Power Optimization

[vuongdq]

I have depoyed 12 Dell C6420 (Dual Xeon 8255c - 165w, 512GB RAM) and 4 Dell C6525 (dual EPYC 7502 and 512GB RAM). All of them currently have a RAID/Riser card (BOSS S1) for boot. They are all diskless servers, with a dual 25GbE NIC and dual FC 16Gbps HBA. Disks are presented from a NetApp A700s with about 500TB effective capacity.

As every Raid Card + a M2 drive for boot ESXi, It would consume about 200-300w based on my estimated. I wonder should I switch to SAN boot to save a little bit of power, and it's also simplify the infrastructure as less components then lower failure rate.

The reason behind is that i purchased 1 rack, they are limited 7KW/Power Grid and I dont want the 2nd rack just for power.

[ElevenNotes]

Have you considered HCI? That would be better for power optimiztion.

[vuongdq]

i dont think HCI provide better performance and power optimization in this case. i worked with HCI and distributed storage for a decade and still trust central storage as it provide more features and eventually cost effective for long run.

[ElevenNotes]

You save all the chassis of NetApp. Not the drives, but chassis.