Low-Powered Personal Servers? 119
antifoidulus asks: "Being the proud owner of a PowerBook, I have but one complaint when it comes to my computing experience: the lack of an 'always-on' web/database server that would allow me to work on some personal programming projects, since I don't like having my PowerBook on 24/7. I could just buy an Intel box, but looking at some of the horror stories of how much power P4s consume, and living in Germany where electricity is not cheap, I wanted to see what suggestions the Slashdot community has for low-cost, low-power, headless servers. My only requirements are that it can run Linux and preferably cost less than $500. Is this possible? What architecture should I go with?"
mini-itx (Score:2, Informative)
Re:mini-itx (Score:5, Informative)
Good luck!
Re:mini-itx (Score:2)
Re:mini-itx (Score:3, Insightful)
If the disk subsystem is an issue, I'd suggest something in an Athlon mobile or Athlon64 mobile. Low power, noise and heat, combined with modern and full-featured system boards AND a CPU that's up for real work if need be (and if not, it
Epia-M II Nehemiah (Score:2)
In includes onboard:
I've run the Epia machines on DC power units connected to as low as a 40W power brick (total system power including drive, etc). After you get the board, all you
NOT EPIA! (Score:2)
What I would do is pick up an ancient Power Mac G3 tower (blue and white). It consumes very little power, has only one fan, will run indefinitely, and has 'server-quality' components. Your number one concern with a home server is throughput, and the G3 tower provides it with 64-bit PCI slots, ATA-100, PC-100 RAM, and built-in Fast Ethernet.
Re:mini-itx (Score:2)
Hey! (Score:1)
This server is now, my storage server and also acts as a mirror for Fedora Core on their torrent (makes my connection useful).
So I want to know what slashdotters will suggest!
Re:Hey! (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I have two always-on machines... My internet gateway, and my file server (both running Linux). I recently upgraded both from old P3 machines, which suck 30W each just for the CPU, as you mention.
For my Masq'ing box, I went with an Epia CL 600 and a 512MB CF disk (via a CF to IDE adapter). Won't break any number-crunching records, but it sips a nice 28W, total, at-the-wall. Best of all, I could run it fanless, which would make it have no moving parts at all. I didn't like that it would creep up above 50C, however, so threw in an as-close-to-silent-as-you-can-get 120mm fan, keeping it down in the low 30s.
For the file server, I used an Athlon 64 (90nm Winchester 3000). Before drives, it sucks under 50W (again, at-the-wall). Each drive will add 15-25W, so scale up from there. The whole system, however, can realistically draw less than just a naked P4, if I limited it to only two drives (but of course I have more than that, currently four, each as the master with no slave).
One interesting point I'd like to see discussed, if anyone has a few good links - Motherboard power consumption (aside from the CPU), and "real world" HDD draw. I have three Winchester 3000s (two of which I plan to drop X2s in when they come down in price a tad) in three different motherboards, and they vary by 20W (ie, half the total) idle power use (with the same low-end PCI video card, except one system has on-board video a hell of a lot stronger than that old Trident card (an ATI Radeon XPress 200), and it sucks the least power of the three). Then for HDDs, I can of course find the published TDP, but as with CPUs, that means very close to nothing beyond "make sure your power supply can handle this, but it will never actually need to".
And, as a last point, if you care about shaving off a few more watts more than money or horsepower (but want something heftier than an Epia), get a Pentium-M board. They can manage around half the power consumption of an Athlon 64 (3W vs 7W idle, and (roughly) 25W vs 50W at load), with around 80% of the performance. At idle (an always-on home server sits idle over 99% of the time, I'd say, unless you stick something like Seti@Home on it), that should compare well (wattage-wise) even to a high-end Epia board.
