Low-Power Home Linux Server? 697
mpol writes "For years I've been using a home server with Linux, but recently I've been having doubts about the electric bill. I'm not touched by the recession yet, but I would like to cut costs, and going from a 100-Watt system to a 30-Watt system would save me 70 bucks a year. The system doesn't need to do much, just apache, imap, ssh and some nfs, but I do prefer to have a full-fledged system, where I can choose what to install on it. I also don't really care if it's a low-power Via or an ARM processor as long as it's cheap. I'm aiming for $300 or less for a full system, which I could then earn back in about four years through power savings. I've been reading about the Western Digital Mybook World Edition, which has an ARM processor but isn't that easy to install Debian on. A Mac Mini draws about 85 Watts, so that isn't an option either. Something a bit more than turn-key would be fine, but preferably not a complete hack-job. Adding a temporary CR-ROM or DVD-ROM, or a USB disk with an iso to install from would be nice. Any Slashdotters run nice and cheap low-power Linux systems? What can you recommend?"
Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
Get a Sheeva plug its 5W and it looks like an adapter.
http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/sheevaplug.jsp
Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:4, Informative)
I have a DNS-323 which looks similar. You can indeed install Debian on it, but it seems that some of the peripherals are not handled properly, in particulare the thermal sensors.
My current mini-server of choice is the Micro-Client Jr DX (~10W)
http://www.norhtec.com/products/mcjrdx/index.html
ALIX (Score:1, Informative)
How about a Linksys router or D-Link NAS box (Score:5, Informative)
The Linksys WRT54G router runs a version of Linux in an open source distribution...
Or a D-Link DNS 323 NAS box... there's quite an active hacking community using these boxes...
nettop (Score:1, Informative)
I got worried about this about a year ago. So, I bought one of those MSI wind nettop barebones systems. They are based on the Intel Atom, so it is fairly low power. I picked the single-core model in order to reduce power usage. Then I bought a pen drive and a compact flash card and an SDHC card. I put the compact flash card on the connector on the motherboard. This puts it on the IDE channel. I put the SDHC card into the SDHC reader on the front panel of the machine. I put the pen drive on a USB port. I set up a 3-way striped software raid situation and ended up with a relatively cheap, relatively fast 32 GB partition. I think that probably saved a bit of energy over installing a hard drive. It runs Linux and is pretty quick and I think pretty low power.
Mac Mini or Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
SheevaPlug, UD-160A and USB hubs (Score:4, Informative)
The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug [wikipedia.org] runs a 1.2ghz Marvell PXA 270 ARM, and costs $99.
The UD-160A [plugable.com] gives you a full set of ports (4x USB2, VGA-out, 10/100 Ethernet) thanks to DisplayLink [displaylink.org] drivers. Price: $90-ish.
If you don't need a screen, you can get away with a 4x USB2 hub ($8) or a 7x USB2 hub ($12) and spang on peripherals as you need.
Then, if it turns out that you do want a screen after all, you can always go for a Doublesight DS-90U [doublesight.com] USB 1024x600 screen, again, using DisplayLink [displaylink.org] free software drivers.
There are plenty of other ARM-based low-power CPUs with at least 512mb of RAM: the beagleboard and the IGEP-v2 go for $100 appx at 600mhz.
Used P3 (Score:3, Informative)
I have a Compaq low-profile Presario P3. It's tiny (about 3 inches tall and about 12 inches on a side) and consumes very little power - about 20-25 watts.
1 Ghz CPU, 512 RAM, 100 Mb Ethernet, 250 GB HDD, worth about 20 dollars w/o the HD, been my "mini" server for years now running CentOS 4.
Tough combo to beat....
Re:So it's $70 a year.... (Score:1, Informative)
It's not about the money. It's about using less energy. Less so, but it's also about leading by example for the next person that wants to run a server.
