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Energy Efficient and Cheap Servers for Home Use?
CapnRob asks: "I just got married, and my wife and I are putting together a home network in the (small) apartment we're now living in. We'd like to set up a firewall/mail server/small-file-server, but all the machines we own right now are pretty big machines that pull a fair amount of power, and that we don't want to keep running 24/7. Since our mail and file server needs are pretty low, our ideal box would be something like a Linksys WRT45G with one of the open source firmwares ... if only you could add a small hard drive to it. We're both long-time FreeBSD users, so installing a *nix system is no big deal, but what I've found so far in this line needs more l337 soldering iron skillz than I've got. Any suggestions for tiny little cheap boxes that won't send our power bills into orbit?"
Soekris boxes are exactly what you're looking for. They're cheap, stable, low power, interface-rich and run FreeBSD like a dream. They're super boxes.
Saw a story at a home recording enthusiast site (sorry that I don't recall which) about using a Mini ITX mobo and a flash memory card instead of a HDD (I think they put knoppix on a 1gb CF) for a low-power, low-heat, nearly no noise solution for a recording studio.
I guess the same solution would work for a low power home firewall & mail server, and have the added advantage of being really nice and quiet too.
You could possibly sub a low power laptop HDD if you needed more storage space.
Just a thought.
Start a happiness pandemic
http://www.mini-itx.com/
I am using a Syntax Via 1200+ Motherboard with CPU From TigerDirect when they were having a sale(I came to 10$USD, I grabbed a small MicroATX case from NewEgg and it works beautifully, and is small and quiet. It kinda takes a while to emerge everything, yeah Gentoo user here :D. but it works great and does not use much power.
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Mini-box make some neato little ITX boxes which you could hook up to any number of storage solutions. Past that, I've had good success with Mini-ITX boards. I get the cases from Web-tronics, as the MITX ones are very, very expensive -- they're meant to make your MITX look like a CD player, pretty much, and I can do more without having to worry about cosmetics. MiniBox (above) sells snap-in MITX power supplies ranging from 60w to 200w. For the extra cool factor, use a Xenarc display or use something 'headless', e.g., LCDProc and Crystalfontz. (As I remember, the MiniBoxes come with their own little displays.)
Laptops are generally very efficient on power. And they come with their own screen too. In fact, I heard of one company that replaced all of it's desktops with Thinkpads and used power as the single justification (the computer takes less, the monitor takes less, and less heat generated requires less AC).
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Brother in law gave me an old gateway Pentium MMX 133, 32 mb ram, 4 gb HD. Put two pcmcia net cards in it, and put OpenBSD running PF. Perfect.
How about the NSLU2?
It has been covered before on Slashdot and is hackable just like the router you mentioned.
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Two types of solutions, I don't know your budget/storage expectations
r ver_a ppliances/home_series_net-box/
1) A soekris net4801 with some CF disk: very efficient. Use a USB drive if you need more storage (or cheaper). A bit slow, though.
http://www.soekris.com. Probably not your better option, but good to know
2) An Axentra appliance such as the H50
http://www.axentra.com/products/multifunc_se
A more powerful option, at a reasonable price.
Running Linux with full shell access, the software included seems very convenient: I would think twice before putting my favorite distro on it.
This PDF is the manual for the bare-bones Soekris 4501 - the first page has pictures of the bare board and the "box" version. It is a router/hub form factor.
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Greetings:
http://openbrick.org/ is a community of folks doing this kind of stuff. I have purchased a couple of boxes from a US distributor (http://www.hacom.net/ and have been really happy. They have 3 ethernet ports, so they make great firewalls. We use CF cards for storage because we don't need the storage, but you can put little laptop harddrives in them, so you could make a file/print box if you wanted to. They'll boot off of a USB CD, so installation is a breeze. I run Debian, but have installed openbsd for kicks, also. They're cool enough that they don't need an internal fan, so they're quiet too.
I have nothing but nice things to say about them. The US distributor only takes paypal, but he has always delivered without problems. He even called back to see if I liked it.
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If your answer is Microsoft, you obviously didn't understand the question.