Re:Hey! (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the reasons I dumped the idea of running an internet gateway on a PC was the power consumption. I now run a gateway appliance that draws about 5 watts. For my file server up antil recently I was running a dual P2 400 that drew 60 watts idle (with one HD spinning). My experience is that HD's draw about 7 watts per spindle to keep them spinnin
Re:Hey! (Score:2)
I had considered that route, but wanted the flexibility of a basically-complete Linux system (without X) as well. If I ever manage to make it off-grid, I'll certainly reevaluate that choice, but for now, the difference has more value to me than saving $0.25 per month on the electric bill.
I've been using the Kill-a-Watt wattmeter
Same here - Great little toy, and it has already saved me more than its cost. It amazed me how much power various dev
Re:Hey! (Score:2)
I haven't optimized my displays yet - I have 3 that I use, a 19" CRT, a 21", and a 20" LCD. From your description I guess I am going to end up making the LCD my primary display.
I hate to think how much power my home theater draws. Just the subwoofer is rated at 900 watts.
EPIA is your friend (Score:3, Interesting)
The mini-itx and nano-itx boards require little power to operate, can run any X86 based OS, and some can run off of flash memory devices with no addons required.
The only drawback to these is that their overall performace is not as fast as their AMD or Intel counterparts, but if silence, space and power savings is what you are looking for then these are a great solution.
Caveat Hacker! (Score:3, Informative)
Last time I checked, Silverstone is retooling to produce modified cases, but the nano-ITX/LC0[7|8] combo will not be silent: Via nixed the option to let Silverstone use the nano-ITX moniker unless their case accomodated a fan and not a heat block (like their original LC-07 and LC-08 designs). (The new LC-07 nd LC-08 cases supposedly will have vent holes in
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:1)
2.6.11 series (and earlier 2.6) - start it up. No problems. Unplug the network cable, and plug it back it. The driver still thinks that the network is unplugged, and it won't work again until you reboot.
This is bad, because if your switch loses power your NIC never sees it come back up.
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
And use a hell of a complicated solution to solve the problem? Whart happens if you like using stokc diso kernel for some reason and there the NIC is not modularized? What happens if you want to use a specialized kernel for you machine with ALL the drivers built in because it is, well, faster??
And no, you cannot use the network to warn you of the proble
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
Typical "I've never managed a server before" answer.
If you're running a server that matters at all then you're also running some sort of monitoring program to make sure that your various services are up and running. Furthermore, how often does your switch just "lose power"? If you have an UPS for your server then why isn't your switch plugged
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
> #modprobe viarhine && ifup eth0
First, this does not work. IF the thing went down once it does not compe up again.
And what do you do when the network card is down? Send a message ove the, uhm, network??
It is irrelevant if the switch seldomly loses power (mine does) or if someone plugs out a cable once in a while or whatever. The card should work, period. Having to write scripts to check for a broken card is total friggin tripe, now matter how "eas
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
No. You put the following entry to root's crontab (all in single line):
* * * * * ! ( ping -w 10 -c 1 www.google.com > /dev/null 2>&1 || ( /sbin/ifdown eth0 ; /sbin/modprobe -r viarhine ; /sbin/modprobe viarhine ; /sbin/ifup eth0 ) > /dev/null 2>&1
This will try to ping google once per minute, and if it doesn't get proper response withing ten seconds, will try to reset the network.
I have no id
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
To elaborate on my experiences with a 533MHz Epia system. The performance as a web/mail server is excellent. I can readily manage orders of magnitudes more activity than I really see. Just max out the RAM and let it go.
But as a graphical interface you will find it's performance lacking. But you can't expect great things from their onboard graphics chip. It's certainly useful and worthwhile, but it's no gaming console.
What has always surprised me about these boxes is they tend to stick with so much le
Re:EPIA is your friend (Score:2)
Sure, you could argue for a one size fits all connectivity solution, but you would probably regret it. I think there is an arguement for delineation of connection architecture.
If your USB drivers aren't stable, do you want that one your keyboard/mouse? Why invest in a multi-MB interface for user actions that run in the KB speeds?
