Slashdot Mirror
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?"
SparcStation IPX (or even IPC) I ran one of these clever little buggers for a few years, very low on power, quiet as a churchmouse and houses one harddrive (but at todays disk sizes that's plenty) the architecture is pretty fast and 64MB of RAM was more than adequate. You can pick these little beasties up on eBay for next to nothing so spare parts shouldn't be a problem, either (I actually bought a second for spares.) I was running RedHat 6.1 for months at a time without a hiccup.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm using an old P233 box as a server. It's not exactly a small box, but it doesn't draw much power. If you want a small form factor as well, look into VIA C3-based computers.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Flash memory isn't a good storage solution for a mail server. If you've got any sort of traffic volume, you'll wear out the memory in a year or so.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Don't think you can buy them new (at least cheaply) but look for an old Netwinder. I got one on eBay a couple of years ago for abougt $150. Low power, two ethernet ports, easy to manage and small. Not a barn burner by any means, but for a firewall / file server / print server it works perfect.
I second the mini itx idea (not sure about the CF). I have a Via Epia 533MHz box that works great for that kind of stuff.
It's only 20 or 30 watts, and the only moving parts are a small, quiet fan and the hard drive (get an old 5400rpm drive for even less noise/power).
Get an older laptop, put a PCMCIA or USB ethernet to give you a second ethernet (connect that to the DSL/Cablemodem uplink).
Low power: Obviously, laptops have to be low power.
Low space: Laptops are small. Disable the "I've closed the lid" switch or get the *nix install to ignore it, fold it up, and slide it away.
Low cost: I said OLD laptop.
Built in UPS: Why do you think its called a "California Server"?
Test your net with Netalyzr
Bollocks. Just do what I did - build a nice little Mini-ITX system, put in a gig of RAM and load up Linux with a custom initrd that extracts the system to a ramdisk and pivot_roots to it. Mount the drive for storage, then use hdparm to tell it to power down when idle.
Then write a daemon to watch when the drive is spun up, and copy the mailboxes off to a storage area on the drive. Use rc.local to copy them back when the system reboots.
Voila - low power (max 40 watts, usually less because the drive isn't spinning) and fast.
You could do this with flash as well, you just won't have the storage space of a drive. And it obviously doesn't have to spin down. Just use a cron job.
Try Xbox Linux--- http://www.xbox-linux.org/
http://www.routerboard.com
:) add an usb external hard drive (not sure if it has usb2, i dont use it) and you're good to go
(no i won't make a goddaned link)
while designed to act as a router, this thing has a 233 mhz, intel compatible cpu, can eat up to 512 megs of ram, and works off a flash disk.
it has 2 ethernet ports (100mbits), and a USB one. i'm using one as my core router (for an ISP) and it's just a charm
Seriously. An old iMac of the DV series is perfect for this, except maybe for the footprint, it's bigger than a mini-ITX BSD box. Fanless so it's very silent, low power requirement, runs MacOS X or Linux or BSD. Just set it to disable the screen after one minute of inactivity for even lower power needs.
Plus it doubles as an MP3 jukebox (the Harman Kardon speakers are better than their looks would lead one to think), and with a eyeTV plugged on the FireWire, it can also replace a Tivo. You can get one cheap on Ebay or through LowEndMac.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
You could probably pick up an older Zaurus (Linux PDA) cheap. The 5500 I have can take both compact flash and SD/MMC Cards, and runs on a fraction of a watt. With a compact flash ethernet card you could connect it to pretty much any router. Just mark it as your DMZ, and the incoming traffic will be routed to it. All you need do is set up a mail server on the Zaurus, maybe a little custom compiling, and you're all set.
Actually, you don't even need a modchip. Linux can be installed without ever opening the Xbox. If you do open it, the tsop write protection can be disabled allowing one to flash the BIOS. A RAM upgrade can also be done once the tsop is flashed. I have 5 Xboxes I've done this with and it makes a nice little cluster, outrunning my dual Xeons at times.
I was seeking the same thing before. I did some research and found some really cool and small products. The problem of being cool is it carries a high price tag.
I endup ordered a mini-itx box from idotpc. No hassle, super fast delivery. Cost me around $350 for a 512MB ram 80GB HD system (w/0 CDROM). It ran a small website link above. The best part, my power bill dropped by $10 a month after I turned off the AMD box!!! Now I can brat about helping out in the California energy crisis.
Eventually something should make a webserver the size of iPod. How about $200 for a 40GB version?
I did something like this with an old AST notebook.
