For all the consumerization in IT, the enterprise side is only getting more complicated. I wouldn't try to spec a server from HP without at least being familiar with their product line and the options it offers.
lorribot - Friday, September 10, 2010 - link
Being a bit weird we buy Dell PCs (and a sprinkling of Macs) and HP servers.The Dell PCs are cheap and do the job, initial sales calls are good and they will bust a gut on price but beyond that Dell are pretty much hopeless at support in the UK, with our sales manager changing 3 or 4 times a year and never refering any support calls to some else in the team w have never heard of before.
Our HP partner, however, is much more stable and they are generally knowledgeable and help configure servers accordingly though for the most part they are actually straight forward until some nutty developer wants 16 disks locally in an 580 g5. And we have a single point of contact for everything.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Did mention the next day or two (HP) versus 1 to 2 weeks (Dell) delivery options?
The draw full of 2 GB DDR3 RAM I have from our HP blades is very irritating, I wish HP would supply with out any RAM installed, it is such a waste.
AllYourBaseAreBelong2Us - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
Nice article but HP either sells DL380 (Intel) or DL385 (AMD) servers. Please correct all the DL387 references.JohanAnandtech - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
Yes, fixed that one. I always get in trouble with these number codes.Stuka87 - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
Great review, I love it when different platforms are compared to each other. Also happy to see AMD hold their own to the much lauded 7500 series Xeons in a market that I feel AMD is better suited for (VM Servers)However, its possible I missed it, but was the price of the SGI system listed anywhere? It would have been nice to see the price of each system as configured side by side.
vol7ron - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
Pictures on Page 5-6 look delicious.Nice article
duploxxx - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
"Comparing the dual with the quad Opteron 6174 power numbers, we notice a relatively high increase in power: 244 Watt. So for each Opteron that we add, we measure 122 W at the wall. This 122 W includes a few Watts of PSU losses, VRM and DIMM wiring losses. So the real power consumed by the processor is probably somewhere between 100 and 110W. Which is much closer to the TDP (115W) than the ACP (80W) of this CPU."when the power draw test was done between 2 socket and 4 socket dell 815 did you remain with the same amount of dimms? so you divided the 2 socket amount in the 4 socket?
On the power draw calculation don't forget that you also have an additional SR5690 to account for which is 18W TDP, electronics etc, so I don't think it will be operating close to TDP but neither to ACP :)
btw a lot of mistakes with the HP 387G7 which should be 380G7
eanazag - Thursday, September 9, 2010 - link
This is a strong article. Very helpful and most of us basically need to decide which customer we are and what matches our apps and usage requirements.