Building a Green Server. Need Suggestions.

[DRB]

I 've decided to built a new server. While I'd like this to be as energy efficient as possible I want to make sure it has no short commings.

It would be nice to use this as server and client downstairs. I would then have [2] HD200's and [1] client with an I3 processor. Other equipment running would be [2] usb HD-PVR and [2] HDHR network tuners. I plan on starting with [4] 2TB drives for storage. I perfer to ripp on this server so it will also have [2] dvd burners.

Like I said I love it to be green but it must also perform. I was thinking putting a SSD and I3 or I5 processor. So far I may have picked the case, this one [Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl] Her is a link http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811352020

Any and all suggestions welcome.
Thanks
DRB

[drewg]

Originally Posted by DRB

So far I may have picked the case, this one [Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl] Her is a link

I used the earlier version of this case (R3) for my main workstation / home-server. It is very nice, and very quiet. The drive mounting is excellent.

The biggest (but still minor) drawback I found was that the bottom-mount PSU configuration combined with the PSU / motherboard I chose meant that I could just barely stretch the PSU's power cable to the motherboard connector. I was forced to go over the top of the board, rather than behind like I should have. This was with a "PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 500W" and a SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCA-F-O motherboard. Since this was a server board, perhaps its connector was in a different position than most consumer boards.

The other drawback is that there is no reset switch, and no HDD activity light, which surprised me, since even the $20 bargain-basement cases have those..

Drew

[SWKerr]

I have the cheaper version of that case for my desktop PC and love it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811352010
Note 1: The one you referenced appears to pack the hard drives closer together which may not be a good thing.
Note 2: I have a case with one big door like that and eventually just removed it. There was just never a place where that big swinging door was not in the way.

I would spring for the i5. You may not need the extra cores but at idle it will pretty much use the same amount of power. The i5 will do much better than the i3 at video encoding and commercial skip as well.

Going green may apply more to the hard drives you use than the cpu since the server will be at idle most of the time and there is not that much difference these days between modern cpus at idle. More drives mean more power generally. Some drives are more power efficient than others as well. The Green drives are probably adequate for a Media server but they stink if you are thinking about RAID5. I just got two WD Red 3TB drives yesterday. They are supposed to be a good balance between speed, power and noise. I bought them mostly because they were a good deal at $150 each with a 3 year warranty and I needed to add space. I would opt for higher capacity drives if you are considering green in the equation.

I should also note I have dropped RAID and redundancy from all my machines for performance reasons. I run synctoy nightly\weekly to backup the stuff I care about to separate physical drives. This also gives me the ability to easily go back and get something I accidentally deleted.

I do boot from an 128GB SSD on my server. Not sure it is faster in daily use but it certainly does boot faster. It should also be less prone to failure. (although not immune as I have learned.)

I would buy and single Blu-Ray combo drive as well, rip to disk and then create the copy. With AnyDVD you can play BlyRays directly from the clients and extenders as well.

I replaced my HD-PVR with the Colossus when I went with the new i5 based server. They have been flawless. Probably not worth buying if you already have the HD-PVRs but one year later they are finally working great for me.

Window8: The SageTV server is now Window8-64 and runs great. I would go ahead and start with the latest and greatest. Install Classic Shell and skip the Metro start screen and boot to the desktop and bring up SageTV full screen as well.

Getting long, going to quit now.

[Skirge01]

Keep this in mind before buying any green drives. Also ensure that you're able to spin the drives down. SSD's would be your best bet, of course, but cost is undoubtedly an issue there. I think the key is minimizing heat output (and, thus, fans running full bore) and your actual power draw off the wall. That means an efficient PSU (sized for your actual draw) and low power CPU. Intel always releases a few models with low TDPs in each generation.

[Fuzzy]

I'd take a serious look at the AMD A-series APU's as well as the i3/i5 lineup. Some of the newer AMD boards have 8 SATA ports, and the graphics drivers are usually quite a bit better with AMD than Intel, if you are looking to use it for playback as well.

[texneus]

I'm currently in the process of building a small footprint, low power server. The motherboard I'm using is a bit of a hybrid...uses a desktop CPU and chipset but just about everything else about it is laptop. Not the cheapest board around but since you don't need to buy a PicoPSU you break about even.