133MHZ, 800Meg hdd running Slackware 9.1, Apache. No GUI, just SSH from a 'real' comp as required. Worked fine.
http://request-header.info
Laptops are designed with energy efficiency in mind. In my tests I found that (at least for macintoshes) laptops draw under 40 watts even when running at full tilt, and sip less than 20 watts when relatively idle. You also get a built-in UPS, so you save money and electricity there too. Laptops also don't require a CRT display, saving you another 50 watts or so, plus considerable space savings. If you need additional storage, make sure you get a model with a firewire port on it, or just get one with an 80gb HD if that's enough for you to sprawl on.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...procuring a used laptop? Low power, and all the creature comforts of a full-fledged computer.
(aside)
But, I have to also say. I have NEVER even MET a woman who has HEARD of bsd. I had to argue with a Comcast Cable woman today who hadn't even heard of FireWire. I considered it a victory when I got my g/f to run Folding@Home. She was even game for Red Hat, but it was too difficult for her to find a wireless driver for the Thinkpad built-in 802.11... but hey, at least she tried!
Here's to... if not geek, then geek-compatible women! love 'em.
Laptops with broken displays are even better. I have an old P3 laptop I use as a server, and I got it free. Sony charges $600 for ANY display repair, so it's literally not worth fixing. But the VGA output works fine, and I have it set up through a KVM switch. Viola! A 75 watt server. Tiny hard drive, but if it becomes a problem, I can just do externals.
I'm thinking of taking the whole display off, thus making sure the lamps never come on, thereby reducing power drain even more.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
This brings up an interesting point -- anybody know of a site that lists laptop models that can run with the lid closed? For example, I have an HP Pavilion zt1125 that I suspect won't run closed.
Also, anybody have suggestions for heat dissipation? I've heard horror stories (some posted here at /.) about laptops overheating with the lid closed.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
Buy laptops with broken screens and just rip off the top. You can hook the back VGA port up to any external monitor you have around whenever you actually need a head on the machine.
So despite the fact that it's always on, and lives on top of a desk in my living room, I don't really hear it. Very quiet. I haven't measured the energy use, but I suspect it's not bad. My original plan was just to use it as a firewall/personal server, but since it's plenty adequate for a regular desktop, I use it for that now too--it's nice being able to just check the weather or whatever without waiting for something to boot.
So, anyway, I'm pretty happy with it. Recommended.
--Bruce Fields
I don't but that. We are talking about a home network here. Server isolation
is not really an option. Besides which if your firewall is lossy than so is your
server. I'd trust <a href="http://openbsd.org/">OpenBSD</a> to do both of
those any day... way more than Linksys anyway.
That's a good point, but how much power does a laptop use when on 24/7? My laptop can go for 3 hours a single battery. I would assume that even having a laptop on 24/7 would use very little energy. Plus, the most power is being consumed by your monitor and your hard drive. When the monitor is off (or closed and off for a laptop) and the hard drive is in spin-down/suspend, how much energy is really being used? That wattage was in the 10-15W range and a lot of the times is was just residual energy usage. Also, the ethernet controller is still active on my laptop in this mode, so I never have network connectivity problems when in this specific sleep mode (which is VERY easy and common on all computers to set).
You can do this reasonably. You should have all of your stuff backed up regardless of where you put it. Email and file serving are not security problems, especially if file service is done through ssh. While it may be better to port forward to other computers to share the load and risk, the low effort and low power solution is to set up one box on your internet connection and run that but nothing else 24/7. I set up a 90MHz pentium with sarge and a 200 GB hard drive as my cable box the other day and I love it. If my ISP did not block ports, that box would be a mail server too. It was very easy.
I run about five computers 24/7 and never noticed much on my power bill. None of them are big monsters and all of them run APM or ACPI.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
M0n0wall Is BSD, albeit of the Free variety, and it was more or less designed for one of these things.
I'd love to replace all my light bulbs with high-efficiency ones - but all my lights are on dimmer switches. The day I can get a reasonably priced energy efficient lamp that works with a dimmer I will though.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I had a project many years ago to design a computer for racing yachts, they were using laptops and breaking them on a VERY regular basis, thing is these guys are totally anal about weight, on a 40 foot boat they will chuck shit like 2 pint aluminium kettles over the side, so whatever I designed HAD to use fuck all power because they carried minimal traditional 12 volt lead acid and minimal diesel and in any case starting the motor meant a race penalty.
Ideally they were looking for something around 500 mhz, that weighed 2 ounces, was literally bulletproof and waterproof to 1000 feet, the size of a matchbox, and generated enough power to charge the main lead acid battery.