Re:Mac Mini or Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
Sheeva Plug review/picture: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/marvell-sheevaplug-plug-computing-linux,7104.html [tomshardware.com]
Where to buy the Sheeva Plug: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx [globalscal...logies.com]
Installing Debian on the Sheeva Plug: http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/ [cyrius.com]
mini ITX C7 (Score:1, Informative)
Try a mini-itx C7 processor and MB combo.
These processors are typically soldered, but run very cool, and generally fanless.
I have a VIA-C7 at 1.2Ghz, with a DVD+RW, and 500Gb HD, and the whole system uses only 24W under full load.
C7's are basically PIII class processors, but have hardware accellerated encryption making them 20-30X faster than even a P4 at AES, MD5, SHA, etc.
The boards have everything you could possibly want, USB 2.0, Ethernet [GigE], Audio, Video [integrated] , and even a PCI slot.
at 17mm x 17mm these boards can fit anywhere. DC powered at 12V. Cases and powersupplies will be more expensive due to the size, but well worth it, they can look very nice on even a small desk.
RAM is a bit limited at 2Gb, but that should do.
LEX mini PCs (Score:2, Informative)
Look at http://www.lex.com.tw. Lex has got many small systems which run perfectly Linux and OpenBSD. Some of them are fanless - the alu case doubles as cooling block for the CPU.
Bubba|TWO NAS server (Score:3, Informative)
Zotac Ionitx (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3562&p=12 [anandtech.com]
According to this article, it's between 25-30W, and it fits into any standard Mini-ITX case. Couple it with a low power hard disk or CF drive and it'll be very power efficient. It's also possible to run it completely passively cooled, and if you wanted to use it as a media frontend, it'd be more than capable. You can even get a version that comes with it's own external power brick rather than a PSU.
Re:Mac Mini idles at 13 watts! (Score:2, Informative)
Funny, my Mac Mini (running SETI@home 24x7) uses about 35 Watts with both cores at 100%. That is with an external FW bus powered backup drive hooked up as well (which draws a few Watts by itself). APC might be lying to me about the draw, but somehow I doubt it.
Mind you, a Mini is still out of the projected price range anyway...
Re:Marvell Plug (Score:2, Informative)
DANGER! It is not without reason a development kit. The support is lousy and you need to have really good linux knowledge to use it. I think everyone that want to have some server that simply works, should wait till the community installer is in a better shape and the distributions have more support for it.
More information about the plug:
http://www.cyrius.com/journal/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug
A good community forum:
http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?action=forum
Also the 99$ is the price without shipping AND custom duties. I payed near 125 Euro in germany with shipping and custom duties.
Got me one of these (Score:5, Informative)
Highly recommended.
I installed debian (lenny) and then updated to squeeze because (and this is to be expected) the squeeze installer is currently borked. Attached to an external drive caddy this solution chopuld come in well under your 30W and will do all you need.
I have mine serving media to the PS3, downloading stuff, serving my music collection to wherever I happen to be, doing Samba, NFS, TFTP, SSH, SMTP and IMAP.... it's a great.
Re:Underclocking (Score:5, Informative)
I get a whopping 35 Watts used running SETI@home on my Mini... That is with a bus powered FW external HDD for Time Machine hooked up and not spinning down the disks when idle.
A Mac Mini uses nowhere near the power you claim, unless you've got a case where both cores, the GPU, the HDD, and the DVD Burner all all running full tilt at once; a pretty tough thing to do with the use described by the submitter, I'd say.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
I've had one of these for about two months now and it's amazing. It needs a bit of configuration out of the box to fix some of the odd choices Marvell made in their distribution, but there's two great wikis that support the SheevaPlug so there's plenty of help. I'd highly recommend it, super low power, very small, and totally open for you to mess with if you'd like.
I use mine as a media server and rtorrent downloader. It can serve up multiple samba streams at a time without a hitch. It also has a USB port that I have an external HDD plugged into, though it has its own power plug too (though there are some 2.5 drives that can be powered off USB).
