Power saving question

N

nry

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2008
Messages
409
I currently have a 6TB file server, which consumes a fair amount of power.
The server has a few purposes:
  • File sharing
  • TV server
  • Downloading
  • Mini web server (2-3 people use it max)
  • Home cinema controller

Now this lot uses around 100w idle I have noticed thats using a 45w AMD 5050e CPU

I really need to get this lower. As the web server needs to be 24/7 I was considering having a very low spec ITX build which would take care of the downloading/web server/home cinema controller

My question is how do I set the main file server to wake when its required. I thought of maybe a batch script with a WOL request.
Anyone done anything similar?
 
100W seems a lot for the components involved. You should be able to do that at 50 to 60W. Are you using 2TB green or similar drives that use less than 5W idle? What is your display controller? Is your power supply 80+? Is it 200W or less?


As for WOL depending on the motherboard you may need to send a magic packet. In the past a lot of machines would wake up on any access to the correct ip address.
 
The full spec:

* GA-MA74GM-S2H (mATX)
* AMD 5050e 45W CPU
* 2GB OCZ PC6400
* 120GB 2.5" System/Boot Drive
* 3x WD 1TB GP Grives
* 1x Samsung Spinpoint 1TB
* 1x Seagate 7200.11 500GB
* 1x Seagate 1.5TB
* Pinnacle 3010IX Dual DVB tuner
* Corsair 650w PSU
* 3ware Raid controller
 
Disconnect everything except your base system:

Power Supply
Motherboard
CPU + cpu_fan
RAM
CDROM/DVDROM drive to boot livecd

No HDD or PCI/PCIe cards; get them all disconnected from your system. Now test your idle power consumption while booting a livecd like Ubuntu (power consumption in BIOS is MUCH higher than real idle consumption). You should be having about 35W max, or your base platform consumes too much power to begin with.

You have Cool'N'Quiet enabled in BIOS right?
 
nry said:
The full spec:

* GA-MA74GM-S2H (mATX)
* AMD 5050e 45W CPU
* 2GB OCZ PC6400
* 120GB 2.5" System/Boot Drive
* 3x WD 1TB GP Grives
* 1x Samsung Spinpoint 1TB
* 1x Seagate 7200.11 500GB
* 1x Seagate 1.5TB
* Pinnacle 3010IX Dual DVB tuner
* Corsair 650w PSU
* 3ware Raid controller
Click to expand...

There are 3 items that I think are the cause.
- Corsair 650w PSU
This is large for a low power system. Is that 80+ at 10 to 15% of the rated power?

- Pinnacle 3010IX Dual DVB tuner
This was unexpected for what you were talking about. I expect this uses 10W to 15W constant regardless if you are recording or not.

- 3ware Raid controller
Again I did not expect that to be in a 6TB file server. Too used to using linux for that.. I guess you use windows. This will consume 10 to 15 W all the time as well.

So to me with the 10W+ loss from the too large power supply along with the power draw from the tuner and raid controller you are seeing still a little high power usage but not way off.
 
Last edited:
I would generally agree with drescherjm.

Other thoughts: You have 6 storage drives with 6TB of data. Moving to 3x 2TB green drives would cut power significantly. Higher capacity drives use less power and generate less heat for the same capacity (spindle speeds and drive models being equal) because you have less moving parts and fewer controllers to power.

Second, your add-in cards are using a decent amount of power as was mentioned. If you consolidate to larger disks, you could get by with 6 onboard SATA ports, saving you even more power (assuming you are using WHS/ Linux or something else that could take care of redundancy for you without the RAID controller).

Finally, CPU wise, is an Atom out of the question? I would consider either the Supermicro D510 board or the older N330/ ION platform (cheaper but close to EOL and 10-15% slower). The new NM10 is fairly weak from a server perspective and the old 945 chipset used too much power. The old ION had much better power consumption when not playing games (which was not a great idea anyway on an Atom platform. The thing about the Atoms are that they have really low idle power consumption, but max power consumption won't go beyond 10w over idle for the CPU/ chipset in non-gaming use.
 