A smart engineer doesn't try to reinvent the wheel (especially for a *potential* customer that isn'y waving a blank cheque book at you) so I went out and bought a 3.5 inch biscuit PC from advantech (do a google) this is a single board PC, literally the size and form factor of a 3.5 inch hard drive, with onboard cyrix 233 mhz cpu, onboard sodimm slot (I used a 68 mb card), onboard gfx and sound, and pc104 expansion (I used 4 of these, one for four rs232/485 ports, one for a gps, one for pcmcia and one for ethernet) I also used a 2.5 inch laptop hard drive, and stuck the whole thing in a case that had an integrated inverter / PSU that would run off anything from 10 volts dc to about 36 volts dc. The whole thing was completely fanless.
Build quality of all these components, being industrial, was excellent, much better than home pc standards. It was also extremely tough and had a very wide enviornmental envelope. Best of all it was cheap, they make so many of these things for point of sale electronics etc that prices are comparable to cheap domestic kit.
For the demo unit (which was fully linux compatible) we ran winders98 to demo the nav software which was also winders based, performance was about what you'd expect from a equivalent mhz laptop, eg more than enough for 95% of uses.
Nearly forgot, being industrial it also had in hardware an automatic reboot thing (which you could disable) which would reboot the whole thing if the OS stopped responding to an internal irq for 15 seconds...
Power consumption of this box was typically 11 watts mean, this was measured by a pukka power meter on the supply line for several hours.
Apart from the 2.5 inch hard disk, it was zero moving parts and therefore near as dammit totally silent too.
My take on this is if a standard obsolete dektop box won't do it look at EPIA, and if EPIA won't do it then look at industrial biscuit PC's.
HTH etc
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Here's what I wish I could afford on my paltry network administrator pay:
...
VIA EPIA800V kit, with fanless VIA Eden processor, PW-60 DC-DC converter, 12V/5A AC power adapter. Price I found $148. If you got the extra $$ then you can do better than this kit, including dual Ethernet on board.
PCI riser, $10.
An IDE to CF adapter. Prices I found are around $20.
A 128M CF Flash Drive (I probably wouldn't need that much, but I'd rather have more than less) Price around $30.
Spare PC133 Ram. I could probably do with 32M to 64M, although I've got enough 64M sticks that are pretty much useless to me for any other purpose.
Spare NIC. You can get plenty of RTL-8139 based cards dirt cheap $5 - $10. I've got plenty of NIC's in my little spare parts box, that I would use.
An afordable Mini-ITX case for this kit. Unfortunately for me, I haven't found low cost cases worth using that weren't more expensive than the EPIA800V kit. I may just pick up a cheap project box, and modify it to my own needs, that is if I can ever find a way to spare a little over $200 for my little dream project. It's hard enough to just put food on the table.
From there the choices on Free (Libra) are yours. Me I want to do sort of a LFS, but more geared to embedded systems. Use a Linux kernel configured specifically for my needs (mainly firewall), but lean and mean, uCLibc, BusyBox,...
Here's my reasons for my choices. No moving parts to break and fail, pretty much solid state, low power, low heat. This also gives me x86 compatible architecture, and all the gear I need to build a specialized router/firewall.
Actually, I would like to do two kits, because what I'm really interested in is High Availability (LVS-HA using VRRPv2). One box dies the next automatically takes over, this is why I want to build the system from scratch and not just use another specialized distro geared toward router/firewalls like Devil-Linux, Leaf Bearing, FloppyFW,
Why do I want to do this... PHBs. My PHB wanted a training room set up, firewalled from the rest of the network. So he bought a cheapo Linksys, which is fine, but what bowled me over was when the Linksys broke. I put together a box from all the ancient pieces of junk scattered around our storage room, installed Linux, and wrote specific rulesets to do exactly what we needed (which by the way the Linksys couldn't do), spent maybe 3 hours doing this, had it ready to go.... and the PHB said "no", his stated reasons: hardware failure possiblities... What I believe the real reason was is this: My organization is soooo hooked on the Microsoft monoculture that they drool over idea of a Windows only world (they also drool over replacing their VAX, AXP, and IBM super boxes with a Windows Server Cluster!?!). You only have to look at their web apps to see the monoculture mentality at that organization,... they only work with IE. At first, I thought about remastering a Knoppix based distro for this use, or using LEAF Bearing on a floppy, or Devil Linux CD and configuration floppy, then building several spare boxen as backup, but I realized that this wouldn't impress them (the dark side of the force is strong with my PHBs...). The answer to why I want to do this is: I want to build a proof of concept, shatter their arguments with dual solid state boxen set-up with seamless fail-over, the ability to customize the rulesets, manage the firewall from a management PC (FirewallBuilder, and SSH using RSA keys and no clear text passwords), and let them stew over how much they would have to spend to get the same functionality from a commercial firewall. I would like to show this off, then take the boxen home, and replace my home Athlon based firewall, happy in the thought that I provided some education to my PHBs and fellow (Windows only) network admins.