Dell 3-Node AMD DCS6005

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Ken

New Member
Feb 10, 2014
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Picked up a similar unit (same seller, diff specs)

Stumbled across these today: Dell C6005 Cloud Server 6X 1 8GHz AMD 6 Core 48GB RAM 12x 750GB C6100 Series | eBay

Anyone familiar with it? Looks like they can be had relatively affordably.
I went for a similar system with 144 Gig of RAM (three nodes, 48 Gigs per node) and one 250 Gig HD per node, got It for a bit less than the linked-to system (I figured I could always add HDs, but RAM would be more expensive to add later).

I've poked around with the system a bit, since my unit is for a home Certification lab, the first thing I did was put together a micro USB key with Windows Server 2012 Datacenter R2 ISO on it. I installed the key and installed Windows Server 2012 R2 with no problems - all parts of system detected and supported (though the video is driven by MS Basic Video Driver, something I'd like to change).

A few questions:

1) How does one access the lower "blades"? I've limited by work so far to the blade that is accessible after removing the lid.

2) I'm curious about OS options others are using - I've seen Windows Server 2012 R2 (me) and a couple folks report working with ESXi 5.1/5.5, any others?

3) I can't put my hands on my Kill-A-Watt, anyone have power consumption numbers for 1, 2 or 3 blades running?

4) I'm curious what others are planning to do with their systems - home or work? Training or production work?

Thanks,

Ken
 

Jeggs101

Well-Known Member
Dec 29, 2010
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Sounds like you need a second kill a watt! For a three node memcached cluster this is looking halfway decent. 32GB per node ones are selling for under $500.
 

kdh

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Feb 6, 2014
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1) How does one access the lower "blades"? I've limited by work so far to the blade that is accessible after removing the lid.

2) I'm curious about OS options others are using - I've seen Windows Server 2012 R2 (me) and a couple folks report working with ESXi 5.1/5.5, any others?

3) I can't put my hands on my Kill-A-Watt, anyone have power consumption numbers for 1, 2 or 3 blades running?

4) I'm curious what others are planning to do with their systems - home or work? Training or production work?

Thanks,

Ken
The blades are secured with a single screw on the back panel located by the PCI slot. Disconnect all of the cables, remove the foam shims, pinch the release mechanism on the back and pull the node out.

We have Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, ESXi 5.1, and now ESXi 5.5 (thanks to the above post/s) up and running on different nodes. Testing out our options before rolling out in a work production environment. Still waiting on our test RAID card to come in before making a decision.
 

Patrick

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Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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That is a very interesting solution. What are you using these for? Any chance you could run STHbench.sh on one (a test system not in production) just for fun? I would love to get some data on how these compare to the dual L5520's.
 

Ken

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Feb 10, 2014
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Go for it...

Sounds like you need a second kill a watt! For a three node memcached cluster this is looking halfway decent. 32GB per node ones are selling for under $500.
My 48 Gig/node system was $599.99 shipped (my offer was asking price less shipping cost), I think they are worth the $200/each blade I paid, especially when each blade can take 4 SATA drives and can be powered up/down as needed.

I'm going out to get another kill-a-watt, I'll have numbers later today.

Thanks to the other poster about accessing the blades, I hope to get all three up and running Windows Server 2012 R2 Eval today...

I recently was given an older Dell retail blade setup that requires 220V and uses SCSI drives on the blades, this server will take it's place and do so with better performance, less noise and consume far less power. That Del Blade solution will be out the door soon...

My setup will have a hard-wired KVM, has anyone had good success with the iKVM interface?

I'm reluctant to flash the BIOS/firmware, anyone had a reason to update it beyond wanting the latest BIOS/firmware?
 

Ken

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Feb 10, 2014
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That is a very interesting solution. What are you using these for? Any chance you could run STHbench.sh on one (a test system not in production) just for fun? I would love to get some data on how these compare to the dual L5520's.
To run this benchmark I just install, say, Ubuntu server, wget the code and let it go? I'm happy to give it a spin before I finish testing this server...
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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To run this benchmark I just install, say, Ubuntu server, wget the code and let it go? I'm happy to give it a spin before I finish testing this server...
Just the three commands: wget, chmod and then ./
 

Ken

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Feb 10, 2014
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So I went to install Ubuntu Server 13.10 on one of the blades, and it 'froze' on the second screen (language selection from a long, scrolling list of choices) when I attempted install from USB key. Tried a different USB key, same outcome (frozen). Tried burned CD-R of Ubuntu Server 13.10, same behavior.

Downloaded Ubuntu Server 12.4 LTS, it installed fine off USB CD-R w/ only keyboard installed. After install I ran sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade (as I always do after an Ubuntu install), everything seemed fine.

Ran wget, chmod, and STHbench.sh, and it's still running...

Once benchmark completed, I'll drop kill-a-watt in the power line and try different numbers of blades, recording power consumption.

