Most energy efficient (home) setup

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1

After reading a number of threads where people list their huge and wasteful, but undoubtedly fun (and sometimes necessary?), home setups complete with dedicated rooms and aircos I felt inclined to ask who has attempted to make a really energy efficient setup?

This may be an interesting read, it uses a plugcomputer:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/11/diy_zero_energy_home_server/page2.html

Admittedly I don't have a need for a full blown home lab since I am not a network engineer, I'm more of a sysadmin/network admin/programmer kind of person... So I can make do with a somewhat minimal set up. But I *do* have tunneled IPv6 from home :wink:

In my current apartment in addition to an el cheapo DSL modem that probably wastes about 10 watts and a "sometimes on" PC workstation I used to have an always on thinkpad (early 2000s model) as my main desktop system and an always on G4 system (pegasos2 in case you care) acting as a mail/web/ssh server. The thinkpad was a refurbished model and it was quite stable, up to 500 days of uptime during its last years. But the hardware slowly disintegrated and when the gfx card died I retired it.

Right now my always on server is a VIA artigo 1100 pico-itx system (replacing the G4 system) and my "router/firewall/modem" is still the el cheapo DSL modem (which runs busybox by the way). I have an upgraded workstation that's "sometimes on", it has a mini itx form factor (AMD phenom2 CPU). I use debian on all systems.

I haven't measured it but I think if the set up would use 30 watts continuously (only taking the always on systems into account) it'd be a lot. Of course it'll spike when I fire up the workstation.

It's not extremely energy efficient but compared to some setups I read about it is. The next step would be to migrate to a plugcomputer or something similar (http://plugcomputer.org/).

Any suggestions and ideas appreciated of course. :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Jeroen

2

Right now my always on server is a VIA artigo 1100 pico-itx system
(replacing the G4 system) and my "router/firewall/modem" is still the el
cheapo DSL modem (which runs busybox by the way). I have an upgraded
workstation that's "sometimes on", it has a mini itx form factor (AMD
phenom2 CPU). I use debian on all systems.

I haven't measured it but I think if the set up would use 30 watts
continuously (only taking the always on systems into account) it'd be a
lot. Of course it'll spike when I fire up the workstation.

It's not extremely energy efficient but compared to some setups I read
about it is. The next step would be to migrate to a plugcomputer or
something similar (http://plugcomputer.org/).

Any suggestions and ideas appreciated of course. :slight_smile:

You want truly energy efficient but not too resource limited like the
Pogoplug and stuff like that? Look to Apple's Mac mini.

The current Mac mini "Server" model sports an i7 2.0GHz quad-core CPU
and up to 16GB RAM (see OWC for that, IIRC). Two drives, up to 750GB
each, or SSD's if you prefer.

12 frickin' watts when idle. Or thereabouts. Think about 40 watts
when running full tilt, maybe a bit more.

In the more-realistically-server-grade department, we've built some
really nice Supermicro based E3-1230's, 16-32GB, 6x GigE, RAID, six-
to eight 2.5" SSD's and Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drives, idle around
60 watts and peak around 100. We've virtualized loads of older boxes
onto some of those with good-to-great success. Two of those can replace
what took a rackful of machines a decade ago.

Quite frankly, I think most of the "little server" stuff is a bit
questionable. We picked up a ProLiant Microserver N36L a while back
for NAS use, but quite frankly I'm un-blown-away by its 35 watt baseline
performance, when for 45 watts I can get an E3-1230 with 16GB of RAM,
run ESXi, and run stuff alongside a NAS VM. (The 60 watt figure is for
a more loaded-up-with-stuff box)

Which brings me to the point: for energy efficient home use, you might
want to consider a slightly larger/more expensive machine and
virtualization. It doesn't have to be an ESXi host. It seems like you
can run two or three other servers on a Mac mini Server with stuff like
VMware Fusion without stressing things too much, and that might put you
in the 20-30 watt range for a flexible setup. You also don't have to
buy a MMS; the lower end Mac mini's are also plenty powerful, can be
upgraded similarly, but lack OS X Server and the quad core CPU.

... JG

3

With 10.7, Server is now a $50 add-on download from the Mac App Store, no special hardware required.

Stefan

4

I've run a SheevaPlug at home for a few years now. I don't do
anything fancy with it, but it does what I need it to do. Mostly that
is file server, web server, jump-box for network testing. Also
testing different linux software for this and that... (Quagga runs
nicely, but won't hold a full BGP table :slight_smile:

There are no moving parts in my home computer/networking gear, unless
my laptop is running. That was the goal for me. I recently grabbed a
couple of TPLink WR703N devices to mess around with as well, but I
haven't had a chance to dig into that much.