1) Do a search for the power requirements of a modern computer (any time after the invention of APM). There are plenty of studies to be found, many of them at university websites. The average computer, when it is in standby mode, uses 35W or less. When an EPA Green monitor (almost every modern monitor on Earth) is in sleep mode they use less than 1W. So, you are trying to figure out how to use less electricity than the equivalent of a small nightlight? The first time you leave your electric oven on 350 degrees for about one minute longer than your buzzer went off (assuming it is heating at the time), you most likely just spent more electrical energy than an entire month of computer server usage on full power.
2) Why are you trying to jack around buying proprietary solutions or exotic mini-computers for your needs? That's dumb as hell. My personal server at home is an old Dell P233 laptop I bought for $50. It sports 80MB of RAM, 100Mbit ethernet, and a 4GB HDD. It currently runs my Apache HTTP, SAMBA, SSHD, VNC, Postfix, and CUPS server and it is tucked away neatly on a shelf under my desk. It has been especially useful as my print server (since I have a wireless network) and MP3 SAMBA server. Power consumption? Please, this is a laptop and the power features have worked perfectly as they were intended to. Also, there has been no additional configuration with this system since its original installation outside of Linux OS security/bug/OS upgrades.
There are Mini-ITX motherboards at Fry's (a US West Coast electronics chain) that have a fanless Cyrix 600Mhz processor soldered on.
...and just an ordinary hard disk drive that's pretty quiet.
I've got mine in a simple little case that looks about like a 1990 cable TV terminal adaptor: Casetronic 2699R that has a few teensy (2"?) cooling fans and an external low-wattage power supply.
Actually, I kind of like to hear the disk say "chachunk" when an email come^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H spam gets filtered.
I have seen at least one of the SVEASOFT (experimental) distributions that has a way for the WRT54G(S) to NFS mount a hard drive. Hope this helps.
one obvious solution is mini-itx. im currently using one of these guys for my www/mail server, and i love it. its just a little bigger than a cdrom drive, it only uses a 60w power supply, its totally silent, and very stable. i've been running this thing 24/7 with no problems for the last 6 months or so. and yes, both linux and freebsd run fine on these.
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I have one of these:e /
http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/cerfcub
Add a microdrive for storage. Doesn't win awards for speed, storage or ram but the ~3 inch cube takes nearly no space, looks cool, is silent and draws very little power.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
As a concerned Slashdot reader - here's a Coral cache link for the page in question:
SparcStation IPX
since you mentioned the wrt54g you might be also interested in the Linksys NSLU2. It's got a single ethernet port, dual usb ports and can run linux. Attach a usb harddrive to it and you can use it for your file/mail server. The open source firmwares aren't as polished as, say sveasoft but it seems to me that you're the type that might enjoy getting it working.
One solution would be to run Linux on a Microsoft XBox. It's basically a PC with a few minor hardware changes. All that's required is a modchip (try SmartXX or Xenium) to allow the box to executables that have not been "signed" by Microsoft. My XBox runs Xebian which is a Debian distribution. http://www.xbox-linux.org/ They are very cheap now, and you get a box with a DVD drive and 8-10Gb hard disc, ethernet and Pentium III 733Mhz CPU. Mine runs a webserver and stays up for weeks on end. Power consumption is low - I believe it has a 100W power supply.
Its going to be a mail/file server. I think you don't need a ton of horsepower.......
Until you try run Spamassassin and Clamav to filter spam and windows-virus-cruddage and wonder why email takes days to arrive...
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No offense, but what you need to use is something that's meant to handle the job: a real computer. You can build a low cost, quiet, power conservative computer for not that much money. The average computer consumes less than 100 watts of power when performing basic tasks. This review gives you lots of details. So really the power consumption won't be a problem. Keep the number of internal devices low and you won't have much heat build up. Keep the heat low and you can do all sorts of fancy things with sound panels to absorb sound, thus fixing that problem. You sound like a person that really does need a home server, like myself and my servers. You can't go wrong with a real computer. Plus when something breaks (and of course it will) you have warranties to fall back on. You can also hop on newegg or run down to the corner Crap Shack and buy replacement parts. Try doing that with your jerry-rigged WRT54G. ;-)
I've seen other suggestions for this, I'll give you my exact configuration. I'm running a DNS, web, mail and firewall services using my setup (off of static IP on ISDN no less, 24/7!)
