Dell EMC PowerEdge T140

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Overview of Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 hardware

The Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 is a small, relatively small tower-shaped server that measures 360mm x 175mm x 454mm. The front I / O does not include an HDD Hot Plug tray. Instead, it only has a USB connection, a service port, and a thin optical drive bay.

Some servers in this segment are built entirely with the bare-bones configuration. The PowerEdge T140 gives the first evidence that “low cost does not necessarily mean giving up the company’s quality principles” when we look at the open lid. Here, there is a nice latch mechanism that is easy to operate. In contrast, many servers compete with the same segment, even from large suppliers, using a metal side panel held with screws. Although it may seem like the most unimportant feature at first, this is a cost-add tool that the Dell EMC product team designed properly to give users a quality experience. In summary, the opening of the Dell T140 server will be easier to use than other servers in the same segment.
Inside the case, we can see the basic layout of the system. There is an mATX motherboard, ATX size power, optical drive bay, and 4 3.5 drive bays.

The 3.5 trays are equipped with cable and streamlined cables needed. These are not traditional hot-swap trays because they are more related to exchange drives. At the same time, this solution is common in this segment, and it is often easy enough for a novice IT administrator or an on-site employee to change the drive manually (must turn off the computer before switching). Another quality point is that drive connection are labeled in large letters, so they are easy to read. For those with limited vision who install the drive, the big label makes them easier to see, numbering order from HDD0 – HDD3.

Typically, the company will equip the motherboard’s SATA onboard (RAID) controller to store in the ultra-low price segment. We can see that the SFF-8087 connector can provide up to 4 SATA III 6.0gbps lanes. The SFF-8087 connector is usually associated with SAS, but this port is only SATA. We can also see a traditional SATA 3 6.0gbps SATA 7-pin port labeled for an optical drive or other hard drives.
PCIe connection is provided through a series of 4 slots. We have a PERC card, as shown in the picture.

One note is that there is no M.2 PCIe slot on the board. M.2 has become a popular NVMe SSD in servers in recent times. Dell EMC allows the use of a BOSS card with one or two SATA M.2 drives to boot, but the NVMe drives are for other services and offer higher performance.

This is a fairly basic set at:
– PCIe 3.0 x8 (physical connector x16 )
– PCIe 3.0 x1
– PCIe 3.0 x8
– PCIe 3.0 x4 (physical connector x8)

For this server segment, I / O connectivity is limited by Intel’s basic platform. If you want more PCIe connectivity, you need to look for more advanced products like the Dell EMC PowerEdge T440 based on the Intel Scalable Xeon.

For power, Dell EMC uses a 365W 80Plus Gold source. Instead of a 500W power source, 80Plus Gold PSU is still considered very good. There are competitors in this segment that use PSU Bronze or are not standard. We appreciate Dell EMC has equipped industry-standard PSU to ensure buyers have lower operating costs.

Rear I / O boards have a traditional serial port, VGA port, and four USB 2.0 ports for older standard I / O devices. Users also get two USB 3.0 ports, each of which is under one of two 1GbE ports. Dell EMC once again took a step forward and had a dedicated iDRAC port for remote management that we will focus on later.

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 – Back I / O

Before we end the hardware overview, another feature that needs to be addressed is document quality. Dell EMC has useful online documentation for IT administrators. Designed for deployment, the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 is also intended to be serviced by non-IT on-site employees. Here, simple features like stickers with appropriate images and service details make a big difference.

Document on the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 lid

If you have used many servers like us, it’s quite easy to see that the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 is designed to be budget-friendly. At the same time, the PowerEdge team has done a great job of balancing costs while still making the lower-cost system feel well built. There are some small features that we have mentioned, such as key and label mechanisms, that contribute to the overall quality of the PowerEdge solution compared to other alternatives.

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 management

We will focus on discussing our management of iDRAC and some tools for managing an individual server. When you try to access the server’s remote management interface, you will see the standard interface is equivalent to its Intel Xeon experience.

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 uses iDRAC 9. One of the first things we noticed was the quick responsiveness of the web interface. With this generation, Dell EMC has upgraded the iDRAC CPU. That means that PowerEdge servers can collect more data, send more data to driver management controllers, and more notably render pages faster.

We use many of these web management tools because our lab has many devices from dozens of providers. Some quick feedback tools with fewer features like Supermicro’s IPMI. Some have a lot of features but are slow. For example, if you used the IMM of the Lenovo Xeon E5 system, you had time to finish a cup of coffee to download the page. With iDRAC 9, the system responds quickly.

If you have remote administrative groups in different continents globally, iDRAC is an interesting experience, while some, slower, are more difficult to understand for administrators.