Additionally, can firewire replace SCSI?
If everything is done via firewire and your firewire driver has a bug in it, you've converted your computer to a boat anchor. Not worth
Localhost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Localhost (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Localhost (Score:2)
Via C3 Terminator barebones (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Add a few bits and you've got a complete low power system.
Re:Via C3 Terminator barebones (Score:2)
That's nice, but I've yet to see a Newegg in Germany.
My advice (for "antifoidulus"): Kauf dir ein gebrauchtes Laptop, und wechsel dein Stromhersteller!
-- Steve
Re:Via C3 Terminator barebones (Score:2)
Whatever thier other faults (They're not in Germany for one.) Newegg seems to have OK product information.
DFI 855GME-MGF (Score:2)
Link to Motherboard [dfi.com.tw]
ASUS makes an adaptor that allows the use of P4-M CPUs in standard motherboards, but from what I've seen it uses significantly more power than the DFI option (about 25% more)
Pentium M, not P4-M (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sure you mean Pentium M. P4-M is practically the same as P4, but Pentium M is the sane choice when you're talking low power with high performance.
Buy a Mac Mini (Score:2)
Re:Buy a Mac Mini (Score:2)
Re:Buy a Mac Mini (Score:1)
Re:Buy a Mac Mini (Score:3)
Re:Buy a Mac Mini (Score:2)
Re:Buy a Mac Mini (Score:1)
Enough with the "obsolete PPC Mac" shit! (Score:1, Insightful)
WTF is up with this asinine mentality? If you want/need the machine now, just buy the friggin' thing. PPC Macs won't cease working the day the first Intel-based Macs go on sale!
Freescale just committed to supplying Apple with chips through 2008 if necessary, so the hardware transition could be very gradual. Furthermore, any Mac software worth running will be available as a universal binary through at lea
Re:Enough with the "obsolete PPC Mac" shit! (Score:2)
Re:Buy a Mac Mini (Score:3, Informative)
Since you are already familiar with the Mac OS, the mini sounds like the most logical choice to me. I strongly doubt that a mini-itx will have as low of a draw as
Just Say NO to Chipzilla (Score:2)
In fact, I think my amd64 server that I leave on all the time, complete with TV tuner / capture card (and a PCI-X card with TV out), gigabit ethernet, 1.8 ghz amd64 Venice, 1 gig of RAM, and a couple of 250 gig hard drives (doing RA
Mini-ITX systems (Score:2)
The systems usually sell with case, mb, and CPU.
They start at about $200.
Depending on the case, you can use a 2.5" or 3.5" HD, and usually a slim CD or DVD.
Mini-ITX.com [mini-itx.com] has LOTS of info.
If you get a VIA, make sure its a recent one (C3?) as the older ones aren't fully 686 compatible so some software won't run on them.
Re:Mini-ITX systems (Score:2)
Low Power, Small Size, try an old laptop. (Score:5, Interesting)
For example here is an old IBM thinkpad with a battery that does not hold a charge for 150 euro.
http://paris.craigslist.org/sys/92369116.html [craigslist.org]
Adding a PCMCIA NIC should not be too expensive.
If you want a really cheap system I bet you can find an old pentium or pentium 2 system someone is discarding or recycling.
Re:Low Power, Small Size, try an old laptop. (Score:2)
For my money, Compaq makes the R3000z laptop that can be had on eBay [ebay.com] and in stores (Best Buy for one) for $400US.
Mini-ITX (Score:2)
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
Hmmmm (Score:2)
You want a server for under $500 that is low powered.
Why not pick up an old pentium and throw in a large HDD? Total cost should be less then $200. There may or may not be a 160GBish or so limit, my current setup uses a small HDD (4GB) to boot up off of and mount an 80GB drive that the bios can't see. A cheapo IDE card would also solve this problem.
