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Comments: 697 +- Ask Slashdot: Low-Power Home Linux Server? on Sunday October 25, @12:11PM
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by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 25, @12:11PM
from the how-long-can-a-car-battery-power-it dept.
from the how-long-can-a-car-battery-power-it dept.
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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?"
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Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm working on getting a Buffalo Linkstation Pro Duo [buffalotech.com] set up with Debian Lenny. It's mostly complete, I'm rebuilding the kernel as I type to get USB printer support working. It's very compact and low-power, and has mirrored 500 GB disks, which I think is essential for any home server.
The downside is that I had to solder on a serial connection in order to get access to uboot (a bootloader similar in concept to GRUB) so I could view early kernel output and diagnose problems, log in if networking didn't come up, etc. If you can find a NAS device which supports a serial console (or at least can use netcat instead), that would be good.
One thing to be aware of is that you get a lot less CPU power with these low-watt ARM CPUs. The Linkstation Duo is great for fileserving, printing, and light email and webserving duties, but when I installed Gallery and postgres to view my photos over the web, it ran extremely slowly. That's not too surprising given it's a NAS not a full-fledged server, but it's something to keep in mind. You may only need a low-power device for 90% of your apps, but that last 10% can use a surprising amount of CPU.
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
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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 ;-))
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Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:4, Interesting)
All I do from my home Linux server is read/write files - mostly from Windows clients, but I have a few Linux clients as well. Also some very basic MRTG which I usually don't even look at anyways. One thing I've consistently read about NAS devices is that they won't necessarily have the horsepower to push the network connection on file read/writes to the max.
What's your experience with the speed of files in and out of the Buffalo device?
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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.
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Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it really worth buying some new kit whose sole purpose is to save money when, towards the end of it's lifetime, you will just about have saved the money you spent to buy it? How about saving yourself the time and not doing it?
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Re:Linkstation Pro Duo (Score:4, Insightful)
I second this idea. I have an old athlon linux server next to the furnace that runs all sorts of crap. I was thinking of replacing it with an Atom based MOBO and some new drives. But I kept spec'ing a $750 system to replace my Raid5 athlon box. I kept thinking that for most of the year where I live, the server is actually heating my house, and every watt it consumes goes to heat. So it's like running a 150 watt space heater. That's bad in the summer when I'm paying for the heat, then paying to remove it, but this time of year, the heat is welcome.
So I'm waiting for it to die, or for drives to get bigger so I can use fewer of them and simplify the system.
Sheldon
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Underclocking (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the mac mini draws 110 watts http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini?aid=AIC-NAUS-K2-BUYNOW-MACMINI-DESIGN&cp=BUYNOW-MACMINI-DESIGN
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.
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Re:Underclocking (Score:5, Insightful)
I second this - a few years back I switched my home server to a Mac Mini from an old x86 box, for power draw and space/noise reasons, much like the original poster. At the time I checked out alternatives, but there wasn't much to recommend other machines, all the ones I could find had much more limited storage space. No doubt that has improved recently, but being able to fit any standard 2.5" drive is a big advantage if you want to use it as a file server.
My Mini draws 20W when idling (I tested it with a kill-a-watt). Power use will be higher under heavy load, of course, but your average home server spends most of the time idling. I'm pretty sure the 85W/110W ratings are the maximum the PSU can handle, not the power draw you'd expect in normal use. My box runs a web server, ssh, mail server, file server and various other bits and pieces. X is not installed. It is one of the old PowerPC Minis, which I think draw a bit less than the more recent Intel Minis, but I can't imagine the power draw has increased that much.
My advice to the OP would be to pick up a second hand Mini and use that - there might be machines out there designed specifically as low power home servers, but Minis are fairly easy to come by and easy to install Linux on as people have been doing it for a few years now, even if Apple don't encourage it. If you're thinking about environmental impact as well as your electricity bill, buying a second hand machine is going to be better than buying a new piece of kit. This was another part of my decision to go with a Mini, there are various computers designed to do the sort of thing the OP has asked for, but they're much more niche and consequently hard to find second hand.
By the way, if you choose to use a PowerPC Mini, choose a distro that fully supports PowerPC! When I set up the box Ubuntu still officially supported PowerPC, but it has since been switched to unofficial ports only support, which is pretty flaky. Debian is a much better bet, I am now using that as it is much more reliable (note to anyone who wants to call me on this, I am very happy using Ubuntu on x86 desktop, but my recent experiences of the PowerPC releases have not been favourable).
Some people are suggesting laptops, but I wouldn't recommend one myself. For one thing, they aren't designed or expected to be on all the time, and I suspect you're more likely to run into heating and dust related issues. For another, one of the main advantages of a laptop is that it has a battery and therefore won't require a UPS. However, leaving the machine constantly on and charging is going to kill the battery life fairly quickly, at which point it's not really very useful. On top of that, most laptops use 80W+ when running on mains power. They're usually only designed to save power when running from battery. Obviously you can change the power saving settings, but it's going to be a pain to do so.