The internet tells me that the Sheeva uses about 5 Watts of power.
Along with my wireless router and DSL modem I might be under 10 Watts,
but I really don't know how much power a wireless modem uses.

Oh and I also have native IPv6 on my DSL. I like to brag about that
whenever I can.

Marcel

5

I also haven't found it to be particularly *good* at anything; I'm not
an OS X guy, and maybe that's part of the problem, but I found Snow
Leopard Server a lot more comprehensible in a "this seems really un-Apple-
like but at least it makes some sort of sense" way.

OS X Lion Server feels like someone just bolted on random bits of server
management stuff. If you've ever managed a server with a poorly
integrated control panel, it reminds me a little of that.

I believe that there are plenty of people who ditch OS X entirely and do
other things with them. I wish ESXi would run on them. I could see
*uses* for that.

... JG

6

You dudes need to get with the times and put all this stuff in the cloud.

Ok so I joke a little.. But I did move a load of stuff from a couple of home servers to some VMs and it works fine. Less to mess around with and prob cheaper too.

The only thing I keep at home now is storage.

7

Leigh Porter wrote:

You dudes need to get with the times and put all this stuff in the cloud.
Ok so I joke a little..

The "cloud" seems to be a more modern implementation of the mainframe "paradigm" (and now I feel soiled having used 2 such words in one sentence). It has its uses, though it's interesting to see how things go full circle. I predict a move away from "the cloud" in about a decade, give or take.

The only thing I keep at home now is storage.

I do have a few virtual private servers (and use them) and have set up a few VPS serving servers myself. However it's fun to tinker with hardware and if I'd migrate as much as possible to VPS systems it'd take a big chunk of the fun out of it.

As a side note, the main reasons for me to have a more energy efficient setup is not to "go green" (there are better ways for that) but because it is a fun challenge, I dislike paying bigger bills, and I hate the clutter and the noise a big setup brings.

Greetings,
Jeroen

8

Marcel Plug wrote:

I've run a SheevaPlug at home for a few years now. I don't do
anything fancy with it, but it does what I need it to do. Mostly that

I wonder how reliable the storage is in these things. Is it comparable to modern SSDs?

Oh and I also have native IPv6 on my DSL. I like to brag about that
whenever I can.

So your ISP delivers IPv6 to your home? I wish mine did...

9

Leigh Porter wrote:

You dudes need to get with the times and put all this stuff in the cloud.
Ok so I joke a little..

The "cloud" seems to be a more modern implementation of the mainframe "paradigm" (and now I feel soiled having used 2 such words in one sentence). It has its uses, though it's interesting to see how things go full circle. I predict a move away from "the cloud" in about a decade, give or take.

Or sooner when people realise that anything not locked away on an box at home is being routinely nosed at for thought crime and illegal quotations or something or other..

I do have a few virtual private servers (and use them) and have set up a few VPS serving servers myself. However it's fun to tinker with hardware and if I'd migrate as much as possible to VPS systems it'd take a big chunk of the fun out of it.

Yeah it does, I wish I had time for the fun of it!

10

>=20
>> You also don't have to
>> buy a MMS; the lower end Mac mini's are also plenty powerful, can be
>> upgraded similarly, but lack OS X Server and the quad core CPU.
>=20
> With 10.7, Server is now a $50 add-on download from the Mac App Store, n=
o special hardware required.
>=20

You dudes need to get with the times and put all this stuff in the cloud.

We are. I'm just putting it in *our* cloud, not some random other
company's.

Ok so I joke a little.. But I did move a load of stuff from a couple of ho=
me servers to some VMs and it works fine. Less to mess around with and pro=
b cheaper too.=20

The only thing I keep at home now is storage.

If you're keeping the storage, run some VM's alongside.

Quite frankly, it's a little horrifying how quickly people have embraced
not owning their own resources. On one hand, sure, it's great not to have
to worry about some aspects of it all, but on the other hand...

The web sites that we entrust our data to can, and do, vanish:

MySpace. GeoCities. Friendster. Google Videos. Which of those did
you predict would eventually fail?

The companies we pay to provide us with services screw up:

T-Mobile (Microsoft?) Sidekick. Lala. Megaupload. RIM/Blackberry.

Arbitrary changes in terms of service:

Facebook. Dropbox. Google.

