Best tweaks for reducing ESXi idle power consumption?

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NeverDie

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The mother board I'm using (the SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O) to run ESXi has a BIOS setting that relates to conserving power. Presently it's set to favor performance over saving power (which is the factory default). Are there any relevant settings in ESXi also? For instance, I see under "Hardware" there is a "Power Management Settings" section. Anything else, or other tweaks, or is that basically it?

I used a Kill-a-watt type meter to measure the motherboard, together with the CPU (an E3-1230v3), Intel's stock CPU fan, 16GB 1600 1.35v RAM, a Samsung 850 250GB SSD, and an older 500watt Corsair power supply, and an 8GB USB boot stick. All that combined measured out to 41 watts with ESXi at idle and no VM's running. In contrast, it measured as drawing 6 watts when the motherboard was off but in standby

For comparison, the Kill-a-watt measured a SuperMicro C2758 motherboard as consuming about 16 watts with ESXi similarly at idle. (though with a picopsu instead of a corsair power supply).
 
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Patrick

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How many chassis fans also? That seems in the ballpark of what I might expect with the E3 configuration.

That difference is why I have been a fan of the C2000 series.
 

NeverDie

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Last night I switched the motherboard settings and the ESXi settings to maximum power conservation so that it would have plenty of time to reach a quiescent state overnight. I check the power utilization this morning to see if there had been an improvement. Nope. Not even a slight improvement. Still 41 watts. So, I'm guessing it must relate to spinning disks, which I haven't yet attached, as these measurements are deliberately prior to that.

I was hoping there would be a scenario where the server would actually go to sleep and do a wake-on-lan if anything on the network wanted to access a file or something. Is anyone here doing that, or at least something, to lower their power consumption during what could be long stretches of idle? I need to know, because if it's possible, it would affect how I architect the system.

For example, I presently have Linux HomeSeer3 running on a super cheap, passively cooled J1800 motherboard, which consumes only 7 watts of power and is 100% silent. HomeSeer will need to be running 24/7. If the main server can't go to sleep, I'll migrate HomeSeer to a VM on the main server. On the other hand, if the main server can go to sleep, I'll keep HomeSeer running on the cheap 7 watt hardware. Anything else requiring 24/7 use, like surveillance video, I might just pump into the HomeSeer box rather than the main file server, which I could reserve for high integrity data storage. In such a scenario, I may not even need ESXi on the main file server, in which case a lower power C2758, or possibly something even less expensive and/or more power efficient, would be sufficient for the main server.
 
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RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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The mother board I'm using (the SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O) to run ESXi has a BIOS setting that relates to conserving power. Presently it's set to favor performance over saving power (which is the factory default). Are there any relevant settings in ESXi also? For instance, I see under "Hardware" there is a "Power Management Settings" section. Anything else, or other tweaks, or is that basically it?

I used a Kill-a-watt type meter to measure the motherboard, together with the CPU (an E3-1230v3), Intel's stock CPU fan, 16GB 1600 1.35v RAM, a Samsung 850 250GB SSD, and an older 500watt Corsair power supply, and an 8GB USB boot stick. All that combined measured out to 41 watts with ESXi at idle and no VM's running. In contrast, it measured as drawing 6 watts when the motherboard was off but in standby

For comparison, the Kill-a-watt measured a SuperMicro C2758 motherboard as consuming about 16 watts with ESXi similarly at idle. (though with a picopsu instead of a corsair power supply).
I suspect you already know it already, but your power consumption comparison is not really fair, desktop PSUs are known for being inefficient at lower loads, while PicoPSUs are known to perform very well at lower loads.
You are loading the Corsair PSU at less than 10% of its rating, "80 plus" ratings do not even measure lower than 20% (80 plus titanium is an exception however).

If you want more fair results you should test using the same power supply.

Btw: An alternative might be to use something else like Linux or Windows, at the very least it should give you more options to tweak power consumption.
 

NeverDie

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I suspect you already know it already, but your power consumption comparison is not really fair, desktop PSUs are known for being inefficient at lower loads, while PicoPSUs are known to perform very well at lower loads.
You are loading the Corsair PSU at less than 10% of its rating, "80 plus" ratings do not even measure lower than 20% (80 plus titanium is an exception however).

If you want more fair results you should test using the same power supply.

Btw: An alternative might be to use something else like Linux or Windows, at the very least it should give you more options to tweak power consumption.
Agreed. Just sharing the numbers I currently have so that we're all on the same page. Tomorrow I should be receiving a 4-pin to 8-pin adapter cable for the picopsu, and then I'll hopefully be able to use the same picopsu to power the SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O and thereby do a better comparison. According to info that Kennedy published on this website, the idle power of the E3-1230V3 is 21 watts, and so the whole enchilada is going to measure out as something north of that, but hopefully less than 41 watts measured while using the Corsair.

Also, the kill-a-watt isn't especially accurate. It may be off by a watt or two.
 

NeverDie

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IRRC, an AMD CPU can turn-off cores that aren't being used to save energy. Can Intel CPU's do that? If not, maybe an AMD CPU would better fit my requirements. It would have the reserve capacity for when it's needed, but most of the time it much of it could be powered down. Anyone know?
 