I use a VIA CL6000 (this is a dual lan motherboard with a 600 MHz fanless "Eden" processor) with slackware, 256MB of memory, and a 40GB laptop hard disk (complete overkill, 8GB would be plenty). Total cost of the system was well under $400. Power consumption is about 25 watts, and the box is completely silent. I omit the optical drive since I just "borrowed" one to do the initial install, everything has been via the network since. Uptime's been great.
I've been tempted by the Soekis stuff as well, but cost wise it looks like it'd be a near wash, maybe just a bit cheaper. The ITX stuff is a "real" PC, so you just fire it up and go, no CF config, console emulation via serial port, etc. (I had previously used a CF card on an earlier VIA server, it works if you make sure you put the right things into a RAM disk first.)
As others have pointed out, a cheap laptop would work, however I found the fact that I wanted firewall service (two E-net ports needed) made things a bit odd, as all the used cheap LTs I had included no network adapters, so it would have been dual PCMCIA or USB ethernet, and it just felt and looked really kludgey when I played with it.
They're tiny (13x13x3 in), you can get them dirt cheap in both Pentium and Alpha flavors (100 - 166Mhz range) and just about any *nix distro will support them.
They're basically the predecessor to the SFF boxen. Just don't lay the Alpha Multia's flat or one of the chips on the underside of the motherboard will overheat and die. But, then again, there are detailed instructions on the NetBSD website on how to use those l33t soldering skills to fix it.
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Is the only way to do this IMO....
I have the exact same in my closet. VIA-Epia Eden 533 MHz motherboard/cpu/network/vga package, fanless, a bit of RAM, a fluid bearing harddrive, Gentoo Linux... it rocks....
- Barely consumes power ~30W
- It's also almost silent.
- It's very cheap.
It runs Slackware with SSH, FTP, Apache, squid, gShield (iptables based firewall), LineControl (pppd remote control), etc. LineControl is because I am still on 56k, highspeed internet wasn't approved by the counsel (read: gf). So I'm tweaking the hell out of it (squid with big cache, cron jobs for nightly downloads with wget - like the 266 MB XPSP2, etc)
I'm using a couple Mini-ITX systems from Via. I have three different motherboards from them. One system has dual LAN ports and is running IPCOP. Another is an 800Mhz running FreeBSD 5.2 which is my web/file server. And another is a 1Ghz sitting under my TV as an HTPC.
You can pick up an old Cobalt Qube on ebay for around $100.
There are howto's - if you dig - for porting FreeBSD to one of these.
They are about 7.5" cubed and draw very little power. I've got 5 of them around the country and they've been going strong for over 5 years.
If he means a mailserver for home use, even with a lot of spam for a few users, CPU usage should be OK.
:(
I'd be a lot more worried about RAM though if the boxes max out at 64mb... the perl version of SpamAssassin uses about 20MB, and if you do AV also, that's another 5-10MB RAM per concurrent connection.
I've had problems with my home server (P5/140MB RAM) freaking when I use fetchmail to d/l my POP3 acct with 10-20 emails; fetchmail hands the messages to sendmail and sendmail tries to process them all at once, launching 20 Amavis+McAfee threads, and the server runs out of RAM and the evil OOM killer kicks in and kills something important like apache or bind!
I haven't tried it lately (new 2.4.x kernel without OOM killer).
Tuning sendmail to do less threads at once would help of course.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
This brings up an interesting point -- anybody know of a site that lists laptop models that can run with the lid closed?
Are there really any that won't? I've used linux on four different laptops - an ancient Toshiba, a slightly newer Compaq, a Dell Inspiron made five years ago, and a Sony Vaio I bought this year. All of them would run with the lid closed, given the right BIOS setting. Getting into the BIOS is not always obvious, but that's another story...
You'll either want an older iMac (tray loading, not slot loading) or a G4 cube.
What, me worry?