You know where I never have to worry about any of that? On gear we own
and control.

"Cloud" is a crock of hooey buzzword. There's no "cloud." For the
average end user, it is the realization that we've farmed out tasks to
unknowable servers across the Internet. For the technical user, it's
setting up instances of servers in some large hosting company's big
data centers. The "cloud" people refer to today is nothing more than
the continued evolution of virtualized hosting.

There's nothing magic about it. You're trusting your data, your
processes, or (most likely) both, to arbitrary other companies whose
responsibilities are to their shareholders and whose motives are
profits. You have no control over the actual management, must trust
that they'll let you know if their security has been breached, and
you may never find out if someone's gone snooping.

It isn't somehow magic and new because someone calls it "cloud."
All this "cloud" stuff? It runs on actual hardware, not up in the sky.
And as long as it runs on actual hardware, it'll run faster and better
and more responsively on equipment that's less-loaded, better-specced,
and much-closer.

Sun had it right all those years ago: "The network is the computer."
But it doesn't have to be Amazon's network, or Google's network.
We *are* the North American Network Operators' Group. The people
here are more than just a little clued about this stuff.

I'm fine with running Netflix out of the cloud. I can tolerate their
occasional outages and problems. I'm fine with running other
unimportant stuff out of the cloud. But it looks like it is going to
be a long time before I have any real interest in running anything of
value out of someone else's "cloud."

... JG

11

Joe Greco wrote:

Quite frankly, it's a little horrifying how quickly people have embraced
not owning their own resources. On one hand, sure, it's great not to have
to worry about some aspects of it all, but on the other hand...

The web sites that we entrust our data to can, and do, vanish:

You know where I never have to worry about any of that? On gear we own
and control.

"Cloud" is a crock of hooey buzzword. There's no "cloud." For the
average end user, it is the realization that we've farmed out tasks to

Sun had it right all those years ago: "The network is the computer."
But it doesn't have to be Amazon's network, or Google's network.
We *are* the North American Network Operators' Group. The people
here are more than just a little clued about this stuff.

I wholeheartedly agree.
I couldn't have said it better :slight_smile:

12

I wonder how reliable the storage is in these things. Is it comparable to
modern SSDs?

No issues so far. As I said though, I don't push it too hard. I
don't have any specs or stats off hand, so I can't get any more
detailed.

I use a SD card for extra storage, also seems to be working just fine.

Oh and I also have native IPv6 on my DSL. I like to brag about that
whenever I can.

So your ISP delivers IPv6 to your home? I wish mine did...

I'm pretty happy with them, I just wish my DLink would stop requiring reboots...

Marcel

13

Marcel Plug wrote:

No issues so far. As I said though, I don't push it too hard. I
don't have any specs or stats off hand, so I can't get any more
detailed.

What's the speed like?

I'm pretty happy with them, I just wish my DLink would stop requiring reboots...

I assume you connected it to a (battery backed) UPS? If not doing so may help with that. Small fluctuations in power may cause just enough bitrot (bit rot) for it to behave funky but not all out fail.

Greetings,
Jeroen

14

--As of February 22, 2012 3:48:42 PM -0600, Joe Greco is alleged to have said:

Right now my always on server is a VIA artigo 1100 pico-itx system
(replacing the G4 system) and my "router/firewall/modem" is still the el
cheapo DSL modem (which runs busybox by the way). I have an upgraded
workstation that's "sometimes on", it has a mini itx form factor (AMD
phenom2 CPU). I use debian on all systems.

I haven't measured it but I think if the set up would use 30 watts
continuously (only taking the always on systems into account) it'd be a
lot. Of course it'll spike when I fire up the workstation.

It's not extremely energy efficient but compared to some setups I read
about it is. The next step would be to migrate to a plugcomputer or
something similar (http://plugcomputer.org/).

Any suggestions and ideas appreciated of course. :slight_smile:

You want truly energy efficient but not too resource limited like the
Pogoplug and stuff like that? Look to Apple's Mac mini.

The current Mac mini "Server" model sports an i7 2.0GHz quad-core CPU
and up to 16GB RAM (see OWC for that, IIRC). Two drives, up to 750GB
each, or SSD's if you prefer.

--As for the rest, it is mine.

There is an intermediate step as well; something along the lines of an ALIX or Fit-PC (or Netgate) board. These are boards designed for embedded/network applications, mostly. (Although the Fit-PC looks to be more of a thin client desktop.) Depending on the use, one can run a decent home server on one, or even a lightweight *nix desktop.

