starting a server

M

Modder man

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
1,770
I have been looking into trying to run a server in my home. But I was also thinking that if I get into that my electricity bill may go up quite a bit. I have been thinking maybe I could make a bit of money off running a server, at least enough to make it pay for the electricity that it uses. Would anyone be willing to share any ideas on how to make a server profitable.
 
Kind of hard being uptime and stability will be key in your offereing. At best maybe you and a few of your buddies would be willing to share cost for a small vent server or maybe team speak. Just keep in mind there are many offerings for voice products already.
 
i looked into vent....the ventrilo company would have to license me to use thier software and i do not meet thier requirements
 
The big issue is keeping the availability/ redundancy/ failover that you would want when doing commercial applications (i.e. people paying you) in a home environment. Also, if you, for example, try running a game server, you'd need to set your traffic priority to have the server dominate your outgoing pipe. Your home PC's downloading windows updates would, in many cases, hurt the ping times on your game server.

One thing that may be feasible would be leasing your hardware for folding@home or something. Unless you have the correct power efficient gear though, it may be difficult to make money once electricity is factored in.
 
im not even looking to make money i would just like the electricty cost to be covered, at least in the begining.
 
Well i would like to have my own server for backups/storing media to be accessed by all pcs in the house. At the same time i cannot afford to have a computer running all the time so it made me wonder. Could I somehow make it pay for the electricity it uses?
 
Most people here seem to have overpowered servers with a million drives which could cost $200+/year to power. If you build a server with energy efficiency in mind, then the cost could be pretty much negligible. It depends on the amount of storage (drives) you need as well.

My 2TB WHS draws only 40w with two WD green drives, and Ive also set it to shut itself off from 12am to 6am. From my calculations, it would cost less than $35 per year to run. I think the cost of replacing parts occasionally (failed drives) is more than the energy cost. If you can afford the $300+ to build such a system then you can afford to pay for the energy. Worst case scenario, dont eat out at a restaurant for a few times a year and youll save that amount.

You could look into offsetting your WHS energy costs by focusing on savings in other areas, whether that be CCFL bulbs or what not.
 
Assuming you have some, could you talk to your neigbors about sharing wireless internet/backup space?
 
that was one of the things i thought of, offering to sell friends/nieghbors back up space not sure how that would work
 
Modder man said:
Well i would like to have my own server for backups/storing media to be accessed by all pcs in the house. At the same time i cannot afford to have a computer running all the time so it made me wonder. Could I somehow make it pay for the electricity it uses?
Click to expand...
You are overthinking the whole problem...

Build your server this way:
- Biostar TA760G-M2+ MB
- Athlon II X2 740 CPU (or pretty much any recent Athlon II)
- SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8 port SATA-II HBA
- WD Green 1TB or 2TB drives (up to 14)
- Your favorite 80+ 400w PSU
- WHS, unRaid, Server2008, pick-your-Linux...whatever makes you happy...
- Pick your favorite case based on how many drives you'll pop in.

The hardware listed above will average 30-40 watts idle, 50-60 watts under heavy load not counting disk drives. Assume about 5 watts/drive for the green drives at idle. If you run WHS there are even ways to put it into S3 sleep mode most of the time yet still be highly available for your media and backups. The whole thing might, if you do it badly, average about 70watts/hour over each 24 hour day - if you are careful it could be much, much less.

You can offset the electic costs by replacing a few light bulbs around your house with CFLs and/or turning down the thermostat by about 1 degree all winter <g>
 
Modder man said:
that was one of the things i thought of, offering to sell friends/nieghbors back up space not sure how that would work
Click to expand...

Obviously, you'd want a good router that works well in mixed mode (802.11n and g). I'm sure there's software that was designed for this, but with Windows, you could simply set up a workgroup and share a folder on the server for each user and set permissions so only you and the "customer:" could access it. You can also limit the amount of space they can use, atleast in Windows Server. It's called Quota Management in Windows 2003 Server.

Careful though, I think sharing your internet connection is against most ISP agreements.
 
For a backup file server you really don't need much to power them. dydx and PigLover pretty much summed it up. If you do it right you won't even notice an increase in your electric.

You could also cut corners by getting rid of your Tri-Sli 260, true power quattro 1000W and custom water cooling.
 
Another option that may be worthwhile (if you want to keep power costs low) would be to get that Zotac ION Atom 330 board with the PCI x16 slot. You would have 4 onboard SATA (I think) and a PCIe slot for extra SATA ports.

Also, if you do backup, use WHS no question. With multiple backups of Windows XP/ Vista/ 7 the dedupe feature will save you tons of space.
 
The rig you are mentioning cnick does not run all the time so i am not concerned about its power consumption. I know it consumes a lot but isn't on for more than a few hours a day at most. also most of the bulbs in my house have already been switched to CCFL
 
1. Set up a WHS
2. Download the internet.
3. ???
4. Profit!

16.%20DOWNLOADING%20INTERNET.gif
 
Most home internet connections do not allow their use for commercial purposes.. You would have to get business internet to do that. So you will be paying more for the internet connection. (running a business on a home internet connection is a quick way to get your service cut, or to even get sued)

Once you have customers you are beholden to them to provide service. So you have to buy hardware that will be up a large % of the time. This means buying higher grade servers and UPSes, backup systems, etc. So you will be paying more for your hardware. And you should consider redundant internet and to do this properly it should be a different type of internet from a different vendor, so you will have more than one internet bill.

Higher grade servers use more electricity than one that you could build for cheap for your own needs, so you will be paying more in electricity.

All in all, this used to be something people would do in the 90's.. Anymore, it's cheaper to go to GoDaddy for $4/month for websites and email, and Carbonite for $60 per year for backup, than to go to "billy bob's next door shadetree server" because billy bob (you) will cost more and provide less quality service than the big guys.
 
Last edited:
The problem that I ran into with running game / web servers out of my own house was this. The equipment cost me about $5,000 (network, servers, cooling, battery backup, and generator), Having a 30/30 business FiOS line (Primary internet for the servers), 10/10 business class from Comcast (Backup line for the servers) and then a normal 15/5 line for home (normal FiOS) cost me $300 a month. Then you had the power draw which was about $100/month ontop of my normal home useage. So if we are trying to break even just for internet and power you would have to make at least $400 a month. Which if you think is only 40 servers at $10 a month, its really not that bad, but it becomes a full time job very quickly, even if you specifically state "I give you server space, and you only get to contact me if it goes down." You are still answering emails/phone calls all day and night with people complaining that they can't get to their servers or their server isn't working the way they want and can you help etc.

At the end of the day, unless you are going to start a managed hosting company, a "fun" project designed to just cover costs ended up driving me up the wall, almost cost me my job, and even after selling off everything except the stuff I really wanted to keep, I was still in the hole about $1500.
 
wow yeah the more tips i am getting grom you guys the harder i realize its going to be
 
Srsly. C7J0yc3 pretty much laid it out for you. You might just stick with the KISS method and build an energy concious server.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top