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Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

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Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#111

Post by b3lvedere »

thesorrow wrote: post #110

I use an old Intel Macbook to selfhost this kind of services. The idle draw is around 2W and you get a free UPS if your battery is still working. The sleep management on macOS is really well done and you don't even need a magic packet to wake the computer. You can configure `pmset` to wake on modem access (ring).

Thanks for the idea. Currently i have a Raspberry Pi3 with an external USB-SATA 1TB disk connected which is on 24/7 doing stuff like PiHole, Navidrome, etc. I wonder if putting that all on a fairly new laptop with all the energy savings enabled would actually be more energy efficient.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#112

Post by AshamedCaptain »

MrFoof wrote: post #66
Semaphor wrote: post #54

Heh, my homeserver uses about that much (4W) in idle ;) 2 SSDs, 8 GB RAM and a passively cooled J4125, more than enough for what I need (2-person household). It also runs Home Assistant, so I can’t let it go to sleep, anyway. I have an extra Pi4 with Proxmox Backup Server, that could actually sleep most of the time as it backups only twice a day. But even with German electricity prices, a Pi4 with a single SSD is not…

Indeed, modern hardware is getting ridiculously efficient, and if you go the extra mile to disable hardware you don't use, as well as strip your configuration to run only the software you absolutely need, you can really drive it into the ground. The later hardware revisions (such as 1.5) of the Raspberry Pi 4B, even with 8GB of memory, can idle at ~1.33W on WiFi with everything unnecessary disabled -- 2GB versions ar…

> The later hardware revisions (such as 1.5) of the Raspberry Pi 4B, even with 8GB of memory, can idle at ~1.33W on WiFi

How is this measured? I spent _years_ doing experiments on the Raspberry Pi 4B and was never able to get it to idle to anything less than 3ish W at the wall, albeit arguably this was not with the "1.5" hardware revision.

One day I bought an ASUS PN40, which has an x86 Intel N4000 CPU.... and on the first day, just after installing openSUSE, without even customizing _anything_, I measured _1.7 W_ power consumption at the wall. This is for a full x86 server, with GbE ethernet, 8GB of RAM and a 1TiB SATA SSD.

That server is still my one and only homeserver. It has my calendar, media files, talks to my Zigbee/BluetoothLE devices, and it does so at a fraction of the power used by the Raspberry Pi that TFA uses for waking up his homeserver.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#113

Post by AshamedCaptain »

sandos wrote: post #109
guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

My desktop PCs have always been idling at more than 50W. Granted, my newest one is from 2011 or so.

I don't think it has improved much. No one has been benchmarking these metrics for desktop PCs for a decade or so, so they have gotten worse, if anything.

I have not yet found any LGA 1700 motherboard were the total idle power would be less than 25W, for example. I find that the power supply inefficiency by itself, even on standby , is usually already 2W -- larger than some of the alternatives discussed here. I have to go to Intel's soldered solutions to find <10W idle consumption (and even <2W). Forget about last decade's desktop AMDs either, they have very high idle power, with the exception of some APUs that may go down to 10W. They may also have custom solutions that idle at significantly less, though.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#114

Post by wasneverhere »

pmontra wrote: post #86

I use an Odroid HC4 (two SATA 3 slots) powered by a Shelly smart plug. My backup script powers the plug with a HTTP call. Waits for the server to be online by repeated ssh attempts. Unlocks the backup disk by asking me the LUKS password. Starts the backup. Sshs to the server to shut it down. Polls the plug over HTTP until the power meter shows a less than one Watt consumption for a while. Eventually powers off the pl…

"Unlocks the backup disk by asking me the LUKS password." https://opensource.com/article/20/11/nbde-linux

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#115

Post by xavxav »

pja wrote: post #97
aequitas wrote: post #90

If you're penny pinching also have a look at your network equipment. As a test I set all switch ports on my 24 port HP from 1Gbps to 100Mbps and the power usage dropped by 10W. About half the ports on the switch are occupied. But then again, with the current prices it might make more sense just to replace the hardware with a newer more efficient model and it will pay itself back in a year instead of 5.