Most of these don't actually specify what they use, power-wise; they just list what power supply is included. Fit-PC advertises that it runs at .5 watts for standby, 8 watts fully loaded. Many of the others are probably similar, depending on how powerful they actually are, and how you configure them.

Daniel T. Staal

15

My current always-on home server is:
- 3U rackmount box, Supermicro H8SGL, 450 watt '80-plus platinum' PSU
- 8-core Opteron 6128 _underclocked_ to 800Mhz
- 16 GB of ECC DDR2
- 8x 2TB SATA 'green' drives from assorted manufacturers
- all fans replaced with near-silent Noctua models
- 2 additional gigE ports (4 total)

I run a few VMs on it to compartmentalize things a bit; the host and
most VMs run gentoo-amd64-hardened, virtualized with Qemu-KVM. Host OS
routes/firewalls. One VM is boot and NFS-root server for a couple
diskless workstations around the house. Another VM runs ntpd, local
DNS, HTTP forward proxy, shell, dev tools, etc. Another boots FreeBSD
and runs only Postrgres. The box is also my home music & movie system,
runs motion-detection software to record video from a security camera,
and logs weather and other sensor data.

The server burns 170 to 190 watts in normal use, up to about 280 peak
(movie or music playing + diskless workstations running + compiling
stuff + video recording + backing up laptop). This is certainly not low
absolute energy consumption compared to some of the other things
mentioned in this thread, but it also does a lot more, so it might be
more efficient, depending on situation. Consider also that the diskless
workstations only use around 35 W each (including monitor), and these
are the primary personal computers in my home.

In 2011 measured annual energy consumption for the server was 1635
kW*hour, 186 W average. I estimate the diskless workstations use
another 270 kW*hour or so annually.

-gh/nynex

16

www.aleutia.com

DC-powered everything, including a 12VDC LCD monitor. We're getting one of their D2 Pro dual core Atoms (they have other options for more money) for a solar powered telescope controller, and the specs look good.

There is a whole market segment out there for the 'Mini ITX' crowd with DC power, low power budgets, and reasonable processors. Solid State drives have immensely.

17

In a message written on Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 01:13:47PM -0800, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

After reading a number of threads where people list their huge and
wasteful, but undoubtedly fun (and sometimes necessary?), home setups
complete with dedicated rooms and aircos I felt inclined to ask who has
attempted to make a really energy efficient setup?

I've spent a fair amount of time working on energy effiency at home.
While I've had a rack at my house in the distant past, the cooling
and power bill have always made me work at down sizing. Also, as
time went by I became more obsessed with quite fans, or in particular
fanless designs. I hate working in a room with fan noise.

As others have pointed out, there are options these days. Finding
a competent home router isn't hard, there are plenty of consumer,
fanless devices that can be flashed with OpenWRT or DDWRT. I've
also used a fanless ALIX PC running a unix OS, works great. Apple
products like the Mini and Time Capsule are great off the shelf
options for low power and fanless. Plenty of folks make low power
home theater or car PC's as well.

The area where I think work needs to be done is home file servers.
Most of the low power computer options assume you also want a
super-small case and a disk or two. Many Atom motherboards only
have a pair of SATA ports, a rare couple have four ports. There
seems to be this crazy assumption that if you need 5 disks you need
mondo processor, and it's just not true. I need 5 disks for space,
but if the box can pump it out at 100Mbps I'm more than happy for
home use. It idles 99.99% of the time.

I'd love a low powered motherboard with 6-8 SATA, and a case with
perhaps 6 hot swap bays but designed for a low powered, fanless
motherboard. IX Systems's FreeNAS Mini is the closest I've seen,
but it tops out at 4 drives.

But what's really missing is storage management. RAID5 (and similar)
require all drives to be online all the time. I'd love an intelligent
file system that could spin down drives when not in use, and even for
many workloads spin up only a portion of the drives. It's easy to
imagine a system with a small SSD and a pair of disks. Reads spin one
disk. Writes go to that disk and the SSD until there are enough, which
spins up the second drive and writes them out as a proper mirror. In a
home file server drive motors, time you have 4-6 drives, eat most of the
power. CPU's speed step down nicely, drives don't.

The cloud is great for many things, but only if you have a local copy.
I don't mind serving a web site I push from home out of the cloud, if my
cloud provider dies I get another and push the same data. It seems like
keeping that local copy safe, secure, and fed with electricty and
cooling takes way more energy (people and electricty) than it should.

