Revamping my unraid for energy efficient 24/7

Not only is it a lower price ... but it's In-Stock  [the other link shows "Out of Stock"  ]

My apologies for posting the link to a Kill-A-Watt, I didn't know you were in the UK.

No problem we have established the next steps before swapping out parts so i 'll try that see how it goes

I'm waiting for the Haswell board as well, specifically the AsRock E3C226D2I to go with an Intel i3 (suggestions please)

as the build could be ultra low powered! I'm also in the UK.

I'm looking forward to the release of 5tb red drives as well due to the tiny power imprint it makes.  Not looking forward to price though...

I just need to find a decent rack mount case in the UK

Any suggestions?

The tirade seems a bit unnecessary.  I doubt anyone's going to buy a $550 mini-ITX board for UnRAID when a $110 Asus board with a $125 Core-i3 will easily outperform it with the same number of SATA ports and only about 10w extra power draw; and for a basic NAS that doesn't need the horsepower, the D525 board has the same storage capacity.    As I noted, the board is being targeted at mini-blades for large datacenters [e.g. https://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/system/2U/2015/SYS-2015TA-HTRF.cfm ]

 

 

As for your question ...

 

Do you know ANY Mini-ITX board with more than 6 SATA ports?

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157357

It's funny that this argument drew my attention, but upon further investigation Barzija's recommendation really is outstanding.

There is no comparison in features of an i3 and a cheap itx mobo.

Asrock C2550D4I will offer dual lan, ecc memory and 12x onboard sata. this is the ultimate unraid / zfs board.

At what cost?

Nobody said it wasn't an attractive board [quite the contrary] ... but very few folks will pay $550 for a mini-ITX board with 6 SATA ports and an Atom (even an 8-core high-performance Atom).   

Interesting that you focused on this on your first post of your first day on the forum ... but you did note another very interesting board -- the Asrock with 12 ports is indeed attractive ... but as hilljd00 noted, just how attractive it is depends a lot on the cost.    I suspect this will also be a $500+ board (Intel's quantity pricing on the C2750's is nearly $200) ... but at least it has 12 SATA ports.

Interesting that you focused on this on your first post of your first day on the forum ...

Also interesting that he used Patilan's original banned account name (Barzija) even though there would be no way a new member would know of it. Methinks these two posters are one and the same. 

Edit: Wait a minute... Just went back to the first page of this thread. When did Patilan's name change back to Barzija?  LOL.

ok the kill a watt thingy majig arrived this morning.

I just shut down my server plugged it in and booted up.

I set it to watts as thats what everyone talking about.

Initial boost went up to 136 watts and around 80 - 90 watts while loading.

Once unraid was up it sat at around 68.5 without me brining it online.

Once online doing parity checks it sitting at around 90

I'll post an update on spun up and idle stats

Interesting that you focused on this on your first post of your first day on the forum ...

 

Also interesting that he used Patilan's original banned account name (Barzija) even though there would be no way a new member would know of it. Methinks these two posters are one and the same. 

 

Edit: Wait a minute... Just went back to the first page of this thread. When did Patilan's name change back to Barzija?  LOL.

Ok its about 57 watts idle (all spun down but cache)

all disks spun up 73 watts

normal usage 62 watts

Ok its about 57 watts idle (all spun down but cache)

all disks spun up 73 watts

normal usage 62 watts

That's actually not too bad.

By comparison -- my Atom-based unit idles at 20 watts (no drives spun up);  and typically uses around 30 watts; and gets up to about 48 for parity checks.    I believe (he can confirm) dirtysanchez's runs about 20 watts higher than those numbers, but the Core i3 is a lot more powerful than my Atom, and if you're going to be running plugins it's a better choice.

But consider whether it's worth the expense to change => if you drop to 40 watts at idle (about what it would be if you used the Asus board/Core i3 combo), you'd be saving 15-20 watts compared to your current system.    15 watts 24/7 is about 131kwh/year.    Not sure what your power cost is, but in the US the average cost is around $0.12/kwh ... so that would be about $16/year in savings.

Mine idles at 38W (cache drive spun up, array drives spun down), and hits 69W on a parity check. So as garycase states, roughly 20W more than his Atom during the same use states (although I believe idle on his system means no cache drive spinning as he doesn't use plugins like Plex, etc).  I include the cache drive spinning in my idle number as the cache drive spins 24/7 due to Plex and other plugins. Plugins stopped and cache drive spun down it idles at 33W.

Anyway, as garycase pointed out, your existing system isn't too bad. Building a more "green" replacement isn't financially viable based purely on saved electricity costs. It would take decades for the electrical savings to pay back the cost of the upgrade.

Ok i get it that this is best i can get with what i have.

I just want to optimize the system this level.

Well I'm running it fanless but theres fans in the case but i never attached them should i just go ahead and do it?