The control panel provides a simple user interface to see the status quickly and directly launch IPMI management. You can also put the system into lock mode from the Other Action menu if you need to increase security.

IKVM feature is a must-have feature for any server today because it has one of the best ROI when troubleshooting. iDRAC 9 has several iKVM control panel modes, including Java, ActiveX, and HTML5. In contrast, some of Lenovo’s servers in the same segment that needs to buy new licenses may have similar features to iKVM.

Modern server management solutions such as iDRAC are embedded IoT systems dedicated to managing larger systems. As such, iDRAC has several configuration settings for the service module so that you can set up the appropriate network as an example.

In terms of monitoring, iDRAC has a basic control panel that provides statistics. This can be used to monitor cleaning machines.
Although individual metrics are interesting, their significance is greater; this monitoring can provide greater monitoring and management solutions. Dell EMC has its tools and works in the industry, so if you use 3rd party tools, there is a high possibility that iDRAC is supported.

Part of that data collection includes simple tasks like inventory systems. Usually, servers are purchased at different times with slightly different configurations. iDRAC can provide this data for management tools.
A prominent feature that we want to display is the BIOS configuration page. One can make BIOS changes via the web user interface. That is amazing. If you (or your IT administrator) had to make BIOS changes using the old method, this is a huge benefit. Using iKVM is a major upgrade to the process, but it is still difficult. The administrator will restart the remote system and repeatedly press DEL, F2, or other key combinations to make sure they include it in the BIOS. Since then, some of the less advanced 2018 BIOS settings still look like their UI designers idolized DOS programs in the early 1990s. Some of the more advanced BIOS settings look like programs. Windows 2000 era. By having a BIOS configuration with iDRAC, people can use the modern user interface and avoid that monotonous screen.

From the screenshots provided, you may see more for iDRAC 9. If you want to learn more, try it.
What is notable here is that if you are familiar with managing Dell EMC PowerEdge servers in your data center, a low-cost tower server will feel similar to the high-end line other. It was a great job of the Dell EMC team to keep the same functionality on platforms.

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 test configuration

Dell EMC PowerEdge was present at the company, and we have enhanced the configuration for benchmarking. That is what we used:
– Server: Dell EMC PowerEdge T140
– CPU: Intel Xeon E-2186G (6 core / 12 threads)
– Memory: 4x 16GB ECC UDIMMs
– Storage: 1TB 3.5 ″ HDDs, 1x 400GB Intel DC S3710
– Storage Controller: Dell EMC PERC H330
– PCIe Networking: Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx
– Power Supply Configuration: Single 365W

Our configuration with 4x 16 GB DIMM is being used to match more advanced CPUs. We have also tried several different CPUs to get performance data at other ends of the market.
Unlike our previous Intel Xeon E-2100 series reviews, we currently have data from ten different CPU options that we can present in our performance section when we got more SKUs in the lab last month. Currently, we have all 6-core / 12-thread and 4-core / 8-thread options on the market today, along with Core i3-8100 and Core i3-8300 options.
Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 topology
As modern systems become more complex, we have added topology to our testing method.

On the Intel Xeon E-2100 series, we see a relatively simple topology. That is a single-chip design with PCH, so it fits closely with nearly a decade of architecture in space. That is not necessarily the case with future platforms, so it is important to consider this system in a few quarters.
Next, we will look at the performance of the Dell EMC PowerEdge T340 before we achieve power consumption.

Performance Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 computing performance

For this test, we are using our legacy Linux-Bench scripts to help us see the common denominator results, at least the foundation we have used for years, and some Results from our updated Linux-Bench2 script. Our benchmarking sessions take days to run, and we are creating over a thousand data points. We are also running workloads for software companies that want to see how their software works on the latest hardware. Therefore, this is a small sample of the data we are collecting and can be shared publicly. Our view is always willing to provide some free data, but we also have services to enable companies to run their workload in the laboratory, such as with our DemoEval service.

where can you get a Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 online

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 Mini-Tower Server – 1 x Xeon E-2124-8 GB RAM – 1 TB (1 x 1 TB) HDD – 12Gb/s SAS, Serial ATA/600 Controller – 1 Processor Support – 64 GB RAM Support – Gigabit Ethernet – No -: Buy it now

Python Linux 4.4.2 Benchmarking kernel

That is one of the most required benchmarks for STH in the past few years. The task is very simple; we have a standard configuration file, Linux kernel 4.4.2 from kernel.org, and create an automatic configuration to create standards using all threads in the system.
Intel Xeon E 2100 Optional Benchmarking compiled Linux kernel.
The important thing here is that the large value driver is the number of cores and threads. That creates a step function of performance.
C-ray performance 1.1

We have been using c-ray for our performance testing for many years now. That is an extremely popular ray tracking benchmark to show the difference in processors according to the multithreaded workload. We will use our 8K results that work well at the end of this performance spectrum.