Definitely get the dev kit, has an SD card slot and serial USB port in addition to the normal USB and ethernet ports.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
Should mention that this wiki is being served off a SheevaPlug, should also mention that since you mentioned you need NFS, you'll need to build your own kernel with it enabled, it won't work out of the box. There may be a distro available somewhere though.
http://computingplugs.com/index.php/Main_Page [computingplugs.com]
Re:Underclocking (Score:1, Informative)
You don't look like you need extensive processing power, so why not just underclock your current server? That alone will save you a pretty penny on your bill.
assuming your servers power saving functions work with the underclocked settings during the idle time. Wouldn't it be nice if the processor manufacturers would release the processors with individual shmoo plots? Process variability could be then considered not as threat to the marketing but an opportunity to create more value for the whole "ecosystem". Let the customer make the compromises they want
Re:Laptop (Score:4, Informative)
If he's going to use a linux distro, he can use vbetool to turn off the monitor, or apple laptops will let you turn off the screen completely. Then use ssh, vnc, or ard to control the computer remotely.
Re:Laptop (Score:3, Informative)
I tried this with two laptops, and you have to keep the lid open, because processor overheats otherwise.
This is bad for the space it occupies and for the dust that keeps raining on the keyboard
With lid open, it works great.
Re:Zotac Ionitx (Score:1, Informative)
I am using a system based on this and can confirm the 30W maximum current draw.
The processor runs fine without the fan, and I added a solid state disk so its totally silent. A hard disk spins up for backups and spins down when the backup is complete. In-between its no distraction at all.
Re:Underclocking (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.applesource.com.au/mac/soa/Apple-Mac-Mini-2009-/0,2000070803,339295252,00.htm [applesource.com.au]
Just under 30w under load. Might be a bit higher if you have a DVD in there. It draws a lot less juice than the adapter provides.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget the OpenRD [globalscal...logies.com]
Same chip, but in a larger form factor to bring out the rest of the connectors: 7 USB, 2 Gb ethernet, VGA, audio, serial, & esata.
It's 250 instead of only 99, though.
A couple random tips (Score:4, Informative)
I've been into low-power conventional computers for a while. You can buy an old Compaq iPaq [wikipedia.org] (the computer, not the PDA) for almost nothing ($10-$50 in speeds from 500 MHz Celeron to 1 GHz PIII) and they'll use 30W at idle and under light use. They come in "legacy" (serial, parallel) versions and "legacy-free" (USB only) versions. They have a bay that can hold a CD, floppy, or no drive. (Compatible with Armada laptops from the same era.) So beware that if you buy a used one it might come with no optical drive so shop carefully.
A slimline HP [google.com] will also use about 30W and is a little newer and faster--the one I had was a 1.6 GHz Celeron with a DVD burner (could be a 2nd HDD instead) and SATA hard drive.
Re:Underclocking (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the mac mini draws 110 watts
I'd be surprised if it actually uses that much. The figures shown on consumer products for power consumption seem to be peak or maximum, not nominal figures. Using a meter such as the Kill-a-watt will likely show significantly less consumption. (read Watts, not VA)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Electronic+Gadgets-_-P3+International-_-82715001 [newegg.com]
A few years ago I built a desktop using a E6300 Core 2 Duo overclocked to 2.25 Ghz. With added Ethernet and Firewire cards, and typical optical and hard drives, consumption measures only 82 Watts. (tested while doing video compression) Components were selected with energy use in mind. It helped to use basic ICH7/GMA950 graphics.
Clearly the Minis still use much more energy than some alternatives suggested here, but for a true picture of power savings measured consumption is needed. It would be interesting to results at different clock rates.
At aa 13 cents a kwh above baseline rate, I figure it costs roughly $1. per month for every 10 Watts of continuous (24 hr) load.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely TERRIBLE, no question about it. You'll get much better performance out of the oldest system you can snag off ebay for $20.