Curious about Ubuntu Server 13.10 'freezing' during install... Anyone else seen similar behavior?
 

Chuckleb

Moderator
Mar 5, 2013
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Minnesota
I had CentOS freezing during boot and during install on my C6100 if the BIOS had IPMI set as dedicated port instead of shared port if that helps. I know it's not the same system... but could have similar problems.
 

Ken

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Feb 10, 2014
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Power consumption tests:

One node, running STHbench.sh benchmark: 130 watts

Two nodes, one STHbench.sh, the other installing Ubuntu Server: 190-210 watts

Three nodes, one STHbench.sh, one installing Ubuntu Server, one running Windows Server 2012 R2 with 12 SETI@home threads running: 340 watts

These tests were run on a three node DCS C6005 server with 48 Gigs RAM per node, one 250 Gig SATA HD (non-Green) and dual Opteron 2419 EE CPUs.
 

Ken

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Feb 10, 2014
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I ran the STHbench.sh test earlier, it seemed to report 12x 800 MHz CPUs, not 1.8 GHz - I'm re-running the tests now, is there some option in the BIOS I need to set to max the CPU speed (turn off power-saving)?
 

javi404

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Jan 24, 2014
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Hey guys, some people having problems with these 1.8 dual hex core variant servers might want to make sure NUMA is turned on in the bios for the CPUs.

Also, esxi 5.5 reports dell bios 1.09 even though on the boot screen i get a completely different number. According to the ftp info someone posted, that looks like the latest bios. Also 1.03 is the latest BMC. Remember these servers are very similar but completely different internally to the other 6100 servers out there.

Tyan specifically built the motherboards for dell, and this was a custom order for dell for a large client(s).
 

javi404

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Jan 24, 2014
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I ran the STHbench.sh test earlier, it seemed to report 12x 800 MHz CPUs, not 1.8 GHz - I'm re-running the tests now, is there some option in the BIOS I need to set to max the CPU speed (turn off power-saving)?
Check the dell power saving settings. I saw some option in the bios about that and disabled it although i'm pretty sure in linux the cpuspeed daemon would perform the same function.
 

javi404

New Member
Jan 24, 2014
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This file may be of interest to owners of this machine. The documentation for the implementation of the Aspeed 2050 BMC on board.

ftp://ftp.tyan.com/manuals/AST2050_Manual_v101.pdf

Edit: just an fyi, for me the default passwords for the ipmi / bmc were root / root
Not sure if that was something the vendor who sold me the box did or not. Figure it might help someone.
 
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Ken

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Feb 10, 2014
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Check the dell power saving settings. I saw some option in the bios about that and disabled it although i'm pretty sure in linux the cpuspeed daemon would perform the same function.
I didn't see anything that 'screamed out' power savings, any tips on what to look for? I've mainly worked with Intel CPUs, and I'm not very familiar with AMD features (on a Intel I'd look for speedstep, on AMD?)...
 

Ken

New Member
Feb 10, 2014
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Second time, same results...

I ran the STHbench.sh test earlier, it seemed to report 12x 800 MHz CPUs, not 1.8 GHz - I'm re-running the tests now, is there some option in the BIOS I need to set to max the CPU speed (turn off power-saving)?
The second run produced the same results - what should I do with my results file SThbench.sh.log?
 

javi404

New Member
Jan 24, 2014
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I didn't see anything that 'screamed out' power savings, any tips on what to look for? I've mainly worked with Intel CPUs, and I'm not very familiar with AMD features (on a Intel I'd look for speedstep, on AMD?)...
I'll have to reboot one of my nodes to see where it was exactly. I thought I saw something in there.
 

c6005

New Member
Feb 14, 2014
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florida
new to the forums but i have 3 of these

After a little more research, here's what I've found:

http://www.tyan.com/Motherboards_S8208_S8208GM2NR [BTO]

It's also likely using the Opteron 2419 or Opteron 2419 EE, since those are the only 6-core, 2300/2400-series AMD processors that are clocked at 1.8 Ghz.

Here's the only benchmark I could find (for the 2419): PassMark - [Dual CPU] AMD Opteron 2419 - Price performance comparison

Looks like it's going to be (approximately) half the speed of the L5639, and about 3/4 the speed of the L5520, at around the same overall power consumption under load. Looks like it also needs DDR2 ram.

Given the price right now, I could build a pretty good use case for highly available low-power edge routing. I'll need to check and see which version of the 2419 it is using...

do you think these would be ok to do a decent POC of openstack for hosting company and some HPC ?
 

c6005

New Member
Feb 14, 2014
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florida
how in the world did you get esxi 5.5 to even boot the installer ?

im having all kinds of trouble with the three units i bought

i can only get centOS to run on mine.

they sold them to me as c6105s i was pissed.. but if i could run esxi 5.5 that would help me out a lot

really glad to find this forum .. probably gonna be my home page for a while

im doing a big openstack POC on these and so far its really hard machine to work with

doug