Dell POWEREDGE M915 User Manual

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell™ PowerEdge™ M915 and

HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

A Dell Technical White Paper

Brian Bassett and Chris Christian

Solutions Performance Analysis

Dell | Enterprise Solutions Group

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge M915 and HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND.

© 2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this material in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell.

Dell, the DELL logo, and the DELL badge, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. SPEC and the benchmark names SPECpower_ssj and SPECjbb are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own.

August 2011

Revision 1.0

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge M915 and HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................ 6

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 6

Key Findings ....................................................................................................................... 6

Performance/Watt ............................................................................................................. 6

Performance .................................................................................................................... 6

Power ............................................................................................................................ 6

Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 8

Configurations ....................................................................................................................... 8

Results .............................................................................................................................. 10

Price as Tested .................................................................................................................... 15

Price to Power Efficiency Ratio ............................................................................................... 16

Performance per Dollar ......................................................................................................... 17

Industry Leading 4-Socket Server Power Efficiency ...................................................................... 18

Future Platform Updates ....................................................................................................... 18

Summary............................................................................................................................ 18

Appendix A—Test Methodology ................................................................................................ 19

SPECpower_ssj2008 Standard .................................................................................................. 19

BIOS Settings ..................................................................................................................... 19

OS Tuning ......................................................................................................................... 20

SPECpower_ssj2008 Configuration ............................................................................................ 20

Appendix B—Blade Server Hardware Configuration ...................................................................... 22

Appendix C—Server Firmware and Drivers ................................................................................. 23

Appendix D—Results ............................................................................................................. 24

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge M915 and HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

Table 1: Detailed Blade Solution Configurations ................................................................ 9

Table 2: Dell Blade Solution Cost Breakdown .................................................................. 16

Table 3: HP Blade Solution Cost Breakdown ................................................................... 16

Table 4: Blade Server Hardware Configuration ................................................................ 22

Table 5: Server Firmware and Drivers .......................................................................... 23

Figure 1: Blade Solution Comparison (Normalized Values) .................................................. 10

Figure 2: Blade Solution Power Efficiency ..................................................................... 11

Figure 3: Blade Solution Full-Chassis Performance ........................................................... 12

Figure 4: Blade Solution Power Consumption at 100% Target Load ........................................ 13

Figure 5: Blade Solution Power Consumption at Idle ......................................................... 14

Figure 6: Price as Tested ......................................................................................... 15

Figure 7: Blade Solution Performance per Dollar ............................................................. 17

Figure 8: Dell Blade Solution Benchmark Results ............................................................. 24

Figure 9: HP Blade Solution Benchmark Results ............................................................... 25

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge M915 and HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

Executive Summary

Introduction

Dell commissioned its Solutions Performance Analysis team to compare the power efficiency of full-chassis blade solutions using 4-socket blades from Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP).

In July 2011, the Dell PowerEdge M915 blade server achieved the highest SPECpower_ssj2008 score of any 4socket server on the market1, so eight of these blades and a PowerEdge M1000e enclosure were used as the PowerEdge solution.

For the ProLiant solution, HP’s similar BL685c G7 could have been chosen for this study. However, the BL680c G7 is HP’s top-selling 4-socket blade2, so it was chosen to allow examination of HP’s claims of that server’s unique 4P blade performance and improved power efficiency3. Due to its full-height, double-wide form factor, only four of these blades can fit in a 10U BladeSystem c7000 blade enclosure.

Using the industry-standard SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark, the performance, power draw, and performance/watt of full-chassis configurations of both blade solutions were tested. The blade servers were compared configured as similarly as possible given their architectural differences, with identical memory and hard drive selections, and best known CPU choices for highest performance/watt ratio. To ensure the lowest power draw, both blade chassis were equipped with six of their Platinum-rated power supplies for all tests.

The results showed the Dell solution using 8 PowerEdge M915 costs less than the HP solution consisting of just 4 BL680c G7 blades (the maximum that can fit in the BladeSystem c7000 enclosure). The Dell solution also consumed less power at idle, provided higher raw performance, and achieved a better performance / watt ratio. The Dell solution also fits twice as many servers in a 10U blade enclosure.

Key Findings

Performance/Watt

 The Dell solution with 8 PowerEdge M915 blades achieved a 92% higher performance / watt ratio

across all load levels than the HP solution using 4 ProLiant BL680c G7 blades.

Performance

 The chassis full of 8 PowerEdge M915 blades achieved 87% higher raw performance at 100% utilization

than the chassis full of 4 HP ProLiant BL680c G7 blades.

Power

 Despite having 87% greater performance, the Dell solution with 8 PowerEdge M915 blades consumes

only 14% more power at 100% utilization compared to the HP solution with just 4 ProLiant BL680c G7 blades.

 Despite having twice as many servers, the Dell blade solution consumes 35% less power at idle than

the HP blade solution.

In the published result, the 8-node M915 achieved 14,793,524 ssj_ops@100% target load and a SPECpower_ssj2008 result of 2,716 overall ssj_ops/Watt.

Benchmark results based on results published at www.spec.org as of July 2011. For the latest SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/power_ssj2008.html.

According to IDC Q1 2011 Server Tracker, May 22, 2011

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/3709945-3709945-3328410-241641-3722793-4268690.html

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge M915 and HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

Price

 Priced as configured, the Dell PowerEdge solution, including 8 M915 blades and the M1000e Blade

Chassis, costs 21% less overall than the HP ProLiant solution which includes 4 BL680c G7 blades and the BladeSystem C7000 enclosure.

 The Dell solution’s lower cost and greater power efficiency lead to a 59% better price / performance /

watt ratio.

Rack Density

 The Dell solution provides 8 servers per 10U chassis, compared to the HP solution which provides

only 4 servers per 10U chassis.

Test methodology and detailed results are documented in this paper.

The comparison presented here is based on the respective enterprise-class servers configured as similarly as possible and currently shipping by Dell and HP. Results based on SPECpower_ssj2008 performance testing by Dell Labs in June 2011. For the latest SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark results, visit

http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/power_ssj2008.html. For latest SPECjbb2005 benchmark results,

visit http://www.spec.org/osg/jbb2005.

Power Efficiency Comparison of the Dell PowerEdge M915 and HP ProLiant BL680c G7 Blade Solutions

Methodology

SPECpower_ssj2008 is an industry standard benchmark created by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) to measure a server’s power and performance across multiple utilization levels. Appendix A details the test methodology used by Dell, Appendices B and C provide detailed configurations for the tests, and Appendix D provides detailed report data that supports the results in this paper. Full disclosure reports from the valid SPECpower_ssj2008 runs used in this comparison are attached to this whitepaper for reference.

Configurations

The blade servers in both solutions were configured for their best known SPECpower_ssj2008 configurations, and were matched as closely as possible given the differences between the architectures. Both solutions used the maximum number of DIMMs and CPUs the blades could accommodate.

The configuration used is summarized in Table 1.

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