Even if you get one for free, I would recomend NOT using it. They made some of the most horrendous design decision ever. First is vastly underpowering the system. Second is giving it anything more than 10BaseT networking, and advertising it as if there's a snowball's chance in hell it'll be able to utilize it... Third, is not providing ANY WAY for the end user to access the underlying system, so when the array gets completely hosed for no reason (and it will! No question.) you can't get in, anywhere, to fix anything, and only a hacked firmware image will save you... Fourth and perhaps most significantly, is cheaping-out on $1 worth of flash, and instead storing the OS image on the HDDs, leaving it vulnerable to data corruption, and a huge pain in the ass to bootstrap with fresh drives (requiring Windows, or at least WINE to run the firmware updater app).
I posted on a forum somewhere about all the typos I found in the firmware of my unit... "ehco" is a good extensive one in the software-raid scripts, ensuring nobody can actually get the reports of a few specific errors, should they occur. And this is in a commercial product.
Re:So it's $70 a year.... (Score:5, Informative)
Energy to build a new computer: 18,100 MJ ~= 5,000 kwh. Source [scribd.com]. Fossil fuels assumed to be 45 MJ per kg, the value for gasoline.
Proposed ROI payback period is $300/$70 ~= 4 years, saving $70 per year. Electricity cost in the US for residential customers is $0.104 per kwh. Source [doe.gov]. This means he expects energy savings of around 675 kwh per year.
Expected EROI payback period is: 5,000 / 675 ~= 7.4 years.
I have to admit to being pretty surprised by that number. Usually, energy to manufacture is a fairly small portion of the retail price. Not so for computers, I guess.
Re:Got me one of these (Score:5, Informative)
Under 30W !? Miles under 30W.
I've spent quite a few years working towards having a capable low-power home server. I've worked steadily downwards but up until now I've been forced to trade off capability against power consumption. For instance, an NSLU2 is great on power consumption, but its 32M of RAM means there are many things which it just can't do.
The Sheevaplug has been the answer to my prayers. I now have one of these with an external 350G USB HDD attached and the total power consumption of the pair at idle is a mere 3W. It also seems to be capable of doing anything I ask of it. It runs a MySQL server, handles all my local file services, and provides a public NTP server in the pool.ntp.org pool, managing to keep a constant score of 20.
It's a wonderful device. Nothing else comes close if you're after power savings.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:4, Informative)
There may be a distro available somewhere though.
Installing Debian on the Sheevaplug is simple, straightforward and well documented (thank you Martin). An unbeatable combination.
Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:3, Informative)
Bubba (Score:2, Informative)
Intel Atom (Score:3, Informative)
I wanted the same type of box a year ago, and settled on Intel's D945GCLF2 board, which has a dual core Atom, onboard video, one memory slot, and two SATA plugs. Adding a 2Gb stick, a 500Gb Seagate drive, a generic CD-RW, and a case to put it all in ran just over $300. Runs Ubuntu 8.10 like a champ, and draws 35 watts when spinning the disk. To quiet it down, I replaced the stock northbridge fan with a Zalman passive cooler (instructions here [davewsmith.com]).
SuperMicro 5015A-H (Score:3, Informative)
I just put together a SuperMicro 5014A-H 1U server (dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor) with two 320GB 2.5" hard drives (in a RAID-1 configuration) and an 8-port Digium card (AEX800) for Asterisk use. Aside from the Digium card (which was inherited from another server), the total cost of parts including tax and delivery was under $500. The system runs Asterisk, Samba, Apache, PostFix, and Dovecot and does so consuming (according to Kill-A-Watt) roughly 40 watts of power. It's also reasonably quiet and compact. The only downside is that the chassis was designed to hold one 3.5" HDD, and the adapter they sell for it makes it impossible to use anything larger than a half-height PCIe card, so mounting the two 2.5" drives required some drilling new mounting holes - no big deal, but something that should have been foreseen by SuperMicro.
Re:Laptop (Score:3, Informative)
No, because the LCD's backlight almost always gets shut off when the lid is closed. The backlight is the part that draws the most watts in an idling laptop.
Re:Mac Mini idles at 13 watts! (Score:3, Informative)
There's a difference between idle, full load, and max power. For the new models, idle is about 13W. Then there's full load with the CPU at 100% and the HD spinning. Most owners say that the full load is around 30W Then there is the maximum power that the power supply will handle. The full load might be well below the max power. The idle power might be well below max power.
