Low Wattage SageTV Servers?

[PeteCress]

I'm currently using a Windows Home Server box with a half-dozen WD Caviar Green drives.

Needs a reboot every so often, but mostly works OK, and draws about 160 watts 24-7 - which could be mitigated by about 30% if I ever get off my butt and implement a shutdown/powerup scheme for the wee hours.

Somebody got me sniffing around a Drobo hooked into a Mac Mini as an alternative, but it looks to me like Drobo's highly-proprietary environment plus the inevitable hardware/software failures tb expected in *any* device spell trouble.

Besides, although I couldn't find a wattage figure for Drobo, I see that NetGear's NAS draws 80 watts for just 4 bays.

So, bottom line, is anybody else cheap enough tb thinking about a minimal-electric-bill SageTV server?

If so, what have you looked into?

[peternm22]

Have you looked into a higher efficiency power supply for the server? That could help lower the power use, and reduce the heat in the server.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by peternm22

Have you looked into a higher efficiency power supply for the server? That could help lower the power use, and reduce the heat in the server.

Didn't even know there *was* such a thing.

I'll check it out.

Thanks.

[peternm22]

Look for power supplies rated 80 Plus Gold, I believe it's the highest efficiency currently on the market. At 50% load, the power supply should be 90% efficient.

Seasonic makes quite good quality power supplies (I have a X650 in my system)

[Fuzzy]

What are you using your server for? Is it just finctioning as a file server/sage server? are you running placeshifter? comskip? If you are just using OTA HD, then most low-power systems will be enough to keep up with the comskiping. You could probably keep most of your system, and just upgrade the MB/CPU to a lower power, more modern system. For comparison, that E7400 CPU in your server is a 65W 2.8GHz Dual core CPU. While an Atom N550 is a Dual core 1.5GHz, maxing out at 8.5W (including the built-in GPU), and would probably still serve up your files just file, and even be mostly able to stay up to speed comskipping your 4 ATSC tuners.

[peternm22]

Another idea: With AMD chips, there is something called Cool'n'Quiet. Basically, if the computer doesn't need the processor, it automatically downclocks it resulting in less energy and heat. I'm guessing Intel probably has something similar.

If a processor intensive task occurs, then the CPU's clock is automatically increased.

[Brent94Z]

I need to look into this as well.

With what you just posted, Fuzzy, I should definitely ditch my "old" HTPC server. Last I checked my HTPC was using 340 watts. I should be able to pay for a new motherboard in savings on my electric bill Problem is I have three PVR250 cards and most newer motherboards don't support the number of slots I need. But, I recently setup a HD PVR and HDHR so I may not *need* three PVR250s. Hmm??? Thanks for getting me thinking about this

[Nelbert]

Had a look when setting up my Sage Server. Swapping my previous Intel Celeron ITX NAS with external drivebay and moving back to having a Windows Server.

160W sounds high for 6 drives and a C2Duo compared to my system. Even allowing 10W max per drive, that's 60W in drives. The processor under full load is 65W, motherboard chipset? typically upto 25W, and nearer 10-15W when idle. The cpu should speedstep down to 1.6Ghz when idle. I'd have thought with an E7400 you should be nearer 100W when idle.

Do you have any power management enabled on the server? Is speedstep enabled? Have you tried changing the Windows Desktop Search settings and reducing the amount of locations it's indexing?

What sort of video card is in the system? Unless you have an old PSU don't expect to see much difference with the PSU, a couple of % maybe. The graphics card on the other hand can make a very noticable difference.What else is plugged into the server? How many fans are running at full speed?

I have a passive cooled E4700 with 4 7200 rpm seagate drives, USB dual DVB-T and USB DVB-S2 tuners in an Intel SS4200 case. My idle power is ~60 watts for the server and then the sat tuner needs a 9V 2A supply as it supports rotors.

Took me completely by surprise to find a C2Duo took no more power than the fanless Intel ITX Celeron system with external drivebays it replaced, but with speedstep it becomes a 1.8Ghz system idle and the Celeron was a few years old, so the CPUs are probably similar in power usage anyway.

[Fuzzy]

Well, Atom boards are primarily designed for nettops and embedded devices (for one running in my expedition!). Therefore, most are mini-itx form factor. The cuts down on the 'extras' like expansion slots, and SATA ports. JetWay makes a great little N550 board that has 4 SATA ports, a single PCI slot, a mini-PCIe (which is a shrunk down x1) and a 'JetWay expansion port', which essentially, is another PCI slot with 'proprietary' modules, one of which is a 4 SATA controller. This means you can get a mini-itx board, running a dual core (with hyper-threading, so 4 logical cores), with 8 total SATA ports.
Now, this would probably be plenty for Pete's situation, since he's dealing with MPEG-2 only. Brent, on the other hand, with his HD-PVR, may have a harder time keeping up with comskip.

