How do dual power supplies on PowerEdge T330 work?

[timeshifter]

One of my clients has a Dell PowerEdge T330 server with dual power supplies. I have two UPSs for it, one connected to each power supply. One of the UPSs is showing a battery failure message. That UPS shows a load while the other one shows no load.

So it looks like only one power supply is actually doing any work and the other is just sitting there.

I guess if there's a power failure that UPS will fail but the secondary UPS should be OK and will kick in and the server would begin using the second power supply?

Is this accurate of do I need to go back to school?

 

[HCHTech]

Yep - 2nd PS is failover only. Good call using a separate UPS. Also, you might want to pickup a cold spare if they are available. We push to have a cold spare of all redundancy parts with a server setup. Don't always win the argument, though. I should really just start building them into the quote.

 

[timeshifter]

Also, you might want to pickup a cold spare if they are available.

A cold spare for the power supply or UPS, or both?

 

[HCHTech]

PS. They become harder to find and more expensive the longer you wait to get one (in my experience anyway), so it's always easier to find one when the thing is new. It's just insurance like anything else you keep on hand instead of ordering when you need it. I have a new one for an R720 sitting on my largest client's shelf that will be six years old in February, never needed it but I slept better for those 6 years knowing it was there.

 

[SAFCasper]

Having accidentally switched off the wrong plug on several occasions... I can confidently say the second PSU will kick in instantly. Zero downtime to the server.

 

[Markverhyden]

One of the UPSs is showing a battery failure message. That UPS shows a load while the other one shows no load.

Don't have the T series but have R and both UPS's show a load from each power supply.

 

[timeshifter]

Don't have the T series but have R and both UPS's show a load from each power supply.

Is it a 300 series or maybe a higher model number like a 600 series?

 

[Markverhyden]

Is it a 300 series or maybe a higher model number like a 600 series?

7xx

 

[Sky-Knight]

iDrac from my PowerEdge T330 reports this:



So it's using both at the same time.

If your UPS cannot handle live battery testing, or report loads below an amp (quite common), the UPSs aren't sensitive enough to be reliable here.

By the way, this platform is live, running 6 VMs. So that's power consumption under moderate load for her use case.

Here, Watts over last week:



She doesn't use that much power... not compared to her predecessor anyway!

 

[Markverhyden]

iDrac from my PowerEdge T330 reports this:

View attachment 12258

So it's using both at the same time.

If your UPS cannot handle live battery testing, or report loads below an amp (quite common), the UPSs aren't sensitive enough to be reliable here.

By the way, this platform is live, running 6 VMs. So that's power consumption under moderate load for her use case.

Here, Watts over last week:

View attachment 12259

She doesn't use that much power... not compared to her predecessor anyway!

How many drives? My R730 runs around 202 watts. Only two production VM's but I've got 12 10k 3.5" SAS drives.

 

[Sky-Knight]

How many drives? My R730 runs around 202 watts. Only two production VM's but I've got 12 10k 3.5" SAS drives.

RAID 10 all SSD!

Platters suck up power... cost over time just isn't worth it. I did use the mixed use disks here, server is almost 4 now... so I obviously could have done read intense and saved a mint.

 

[HCHTech]

RAID 10 all SSD!

Nice. Veering OT, but that's a lot of VMs for what, a little over 1TB of usable space? Curious how you divvy that up, I always struggle with that part.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Toybox has 80gb
3CX has 80gb
File01 has 80gb
Tactical has 80gb
Web has 80gb

Noticing a trend here?

Vikingserv 162gb *splat*

1.08TB array, in a single partition. With 562gb allocated, and 472gb free.

The trick is to stop over-provisioning your stuff. If you need bulk file storage, get a QNAP.

Toybox is attached to an 8tb USB platter external full of movies / media. It runs Plex, and whatever game server I'm poking at this week.
File01 is attached to an 4tb USB platter external with backups of all critical systems on it, that disk is synced to a 2nd disk periodically I keep offline in a fireproof safe.

 

[HCHTech]

Yeah, most all the VMs I've setup are Windows, and I've been burnt before by under-provisioning, so I'm sure I am over-correcting for those bad memories - ha. What's your host OS? That doesn't look like either HyperV or ESXi.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Server 2019 standard, that's HyperV.

Also, you can always grow a disk... That's a right click operation on the host and the guest. It's shrinking that's the problem.

Edit Disk:




This is a huge portion of what I use my Action Pack for, this Dell and the lab it creates along with all the stuff I use for my business and my home.

P.S. Toybox and 3CX are Windows 10. File01 is Server 2016. Web is Debian 10, and Tactical is Ubuntu LTS 20.04. And the curveball... VikingServ is Server 2003!

 

[HCHTech]

P.S. Toybox and 3CX are Windows 10. File01 is Server 2016. Web is Debian 10, and Tactical is Ubuntu LTS 20.04. And the curveball... VikingServ is Server 2003!

Thanks - always educational to see how other folks have cracked a particular nut!