But, you cry, low powered! Simple enough. An old pentium probably isn't even using 100W to spin the disks. That is 2.4 kWh/day, or about $0.24/day if
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
He still has to pay for power, and for any hard drive upgrades.
I have a "pentium retread" at
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Why not pick up an old pentium and throw in a large HDD? Total cost should be less then $200.
And my point is that for around $100 more, you get a much more usable machine. Mine runs my PDC, web, ftp, file shares, and I use it as a workstation via a terminal.
Powerwise, I pulled out an old pentium 120, it used 50w to boot and settled at 45w. For comparision, my 2g laptop uses 45w under a load. A machine nearly identical to my file server used 70w to boot and settled at 65
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:3, Informative)
Why not pick up an old pentium and throw in a large HDD?
It's really quite simple. The buy a slightly faster pentium (they're a bit more efficient in terms of power per cycle). Clock it down. Clock down the RAM speed. I have a 2x550MHz machine running at 2x350 (or so) with slghtly lower core voltage. It doesn't even need fans (well I haven't tried in the warmer weather but that is coming up, so we will see).
One place that uses quite a bit of power is DRAM. It is continually drawing power to do the re
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Or you could just make two partitions on your 200 GB d
NSLU2 (Score:5, Informative)
It's no 4-way Xeon when it comes to performance, but at 8W power consumption and a $75 pricetag, you can't go wrong.
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/ [nslu2-linux.org]
I'm actually writing an article on how to run a domain from one of those things for AnandTech, so in a few weeks you can read about it there. (Tom's Hardware did an article, but it isn't very good or accurate anymore. Stick with the nslu2-linux site.)
Re:NSLU2 (Score:1)
Since it is Debian you're talking about I'd be interesteding in publishing your description on my site too, if you don't have any exclusive AnandTech relationship.
Site details in .sig.
Re:NSLU2 (Score:2)
I have an NSLU2 (affectionately called the slug), and have successfully performed the upgrade to Unslung. Let me tell you, this is not a good platform for someone looking to learn on.
Beyond the memory constraints (only 32mb of RAM), it isn't x86-based, so you'll have to take what someone else thought was a good configuration for pre-compiled binaries, cross-compile on another linux box, or endure the hideously slow compile process on the slug as it enters paging hell due to the low RAM. Even once I got
Re:NSLU2 (Score:2)
Any problems you're having are probably related to your own inability
Re:NSLU2 (Score:2)
well, there's the soekris net4801, I suppose... (Score:4, Interesting)
They are completely headless AMD Geode machines... 266mhz Pentium class, with 128mb of RAM. They're primarily meant as routing devices for wireless networks (they have three network ports, and 1 3.3v PCI and 1 miniPCI slot). They are completely fanless, and have a socket for a Compact Flash, which is the normal boot device. They also have a connection for a laptop-style hard drive, and a USB 1.1 port.
Now, these little guys can really be a chore to get set up, because they have no true video... they route the BIOS text-display calls out through the serial port. And they have no floppy to boot from, so you must either set up a PXE boot environment (what I did the first time... NOT a trivial process for someone who isn't very familiar with Linux and/or the BSDs), or build a bootable CF or laptop drive on another system.
If you can muscle past the installation difficulty, the boards themselves are absolutely silent, with no moving parts at all. For your application, you'd probably boot off a laptop IDE drive. Most of these small drives aren't designed to be on 24x7, so be sure to look around for one that supports a long duty cycle, and even at that, take regular backups.
This would give you a small, very low-power solution. The Geode is extremely efficient. I'd have to look it up, but from memory I think it's like 7.5 watts. You could spend more running a nightlight. The drive will add some to that, but it'll definitely stay under 15w, and maybe under 10. It's reasonably powerful, with a decent amount of RAM, and will make very little noise and take up very little space.