18

Look at Supermicro's X7SPA-H. It's an Atom board with the ICH9R
chipset, and 6 on-board SATA ports.

That one has been out for a while, so there may be something newer
available now too.

19

I've spent a fair amount of time working on energy effiency at home.
While I've had a rack at my house in the distant past, the cooling
and power bill have always made me work at down sizing. Also, as
time went by I became more obsessed with quite fans, or in particular
fanless designs. I hate working in a room with fan noise.

So, good group to ask, probably... anyone have suggestions for a low-
noise, low-power GigE switch in the 24-port range ... managed, with SFP?
That doesn't require constant rebooting?

I'm sure I'll get laughed at for saying we like the Dell 5324. It's a
competent switch that we've had good luck with for half a decade. The
RPS is noisy as heck, though, and overall consumption is something like
maybe 80 watts per switch (incl RPS).

The area where I think work needs to be done is home file servers.
Most of the low power computer options assume you also want a
super-small case and a disk or two. Many Atom motherboards only
have a pair of SATA ports, a rare couple have four ports. There
seems to be this crazy assumption that if you need 5 disks you need
mondo processor, and it's just not true. I need 5 disks for space,
but if the box can pump it out at 100Mbps I'm more than happy for
home use. It idles 99.99% of the time.

I'd love a low powered motherboard with 6-8 SATA, and a case with
perhaps 6 hot swap bays but designed for a low powered, fanless
motherboard. IX Systems's FreeNAS Mini is the closest I've seen,
but it tops out at 4 drives.

But what's really missing is storage management. RAID5 (and similar)
require all drives to be online all the time. I'd love an intelligent
file system that could spin down drives when not in use, and even for
many workloads spin up only a portion of the drives. It's easy to
imagine a system with a small SSD and a pair of disks. Reads spin one
disk. Writes go to that disk and the SSD until there are enough, which
spins up the second drive and writes them out as a proper mirror. In a
home file server drive motors, time you have 4-6 drives, eat most of the
power. CPU's speed step down nicely, drives don't.

FreeNAS can cope with ATA idle spindowns. You don't need to have all the
drives spun up all the time. But it's a lot more dumb than it maybe could
be. What do you consider a reasonable power budget to be?

The cloud is great for many things, but only if you have a local copy.
I don't mind serving a web site I push from home out of the cloud, if my
cloud provider dies I get another and push the same data. It seems like
keeping that local copy safe, secure, and fed with electricty and
cooling takes way more energy (people and electricty) than it should.

Quite frankly, and I'm going to get some flak for saying this I bet, I am
very disappointed at how poorly the Internet community and related vendors
have been at making useful software, hardware, and services that mere
mortals can use that do not also marry them to some significant gotchas
(or their own proprietary platforms and/or services). Part of the reason
that people wish to outsource their problems is because it hasn't been
made easy to handle them yourself.

Look at e-mail service as just one example. What the average user wants
is to be able to get and send e-mail. Think of how much effort it is to
set up an e-mail system, with spam filtering, a web frontend, and all the
other little things. I've been building e-mail services on the Internet
for more than a quarter of a century, and as far as I can tell, it has
not gotten easier - it's gotten worse. Most people just concede defeat
without even trying at this point, point their domains at Gmail, and let
someone else handle it.

What about services like Flickr? We've completely failed at providing
strategies for users to retain their pictures locally without putting
them at risk. By that, I mean that Microsoft (for example) has made it
nice and easy for users to pull their digital photos off their cameras,
but has failed to impress upon users that their computers are not
redundant or reliable, and then when a hard drive fails, years worth
of pictures vanish in a moment. So that frustrates users, who then go
to services like Flickr, upload their content there, and their data lies
on a server somewhere, awaiting the day the business implodes, or gets
T-Mo Sidekick'ed, or whatever.

This frustrates me, seeing as how we've had so much time in which this
stuff could have been made significantly more usable and useful...

... JG

20

I can't comment to the rebooting, but a couple of years ago I looked at the Allied-Telesis AT-9000-28SP, which is a smack steeply priced (~$1,500) but has flexible optics and is managed. And at ~35 watts is the lowest powered managed gigabit switch I was able to find for our solar powered telescopes. The grant that was going to fund that fell through, so I'm still running the 90W+ Catalyst 2900XL with two 1000Base-X modules and 24 10/100 ports instead, but the AT unit looked pretty good as a pretty much direct replacement with extra bandwidth.