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Energy Efficient and Cheap Servers for Home Use?
Posted by
Cliff
on Fri Sep 17, 2004 06:20 PM
from the losing-less-money-down-the-outlet dept.
from the losing-less-money-down-the-outlet dept.
CapnRob asks: "I just got married, and my wife and I are putting together a home network in the (small) apartment we're now living in. We'd like to set up a firewall/mail server/small-file-server, but all the machines we own right now are pretty big machines that pull a fair amount of power, and that we don't want to keep running 24/7. Since our mail and file server needs are pretty low, our ideal box would be something like a Linksys WRT45G with one of the open source firmwares ... if only you could add a small hard drive to it. We're both long-time FreeBSD users, so installing a *nix system is no big deal, but what I've found so far in this line needs more l337 soldering iron skillz than I've got. Any suggestions for tiny little cheap boxes that won't send our power bills into orbit?"
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SparcStation IPX (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SparcStation IPX (Score:3, Interesting)
Obsolyte! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Obsolyte! (Score:5, Informative)
SparcStation IPX [nyud.net]
Parent
Re:SparcStation IPX (Score:5, Interesting)
1) CPU speed: The CPU in a Sparc IPX is slow. We're talking a MicroSPARC at 40MHz. Even running basic applications in a shell, it feels like slogging through mud. I have a SparcStation classic, which uses a MicroSPARC at 50MHz (slightly faster) and it's pure torture, especially when you fire up gcc to compile something.
2) Bus speed: The 20MHz SBUS can barely support 10Mbps ethernet at full speed. I put an hme 100Mbps adapter in my SparcClassic and couldn't push more than about 12Mbps through it with large packets. It absolutely choked with smaller ones. The system also adds about 4ms of latency to any packet going through it, in my experience. Again, this is the slightly faster SparcClassic, not even an IPX! If you have a really fast (3Mbps or greater) DSL connection, you may lose out on performance because of this.
Don't get me wrong, it's a fun as hell box to play with, and you can get them to network boot and run off a serial console, but they're just plain torture for doing real work. Even a PCI-bus 486 is loads faster.
-Z
Parent
DEC Multia's (Score:4, Informative)
They're basically the predecessor to the SFF boxen. Just don't lay the Alpha Multia's flat or one of the chips on the underside of the motherboard will overheat and die. But, then again, there are detailed instructions on the NetBSD website on how to use those l33t soldering skills to fix it.
Parent
Soekris is what you want. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Soekris is what you want. (Score:5, Informative)
Since you can get 1 GB flash cards for pretty cheap, and Pebble even with added bells & whistles fits handily in 256 MB, you can run dead silent. No fans, no water cooling. Power consumption is somewhere south of 10 watts according to the soekris docs.
Of course, if you are running a mail server and/or web server, you might want an actual hard disk to be able to have many read/write cycles without destroying your CF card - you can use a microdrive CF form factor disk with no problem.
My understanding is that Soekris' support for *BSD is better than for Linux, but I've had no problem running Pebble on mine.
Parent
Re:Soekris is what you want. (Score:5, Informative)
I'll second that. I bought one of these about 6 months ago and it has been amazing. I plan on getting at least one more so I can have a highly customizable WAP.
Check my little tutorial [davidcourtney.org] for more info. (Several pictures included.)
Parent
Boxes too... (Score:5, Informative)
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whoa! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:whoa! (Score:5, Funny)
I happen to know there are some BSD chix out there. They like Star Trek, Star Wars, computer games, Dungeons and Dragons, and love wild sex. Unfortunately 90% of them are five foot two and weigh in at 250 pounds.
Parent
Re:whoa! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:whoa! (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart, hot, sane. Choose any two.
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Re:whoa! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:whoa! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:whoa! (Score:5, Funny)
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Just do what I do (Score:5, Funny)
AC 24/7, free electricity... It's like a server farm in here.
Mini ITX and CF (Score:3, Informative)
I guess the same solution would work for a low power home firewall & mail server, and have the added advantage of being really nice and quiet too.
You could possibly sub a low power laptop HDD if you needed more storage space.
Just a thought.
