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dgingeri
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2004
- Messages
- 2,830
I currently have a server that is doing file sharing, file virus scanning, backups, routing, DNS, DHCP, and a virtual switch. It's running on a Core i7 920 on an Asus P6T with 2 4 port network cards and a 3ware 9650 raid controller hooked to 4 750GB hard drives in RAID10 and 2 2TB drives in RAID1. The OS is Windows 2008 r2. (I got a free single license from being a college student and signing up for MS's Dreamspark program a few years ago.)
The bad thing is that this beast takes 200W of power. My little 550VA UPS doesn't hold it up long enough to shut down when the power goes down. It also generates a lot of heat that throws off my thermostat and keeps the furnace from heating the rest of the apartment properly. The living room is about 10 degrees hotter than the bedrooms. I'm hoping to reduce that power footprint somehow.
The big thing is I/O. I need a total of 2 x4 slots and a x8 slot to run the cards I have. I'm currently using a PCI video card with a passive cooler to keep my PCIe slots available.
I could potentially get rid of the network cards and just use a regular switch. That would certainly reduce my power footprint, considering each of these 4 port cards use more power than a cheap 8 port gigabit switch, but I was hoping to reduce the number of devices and just have each system plug directly into the "router" server like a big home router would do.
I've been wondering if an AMD A6 or A8, or even an A4, would be enough to handle this kind of a load. I have seen several FM1 and FM2 boards with slot arrangements that would work for me. The DNS and DHCP take pretty much nothing to run. They could run from an old 386 and still have room to spare. File serving doesn't take much more than that with only 2 users. The big things are antivirus scans and the virtual switch. Even going down from a Core i7 920 to an A6 would be a 65W drop in peak consumption, and I know the idle power consumption of an A6 would be significantly lower than the 920. Given the power rates in my area, that could save me about $10-20/month in power, paying for itself in about 1-2 years.
(Power is costly here, not because of the basic rates, but because of what Xcel calls "Electrical Commodity Adjustment" which is more than 60% of my bill these days. We also have in place a law that doubles or triples a person's electric rates if they go over a certain amount of consumption during the summer, which I constantly do due to very poor insulation in my apartment. Fortunately, it doesn't double the ECA, but $350/month electric bills from May to September are very annoying, let me tell you.)
Has anyone here tried an A6 or A4 as a home server before? Think it would work?
The bad thing is that this beast takes 200W of power. My little 550VA UPS doesn't hold it up long enough to shut down when the power goes down. It also generates a lot of heat that throws off my thermostat and keeps the furnace from heating the rest of the apartment properly. The living room is about 10 degrees hotter than the bedrooms. I'm hoping to reduce that power footprint somehow.
The big thing is I/O. I need a total of 2 x4 slots and a x8 slot to run the cards I have. I'm currently using a PCI video card with a passive cooler to keep my PCIe slots available.
I could potentially get rid of the network cards and just use a regular switch. That would certainly reduce my power footprint, considering each of these 4 port cards use more power than a cheap 8 port gigabit switch, but I was hoping to reduce the number of devices and just have each system plug directly into the "router" server like a big home router would do.
I've been wondering if an AMD A6 or A8, or even an A4, would be enough to handle this kind of a load. I have seen several FM1 and FM2 boards with slot arrangements that would work for me. The DNS and DHCP take pretty much nothing to run. They could run from an old 386 and still have room to spare. File serving doesn't take much more than that with only 2 users. The big things are antivirus scans and the virtual switch. Even going down from a Core i7 920 to an A6 would be a 65W drop in peak consumption, and I know the idle power consumption of an A6 would be significantly lower than the 920. Given the power rates in my area, that could save me about $10-20/month in power, paying for itself in about 1-2 years.
(Power is costly here, not because of the basic rates, but because of what Xcel calls "Electrical Commodity Adjustment" which is more than 60% of my bill these days. We also have in place a law that doubles or triples a person's electric rates if they go over a certain amount of consumption during the summer, which I constantly do due to very poor insulation in my apartment. Fortunately, it doesn't double the ECA, but $350/month electric bills from May to September are very annoying, let me tell you.)
Has anyone here tried an A6 or A4 as a home server before? Think it would work?
