Energizing IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI

 

Nothing happens in an IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI system without electricity.  I know that this is obvious, but sometimes we forget how important it is to get the supply of electrical power correct when setting up a system.  Fusion HCI is designed to be flexible when it comes to electrical power supply so that it can adapt to the local situation in countries all over the world.  Fusion HCI is also designed to be resilient to power supply failures.  Let's examine the components in Fusion HCI that contribute to that design.

Layers of Power Resiliency

Each Fusion HCI rack  contains multiple power distribution units (PDUs), and every component in the rack plugs into these PDUs.  In turn, each of these PDUs plugs into a power connection in the data center.  You can think of these PDUs as industrial-strength power bars.  Each PDU has twelve C13 receptacles into which the power cords from the rack components plug.  The C13 is the most common receptacle used by servers and switches and can handle up to 10A of current and 250V voltage.  The C19 receptacle is also often used in data centers and is designed to handle higher currents of up to 16A, but it is not used by Fusion HCI because none of the Fusion HCI components draw more than 10A of current.

Redundant PSUs

Every switch and server in a Fusion HCI rack has two hot-pluggable power supply units (PSUs).  Having redundant hot-pluggable power supplies for every component means that all server and switch components can tolerate a PSU failure and continue to operate.  The failed PSU can be pulled out and replaced with a new PSU without having to shut down the server.  Redundant PSUs provide the first layer of power resiliency in the system.

Redundant PDUs

The PDUs in a Fusion HCI system are arranged in pairs.  All the servers and switches in a system have one of their PSUs connected to the first PDU in a particular pair, and the other PSU connected to the second PDU in the pair.  The power consumption of the components that are connected to a particular pair of PDUs is limited to what one PDU in the pair can handle.  In this way, if one of the PDUs fails, the other PDU in the pair will be able to carry the load without interruption.  This redundant PDU design provides the second layer of power resiliency in the system.

Redundant Electrical Supply

In the ideal case, power outlets in the data center can be supplied from two independent sources.  Assuming this is the case, half of the PDUs, one from each pair, should be connected to outlets from one electrical power source and the other half of the PDUs to the other source.  If one of the sources fails, then all the components in the Fusion HCI will still be able to operate using the power supplied through the PDUs connected to the other source. This redundant power supply capability provides the third layer of power resiliency in the system.

Options for Getting Connected

When considering how to connect a Fusion HCI system to electrical power, there are three questions to be answered:

  1. Three-phase or single-phase power?
  2. What amperage, 30A/32A or 60A?
  3. What plug type?

Three-Phase or Single-Phase

Fusion HCI systems support both three-phase and single phase power with two different PDU features.  One PDU feature is for three-phase delta wiring that is commonly used in North America and a few other countries such as Japan and Taiwan.  The second PDU feature is for three-phase wye wiring that is commonly used in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.  This second PDU feature also supports all single-phase power connections.

Amperage

The next question is about what amperage is provided.  There are typically two amperage levels available in a data center: 30A/32A and 60A.  Sometime you will see these levels listed using their 80% derated values of 24A and 48A.  If single phase power connections are provided, then it recommended to use 60A connections for Fusion HCI.  If three-phase power connections are provided, then either 30A/32A or 60A connections can be used.

Plug Type

The last question is about the type of wall plug provided in the data center.  These plug types vary widely around the world, though most countries have a small number default plug types.  Find out which plugs are used in the data center where Fusion HCI will be installed.

One you have the answers to these three questions you will be able to order the correct line cords that will connect the Fusion HCI PDUs to the wall outlets.  Line cords may not be the flashiest parts of a Fusion HCI system, but if you don't have the correct line cords you won't be able to plug in the system and power it up!

Previous post: New Storage Server Options in Spectrum Fusion HCI 2.4

Painting of computer server racks in the style of the Group of Seven by Dall-E
Painting of a computer power supply in the style of Van Gogh by Dall-E

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inside the Storage/Compute Servers of IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI

Image
Previously, I provided an overview of the IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI hardware followed by posts giving an overview of the different server and switch components that go into that system. Most of the servers in an IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI system will be storage/compute servers, so you can think of these servers as the workhorses of the system. In this post, I take a closer look at the CPU, memory, storage, and network elements inside these storage/compute servers. CPU and Memory A storage/compute server is built from a Lenovo SR645 server that is one rack unit (1U) high.  (A rack unit is an industry standard that translates to 1.75 inches; an industry standard data center rack used to hold servers and switches is 42U tall.)  Inside the server are two processor sockets that are each populated with an AMD EPYC 7302 processor.  The EPYC 7302 is a 16-core, 32-thread, processor that operates with a base clock speed of 3.0 GHz.  With two of these processors, the server has a total o
Read more

Fusion HCI Adds 8x the GPU Power

Image
IBM Storage Fusion HCI System has released a new GPU server today that takes a huge step forward in the support of AI applications.  The new server, called the G03, can be configured to have as many as 8 double-wide GPU adapter cards .   Fine-tuning and inferencing with foundation models used in AI applications increasingly requires faster and more powerful hardware, and the Fusion HCI G03 meets that need head on! The tremendous boost provided by the G03 for AI apps comes from having up to 8 of the  NVIDIA L40S  GPU PCIe double-wide adapter cards inside a single server.  The L40S is powered by the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace Architecture and is designed for generative AI and LLM training and inferencing.  It contains fourth generation tensor cores and the latest transformer engine that puts those tensor cores to good use. The design of the G03 provides flexibility for deploying GPU resources.  Many organizations will order the G03 with a full complement of 8 L40S GPUs.  But for organizations g
Read more

Fusion HCI Performance Boost for AI Apps

Image
Fine-tuning and inferencing with foundation models used in AI applications increasingly requires faster and more powerful hardware as AI foundation models grow ever larger.  In response to this need, IBM Storage Fusion HCI System released a new GPU server option earlier this month called the G02 that gives a performance boost for AI applications. The new G02 GPU server is based on the Lenovo SR650 V3.  The configuration used in the G02 includes a pair of Intel Xeon Gold 6418H 24-core "Sapphire Rapids" processors.  This processor model includes Intel Deep Learning Boost, designed to accelerate AI use cases by extending the Intel AVX-512 instruction extension with a new instruction that increases deep learning inference performance. But the big boost provided by the G02 for AI apps comes from the three  NVIDIA A100 80GB GPU PCIe adapter cards in each G02 server.  This newer version of the A100 has u p to 1.25x higher AI inference performance over the A100 40GB  that was used i
Read more