Dell PowerEdge R815 review

Of all the blue-chip vendors, Dell offers by far the largest choice of AMD-based systems. Its latest showcases the new Bulldozer technology and 16-core Opteron 6200 processors. In this review we see whether a 4P, 64-core PowerEdge R815 is suitable for virtualisation and server consolidation.

Dell supports the entire Opteron 6200 range, with one four-core, two eight-core, two 12-core and five 16-core models available. The four 2.1GHz Opteron 6272 modules in our system are rated at 115W; other 16-core options extend from the 85W 1.6GHz 6262 HE up to the power-hungry 140W 2.6GHz 6282 SE.

Along with virtualisation, Dell is aiming the R815 at businesses looking to consolidate existing servers into fewer, more energy-efficient systems. With two 1,100W hotplug power supplies, our inline meter recorded a draw of 297W with Windows Server 2008 R2 in idle; using the SiSoft Sandra benchmarking app, peak power usage rose to 660W.

To put this in perspective, the older Dell PowerEdge R810 with a pair of 2GHz Intel X6550 Xeons and the same memory drew 392W in idle and 558W under load. Considering that’s only 16 cores as opposed to the R815’s 64, the benefits of the new Opteron are clear.

The Opteron 6200 uses the same G34 socket as the 6100, and is essentially a drop-in upgrade for existing systems. In reality, few businesses will do this, but Dell offers kits for those that want to.

The chassis is well designed. The front is split horizontally, with the lower half letting air flow through the chassis. To the right are six hot-swap SFF disk bays, with a choice of SATA, 6Gbits/sec SAS, near-line SAS and SSD drives.

Opposite is Dell’s LCD screen and control panel. This provides a keypad for setting the network address of the iDRAC6 remote-management controller, along with options to view the server’s serial number, power consumption and temperatures.

The interior is tool-free. The four processor sockets and their banks of eight DIMM sockets are staggered to improve airflow, and the front sockets are accessed by releasing the hard disk bay and sliding the top half of the front panel forward. Six hot-swap fans are spread across the middle of the chassis, and the server is very quiet. Each fan can be removed individually, or the entire assembly can be lifted out.

RAID options start with the embedded SATA controller supporting mirrors and stripes. Our system came with the PERC H700 card with 512MB of cache, plus the battery backup pack, supporting the usual array options, including RAID6. For expansion, the server has six PCI Express slots, although you’re unlikely to need them all since it has four embedded Gigabit ports and the RAID card has its own dedicated slot.

You can boot into an embedded hypervisor via Dell’s optional £60 SD card controller. This provides two card slots and keeps an onboard copy of the primary boot media in case it fails. Dell’s Lifecycle Controller and its 1GB of NVRAM memory ease OS installation; you can boot the server into Dell’s UEFI environment and deploy an OS without the need for boot media.

There are two remote-management options, and the price above includes the iDRAC6 Enterprise module, with its dedicated network port, SD card slot and full remote access to the server. The cheaper iDRAC6 Express module doesn’t support full KVM over IP remote control or virtual media services.

Dell’s main competition in the 4P server market is the HP ProLiant DL585, but that dearer 4U system can’t match the R815 for processing density. Intel’s Xeon E5 will also be a challenger, although 4P motherboards won’t be available at first. For now, the R815 is the most affordable and compact 4P server available.

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