I'm using one of these boxes as a router/firewall, and I like it very much. I hate noise, and with a CF, it is both silent and should last many, many years... no moving parts at all. Folks on the mailing list have claimed that it can sustain 10 megabits comfortably with moderately complex firewalling, and as much as 30 megabits if it's just routing between interfaces. It's not a speed demon, but it's really not bad.
Another possibility might be the Linksys NSLU2, which is a NAS device that runs Linux, and is apparently pretty hackable. It would be even harder than the Soekris to get going, though...and it's not X86, if that matters. I don't know much about them, but others may chime in with more data.
Re:well, there's the soekris net4801, I suppose... (Score:2)
EmbeddedX86, from Technologic Systems, is also in the same niche. I don't know if I'd recommend ANY of these machines for development like the original poster wanted, but if parent's embedded board sounds cool for your particular application, you owe it to yourself to check out all the options. Soekris boards are very cool.
Re:well, there's the soekris net4801, I suppose... (Score:2)
That's about what I remember from the spec sheet for the Soekris. Bear in mind that is the DC power input to the board and not the draw on the AC mains (which will be higher due to losses in the power supply). The Mac Mini idles around 10 to 11 watts from the AC mains, which
Do what I do: WOL (Score:4, Informative)
I have a computer that remains in hibernation until it receives network traffic. I have it set up to only wake-on-lan when it receives a magic packet (I configured my router to accept these packets over the internet). So when I need to work on my webprojects I usually run through this:
1. Send magic packet to my home IP (the router takes care of the rest)
2. wait about 20 seconds for my server to awake and acquire an IP
3. go on with my work as if the server had never been down.
I also have the server set to hibernate if it's been idle for 10 minutes, so I don't use very much electricity at all.
Re:Do what I do: WOL (Score:2)
Some kind of managed hosting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some kind of managed hosting (Score:2)
Schools have lots of surplus equipment. (Score:1)
Re:Schools have lots of surplus equipment. (Score:2)
Why not just use your PowerBook? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not just use your PowerBook? (Score:2)
These mini-itx solutiions are pretty cool but (Score:2, Insightful)
Rebel .Com (Score:1)
Re:Rebel .Com (Score:1)
The Pegasos/Open Desktop Workstation (Score:2)
(future models) (Score:2)
I don't remember chipset names and so on.
Three words: Mac mini ! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's quiet enough to keep in the bedroom (the nearby TiVo is louder) and it's much faster than the PIII/500 Compaq Deskpro EN SFF that it replaced (that's another low-power box, and those corporate Compaqs last forever) though half the reason I switched was because it's just so much easier to get everything working on OS X.*
Plus, it'll work great with your PB (native file sharing = easy two-way backups) which in turn will be the perfect portable development environment since it's got the same OS. This guy [mundy.org] has some really good guides on doing ISP-like stuff under OS X and Marc [entropy.ch] is your source for all the packages you'll need.
* I've been using Linux since 1998 but every time I put together a box I can never get everything working at once. My last attempt with Fedora resulted in a box with PHP and MySQL, but PHP did not have something it needed to talk to MySQL. Another box had PHP and MySQL but something else didn't want to take, and so on, and so on.
Re:Three words: Mac mini ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you considered that, perhaps, despite using linux for 7 years, you're bad at it?
Re:Three words: Mac mini ! (Score:1)
Re:Three words: Mac mini ! (Score:2)
OS X: apache's already there. download & run mysql installer. download & run php installer. bam! everything works.
Yup, you're right, must be me. All hail St. Linus.
Re:Three words: Mac mini ! (Score:2)
In all seriousness, thanks for the tip. I'll try it out as soon as I can. But yes, that *is* hard to find--you can wear your fingers down to nubs searching for 'php mysql' and related th
Re:Three words: Mac mini ! (Score:2)
E: Couldn't find package php4-mysql
root@gx150:/root #
Yeah. You're right. I suck.
