HP and Dell get first servers listed with new Energy Star spec

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You’ll recall that we reported back in May that the EPA had released the first spec for servers. Although the 1.0 release only covers servers with no more than four sockets and excludes blades, its a step in the right direction. The spec is expected to be revised later this year (October 15) to cover blades and multi-node clusters of the sort that appeal to us HPC types. Also, version 1.0 only covers idle power draw, which is a pretty big flaw that I hope they correct.

Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Register is reporting that HP and Dell have gotten servers certified under the new spec:

HP logoYet, Hewlett-Packard was first out the door getting a few of its machines certified under the Energy Star for servers spec, and Dell was pretty close behind.

Dell logoNeither vendor has opted to use the default power-related performance benchmark, the SPECpower_ssj2008 Java server test that the EPA and various server makers have created in conjunction with the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. While the 1.0 spec does not require a specific power-performance benchmark, the default in the docs is SPECpowerssj_2008.

HP put its ProLiant DL360 G6 and DL380 G6 servers to the test (results here, while Dell ran the PowerEdge R610 and R710 through the process (results here). Both vendors tested Nehalem systems.

NB: if you’re having trouble sleeping, you can read the spec yourself (along with all the industry comments) at the Energy Star site.

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