[paulbeers]

Power usage comes up a lot on these forums. As already stated, high efficiency power supplies are THE best way to conserve energy. A power supply has to convert AC power @ 120volts (what your house plug uses) to DC power @ 3.3V, 5V, and 12Volts. This conversion is where you lose energy and depending on the efficiency, you could be just pi$$ing money away. For Example, if your PC uses 200watts of power on average @ the wall, a 65% efficient power supply (as found in many cheapos), means your computer is really only using approx 130 watts of power. The rest is being wasted. Now even swap out an 80% efficient power supply and you would only be pulling approx 160 watts. That's a 40 watt an hour savings and you aren't changing anything out but the power supply. Other than dropping down to an Atom Processor, there isn't any CPU swap that will save you that kind of power.

You also need to make sure you pick the right size as it pertains to power supplies. Efficiency is highest when a power supply is running between 50-70% of max. This means if you buy too big or too small you will just be wasting energy. With that said, the best power supplies on the market still have 80+ efficiency even when not in the "sweet spot". I have a Seasonic X-650 in my server now. It's actually overkill, but even at 20% load it still is rated at over 80% efficiency.

[blade]

You also have to look at the cost of the components you're purchasing to reduce energy consumption. Sometimes the cost of the components far outweigh the money you'll save.

I think you should look at reducing the power consumption of your existing server. It sounds on the high side to me. I would think your system would be more efficient than my older AMD system. Mine was pulling 128w with Cool n Quiet enabled when idling or doing light recording/comskipping. It contained the following:

Opteron 175
2GB RAM
6 Drives
PVR-500
56k Modem (for caller ID)
Intel 1gb NIC
Nvidia 6200TC
4 Case Fans (I think I noticed my fans pulling 1-2w each)

I had a power supply die in my desktop so I pulled the one from the Sage Server to use in the desktop and got a more efficient one for the server. I've also reduced my drives from 6 to 4 when I added a 2TB drive the last time. I haven't measured power consumption since making those changes, but it should definitely be lower now.

[Oats]

Make sure you are using speed step. Download CPU-Z, it will show what speed your CPU is running. At idle it should be much lower than 2.8ghz.

If your MB BIOS allows you can undervolt the CPU. This may require some stability testing though. My E8400 runs fine at 1.0v

I would look up the specs on your PSU. If you have some super generic brand than it may be worth replacing. But if it is a decent brand odds are you aren't going to get that much better effiecency out of an 80+ rated model unless you went with a really expensive model that gets over 90%.

Using fewer drives can help as well. If you have a bunch of smaller 500-750gb drives think about upgrading to fewer 2tb drives.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

Do you have any power management enabled on the server? Is speedstep enabled?

Don't even know what SpeedStep is.... although from context it sounds like something that reduces CPU mhz depending on load. I'll look into it.

What sort of video card is in the system? Unless you have an old PSU don't expect to see much difference with the PSU, a couple of % maybe. The graphics card on the other hand can make a very noticable difference.What else is plugged into the server? How many fans are running at full speed?

I run headless.... plugging in a video card if/when there's a startup/shutdown problem. I'm pretty sure there's something in the mobo BIOS settings about fan speeds and I'll check.

No tuner cards in the server, by my 160 figure includes the two HD HomeRuns I use. Those, plus the extra router that they feed, might account for the 160 seeming on the high side.[/quote]

Originally Posted by Oats

Make sure you are using speed step. Download CPU-Z, it will show what speed your CPU is running. At idle it should be much lower than 2.8ghz.

Looks to me like it's running at 1.6ghz (CPUZ | CPU | Core Speed = 1066.5 MHz) right now - with nothing overt going on.

When I fire up PlaceShifter on this PC the server itermittantly kicks up to 2.8..... So I guess it's already automagically adapting to load.

Originally Posted by blade

I think you should look at reducing the power consumption of your existing server. It sounds on the high side to me.

Just put a couple of Kill-A-Watt meters on the server closet: On on just the server box itself, and the other on the combined server box, HD HomeRuns, supplemental router, and external backup drive.