Here's a link: Soekris Engineering
Here's another: an unofficial OpenBSD Sokeris HOWTO
Well, they can run the latest version of OpenBSD at the very least, which should be fine for anything you are likely to do with an IPX. As for Solaris, I would forget about anything past 2.6. It might run, but... I've got one serving as my firewall, running OpenBSD. It's a fine box for what it does; they're built like little tanks. But powerful they are not. Just ssh'ing in raises the load to 0.5.
Everyone is just listing what they've tried, because you haven't really said what you are looking for.
What are your concerns? Power, heat, noise, price, performance, x86 compatibility?
If you don't need very performance, want a low power fanless system, with x86 compatibility, and are happy with a CF card or 2.5" hard drive (more expensive, less reliable than a 3.5") then Soekris is the way to go. Expect 15watts.
If you're willing to part with x86 compatibility, you must get something Geode-based. They are amazingly low power processors, and come with multiple NICs built-in like the Soekris above. Expect < 10watts
If you want cheap, just grab an old PC, and underclock it. I use this method myself. People think "noisy", but spending $10 to replace the cheap fans will do wonders (Great source). Expect 30watts.
I hate hearing so many people suggesting VIA C3-based systems. They are expensive, slow, and not all that low power. I wouldn't recomend VIA at all.
If you want a system with some real CPU power, you can have it. Buy a cheap AMD Duron CPU, with a KT133 chipset mobo. Now, this would normally use a good 80+ watts of power, but fvcool works well on this chipset. Install fvcool, and power usage will halve when idle, yet it's full processing power is there when needed. Mobo, CPU, PS, Case, RAM: under $150. Expect 40watts.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You can run any version of SunOS 4 and up to Solaris 2.6 on these machines. I believe you can also run Solaris7, but definitly not Solaris8 or newer. I used to have an IPC running as NIS master to a bunch of U60's and SF3800's; then I lost a power supply in it and upgraded to a pair of Netra's. Quite a performance upgrade! Say what you will about Sun's and Slowaris, but PC hardware has a hard time competing with true workstations.
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If you go for the models mit no more than 667MHz, you get passive cooling. You can get these with up to 2 network interfaces, but one is cheaper and you can put a cheap additional card in the PCI-slot. Just make sure the case you get has a raiser-card. Using a notebook HDD is simpler than CF, since you do not need to worry about writes (CF has a limited number of writes before it breaks). Is also cheaper when you want storage in the GB range. I have made good experience with notebook HDDs from Fujitsu. Very quiet.
Total equipment:
- board
- RAM
- HDD
- Case
The PSU comes with the case. Mine has an external notebook type 12V only PSU and an additional regulator board in the case. What you get is a modern PC that is a little slow (I would say C3-MHz / 2 = Athlon MHz. i.e. a 800MHz C3 feels like a 400MHz Athlon) but completely functional and with everything integrated you are likely to need. Keyboard and monitor required for installation in addition.
I have such a setup running wit a real HDD (also backups on it) for over a year now without problems.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The original Pentium is often referred to as a P5. :P
PPro/PII/PIII is P6, Pentium4 is P7...
I don't know what they'll call the Pentium 5 if/when it comes out
Nothing to see here; Move along.
I bought this silent computer. It's so nice to have a silent family room.
The machine has lived up to the expectations. However, here are some caveats:
Marko
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IBM tried the same strategy when it introduced MicroChannel architecture (MCA) for PS/2 in 1987.
MCA featured technical improvements that were appropriate for the times. Computers were speeding up and the bus was a bottleneck.
The verdict of history?
Although MCA was a huge improvement over ISA, it was limited only to IBM hardware. It was not compatible with either EISA or XT bus architecture so older cards cannot be used with it. This small market made for very high prices, and IBM didn't help matters by charging high licensing fees. MCA was largely ignored, and with the introduction of PCI, MCA swiftly disappeared.
I have a soekris net4501, it uses less than 10watts, and provides most of the services for my house.
with a laptop drive attached, you could get a soekris net4801, and power the thing for around 15watts.
The other great option is to use an old laptop, laptops in general use less than 50 watts when operating.. even less with the LCD turned off.
