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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

#151

Post by imhoguy »

londons_explore wrote: post #145

I'd kinda like all machines to do this all the time... The OS should go to sleep, and give the network hardware enough info to respond to simple requests (ie. maybe ARP requests, mDNS, and keeping a DHCP lease alive). Anything that comes in addressed to the machine that can't be handled by the network hardware should wake the machine, leaving the packet in a buffer for the machine to handle and then go back to sleep.

I think this is what Modern Standby aka "S0" power state is doing. Worse it is not always properly implemented and laptops turn on burning hot in backpacks (looking at you Lenovo Legion).

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

#152

Post by trialect »

leipert wrote: post #92

Does anyone have tips for a Synology NAS to hibernate reliably? My fear of powering the machine on and off completely on intervals, would be damaging the HDDs.

Did you try reading info on this? Contacting Synology maybe?

https://kb.synology.com/en-au/DSM/tutorial/What_stops_my_Syn...

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

#153

Post by imhoguy »

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).

Did the same with 16GB i7 Dell E7420 laptop (2013), it draws 4W when idle, can spin up two cores instantly and fairly quickly transcode video with iGPU or host multiple Minecraft worlds. No way phone or RPi can get these params.

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

#154

Post by Semaphor »

piaste wrote: post #141
Semaphor wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, everything added together for my homeserver in the parent comment was about €120 ;) With the 0.4€/kWh that I pay here, that’s worth it quite quickly.

How much storage do you have? That's typically the biggest expense as you put more stuff on your server (i.e. media, both upload and download).

Around 2TB with little need for that to ever grow.

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

#155

Post by pydry »

simongray wrote: post #84
eternityforest wrote: post #70

Smartphones can be connected for days on the internal battery, using well under a watt, and they can be ready to respond instantly, and they have an app container system that makes everything just work. I really think we need to start making Android servers a thing, at least for self hosting, maybe for everything. Judging by how WearOS seems to be able to run on 35mA or less, I think there's a good case for just maki…

Raspberry Pis (and similar devices) already work great as low-power servers. The big issue is the home server community being overly focused on creating "battle stations" that look cool and run 40 different Docker containers rather than simple low-power solutions.

You can very quickly run up against resource constraints with a raspberry pi.

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

#157

Post by dingaling »

Gasp0de wrote: post #156

My old laptop is more than powerful enough for Plex and backups, and idles at around 3W. Why someone would use a desktop PC as a home server in Europe is beyond me.

Often because they need more than one disk installed. You could use a NAS, but then you've cost and additional energy consumption.

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

#158

Post by eptcyka »

Gasp0de wrote: post #156

My old laptop is more than powerful enough for Plex and backups, and idles at around 3W. Why someone would use a desktop PC as a home server in Europe is beyond me.

I'd love to run a laptop, but I've yet to see good, cheap used laptops with ECC memory support.

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

#159

Post by 314 »

varenc wrote: post #79

This general concept is very similar to Apple’s Bonjour based “Sleep Proxy” service. Basically, if you have an Apple TV or something similar it will automatically wake up a sleeping device when someone requests its services. SSH or media sharing for example. While a device is sleeping the proxy will keep advertising its services via Bonjour. Low power always-on Apple devices are sleep proxies by default but you can t…

This is a nice idea, I was jsut wondering how to do that.

Another approach (if it is supported by the adaptor) is to configure WoL so that it does not need a magic packet. Some adaptors can be configured to wake on any "directed packet".

I have a linux server sitting downstairs that I might play around with. It would be nice if the sleep support featured a timer and integration with the system cron daemon. Then it could wake on a directed packet or when there is a scheduled task.

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

#160

Post by hddherman »

guilamu wrote: post #129
hddherman wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're right, using a desktop CPU for a mediacenter is not a good idea. Laptop CPUs are, however, really well optimised for very low consumption when idling and that's what you should be using for a mediacenter. Also, IMHO, ASRock Deskmini would not be a good idea for a media center since it's using desktop CPUs. The idle power draw will not be as good as mini pc with a laptop CPU.

I've measured 11-15W idle power usage on a Deskmini X300 with a Ryzen 7 5700G, which is not bad for a socketed desktop CPU.
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