Servers don't idle? Since when? Unless your server is doing something 24/7 like SETI@home, it will idle.
Dual core Atom w.GE D945GSE brd w intgr DC power (Score:4, Informative)
Check out Intel D945GSEJT Johnstown Mainboard [logicsupply.com] Dual core Atom, low power fanless, doesn't need power supply (jack in back goes right to power brick) and gig ethernet for about $118. Very low profile Mini-ITX board, works well in $39 mini-case [logicsupply.com]. I've been using this combination for all sorts of things esp storage servers ( Try OpenFiler [openfiler.com] Linux-based or FreeNAS [freenas.org] BSD-based FOSS NAS solutions )
Re:So it's $70 a year.... (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like you included the energy for producing the 17" CRT Williams assumes each desktop computer has. I think we could leave that out for a server.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:3, Informative)
Pogo Plug is a commercialized Sheeva Plug. It may be easier to buy.
http://www.pogoplug.com/ [pogoplug.com]
Sheeva/Pogo is the best solution to this problem that I am aware of. 5W and $99.
Atom 330 Desktop/Server (Score:4, Informative)
I like it because it is powerful enough to do most of my daily computing. It runs an apache, a mailserver and serves as my desktop machine. I use a 1680x1050 Gnome desktop, fullscreen video, browser and email client. It has, in practise, completely replaced my normal (1300 euro) desktop. After I replaced the crappy fan that came with the motherboard it is now perfectly silent.
The whole system, under load, uses 28Watt.
Look at portables - Netbooks (Score:3, Informative)
If you want low power, look at any of the Netbook and low power 'portable' market devices.
They run on a few Watts compared to something even like a Mini-ATX or Mac Mini desktop solution.
Pick an OS that knows how to handle the device's power management - some distributions suck at this, and some are smooth as butter. (Use something like Windows7 -trial copy- to baseline the power usage to help pick a distribution that gets close to what Windows7 does with power usage or beats it, as it is a good all around consumer baseline OS that does try to manage every power management trick in the book.)
You can even stick to a bland x86 architecture, making things a lot easier for you.
If you pick a netbook or low end laptop, use USB 'selective suspend' devices for storage, DVD/CDROM, etc. Also some of the low end power efficient laptops have eSATA, ExpressCard, etc.
Low power is what these devices were designed to do. (One caveat, make sure they have a 'smart' AC adapter, if not, the AC adapter will not cycle down, and so all the laptop side power saving won't have as dramatic gain.)
PS for a Server, a low end laptop is rather smart, as it can be folded away on your bookshelf next to your hub out of the way, and they also have built in battery backup for power outages and smart shutdown/restart - perfect for servers.
Good Luck...
Re:Underclocking (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget going to passive heatsinks (I just glue them on with a fat bead of epoxy around a dot of thermal paste, chisel off with a screwdriver if you want them back when disposing of the old system) and reducing the fan speed on the power supply.
Re:Zotac Ionitx (Score:2, Informative)
I've got one of these too. I love it for what it does: perform all my 24/7 computing desires (except gaming) while drawing very little power and producing no noise (well, except when it's playing 1080p or stuttering on SD web flash video).
It's really over-kill if he just wants a server.
If I were to buy a server it would be a rack.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:3, Informative)
The sites linked above are charging £60 in postage. Which is stupid considering the plug is £60.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:3, Informative)
I got the joke, but what he means is that in addition to the USB A plug (to which you can plug in hard drives and the such), it has a USB->Serial->JTAG adapter on it. Meaning no matter how hard you try to screw up the OS, you should still be able to recover it.
To address the comments below about the Pogo and Tonido plug, the Sheeva plug is infinitely better in my book (especially for the slashdot crowd.) It includes the JTAG plug in addition to the SD card. Those projects are great for the clueless home owner who just wants X done. But you're going to run into limitations.
Ordered mine a while ago, should be here this Saturday. (Party, play with plug, party, play with plug....) They seem to get them in batches from Sheeva so that's what took a little while.