Do look at the Mini-ITX boards... (Score:2)
I pushed things a bit further and replaced the 'pow
Re:Do look at the Mini-ITX boards... (Score:2)
Re:Do look at the Mini-ITX boards... (Score:2)
Correct. The warning is if you did do a 'typical' RH, SuSE, or most any other distro - it sets up a swap file... If you do that and point it at the flash drive, you will trash it. A lesson learned the hard way by me, but may be obvious to you.
Re:Do look at the Mini-ITX boards... (Score:2)
xbox? (Score:3, Insightful)
USian options... (Score:2)
I'm in a similar position. Compute power isn't important, but power consumption and noise are. I used an old 486 IBM Thinkpad for 2 years in such a server role, and that worked great. It was a little slow with the apt-gets, but that was my only complaint. Since then, I took it up to a PowerMac 7600 and although I didn't get out the power meter, it seemed to fit the bill nicely and the price was right (honestly only really wanted more RAM).
My next computer for this role may well be an old Powerbook (eit
My take on the low power personal server thread (Score:2, Informative)
Weighing in with my two cents worth, for what it's worth, I'd like to brain dump what I would consider worth while options for your needs. All of these are solutions I either have used in the past successfully, or am currently using for various purposes. So bear in mind that this is not just the causal musings of a thread cruiser, but actual tried and proven solutions
First some basic assumptions:
1) You want to run some form of Unix or Unix like system ( i.e. Linux ) - you've noted you currently use y
Mitel SME Server has it all... :-) (Score:2)
Lamp, Apache, MySQL, PostSQL, etc.
'runs in text-mode on slow machines with 64 MB
Check DistroWatch.com for the latest version.
Use a hosting provider (Score:2, Insightful)
Another alternative... (Score:2)
Go to e-bay and pick up a Zaurus SL-5500, check price watch for a 1 gig SD card, and find a network adapter that works in your environment. (10/100 wired Hawking cf-network card, or linksys wifi cf card perhaps.)
Add Apache, to make it a web server, Samba to make it a file server. Granted it won't have a lot of storage space, but if you are just looking for something to host a small personal web site, do a bit of programi
Re:Another alternative... (Score:2)
Re:Another alternative... (Score:2)
As otherwise noted, Watts will not change by voltage, though current will. The brick is a 13W power source, at 5.0V. i.e. it provides about 2 amps of power, i.e. it has a loss of some 3 watts. (though some of that loss is very likely to be simply calculation error allowance.)
Nope, I didn't get a geek licence. Just happen to be one...
-Rusty
Kurobox (Score:2)
Hmm... the Revolution Store [revolutionstore.com] and main web site [revogear.com] appear to be undergoing some sort of maintenance at the moment, but the wiki [kurobox.com] is still online...
I originally saw this on robots,net [robots.net], but it looks like it might suit your needs...
Via Epia ME6000 (Score:2)
When I wish I can fire up XORG, Xfce4, and Firefox to surf the web, and as far as I can tell this does not slow down any of the other services.
In my opinion this system is the perfect server, although I w
Quit thinking "today's box"... (Score:2)
Yesterday's webserver was a P2-300 with probably 256MB of memory and a 40 gig (if you were lucky) hard drive. Actually, there was probably a RAID box in there, but you get what I am saying...
These kinds of boxes are thrown away today, and are still perfectly servable (load up a LAMP system) for home-base web development. They won't pull the power of a new P4 system, and if you want lower power, underclock the sucker. You *will not* tax this box with development only (heck,
Why a P4? (Score:2)
Re:Rent a VPS (Score:1)
If you checkout pricewatch.com, you can probably find a mobo/cpu/fan combo with a 1.5 ghz Athlon XP for under $100. Just throw in some cheap PC2100 (or whatever) ram, a $30 case, a $20 cdrom an
Re:Rent a VPS (Score:2)
Re:Rent a VPS (Score:2)
They're not the newest, but lower on the side of power consumption and since they're running FreeBSD, they don't have any load pro