Turns out I was lying about the 160 watts. Maybe I wrote that down when the video card was in there and/or when the server was more active.

Now I'm seeing 115-125 while the server is running at 2.8 GHz and DeMigrator is taking 15-20% CPU and the SageTV Service is taking 6-12%. Oops.... now that DeMigrator has shut down, it's down to 100-115. Oops again..... now it's down to 95 watts - and still at 2.8. Seems like there's 20-30 watts of undertainty/fluidity even at a given speed.

I'm waiting for the CPU to throttle back to 1.6 as I write this.

Thanks to Oats for introducing me to the concept of the CPU varying it's power use depending on load.


Tangentially, looking into a NAS like Drobo, it seems like the savings there wouldn't be all that wonderful.

To wit, the number I see for a 4-bay Drobo is 42 watts. Figure a couple more drives, and it would seem tb more like sixty.

With sixty watts for the NAS, there's still the need for a 24-7 PC to run SageTV..... OTOH, something like a Mac Mini only draws about 10 watts.....

Comparing that to a WSH box that could be pared down to 110 watts most of the time..... 8-bay Drobo at 2 grand, Mac Mini @$600.... savings of 50 watts at .20/KWHr.... ( (50*24*365)/1000) * .20 ==> $219/year.... 2600/219 = 11+ years to break even..... and in that timeframe I might be dead and/or we might all be using SSD for our drives....

[Nelbert]

Glad you got to the bottom of your power usage.

Unfortunately the biggest power drain in the pvrs/nas is almost certainly going to end up being the hard disks, regardless of whether you use a pc or a device.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

Glad you got to the bottom of your power usage.

Unfortunately the biggest power drain in the pvrs/nas is almost certainly going to end up being the hard disks, regardless of whether you use a pc or a device.

I'm coming around to a functionally-similar conclusion without the benefit of any real knowledge. Even a modest dollar outlay takes a long (in terms of PC stuff's evolution speed) time to break even on at .18/KWHr.

But in my searches, I came across NetGear's offering. And for a grand, instead of Drobo's $2k....

Geeze, if the spiel they give is correct and there aren't any hidden gotchas this thing sounds like the cat's meow.

In fact, it sounds so cool that I'd be tempted to get one just on the rationalization of semi-portable backup. I do note that it does not provide WHS's and Drobo's ability to use different-size discs without reducing all discs' capacity to that of the smallest.

But if it is as trouble-free/fault-tolerant/foolproof as they claim it sounds like a most elegant solution to data storage on a home LAN.

WHS has been ok for me - but when a disc starts going south it gets ugly fast. Excrutiatingly-long downtimes (as in a day or so) to "Remove" the failing disc, no useful notification as to which disc failed ("Drive 3 Is Failing".... Yo, MS! I've got a half-dozen identical drives in there... WTF is "Drive 3"??? You could at least give me a serial number.....

The NetGear device, OTOH, purports to support hot drive replacement - for two failed drives, even, if you run a full house of six drives.

Same-sized drives, I could live with.... but the big question is whether the thing accepts the likes of WD Caviar Green drives or it requires some sort of "Enterprise-Level" drives.

Question Answered: Yes... with some qualification: http://www.readynas.com/?p=3690

FWIW, maybe it's just me, but I find NegGear's support and informational pages a cut above the rest in terms of readability and content.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

I should be able to pay for a new motherboard in savings on my electric bill

Depends on your electric bill. I looked at that a while ago here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25576

My take, it makes a good bit of sense to buy power efficient if you're already planning on buying. The cost isn't much higher. However if you've got something that already works, it can take a very, very long time to pay off an upgrade just for power savings.

FWIW, I recently reconfigured my system due to a need for more space. For that I built an unRAID box based on a Supermicro X7SPA board, which is an Atom 510 board, that pulls about 25W. unRAID reports about 50W for a whole system with an 8-port SATA card and a bunch of drives. I've got 5 2TB WDs on it now off the onboard SATA.

I converted my server from my old Athlon XP to a spare (old HTPC) Athon BE. I put an Intel X-25V (40GB) for boot, and the two Caviar Blacks for recording.

It total I went from a single Athlon XP 1800+ with 8x250GB drives, 2 1TB Caviar Blacks (recording), and a couple of misc drives to the above two machines and shaved something on the order of 100W off the total usage.

Everything off my UPS now pulls about 250W or so, but that's the two machines, plus my two Dish STBs, ReadyNAS X6, DSL modem, Router, Switch, etc.