Parent
Re:Underclocking (Score:5, Insightful)
Err.. Pretty much all of the reasons you give for not using a laptop are just plain wrong or at least only applicable to certain laptops. Basically the "Desktop Replacement" type laptops that were sold in the year or two leading up to the core2Duo were often essentially desktop processors crammed into a laptop sized case and pretty much behaved the way you described with some poor little fan running full tilt pretty much the whole time. Most older and newer laptops do a lot better though. I have a Toshiba U405D (dual core AMD Turon) right now doing a Vista -> Win 7 upgrade and is using about 40W. My thinkpad A22 (1GHZ P3) running Ubuntu is consuming 25W doing some light web browsing. With the screens off they would both use less of course. As for the battery life issue, while it's true that L-ion batteries will live longer if stored at somewhat less than a full charge the difference isn't that large. Most of these batteries are rated for something like 300 - 400 charge/discharge cycles which is a lot for the sort of usage we're talking about. Remember, these types of batteries/chargers don't just keep charging like NiCads sometimes did. They just charge up and stop.
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Re:Underclocking (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
Parent
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]
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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.
Parent
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:4, Funny)
Now that you've published a link to a Wiki running on a Sheevaplug on Slashdot, you are probably aware of its limitations. I hope it didn't burn your house down when it melted.
Parent
Re:Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Interesting)
The SheevaPlug is great: I've come down from over 600W for a rack of Solaris servers via 18W for a Linux laptop to now under 4W for a SheevaPlug (all quiet/typical consumption) to provide the same services, see:
http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-SheevaPlug-setup.html [earth.org.uk]
(Served off the plug indeed...)
I've reduced the consumption so much that the plug now runs entirely off-grid from a small array of solar PV panels (under 200Wp) with a small (12V, 40Ah) battery to cover nights and very dull days...
Rgds
Damon
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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.
Parent
Mac Mini idles at 13 watts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Where on earth did you get 85? Are you reading that off the power brick? Those figures are meaningless for this purpose - that's the total load the PS is rated to deliver, not the average load at the wall socket.
The Mac Mini has all the components and power management features of a notebook so it's going to be about as good as you can get. For less money, the FitPC or a second-hand laptop is probably the next best choice.
Re:Mac Mini idles at 13 watts! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is Apples's spec on the power usage: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3468 [apple.com]
I have confirmed 13W on a recent model using a kill-a-watt meter.
Fit-PC2 (Intel Atom) uses only 6W at idle, 8W full load.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mac Mini idles at 13 watts! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not robust enough? I think the people running this server farm might disagree.
http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/13019/Mac+Mini+Server+Farm.html [dannychoo.com]
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Laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
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...
Mac Mini power-draw - some actual facts (sorry!) (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.goodcleantech.com/2009/03/its_official_apple_mac_mini_is.php [goodcleantech.com]
"The mini uses only 15W while idling in our tests, and a low 34W while running the CineBench benchmark test"
So it's $70 a year.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So it's $70 a year.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of energy that goes into making a new computer. You need to factor that in before you can decide if you are really saving energy.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
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Via Epia 5000 (Score:4, Interesting)
Mac Mini or Sheeva Plug (Score:5, Informative)
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]
Parent
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.
Marvell Plug (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
why bother (Score:5, Insightful)
New Intel D945GSEJT & PC Engine Alix!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel just released the D945GSEJT Atom board. This is not the same boards that used to older 945 chipsets. The older boards needed a fan on the chipset for it sucked up almost 20 watts!! The new board is mini-itx so it should fit in just about any case and runs on a single 12 volt coaxial plug so no need for a buly ATX PSU.
A nice review here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Intel_D945GSEJT_with_Morex_T1610 [silentpcreview.com]
I also use, and am a big fan of the PC Engines Alix boards: http://www.pcengines.ch/ [pcengines.ch] You have several board styles to choose from. You can install Voyage Linux (Debian based and keep APT!!) on a compact flash with a simple installation (specifically for ALIX) script: http://linux.voyage.hk/ [voyage.hk]
My alix, which I use as a USB music server, draws a measly 3 watts (Kill-A-Watt meter) when playing FLAC files. You can attach a low power USB hard disk for added storage if you want to run NFS.
Re:New Intel D945GSEJT & PC Engine Alix!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seconded on the D945GSEJT! For under $200 I was able to get the board, a 1TB Seagate Barracuda LP drive, 2GB SODIMM, and some miscellaneous bits to make a simple plexiglass case. The PSU came from an old external HDD case and didn't require any cable hacking to fit the connector at the back. The board has no onboard fans, and runs so cool I didn't need to add any. It's so quiet that I can't hear it over the hum of the 2 CFL bulbs 10 feet away.
I haven't measured power consumption yet, but considering my PSU is only 12V@2A and it hasn't caught fire yet, it can't draw much more than 24A running full tilt.
Parent
Not what I intended, but works well as a server (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought a Western Digital MyBook network drive which is basically a little ARM board with 32MB memory. It is intended just to serve up some windows shares over a network. But you can run a simple program to enable ssh access, install a package manager and start installing other software on it - mine runs a few cron jobs to download files, as well as being a print server through its spare USB port. I'm not sure how far it could be pushed given how little memory it has, but I'm sure a bit of email & NFS wouldn't be beyond it if you're not fussy about speed.
Power and cost were only a bit more than the drive itself.
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.
Pedal Power (Score:4, Funny)
Buy a mac mini and hook a bicycle + generator up to it. Runs your server and burns off yesterday's donuts.
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 )
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.