Dell C6100 XS23-TY3 2U 4-Node (8 CPU) Cloud Server

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britinpdx

Active Member
Feb 8, 2013
367
184
43
Portland OR
I have a feeling there is something in the BIOS that we are missing.
My previous power draw tests were with the BIOS setting for Server / Power Management set to "Node Management". I changed this to "OS Control/EIST" on both nodes and checked "idle" power, and again measured about 240W. So no change between those 2 settings that I could tell.

The other 2 choices are "Max Performance" and "Active Power Controller", both of which disable Speedstep.

I tried the "Active Power Controller" setting just to see how it effects things. Once both nodes were idle in Server 2012, the power draw didn't seem to be much different ... maybe a handful of Watts at best ?

So I don't see any effect on idle power draw from BIOS settings. Maybe it's a Linux / Windows thing ?
 

legen

Active Member
Mar 6, 2013
213
39
28
Sweden
My C6100 finally arrived today!

Everything seems to be working well, however there are some issues.

1. I think i got the wrong cpus! I ordered the one with L5520 CPU's but the bios is reporting E5520 cpus. I will contact the seller about this.

2. My power consumption with Node Management selected in BIOS:
1 node with 2x 500 GB Samsung SATA drives, 2x5520E, 48 GB RAM
*in bios:170W
*in esxi without any vms running: 150W

Whole machine with all 4 nodes connected draws 55W

I have yet to test what power consumption i have with 4 nodes running, and running windows on 1 node.

Edit1:
I also tested passthrough in esxi and it worked flawlessly!
Used esxi 4.1 to pass-through one of the on-board Nics to a debian machine.
 
Last edited:

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
164
16
18
RAID controllers for C6100

I'm looking to install an LSI controller (maybe a 9266-8i?) into a C6100 node but it looks like the physical size of the card may be a problem. Anyone install a RAID card in the PCIe slot of a C6100 node? What make/model controller did you use?
 

legen

Active Member
Mar 6, 2013
213
39
28
Sweden
I'm looking to install an LSI controller (maybe a 9266-8i?) into a C6100 node but it looks like the physical size of the card may be a problem. Anyone install a RAID card in the PCIe slot of a C6100 node? What make/model controller did you use?
You need a low-profile pcie card. In a day or two i will test my M1015 and see if that works, i will report back then.
 

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
164
16
18
You need a low-profile pcie card. In a day or two i will test my M1015 and see if that works, i will report back then.
Yes, that part I know. It is the length of the card that worries me. The heatsink for one of the processors is right behind the PCIe x16 slot.
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
The M1015 does work, length and all. The end of the card hangs over the heatsink, but that is by design. There is (or should be) a plastic insulator over that portion of the heatsink to prevent any possibility of a short.

Yes, that part I know. It is the length of the card that worries me. The heatsink for one of the processors is right behind the PCIe x16 slot.
 

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
164
16
18
The M1015 does work, length and all. The end of the card hangs over the heatsink, but that is by design. There is (or should be) a plastic insulator over that portion of the heatsink to prevent any possibility of a short.
Gotcha. Several LSI based cards have the SFF-8087 ports right behind the slot bracket. These cards shouldn't be a problem but there are some cards with the ports on the back of the card. I would imagine these would be a problem?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
My C6100 finally arrived today!

Everything seems to be working well, however there are some issues.

1. I think i got the wrong cpus! I ordered the one with L5520 CPU's but the bios is reporting E5520 cpus. I will contact the seller about this.
Get the L5520's for sure.
 

carlosmp

New Member
Mar 12, 2013
18
1
3
dba,

Would love to see a picture of this setup. I have a pair of these boxes in production, and was going to replace the intel ET 4 port cards with the infiniband, and then use the PCIe for HBA. I was thinking of using some 9211s for this since they have ports on the edge of the card, making it easier to cable. What cables did you use to the MB? Was considering this route to get some speed on the drives over the built in 3G interfaces...

TIA,
Carlos.
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I have two boxes with IB Mezzanine and LSI 9202 for external SAS ports. I'm using the motherboard SATA ports for boot only. The third box uses LSI 2008 Mezzanine and PCIe IB. That means that I don't have a photo showing an internal port PCIe HBA.

I did test-fit an M1015 early on but didn't take photos. That said, cards like the 9211 with rear-facing SAS ports could be problematic - you'd need both SAS cables to bend around the heatsink. I have not tried it myself. Cards like the M1015 with side facing ports are easy if you aren't using a Mezzanine card. If you have a Mezzanine card taking up real estate then you may have a different cable routing problem - again I haven't tried the M1015 in conjunction with a Mezzanine card.



dba,

Would love to see a picture of this setup. I have a pair of these boxes in production, and was going to replace the intel ET 4 port cards with the infiniband, and then use the PCIe for HBA. I was thinking of using some 9211s for this since they have ports on the edge of the card, making it easier to cable. What cables did you use to the MB? Was considering this route to get some speed on the drives over the built in 3G interfaces...