Intel Xeon E 2100 Optional C Ray 8K benchmark
If you are looking for a cheap 1-4 hard drive storage system, the Intel Core i3-8100 is a great choice.
7-zip compression performance
7-zip is a widely used, multi-platform compression/decompression program. We started using the program in the early days with Windows testing. It is now part of Linux-Bench.
Intel Xeon E 2100 7zip Standard option
Compression is a major performance component in class systems like the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140. Here more cores, threads and higher clock speeds, better compression rates.

Check CPU Sysbench

Sysbench is one of the widely used Linux benchmarks. We are specifically using CPU testing, not OLTP tests that we use for some storage checks.
Intel Xeon E 2100 Multi-standard Sysbench CPU Options
Although we are showing differences between SKUs in terms of CPU performance, another aspect includes integrated GPUs. Both Intel Xeon E-21xxG and Intel Core i3-8000 parts have integrated GPUs.

OpenSSL performance

OpenSSL is widely used to secure communication between servers. That is an important protocol in many server stacks.
Intel Xeon E 2100 OpenSSL Options Verify benchmarks
OpenSSL is a web-based technology, and many servers like the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 will work as local web application servers. If you compare the Intel Xeon E-2136 with the Xeon E-2174G, it used to be less expensive but significantly faster because of more cores. Intel naming conventions do not necessarily have to be in the order of numerical performance.

UnixBench Dhstallone 2 and Whetstone Benchmarking

Some of the longest tests at STH are the UnixBench 5.1.3 Dhstallone 2 and the honorable Whetstone. They certainly are getting old; however, we constantly get requests for them and many angry notes when we leave them. UnixBench is widely used, so we include it in this dataset.
Intel Xeon E 2100 Optional Benchmarks UnixBench Whetstone
Single-threaded performance on all these components is significantly better than some lower power options. For example, if you look at AMD Opteron X3421 powered by HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10, cheap CPU options in the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 have beat that solution.

Chess benchmark

Chess is an interesting use case because it has almost unlimited complexity. Over the years, we have received some requests to bring back the chess benchmark.
Intel Xeon E 2100 Chess benchmark option
Each frequency increases on different SKUs that are accompanied by improved performance. We urge our readers to get the performance data we have and compare it to the total price in the configuration settings to make their purchasing decisions.
Next, we will look at the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140’s power consumption before ending with STH Server Spider.

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 power consumption

We have used Extech TrueRMS Power Analyzer 380804 to perform measurements at various Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 used on 120V sources in the embedded lab. Tower servers tend to spend more time in offices than in higher energy data centers, so we perform tests at lower voltages.

– Power off: 5.1W
– Idle: 33.8W
– Load 70% STH: 88.2W
– Download STH 100%: 121W
– Maximum observed power: 153W

From a performance perspective, the Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 is a giant leap forward. As we discussed when looking back at the new Intel Xeon E3-1200 V1-V6 for the new Xeon E-2100, in different CPU reviews as with our benchmark and Intel Xeon E-2146G rating, This is the first time in nearly a decade, the leading parts in this segment have received an increasing core. We look forward to our readers considering quad-core components to consider upgrading their PowerEdge T140 configuration to Intel Xeon E-2136 or E-2146G CPUs as they will provide a Value not seen in this line for many years. That is a time when rising costs for upgrades are reduced by the additional performance people get.

Small features such as detailed labeling help solve real-world problems such as requiring IT professionals not to perform maintenance. Using iDRAC 9 allows businesses to manage their edge servers with the same Open Management tools to manage large servers like the Dell EMC PowerEdge R640 or even the Dell EMC PowerEdge MX depth. For organizations, these are small features that reduce TCO when on-site maintenance can cost more than buying a server.

Dell PowerEdge T140 is a reasonable choice in the cheap server segment.
These are big energy consumption figures. If you use a lower-level CPU than the top Intel Xeon E-2186G we use here, power consumption will decrease when loading.

Conclude

Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 is a low-power and low-cost tower server. Its compact form fits well with where the PowerEdge T340 can’t match. From a competitive perspective, it’s definitely on the HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 and closer to the HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen10. For many SMB customers and business customers, the Dell EMC PowerEdge represents a simple value proposition. The PowerEdge T140 is a cheap server that delivers great performance in a well-designed package.