On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:01 PM, Tracy Reed <[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm not sure how the datacenter's power distribution system
> works but they currently have to run me 4 20A per rack. Coudldn't they cut
> that
> approximately in half (power factor correction etc, as mentioned earlier)
> if I
> ran 208v?
>

Yeah, that was the biggest win for me going to 208v. With 2-3 120v (20A)
per rack I couldn't fill a rack because I would run out of
power, especially if you want power circuit redundancy*. With 2 208v
circuits there was power to fill the rack (actually enough to reach the max
per-rack cooling capacity of the data center).

* Remember, if you have redundant power supplies and also
want redundant circuits or PDUs you can't max out your circuits. If a
machine consumes 2 amps in total, with dual power supplies it will pull 1
amp per PSU. When one PSU fails it will pull the full 2 amps from remaining
PSU. If you have 13 machines and 2 20A circuits, and each machine has a PSU
connected to each circuit/PDU, if one PDU or circuit fails it will try to
pull 26A from the one remaining 20A circuit (which won't work). Having more
than 2 circuits, and balancing the power cables in a round-robin fashion is
a way to reduce the overhead needed to withstand a single circuit failure.

-Anton
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