Measuring power

[Paul Makepeace]

I'd second the option of getting a similar machine and comparing that. The
power usage doesn't vary much more than about 20% against CPU load in my
experience, unfortunately.

If you're feeling brave you can separate the live wire from the rest
_reasonably_ safely. The trick is using a very sharp knife and bending the
cable and nicking the outer sheath at the outside 'edge' of the curve. What
tends to happen is the sheath tears and with successive small slices will
tear more & reveal enough for you to work the rest of the sheath off safely.

Rubber gloves & mats too, obviously :-)

Paul

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Andrew Beattie <andrew at tug.com> wrote:

> This is a long way off topic but I'm hoping that someone here might be able
> to share a clue...
>
> I need to measure the power used on dozens and dozens of servers.
>
> I need a breakdown by server, not a total for the room.
>
> (more specifically, I want to calculate the power cost per server per
> year).
>
> Added difficulty:  I want to do this non-intrusively.
>
> I can't go round, yanking out cables and inserting in-line meters.
>
> So, I got a clamp meter.  But contrary to my expectation, that only works
> if I can separate the individual wires in the power cable - not an option.
>
> So, I'm stuck.  Is there any non-intrusive way to measure the power
> consumption of my servers?
>
> Andrew
>