Motherboard: Intel DQ77KB
CPU: I3-3220T
Boot Disk: Crucial M4 32GB mSATA
RAM: Mushkin 8GB SO-DIMM (single channel and 1.35v to help keep power low)
RAID Disks: WDC 2TB Red, qty 3 in RAID-Z
Scratch Disk: WDC 1.5TB Green (note: use WDIDLE3 on this drive)

The Motherboard/CPU/mSATA (HDD power unplugged) by themselves idle at ~14 watts. With all 4 HDDs installed but spun down it consumes ~20 watts, with all 4 HDDs spun up but idle it consumes ~30 watts. Highest power I've ever seen are temporary mid 50 watt spikes with all HDDs spun up and writing to the RAID array plus a load on the CPU. I power the whole thing with a disused 90 watt Dell laptop brick. It runs OpenIndiana (OpenSolaris fork) with Napp-It as the server front end. I'm finding that 100ish MBPS transfer rates are doable if the source disk is that fast. My current challenge is getting Serviio to run in a Solaris zone VM (I think I finally got it working tonight...Solaris is a bit tough to chew as documentation and users who don't think they're some kind of deity are hard to find ).

Good luck in your quest!

[DRB]

graphics drivers are usually quite a bit better with AMD than Intel

I thought that intel was getting better than AMD with the Ivy Bridge processors.

Which AMD would you recommend that compares to an I5? Going this way will definily save me some money. How about this processor?

AMD A8-5500 Trinity 3.2GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Quad-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 7560D AD5500OKHJBOX.

Texneus; Thanks for the suguestions but a want [8] sata ports and all the HD contained in the case.

DRB

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by DRB

I thought that intel was getting better than AMD with the Ivy Bridge processors.

Which AMD would you recommend that compares to an I5? Going this way will definily save me some money. How about this processor?

AMD A8-5500 Trinity 3.2GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Quad-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 7560D AD5500OKHJBOX.

Texneus; Thanks for the suguestions but a want [8] sata ports and all the HD contained in the case.

DRB

That A8-5500 is probably the best bang for your buck of any current processor from either company. The A85X boards to pair it with are not entirely inexpensive, but like I said, for the features, are still cheaper than a comparable intel based board.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by texneus

It runs OpenIndiana (OpenSolaris fork) with Napp-It as the server front end. I'm finding that 100ish MBPS transfer rates are doable if the source disk is that fast. My current challenge is getting Serviio to run in a Solaris zone VM (I think I finally got it working tonight...Solaris is a bit tough to chew as documentation and users who don't think they're some kind of deity are hard to find ).

Nice to see another ZFS user! If OpenSolaris is too obscure, you might want to try zfs on freebsd, or even on linux (http://zfsonlinux.org/). I run zfs on linux myself.

One tip: For your media / recording pool, you might want to try setting the primarycache to metadata -- this will prevent large mpeg files from blowing the arc cache. And if you have room, try adding another SSD for an L2Arc. The L2Arc is one of the best things about ZFS, IMHO.

Drew

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by DRB

I thought that intel was getting better than AMD with the Ivy Bridge processors.

The AMD graphics in the APU is still better than the HD4000 (as is the Llano). Now CPU wise, it's still the other way around.

BTW, both are OK, thought the HD4000 still has some color issues. See this link:
http://techreport.com/review/22932/a...apu-reviewed/9

If you think you'll need 3D, get the A8 or better.

[Fuzzy]

My point wasn't really that the A8 is going to be better than a i5 in all cases, but considering the cost difference, I don't think I'd buy and Ivy Bridge for any use at this point. A comparable Ivy Bridge is going to be near twice the cost of the A8.

Look at it this way, the FASTEST quad-core A10-5800K, is 30% cheaper than the SLOWEST quad-core ivy bridge cpu (i5-3330), and the A8 or A10 is going to be better on the graphics front.

[texneus]

drewg - It is obscure to be certain for home use, but for what I need it's hard to beat with Napp-IT as a front end. I can manage all server functions and the ZFS file system itself remotely via a web GUI. I could find no other option that met all my requirements (and I did consider options such as you describe). Plus the more I learn about Solaris the more impressed I become. Native ZFS (due largely to the snap feature and CIFS) and Zones make for amazing flexibility. Sun was incredibly forward thinking on this stuff.

Also interested in your tip and will look into it. Although this will not be a recording drive, it will definitely be a media & DLNA server. Thanks!



DRB - Understand this won't meet your requirements, just giving and idea of what is possible with judicious component selection. For the record though, all the drives are in the same case. The motherboard selected provides power conversion for the SATA drives, and the power draws quoted are for the entire system including drives, fans, USB demands etc. All components run at stock speeds, voltages, etc.