[Brent94Z]

Very true, stanger. It doesn't make sense to spend a "bunch" of money just for power savings. For me though, I'm struggling a bit with my setup and HD PVR playback when a couple other HD shows are recording. My system is OLD and outdated but works pretty darn good unless I'm recording 3 HD shows and trying to watch another then I can see issues and switch over to the HD300 if it is really bad If it aggravates me enough, I'll get a newer setup with the primary purpose of having a faster system and a secondary benefit of using less power. But, I do understand what you are saying that it ain't typically worth it for JUST power savings. Kinda like the people who have an older but nice car that is paid for and gets 25mpg sell it to get a $40k hybrid because gas went up a buck a gallon. A guy I know did this thinking he was smart until I did the math for him and told him it was going to take him 150 years to just break even and then he got frowny. LOL

Also, I'll add that a couple weeks ago I tested an APC 350VA back up power supply and with nothing plugged into it, it was using about 10 watts. I need to do a more complete test though and let it just there for a day and see what kind of average I get as I suspect it might go higher and lower. But, if that is basically what it ends up being then I'm sucking up a lot of power with these things. I've got a few of the 350VAs, a 550VA, a 750VA and a couple 1500VAs. No wonder my electric bill these days never drops under $200 a month. LOL

[that_kid]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Everything off my UPS now pulls about 250W or so.

I wish that was the case for me, all my servers draw around 1200 watts. That is better than the 2000 watts I was using before I consolidated many of my servers and thanks to my killawatt I found some servers that didn't do much but used a bunch of power.

[Nelbert]

lol @ that_kid... guess you work from home or have an unhealthy collection habit.

The 1/2 rack 10 blade system we ran at work with 4 dual core opterons per board was only pulling ~3KW under full load (100% cpu usage on all cores) and I used that to consolidate hardware from 6 racks worth of servers. Admittedly it had 9KW worth of PSU to draw on if needed (6 * 3KW, with 3 active at once)

Pete, if you're looking at that price range then you'll find any of the atom based nas (Netgear, QNAP, Theacus etc) will blow the socks off a drobo or other consumer based nas.

The consumer nas generally use all in one chips (marvell etc) and they just don't have the cpu horsepower or network throughput of the low-end intel/amd chips, not to mention having limited ram.

Whether that matters is down to personal preference and usage. As all the client devices in our house use the server it matters to me. The client devices are the bottle neck not the server, but it means they can all read write at their full speed and the server isn't struggling to keep up.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

Pete, if you're looking at that price range then you'll find any of the atom based nas (Netgear, QNAP, Theacus etc) will blow the socks off a drobo or other consumer based nas.

I was zeroing in on NetGear's Ultra-6 as a matter of fact.

But it looks to me like a NAS with 6 2-tb drives in it is going to pull 74 watts active, 68 idle, and 33 spun down. For estimating purposes, I'd say an average of 50 24-7.

Compare that to my WHS box drawing 100 watts and you get ((50*24*365)/1000)*.18 = less than eighty bucks a year savings.
And that's assuming that an existing PC that's already running much of the day will take over the SageTV server role. It's obviously less if one needs to put another PC on line for that purpose.

Also, it seems like there is an additional liability with a NAS. With the WSH box I can run a virus protection utility. With the NAS, it seems like the NAS' data is exposed to whatever PCs are on the network - as in a houseguest by design or accident getting on with their infected laptop. OTOH, I don't know enough to say whether that exposure is any different from the WSH box's. e.g. Somebody has malware that just deletes files, no way the WSH box is going to tell that delete request from a legit one. OTOH, if the offending PC tries to save a file with a virus in it, the WSH box will block it.

As others observe, it's like getting rid of a perfectly good car and buying a more expensive one just to get a few more MPG. The additional sunk costs take too long to pay off to make it an economically rational decision.

Having said that, my intuition tells me that if I were doing this from scratch the NAS would be the way to go - virus concerns notwithstanding - bc the NetGear product sounds more bulletproof to me in terms of power failures, boot problems, and so-forth. My WSH box sometimes hangs on a re-boot and there's no way to fix it unless one is right there to plug in a monitor. NetGear's device also has some nice-sounding options for shutting itself down and restarting every day at set times.

Finally, I'm impressed by NetGear's web pages, manuals, and support fora. Seems like a class act.

Drobo, OTOH, has seen fit to restrict their fora to people who own a Drobo - which I find tb suspicious - my first suspicion being that of frustrated users whose rants Drobo doesn't want available to prospective buyers.