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Low-Powered Personal Servers?
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?"
Is there any reason you can't run the web and database servers locally on your laptop so that it's always available when you need it, but not using power otherwise?
It's at Newegg for 107USD.
2 E16856110030
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Add a few bits and you've got a complete low power system.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Specifically old laptops with bad screens or batteries that do not work anymore can be quite cheap.
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
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.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Good luck!
\/\/oobie
Get a linksys NSLU2. It's a network attached storage unit, but it can be flashed with a firmware that lets you basically run Debian on it. Right now, one is serving mail, web, and storage for my domain.
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/
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.)
My other car is first.
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.
Use the Wake-on-LAN feature of your network card.
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.
I just pooped your party.
I've also been wondering for the same thing. I now was with a long disputed battle to leave on a 30watts 800MHz P3 always on.
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.