Re:Mini ITX and CF (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Mini ITX and CF (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Mini ITX and CF (Score:5, Informative)
It's a sysctl variable...
echo "1" >
There's apparently also a userspace version if you don't want to upgrade your kernel.
Google [google.com] has info on using both.
Parent
Re:Mini ITX and CF (Score:3, Interesting)
It's only 20 or 30 watts, and the only moving parts are a small, quiet fan and the hard drive (get an old 5400rpm drive for even less noise/power).
Is this what you're looking for? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this what you're looking for? (Score:5, Informative)
Try to get a setup that requires no fans.
Parent
Old computers (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
Via Motherboard (Score:3, Informative)
Mini-ITX variety (Score:5, Informative)
How about a used laptop? (Score:5, Informative)
Laptops are generally very efficient on power. And they come with their own screen too. In fact, I heard of one company that replaced all of it's desktops with Thinkpads and used power as the single justification (the computer takes less, the monitor takes less, and less heat generated requires less AC).
Re:How about a used laptop? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a good power saving alternative to a huge desktop, but I wouldn't trust my data to a laptop hard drive.
Parent
Old laptops... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that you will find a few of these 'battery-less' laptop on ebay for a good price as the lack of mobility will really effect the asking price for a laptop. Snap them up and get all the cheap servers you will ever need.
Re:Old laptops... (Score:5, Interesting)
Laptops with broken displays are even better. I have an old P3 laptop I use as a server, and I got it free. Sony charges $600 for ANY display repair, so it's literally not worth fixing. But the VGA output works fine, and I have it set up through a KVM switch. Viola! A 75 watt server. Tiny hard drive, but if it becomes a problem, I can just do externals.
I'm thinking of taking the whole display off, thus making sure the lamps never come on, thereby reducing power drain even more.
Parent
None of us believe you (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, honestly, none of us believe you. You should have included a link to your marriage certificate and a picture of yourselves. People posting articles on Slashdot aren't married.
Besides, you just got married, and your interested in the network ?????
Re:None of us believe you (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, 0 times anything is still zero.
You're not impressing anybody.
Parent
Netwinder (Score:4, Interesting)
Old Laptop, two pcmcia net cards (Score:5, Informative)
Since you like Linksys (Score:5, Informative)
How about the NSLU2?
It has been covered before on Slashdot [slashdot.org] and is hackable [tomsnetworking.com] just like the router you mentioned.
Old Laptop (aka a "california server") (Score:5, Interesting)
Low power: Obviously, laptops have to be low power.
Low space: Laptops are small. Disable the "I've closed the lid" switch or get the *nix install to ignore it, fold it up, and slide it away.
Low cost: I said OLD laptop.
Built in UPS: Why do you think its called a "California Server"?
Openbrick (Score:5, Informative)
http://openbrick.org/ [openbrick.org] is a community of folks doing this kind of stuff. I have purchased a couple of boxes from a US distributor (http://www.hacom.net/ [hacom.net] and have been really happy. They have 3 ethernet ports, so they make great firewalls. We use CF cards for storage because we don't need the storage, but you can put little laptop harddrives in them, so you could make a file/print box if you wanted to. They'll boot off of a USB CD, so installation is a breeze. I run Debian, but have installed openbsd for kicks, also. They're cool enough that they don't need an internal fan, so they're quiet too.
I have nothing but nice things to say about them. The US distributor only takes paypal, but he has always delivered without problems. He even called back to see if I liked it.
Two Things (Score:5, Informative)
2) Why are you trying to jack around buying proprietary solutions or exotic mini-computers for your needs? That's dumb as hell. My personal server at home is an old Dell P233 laptop I bought for $50. It sports 80MB of RAM, 100Mbit ethernet, and a 4GB HDD. It currently runs my Apache HTTP, SAMBA, SSHD, VNC, Postfix, and CUPS server and it is tucked away neatly on a shelf under my desk. It has been especially useful as my print server (since I have a wireless network) and MP3 SAMBA server. Power consumption? Please, this is a laptop and the power features have worked perfectly as they were intended to. Also, there has been no additional configuration with this system since its original installation outside of Linux OS security/bug/OS upgrades.