Other thoughts: You have 6 storage drives with 6TB of data. Moving to 3x 2TB green drives would cut power significantly. Higher capacity drives use less power and generate less heat for the same capacity (spindle speeds and drive models being equal) because you have less moving parts and fewer controllers to power.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Good point.
 
Still i would consider 1TB disks too new to be retired. People still using 7200rpm 500GB disks or lower; yes that would help when upgrading to 5400rpm 2TB.

If you want to know how efficient your power supply is, the stripping down everything like i discussed in my previous post is really useful. If you begin with 50W already, you can bet your power supply has something to do with it. 80-plus certified PSUs are tested at 20%, 50% and 100% DC load.

Here are some Corsair 115W PSUs listed:
http://80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_detail.aspx?id=25&type=2
No 230V tests though.
 
DVB tuners can sonsume a significant amount of power, especially if they have to supply the LNBs. Are you using a multiswitch? Also a 7200rpm drive can consume 2 to 3 times the power of a 5400rpm one.
 
sub.mesa: I agree 100% on 1TB drives still being viable. However, given the user's capacity requirements, selling the drives and RAID controller while moving to onboard and lowering power consumption may be worthwhile. Personally, I would just deal with that power consumption instead of going through the trouble, but if the goal really is lower power consumption, swapping to 3x 2TB drives and removing the controller would be a big step in the right direction... with a payback period of 5+ years probably :)
 
Guess I should have been more clear.
This server is constantly growing.

Im considering a major upgrade in the coming months due to the amount of data im building up from both films (bluray rips) and work which I have a number of backups taking up about 200-300GB per month.

This is my reason for the RAID controller, as I am considering purchasing a HP expander card and about 8x 2TB drives. (raid 6)
Selling off the current drives.
Then by feburary im guessing I will purchase another additional 8x 2TB drives.
The server will also be running another aditional tv tuner.

So power consumption is going to go through the roof and will come to the point where running it 24/7 is just not the most sensible idea.

My plan (if even possible):

pfSense Firewall running on Alix 2D3 board (think this consumes around 4-7w)

Mini ITX system, low spec. With dual lan (atleast 1 gigabit for internal network, 1 for web traffic). Looking at some motherboards I think I can get this around the 20w mark??
Duties will include:
  • web server (2-3 people max)
  • downloading
  • home cinema controller

Main file server:
Upgraded motherboard (full size atx) due to requiring an additional pci express port for tv tuner. And if using HP expander will require a additional pci express port for this
Duties will include:
  • tv server
  • file/backup server

Now my plan might not even be possible, basically all systems run windows.
File server:
When no direct network traffic for 1 hour, system enters standby (or alternative state) waiting for WOL request

ITX Server:
When no active clients on the network/no pending downloads (although downloads only run midnight till 10am), system goes to sleep, again waiting for WOL request.

Now the most likley impossible bit, have no idea if this will be possible with pfsense
Say a user turns the computer on, pfsense detects this and wakes the ITX server
OR
User requests access to the WAN ip address pfsense sends WOL request to ITX server. I understand that this may cause a timeout request but this is acceptable as user can just refresh a few seconds later. Its only developers working with me using the server.

With the file server, ideally I would like it to show up in windows networking, when a user requests access to it. a WOL packet is sent. Guessing this isnt possible though!
But can't think of any other way?

Any suggestions to my mad idea!? :eek:
 
Yes for separating the computers for different tasks, the file server should be as low power as practical while dedicated to the multimedia tasks (music, movies and TV.)
I have a 8x1.5TB RAID 6 DAS box myself, and it's already full with SD DVDs:
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat84xt.asp
I have only a few BDs, but I already feel the pain at 40GB per BD, and I still have hundreds of SD DVDs to rip, so I am also thinking about additional storage.

Another problem is the location of the file server: With that many disks, it won't be silent, so you'll probably need to put it in the room next to the TV, with a hole in the wall for your TV and remote keyboard/mouse receiver.

An HP expander card is a bad idea in my opinion: It supports SAS drives only, and the biggest SAS drives are about 600GB for $650, compared to the 2TB/$200 Barracuda XPs. Plus I think the expander does not work on its own, you'll need the SAS controller as well, with optional (read: more $) RAID 6/60 support and optional (but required for RAID 6) cache with the cumbersome floating battery. You'd be better off with an Adaptec SATA RAID controller.

