Testing power consumption

Question

I'm buying an UPS for the new server. As always, money is short, so I need to buy one which is sufficient, but not needlessly overpowered. The server has a 900 W power supply, but the retailer says he doubts it would ever draw over 300 watts. I went out and bought an "energy meter" today, which can show the consumption, but now I need to test how much I can get it to use.

When starting up, the max usage was around 230 W. How can I test the max usage? Is there software with the only usage of making the computer work a lot? The server has a single Xeon W3565 (3.2 GHz) processor, 24 GB RAM and 6 SAS disks.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '11 at 18:16

1

To saturate all resources of a server, just run at the same time:

bonnie++
prime95
BOINC/primegrid
memtest86+
netperf/ipperf
Linux kernel compilation
ping flood the BMC interface

answered Aug 23 '11 at 18:16

Mircea Vutcovici

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See also: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=486495 – Mircea Vutcovici Aug 23 '11 at 18:29
Prime95 managed to get it to draw almost 300 W. I think I'll be fine with that 1000 VA APC... – carlpett Aug 23 '11 at 18:39

Testing power consumption

1 Answers1