TIA,
Carlos.
 

Smalldog

Member
Mar 18, 2013
62
2
8
Goodyear, AZ
What kind of memory is everyone using in their C6100's?

I have 4GB modules that are DDR3-8500 (1066mhz). When I populate all 12 DIMM sockets, the BIOS reports them as running at 800MHz. When I populate only 12, it reports them running at 1066MHz. These are with the memory set to "auto" in the BIOS. I didn't want to force anything.

Anyone else observe this? Do I need to pony up more money for bigger faster memory? Everything seems to run fine, and Windows Server 2012 and ESXi 5.1 don't seem to complain and appear to run just fine.

Jeff
 

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
1,017
331
83
Minnesota
In this generation of MB and CPU the memory speed would drop based on the number of chips installed due to voltages provided to the memory. I do remember seeing that fully-loaded memory configurations would drop to 800mhz from all major vendors. I am trying to find references in either the Dell manual or others for this, but it does take a lot of power to run all of the resources. I will post something if I can find it.

One thing to note, the manual says that you can't run these things in a full configuration with all 4 nodes and the 1100W power supplies (full disk, memory, CPU). Not really sure what that means to those wanting to run full disk stacks. In the HPC model you would run them disk less or one set so never fully loading them.
 

Toddh

Member
Jan 30, 2013
122
10
18
Not sure if its been posted yet but the C6100s are now going for $799 with rails.

Makes it hard not to buy another....


.
 

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
837
28
28
Singapore
Not sure if its been posted yet but the C6100s are now going for $799 with rails.

Makes it hard not to buy another....


.
Yep, got one of mine from here. Arrived well packaged, in good working order with all the bit expected. The rails are for racks with round holes and do not fit my rack which has square holes. I also got a unit from here as they had the Mellanox PCIe cards I wanted. Again, the unit was well packaged, had all the bits expected and is in good order.

Worst problem so far is that one of the power button blocks cables became disconnected so I had to take the frony bays off to reconnect it. Not such a big job and detailed in the on-line manual.

Just waiting for my Supermicro fans so I can try and quieten this beast.

RB
 

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
1,017
331
83
Minnesota
Correction to myself, it's a memory bandwidth issue. Though according to these docs, we should still be able to sustain 1066Mhz.

Introduction to Nehalem Memory - blog.scottlowe.org - The weblog of an IT pro specializing in virtualization, storage, and servers
04-08-2009 - Nehalem and Memory Configurations - High Performance Computing - Wiki - High Performance Computing - Dell Community
http://www.siliconmechanics.com/files/NehalemInfo.pdf



In this generation of MB and CPU the memory speed would drop based on the number of chips installed due to voltages provided to the memory. I do remember seeing that fully-loaded memory configurations would drop to 800mhz from all major vendors. I am trying to find references in either the Dell manual or others for this, but it does take a lot of power to run all of the resources. I will post something if I can find it.

One thing to note, the manual says that you can't run these things in a full configuration with all 4 nodes and the 1100W power supplies (full disk, memory, CPU). Not really sure what that means to those wanting to run full disk stacks. In the HPC model you would run them disk less or one set so never fully loading them.
 

jcdmacleod

New Member
Mar 27, 2013
5
0
0
Does anyone know what Dell OMSA support these have, if any?

I know when the C6100s first released a couple of reviews I read said that there was no or limited OMSA support. Both the C series and OMSA have come along a couple of revisions and years since so I wondered if anyone has tried OMSA and what support it has with OMSA 7.1 and the XS23-TY3?
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I looked briefly a few weeks ago - no official support for OMSA (OpenManage Server Administrator) in the entire c-series line.

Does anyone know what Dell OMSA support these have, if any?

I know when the C6100s first released a couple of reviews I read said that there was no or limited OMSA support. Both the C series and OMSA have come along a couple of revisions and years since so I wondered if anyone has tried OMSA and what support it has with OMSA 7.1 and the XS23-TY3?
 

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
1,529
241
63
Not sure if its been posted yet but the C6100s are now going for $799 with rails.

Makes it hard not to buy another....


.
Good reasoning not to buy one more... we have a few.

This does make me want to start a dedicated hosting biz tho.
 

darkdub

New Member
Mar 28, 2013
5
0
1
Two questions about the C6100 platform in this thread:

1) I saw on the first post that they are configured for up to three drives per node. Are there any other possibilities for changing that configuration? Specifically, one node with all 12 drives?
and,
2) Are the nodes interconnected in any way that can be utilized from a Linux environment? And if so, at what speed does this interconnect operate?

I'm specifically thinking of putting all drives on one host, doing a RAID-10, then sharing that disk to the other nodes. Another option would be to RAID-0 or 1 the 3 drives within each node, then do the opposite between the nodes. Both of these depend on some sort of connection between the nodes.

I flipped through the pages of this thread, and googled a bit, but wasn't able to find the answers to these. If they're here and I missed it, I apologize. Could be that I'm using the wrong terms to search.

Any info would be appreciated!