My thinkpad T21 uses 20 watts with the lid closed, and the disk spinning.
URL: http://www.soekris.com
Most Laptops use only 20-40 watts of power and could be used as a simple file/mail server. If the screen can be turned off the power used will be quite a bit less yet. If more storage is needed than an older cheap laptop has internally, an external USB drive should not add too much extra power drain. Some Laptops can sleep using virtually no power at all until network activity wakes it.
All theory is gray
Yes, technically, the screen goes in sleep mode instead of shutting down. It consumes a LOT less energy this way (somewhere along 1 W I'm told). That's why this setting is under the Energy Savings preferences ;)
The major sources of heat in my iMac DV are the hard drive, the processor and the power supply (these last two having passive heat radiators), I don't really know about the monitor tube running hot or not.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I've build one in a small wine box, together with a 250 GB 3,5 " HDD. The reason for the hard drive is that it doubles as a Media Server for multiple computers. There were some issues with USB boot devices on my board, but I suppose VIA will have those fixed by now.
This runs fine on a 53W external power supply. If you remember that you can spin down the HDD, the power requirements will be pretty low. I can not give you an exact figure, but it booted fine with several devices attached, including a DVD-ROM drive, so it will only use a small portion of the 53W supplied.
Even then it generates a bit of heat (I've, unfortunately, one with an active CPU fan; the fanless parts were out of stock), so make sure it has got some form of ventilation. Otherwise, buy one with fan but put it into somewhere.
CPU speed is fine for a server running either Linux (!) or Windows. Unless you are the pirating kind, for home use a linux solution is preferable. It also comes with more features out of the box for servers.
Other advantages:
- MM support including audio output (digital even)
- put in a relatively big block of memory and run internet/java/whatever servers
- USB 2.0/firewire support (take your MP3's with you, share a printer)
- PCI support for second or third ethernet port
- HW temperature support (S.M.A.R.T. harddisks mostly have a temperature sensor as well!)
- relatively large support, including different kind of cool cases if you don't wanna build your own
http://www.viaembedded.com/indexN.jsp
I am surprised that no one has suggested this before, but get a Tibook from eBay, preferably with an Airport card installed.
/dev/null !! :)
- It's got a BSD derivative OS
- Works without problems (FreeBSD drivers for some laptops... good luck!)
- The PowerPC architecture is more energy efficient than 80x86
- The 667 Mhz/DVI model, the one I am typing this with, is silent in normal use.
- No need for additional wireless routers/access points
- and you can send all you unix boxes to
http://grotto11.com/blog/archive/1018823985.shtml
This might be what you are looking for, its inexpensive, low energy and small. http://www.solarpc.com/ the least expensive one is around $200.
There is no contest, you need a VIA EPIA, running at 533 or 800mhz, which may not sound like a lot, but it is perfectly acceptable for a home server, and more powerful than the soekris or other kits you'll hear of. You can get higher grunt power if you want, but it'll be an overkill.
If you buy a pre-build kit from mini-itx (www.mini-itx.com), it's all you need: comes in a DVD/VCR size box, has a CD-ROM, HD, etc with a single PCI slot that easily fits an 802.11 card, and you can just plug a USB DSL modem into the back, and a hub into the 100mb LAN port - plug a printer into the parallel or USB port, and it's also your print server. Run an entire home network kit (samba, etc) easily. How do I know? Because I did this for over a year.
In terms of cost, power consumption is fantastic: the power supply for the mini-itx is only 70W max to start with, and typically your box will idle at low CPU and with drive inactive, it reportedly draws no more than 5-7W idle power -try doing that with a full scale PC.
It does have a case-fan, but I've found that you can disable the case-fan without a problem -- meaning you get totally quiet operation. Did I mention that is only the size of a VCR/etc, so can in a cupboard or out-of-the way.
Seriously, anything else is an overkill on all fronts. We previously used ours in a small apartment, serving a 2.8ghz dell desktop and a couple of wireless laptops, all at 1mbs DSL 24/7. Absolutely fantastic.
You can either buy a pre-built kit, or a pre-build (where you need to plug everything together -- you'd have to be reasonably incompetent if you couldn't do this).