Mine is going to run my HVAC via 1-wire and a relayboard, in addition to some external hard drives.
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Laptop (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How about a Linksys router or D-Link NAS box (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a big fan of the NSLU2, I had one running mail/web for a few years and another running a web-interface to a torrent client and mediatomb to share media to the PS3. However they do have some pretty big limitations and you have to really cut down on running processes, memory usage and also have a lot patience when doing much.
If you're looking at buying now I'd recommend Sheevaplug as the logical successor - 1.2GHz ARM core with 512MB of RAM, for not much more than the NSLU2 if you can even find an NSLU2 any more. It seriously blows the Linksys model away (though I'll always have a soft-spot for my slugs).
Actually handling it fine! (Score:2, Informative)
He has a page showing realtime load, and so far it's handled the load easily, despite handling several other background tasks. Very impressive!
Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:5, Informative)
> and has mirrored 500 GB disks, which I think is essential for any home server.
I found that when the computer is ran with with no screen, the hard drives are what require the most power. Not surprising when you touch them and see how warm/hot they get.
I have two monitor-less servers, one has 2 X 500G drives in it while the other has 4. The one with 4 drives takes about 160 watts of power while the other with 2 takes about 80 watts of power.
I would suggest to look at alternative media to store your data (or more energy efficient drives) if you are concerned with saving power. You may also look at stopping the drives from spinning when not in use depending on how busy your server is throughout the average day but I do not know how well it works under Linux.
Also, if you live in a cold area where you need to heat your place, the heat dispersed by the drives will warm your house and make you save on heating bills. This is one of the reason I do not worry about this that much... I just warm my place up with the computers and this makes me save on heating bills ;-))
I use the MicroClient since two years now (Score:1, Informative)
I would like to recommend the MicroClient SrDX (not the JrDX)
As a charity in Uganda (http://heart4children.org), where power is really expensive($0.25/KWh) we need to mind the shillings. Besides, power supply is extremely un-reliable and many times we need to run the computers from battery powered inverters.
As if this is not enough, we also have the dust problem. Any fan cooling will give up within one year due to the intrusive African red dust. It is un-avoidable, whatever you undertake, dust will kill your computers.
I tried looking for some fanless design for this purpose and ended up buying 3 different models of the northec company (in HongKong I believe) These are the Micro-Clients: the Jr, JrDX and the SrDX. I tried playing around with the systems, looking what it could handle. The smaller units are supplied with some extremely micro linux distro, the medium was powered by DamnSmallLinux, but the biggest one, the SrDX was able to really do some 'normal' work.
I had the SrDX fitted with a hard disk and tried loading Fedora on it, it failed. I tried playing arround with DSL but this was too limited in freedom to install. Then I installed it with UBUNTU 8.04. It went really easy. Then I connected my Intracom ISDN mosem with a USB connecter (of which you get 3 with the MicroClient SrDX) and with a little tweaking I got it working like a charm.
The little thing only uses 15 watts!! I continued by installing SAMBA and got it going just perfectly for our work here in the office. Next I installed MySQL and APACHE and the little thing just keeps going like one of the big guys!
The original author said he saved $70, I can now say that so far I have saved $187/year plus, I have not had to touch the ting again ever since I installed it... it just works like it should.
I wish we could say the same of the electricity company in Uganda (UMEME)
Cor Koelewijn,
Missionary for Heart For Children in Uganda
http://heart4children.org
Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:1, Informative)
check out Samsung ecogreen drives, 6 watts reading/writing 0.5 watts idle - maybe thats low enough to not necessitate spinning down due to the other issues that causes.
Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:3, Informative)
I have two monitor-less servers, one has 2 X 500G drives in it while the other has 4. The one with 4 drives takes about 160 watts of power while the other with 2 takes about 80 watts of power.
All this means is that your two systems are pretty different. A typical 3.5" hard-drive uses less than 10 watts [tomshardware.com], not anywhere close to the 40 watts your example would seem to imply.