NeverDie

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IRRC, an AMD CPU can turn-off cores that aren't being used to save energy. Can Intel CPU's do that? If not, maybe an AMD CPU would better fit my requirements. It would have the reserve capacity for when it's needed, but most of the time it much of it could be powered down. Anyone know?
Just checked. AMD calls it "coolcore" technology. I would think this would be a good fit for ESXi, which keeps track of how many cores are allocated. Can ESXi simply turn off the cores that aren't needed/allocated and then turn them on again if conditions change?
 

NeverDie

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Agreed. Just sharing the numbers I currently have so that we're all on the same page. Tomorrow I should be receiving a 4-pin to 8-pin adapter cable for the picopsu, and then I'll hopefully be able to use the same picopsu to power the SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O and thereby do a better comparison. According to info that Kennedy published on this website, the idle power of the E3-1230V3 is 21 watts, and so the whole enchilada is going to measure out as something north of that, but hopefully less than 41 watts measured while using the Corsair.

Also, the kill-a-watt isn't especially accurate. It may be off by a watt or two.
See post #17 here to see what I mean: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/quiet-enclosure.4693/#post-39397
 

HellDiverUK

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I'm seeing 22W idling in Windows using a Lenovo TS140, with E3-1225V3, 2x8GB DDR3L-1600 ECC, 2xIntel Pro 1500 SSD, Lenovo 460W 80Plus Platinum PSU. 3x fans. 41W is what that machine gets when it's busy with two 5TB Reds running as well.

Best I've seen is a B85M Eco board with an i3-4350 and 2x Crucial DDR3L-1600 4GB sticks and a single Intel 520 SSD and a 150W 1U FSP PSU - it was idling in Server 2012R2 at 18.8W.

ESXI isn't even attempting to power save, apparently.
 
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NeverDie

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I'm seeing 22W idling in Windows using a Lenovo TS140, with E3-1225V3, 2x8GB DDR3L-1600 ECC, 2xIntel Pro 1500 SSD, Lenovo 460W 80Plus Platinum PSU. 3x fans. 41W is what that machine gets when it's busy with two 5TB Reds running as well.

Best I've seen is a B85M Eco board with an i3-4350 and 2x Crucial DDR3L-1600 4GB sticks and a single Intel 520 SSD and a 150W 1U FSP PSU - it was idling in Server 2012R2 at 18.8W.

ESXI isn't even attempting to power save, apparently.
Now there's a thought. Maybe I'd be better off running the Windows Hypervisor instead of ESXi? It's "free" in Windows 8 Pro--I say "free" because that's assuming you already have Windows 8 Pro. It's not really free if you need to upgrade to get it. Nonetheless, maybe for once Windows is actually better at something?
 

NeverDie

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Now there's a thought. Maybe I'd be better off running the Windows Hypervisor instead of ESXi? It's "free" in Windows 8 Pro--I say "free" because that's assuming you already have Windows 8 Pro. It's not really free if you need to upgrade to get it. Nonetheless, maybe for once Windows is actually better at something?
On the other hand, if Hyper-V is in Windows 10 (need to confirm), it would be a free upgrade to windows 7/8 users who avail themselves of the free upgrade to windows 10.
 

HellDiverUK

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Now there's a thought. Maybe I'd be better off running the Windows Hypervisor instead of ESXi? It's "free" in Windows 8 Pro--I say "free" because that's assuming you already have Windows 8 Pro. It's not really free if you need to upgrade to get it. Nonetheless, maybe for once Windows is actually better at something?
The Hyper-V Hypervisor (the one that boots off USB, same as ESXI) is free anyway. If all you want is to run multiple VMs, then it's the way forward. The only thing I don't like about Hyper-V is the lack of USB passthrough, but there are ways around that if you need it.
 

NeverDie

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Agreed. Just sharing the numbers I currently have so that we're all on the same page. Tomorrow I should be receiving a 4-pin to 8-pin adapter cable for the picopsu, and then I'll hopefully be able to use the same picopsu to power the SuperMicro MBD-X10SL7-F-O and thereby do a better comparison. According to info that Kennedy published on this website, the idle power of the E3-1230V3 is 21 watts, and so the whole enchilada is going to measure out as something north of that, but hopefully less than 41 watts measured while using the Corsair.

Also, the kill-a-watt isn't especially accurate. It may be off by a watt or two.
I received the adapter cable, but it turns out I also need a more powerful brick feeding the picopsu to get the computer to boot. I should receive the brick on Thursday.
 

Joel

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I received the adapter cable, but it turns out I also need a more powerful brick feeding the picopsu to get the computer to boot. I should receive the brick on Thursday.
Often the 4 pin cable from PSU can plug into one half of the 8 pin header on the motherboard (it's keyed to only go in a certain way), and it'll work just fine.​
 

PigLover

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Using the 4-pin feed into the 8-pin power connector is fine up to a certain cpu power draw. The exact calcs depend on detailed review of the MB design, but as a general rule you are ok doing this when using up to about 80W cpus. Higher power cpus really need all four power feeds (8 leads) wired.
 

Joel

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Using the 4-pin feed into the 8-pin power connector is fine up to a certain cpu power draw. The exact calcs depend on detailed review of the MB design, but as a general rule you are ok doing this when using up to about 80W cpus. Higher power cpus really need all four power feeds (8 leads) wired.
Sure, but in that case it'd be pretty fair to say that you'd need a PSU with a native 8-pin cable instead of using a 4->8 pin adapter.