I know you say "green", but do you have a goal for how "green" you want to be?

If you need 8 sata ports, that almost certainly will push you into a full ATX AMD setup which significantly works against the green concept. Not that it's impossible, but I will be very very very impressed if you could get idle power under 50 watts with a 100w CPU, ATX board, supply, and 8 drives. If you can find a way to stick with ITX/uATX, even if it requires a SATA add-in card or port multiplier, and a picoPSU that will power the entire system, I think (based on my experience) you stand a chance of getting to the low 40w or lower realm. Of course, that will also cost you more up front as well.

You might consider forgoing the ROM drives and use another machine for ripping files onto the server, etc. That gets you down to 6 SATA ports which opens up motherboard and PSU options pretty significantly.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by texneus

drewg - It is obscure to be certain for home use, but for what I need it's hard to beat with Napp-IT as a front end. I can manage all server functions and the ZFS file system itself remotely via a web GUI. I could find no other option that met all my requirements (and I did consider options such as you describe). Plus the more I learn about Solaris the more impressed I become. Native ZFS (due largely to the snap feature and CIFS) and Zones make for amazing flexibility. Sun was incredibly forward thinking on this stuff.

Also interested in your tip and will look into it. Although this will not be a recording drive, it will definitely be a media & DLNA server. Thanks!



DRB - Understand this won't meet your requirements, just giving and idea of what is possible with judicious component selection. For the record though, all the drives are in the same case. The motherboard selected provides power conversion for the SATA drives, and the power draws quoted are for the entire system including drives, fans, USB demands etc. All components run at stock speeds, voltages, etc.

I know you say "green", but do you have a goal for how "green" you want to be?

If you need 8 sata ports, that almost certainly will push you into a full ATX AMD setup which significantly works against the green concept. Not that it's impossible, but I will be very very very impressed if you could get idle power under 50 watts with a 100w CPU, ATX board, supply, and 8 drives. If you can find a way to stick with ITX/uATX, even if it requires a SATA add-in card or port multiplier, and a picoPSU that will power the entire system, I think (based on my experience) you stand a chance of getting to the low 40w or lower realm. Of course, that will also cost you more up front as well.

You might consider forgoing the ROM drives and use another machine for ripping files onto the server, etc. That gets you down to 6 SATA ports which opens up motherboard and PSU options pretty significantly.

To be fair, the A8 we wee talking about is only a 65W processor. and the A85X boards with 8 SATA ports are still likely about the same power as a smaller board and additional PCIe SATA card.

Drives are going to be the major difference here in power consumption. I've seen reviews of 85X boards with a much faster 100W A10-5800K processors that run idle <40W, peaking out at about 120W tops for the whole system (running a single SSD in those tests).

Also, the SIZE of the board has no real bearing on the power consumption. A uATX or ATX board based on the same chipset is going to draw about the same power. PCIe slots that are unoccupied draw basically zero. The spreading out of the heat generating components on a full ATX board allow better passive heat dissipation, requiring less fans to keep everything in line. If you are talking about a storage server, I'd much rather have a spacious case with a full ATX board, and plenty of room for the drives to exist, for wires to be routed well, and for everything to breath easy without high speed and undersized fans.

In computers, the only time Small == Less power is if that small also has less components.

[SWKerr]

I'm with Fuzzy on the Case. Big case with big slow moving fans is the way to go. A small case is much harder to make quite especially once you start adding all those heat generating hard drives. Unless you are space limited go with the big case and a full ATX motherboard.

Getting something with 8 SATA ports is a must. Add-on 6Gb/s cards with more than two outputs are expensive. Although on mechanical hard drives I am not sure the 6Gb/s makes much difference. The AMD motherboards definitely have better value on the SATA side of things.

My last 2 builds have been i5 Ivy Bridge after a long run of AMD builds. AMD always offers better value for money but usually can't match Intel on the high end performance side of things. But... I bet you could not tell a difference in performance without running a benchmark or doing something highly cpu intensive like video encoding. I went with the i5 this time because I was concerned the cpu might limit my ability to trans-code and stream HD video on the fly. Also: the newest AMD chips were not out yet and the older ones were not as power efficient at idle.