Re:Two Things (Score:5, Insightful)
That's good to know, but what use is a server if it's in standby mode?
The guy said he wants something on 24/7 - that to me implies accessible, especially as he mentions using it as a mail server.
Parent
Separate your firewall from your servers (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, putting all your servers on your firewall is just asking for trouble. For better security, you'd do best to have one of those Linksys firewall/routers separate from your mail/file/blah-blah server.
Re:Separate your firewall from your servers (Score:5, Insightful)
This aphorism came about because it is undesirable to have one service hacked leading to access to all the other services and firewall configuration. Okay, this is an understandable situation and goal. Taken to its logical end, it clearly leads to one service per box, which is a good design model for a corporate enterprise with uptime and security as primary design goals.
However, in a home network where service consolidation and low power utilization are the primary design goals, this additional layer of safety bears too high of a cost. Even if the servers are $50 laptops, six or seven of them stacked up are going to be noisy, heat-generating, continually failing little problems. That's probably okay if the goal is to learn how to manage a corporate enterprise, but now we're changing design goals midstream, never a good idea.
With tools like chroot and automatically-handled patch management (urpmi, apt-get, &c), the risk of getting the whole server compromised by one service is reduced, down to what is an acceptable level for many. Once that's understood, we can evaluate the choice of firewall/router packages, and once we're doing that the power and flexibility of netfilter or pf blow any SOHO appliance out of the water. Proper logging, a good set of utilities... appliances are fine for use in networks where no one cares, I suppose, but I don't see why you would want one when a Linux or BSD box could be used instead.
Parent
What about a PDA? (Score:4, Interesting)
Uh... am I way off base here by suggesting... (Score:4, Interesting)
(aside)
But, I have to also say. I have NEVER even MET a woman who has HEARD of bsd. I had to argue with a Comcast Cable woman today who hadn't even heard of FireWire. I considered it a victory when I got my g/f to run Folding@Home. She was even game for Red Hat, but it was too difficult for her to find a wireless driver for the Thinkpad built-in 802.11... but hey, at least she tried!
Here's to... if not geek, then geek-compatible women! love 'em.
Real computer (Score:5, Informative)
No offense, but what you need to use is something that's meant to handle the job: a real computer. You can build a low cost, quiet, power conservative computer for not that much money. The average computer consumes less than 100 watts of power when performing basic tasks. This review [techreviewer.com] gives you lots of details. So really the power consumption won't be a problem. Keep the number of internal devices low and you won't have much heat build up. Keep the heat low and you can do all sorts of fancy things with sound panels to absorb sound, thus fixing that problem. You sound like a person that really does need a home server, like myself and my servers. You can't go wrong with a real computer. Plus when something breaks (and of course it will) you have warranties to fall back on. You can also hop on newegg or run down to the corner Crap Shack and buy replacement parts. Try doing that with your jerry-rigged WRT54G. ;-)
Epia / Mini-ITX (Score:5, Informative)
I have the exact same in my closet. VIA-Epia Eden 533 MHz motherboard/cpu/network/vga package, fanless, a bit of RAM, a fluid bearing harddrive, Gentoo Linux... it rocks....
- Barely consumes power ~30W
- It's also almost silent.
- It's very cheap.
Re:Epia / Mini-ITX (Score:5, Informative)
Prices (as I recall.... YMMV):
800 Mhz EPIA... $100
128 MB RAM... $40
2.5" 4 GB HDD... $40
16X DVD-ROM drive... $25 (eBay)
mini-adapter for DVD-ROM... $10
Case + DC-DC power supply... $60
for a grand total of... $275. And it can double as a DVD / digital media player.
BTW, I originally modded an acrylic cube to hold the computer. With no prior experience, I built a 7" cube to hold everything. I took it out because the power switches I used were difficult to press. I even used acrylic hinges. You can get just the power supply for $30.
I didn't do it for e-mail though. MythTV baby, so you gotta throw in a $150 hardware capture card to be perfectly fair when quoting the price of my system as-is.
Parent
Re:The obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)