A DAS enclosure requires 24/7 power, so a NAS with internal drives is the best solution power wise, you can switch it on via a magic packet. Here's the cheapest I've seen:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/

You don't need the whole 90TB, but you can start populating this enclosure with a single RAID controller and 15-16 x 2TB drives to optimize RAID 6 for the less data parity disk space loss, provided you've tested and stressed each drive individually before.

I am planning on getting a SATA III RAID 6/60 controller next year when Adaptec has them. I have already a refurbished Adaptec SATA II controller for my DAS, and I wouldn't consider a different brand because Adaptec is just the most reliable there is. I don't have any backups for my ripped DVDs because of the sheer size, so I rely heavily on the controller and disks reliability, and on RAID 6 for dual simultaneous drive failures.

Digital media online availability is the way to go, but on the other hand, it's a bit of a waste if everybody is forced to duplicate the same costly infrastructure and purchase the same media content. Unfortunately, online paying services are just not there yet, especially for movies, the catalog is still only a few percents of the titles available on DVDs, the video quality is pretty poor viewed on a 42" screen, there is no subtitles, no choice of audio tracks, and no extras, so I'll stick to ripped DVDs for now. I don't watch movies or listen to music on discs any more, only rips. Thanks, AnyDVD!

P.S. Your router should have a firewall already, do you need the pfSense firewall?
 
So I did a bit of research about the PSU with the help of other hardforumers, and it turns out that there are virtually no savings with a lower wattage PSU.
You can make some extra power/dollar savings when you upgrade from a 80+ Bronze to a 80+ Silver or Gold PSU, but again, not much. The benefit is mostly that you have a more reliable and durable PSU less likely to start burning like mine did (I have a modular Corsair now), not the $14/year saved.
 
Chimel said:
An HP expander card is a bad idea in my opinion: It supports SAS drives only, and the biggest SAS drives are about 600GB for $650,
Click to expand...

no, you just need SAS to SATA breakout cables. they are ~$15 and turn one SAS port on the card into 4 SATA connectors to go to the hard drives.
 
Chimel said:
An HP expander card is a bad idea in my opinion: It supports SAS drives only, and the biggest SAS drives are about 600GB for $650, compared to the 2TB/$200 Barracuda XPs. Plus I think the expander does not work on its own, you'll need the SAS controller as well, with optional (read: more $) RAID 6/60 support and optional (but required for RAID 6) cache with the cumbersome floating battery. You'd be better off with an Adaptec SATA RAID controller.

A DAS enclosure requires 24/7 power, so a NAS with internal drives is the best solution power wise, you can switch it on via a magic packet. Here's the cheapest I've seen:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
Click to expand...

While it is true you need a SAS RAID controller or SAS HBA to run the expander, SATA drives do work on SAS hardware by design, and very well. It is extremely common actually to use SATA drives on SAS ports. Just to give you an idea see this post with Hitachi, WD, and Seagate SATA drives on a HP SAS Expander (last picture for the Areca view).

Realistically, you can buy a $100 HBA and a $200 HP SAS Expander and have a $300 setup capable of connecting 32-36 drives using one PCIe slot for data and one for power. You cannot do that with HBA's.

The blackblaze setup is really great, but if you use Silicon Image SATA port multipliers and Areca raid back-to-back though, I can almost promise you will prefer the Areca. Furthermore, the SATA cards cost only $175, but the multipliers (9) cost $42 each for a total of $378. I tried sourcing these but the only place I found them several months ago had them for $60-70 ea with shipping, and you now have 13 points of failure from a controller/ multiplier perspective, rather than two (HBA + Raid card) and end up spending much more. I think a lot of us on here lust for a blackblaze pod, but it is quite a bit cheaper to just use two Norco cases.
 
My bad, the HP SAS Expander specs mentioned only SAS, unlike the Adaptec site. I am learning by the minute... ^-^

It is a feat of data density that the 4U Backblaze enclosure can fit twice as many disks in the same space. But I'll take the convenience of already connected front-loading hot-swappable disks like in the Norco cases anytime. Just need to wait for SATA III controllers, cases, etc.
 
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