I have one i5 with HD 2500 graphics and I have to say it kinda sucks. Since it is in the server that is not really used for viewing this is not big deal but when I was setting it up and testing I was terribly disappointed. My old AMD 4550s were better. This may have been Windows 8 driver issues but I doubt it. The i5 with the HD 4000 seems fine for TV. Runs two monitors and plays back SageTV and other HD content very well. It will also play HD 3d movies. AMD built in graphics are always better but you can also have that experience with a $40 Video card as well.

Power draw from the cpu is really not something I think is terribly important here. The new AMD chips are comparable to Intel at low loads and idle. At high loads AMD will run much higher on most chips but on your server that will really not be that often. It will sit idle most of the time. Recording and viewing do not stress it at all. The real world impact on the overall power usage on the server will be minimal.

Even the low power version of these chips seem suspect to me. They have a lower maximum power draw but at the cost of performance. They will run at their max for a longer period of time to finish a job. As long as a chip has a low idle draw and you are not running off a battery I really don't see the point of the low power chips in a full size box. Might also make sense when you are keeping heat down due to a confined space but not for a server.

[DRB]

I know you say "green", but do you have a goal for how "green" you want to be?

Since it may run 24/7 I want it to be as green as possible. I don't want to lose anything on the performce side, I mean it has to run Sage snappy. I don't mind paying more upfront if I get that back in engery savings.

So for This is what I got. AMD A8 5500 CPU with A85X board in the R4 Fractal case. I will run an 240 GB SSD for OS [thinking WIN 7] and programs. Eventualy this will have [6] 2 or 3 TB HDs and a BluRay drive. Right now I have [2] HD-PVR's and a couple of HDHR tuners. I am thing of maybe going with at least one Colossus HDPVR card to replace one of the HD-PVR's since right now they can be had for $99 after rebate. Are the Colossus less bugging than the USB verison? Do they also require restarts?

This leaves a couple of things left. How much memory and what speed? I was thinking [2] x 4gb. Also what about the PS? I think one of the on line tables show I would need a 380 watt.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by DRB

Are the Colossus less bugging than the USB verison? Do they also require restarts?

Mine work very well, but a reboot weekly depending on the amount of recordings is necessary. Others never reboot, others reboot daily. You'll have to test it to find out.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by DRB

Since it may run 24/7 I want it to be as green as possible. I don't want to lose anything on the performce side, I mean it has to run Sage snappy. I don't mind paying more upfront if I get that back in engery savings.

This is smart. 24x7x365 adds up to a LOT of KWH. This is why I use them any way I can (backups, file serving, etc.). SageTV as a server never uses more than 2-5% of the CPU, except at startup. (addons might use more) Make sure you adjust Windows power settings to lower the CPU speed. Windows 7 does this very well.

I'm lucky to run more than one system at different locations, so I use the server to backup all the local machines, and then the servers backup data to each other. Much better than the "cloud".

Originally Posted by DRB

So for This is what I got. AMD A8 5500 CPU with A85X board in the R4 Fractal case. I will run an 240 GB SSD for OS [thinking WIN 7] and programs. Eventualy this will have [6] 2 or 3 TB HDs and a BluRay drive.

I think the SSD might be a bit over kill, but that's your choice. (My game machine only has a 240GB, all my others (servers included) are happy at 64GB, though 128 is better price per GB) Currently I use about 22GB of the 64GB.

Make sure the MB you pick has all 8 SATA ports inside. Mine only has 7, as one is for eSATA (which I wanted).

Originally Posted by DRB

This leaves a couple of things left. How much memory and what speed? I was thinking [2] x 4gb. Also what about the PS? I think one of the on line tables show I would need a 380 watt.

Memory, I'd stick with 8GB at 1.35V at 1600, but again, make sure they work well with the MB. Mine are running a bit slower than they could, but I don't like fiddling with the BIOS. (BIOS not seeing the XMP settings) (I'm not seeing much over 3 GB usage, but this will be one of the cheapest upgrades, ~$22 vs. ~$44)

This is the power supply I used after a review at "Silent PC Review":
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1297-page1.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151117
(note, those are the same part number, despite them calling the different names) But I only have 4 recording drives, not 6. They have a 450W in the same lineup.

BTW, I'm VERY picky about power supplies, as even a dropping voltage or noisy line can screw up the system. Cheap power supplies seldom run at the rated power, and can die after a year or so (my servers last 5+ years). Plus a lot of people don't understand that most power supplies suck at lower power levels than around 80+%. Most of the time you'll be pulling about 50-100 watts, way down on the left of the power curve. (see page 3 of the review above on why I picked this one)