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A customer came to the ATC in search of an answer to a question "What is the effect on power consumption when enabling the Intel Turbo Boost feature on Dell and HPE servers of various hardware configurations?" The answer to this question is something that we at the ATC have been wondering as well. We expected the turbo would increase the power consumption but how much and would the results change by vendor? To answer these questions we utilized a tool called BurnInTest to put a consistent load on the servers. We recorded the results using Emerson PDUs reporting in SolarWinds at 1 minute intervals. We also compared the data collected to the onboard power utilities in Dell's iDRAC and HPE's iLO as a second data point. Curiosity drove another question, "Do the onboard consoles of these platforms report power accurately?" The answers to these questions may surprise you, they certainly surprised us.

One of our customers asked us to do a Proof of Concept (or POC) around some very customized performance based testing around vSAN technology. That being said, this ATC Insight gets into the weeds of benchmarking, so prepare yourself for a fun ride!