This is an example of where getting rid of old kit & replacing it with new more power efficient hardware ends up being the greener option.

not necessarily, depends on the embodied emissions in the replacement gear. It is also surprisingly hard to get any information on those. I tried seeing if there were estimates of the kg co2 in a modern CPU chip but I found nada

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#116

Post by joking »

forty wrote: post #104
guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

I have a HP Microserver N40L with 4 spinning disks. Last time I measured, I'm pretty sure it was consuming around 40W. I guess CPUs have gotten better in the last 10 years ;)

I have a synology nas and is unable to stop the spinning disks. A shame, every other thing in it is nice, but could have beter optimizations, as the disk are the most of its energy consumption.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#117

Post by tails4e »

guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

I have a 5 year old home server I'd love to replace as it idles at 40w, while an old laptop that could do the job idles at 12w. What I'd like to do is merge that and my old NAS, so ideally somethig with a few sata slots, m2 ssd, and low idle power. Any recommendations for this?

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#118

Post by djhworld »

MBCook wrote: post #44

43 watts idle seems quite excessive. A M1 Mac Mini idles at 7 watts. One of the older Intel models (not the last one) would do 6 watts. The author achieved some impressive savings, but I wonder how much lower it could go with a more efficient machine. (Obviously that costs money and the article’s technique is free)

I bought a Lenovo M900 Tiny a few months back which is quite a few years old (think maybe 2017?) and upgraded it to 24GB RAM, 120 GB SSD and 500GB nvme.

With proxmox and a few vms running on there it idles around 11-12W which isn't raspberry pi levels of efficiency but still pretty decent.

I think the OP's server may have one or more mechanical HDDs in it that are consuming most of the power.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#119

Post by piaste »

MrFoof wrote: post #66
Semaphor wrote: post #54

Heh, my homeserver uses about that much (4W) in idle ;) 2 SSDs, 8 GB RAM and a passively cooled J4125, more than enough for what I need (2-person household). It also runs Home Assistant, so I can’t let it go to sleep, anyway. I have an extra Pi4 with Proxmox Backup Server, that could actually sleep most of the time as it backups only twice a day. But even with German electricity prices, a Pi4 with a single SSD is not…

Indeed, modern hardware is getting ridiculously efficient, and if you go the extra mile to disable hardware you don't use, as well as strip your configuration to run only the software you absolutely need, you can really drive it into the ground. The later hardware revisions (such as 1.5) of the Raspberry Pi 4B, even with 8GB of memory, can idle at ~1.33W on WiFi with everything unnecessary disabled -- 2GB versions ar…

> For those who go, "but I need real power"

There's also the flip side, which is "well since I already have real power..."

I.e., like many HNers, I own a powerful coding/gaming Linux desktop with plenty of HDD space, which gets regularly backed up to cold storage. It does however use a frankly obscene 90W when idling, due to the GPU, fans, and multiple hard drives and peripherals.

Building a separate, power-efficient home server would take a year or two to break even, even compared to running the workstation 24/7. But it's more like 3-5 years when you consider that it's going to run several hours most days anyway, and that it can be safely put to sleep at night. Plus of course it's more effort to manage two servers rather than one, so everything else being equal the single desktop is preferable.

Now if I can use some of the tricks described in this thread to turn it off when I'm not using it, and only temporarily wake it up when I need to stream or upload something, then using the desktop as a home server becomes kind of a no-brainer.

Of course, if you only use a laptop, then a low-wattage home server is a totally sensible complement.

Re: Saving Energy: Home Server That Automatically Suspends to RAM and Wakes Up Again

#120

Post by hddherman »

guilamu wrote: post #100

Something's not right. I own both a passively cooled 2016 Mini PC OLOEY Intel Core i7-7500U (as a home media center) and a 2023 Minisforum UM690 (for work and it's amazing btw), and they both use about 7 watts when idling (screen off). How op is using 43 watts for an idling media center is just beyond me, he must be using a 1978 Intel 8086, right? Anyhow, 4 watts is still far better than 7 watts and this is a great a…

I've found that most desktop PC-s have idle power usage around 35-50W. That was the main motivation to look for alternative solutions like ASRock Deskmini, or the Dell/HP/Lenovo TinyMiniMicro form factor machines. Mini PC-s tend to have great idle power usage compared to big towers, which is probably down to the selection of the CPU, components on the motherboard and the power supply which usually has to only output 12V/19V. ATX PSU-s need to handle 3.3V/5V/12V, which probably plays a role in efficiency at idle.
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