Also what about the sata drives is it worth replacing them as i am tempted to go upto 4tb reds from what i have.

If you move to 4TB Reds you'll save a small amount of power/disk, and may save even more as you can use fewer drives to get the same storage capacity.    But I wouldn't do this just to swap unless you have a use for the old 2TB drives ... if you do, you'll likely never save enough in power costs to cover the cost of the drive swap.

My 2 cents is that often spending money to save money in this area is a false economy.

Sure an i3 will draw next to no power and is a brilliant CPU for this sort of application but the £200 you spend on a new mobo/cpu would be better served buying more hard drives!!!

Just my opinion.

Had my unraid for other a year now and been pretty happy with it overall.

 

I used one of the forum stickied build guide and spare parts to create the original but now looking to refine it and keep it energy efficient.

 

And based in UK and my next electricity bill is estimated £150+ 

 

unRAID: version 5.0-rc16c

MOBO:  Asus M4A88T-M 880G

CPU: AMD Sempron 145 2.8GHz

RAM G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 2x2GB DDR3 1600

PSU Corsair CX 430

CASE Coolmaster Haf 932

HDDs:

Samsung HD204UI F4 3.5 inch 2TB 32MB 5400rpm (parity)

Western Digital WD Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s X4

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal (cache)

 

Running Couchpotato v2, Sabnzbd, Sickbeard x2 and MySQL server which i have yet to set up.

 

Its storing all my Movies/TV shows/Anime and servicing 2 HTPCs and a Gaming PC.

 

It has about 1 tb left and probably going for around 12tb in the long run but I'm just adding as i go along for now but sure need an adapter to add more hdds.

 

This is probably not the main or worse offender but i'm going through them all one by one and as this is on 24/7 guess good place to start.

 

Any advice things to change or swap out be appreciated

If you move to 4TB Reds you'll save a small amount of power/disk, and may save even more as you can use fewer drives to get the same storage capacity.    But I wouldn't do this just to swap unless you have a use for the old 2TB drives ... if you do, you'll likely never save enough in power costs to cover the cost of the drive swap.

Not true. Well, I don't know about the 2TB drives yet, but I've recently sold a huge pile of old, small drives and replaced them with 4TB drives. Even after FleaBay and PayPal fees, I've netted £150 per 4TB of drives sold, which is more than enough to pay for the new drives -- I've bought a variety of 4TB drives including Seagate, Hitachi and WD. I think I'll also have replaced 3 servers with one (with maybe a backup server as well). It means I can also sell some of the old server hardware as well.

My 2 cents is that often spending money to save money in this area is a false economy.

 

Sure an i3 will draw next to no power and is a brilliant CPU for this sort of application but the £200 you spend on a new mobo/cpu would be better served buying more hard drives!!!

Well, this I certainly agree with. The other factor is that I replaced some very power hungry old hardware with very cheap Microservers. That changes the equation because I've now got 20-40W Microservers that only cost (net) £65 each. That definitely saves money in the long term vs. a 150 to 200W monster.

It's also a lot easier to manage 6 or 7 4TB drives in one server compared to 32 drives in 3 servers, so that's worth spending a bit more as well just to reduce that headache. I haven't yet replaced the 2TB drives, but I just listed my first 1.5TB drive, so they will be next.

How can you get 6 or 7 3.5" drives in a micro server?

How can you get 6 or 7 3.5" drives in a micro server?

Good question. 

The HP specs for the micro-server says it supports "... up to 4 ..." hard drives.    While there are certainly some nice mini-ITX cases that DO hold 6 or 7 3.5" drives (e.g. the Lian-Li Q25B and the Fractal Design Node 304), the systems in neilt0's profile are the HP microservers, so I assume that's what he's referring to.

I've now got 20-40W Microservers that only cost (net) £65 each.

Are these the HP Microservers listed in your profile?  Just curious how you got the cost down that low.

Getting 6 in to the original (G7) HP Microserver (N36L/N40L/N56L) is very, very easy.

The G7 Microserver has 6 SATA ports. 4 in the hotswap* bays and 1 internal SATA and 1 external eSATA port. You just need an eSATA to SATA cable to bring that port in to the case and something like a Nexus Double Twin to mount 2x 3.5" drives in the optical drive space -- there's just enough room there.

You can find more info in the thread in my sig.

* They are specced as cold swap, but you can hotswap once you've upgraded to the the unofficial BIOS to enable SATA AHCI on all 6 ports.

To add a seventh drive, you will need a PCI-E HBA and you will need to mount the drive outside the case or use a 2.5" drive, or mod the case like this guy did:

To add an eighth drive, you could velcro a 2.5" drive inside the case, mounted vertically.

In my case, I had a DoubleTwin to go to 6, a 2.5" cache drive under those 2 and an 8th drive mounted outside the case via eSATA, in a drive enclosure. So, as of the last few days, I now have a 28TB microserver!

Because it only has a 150W power supply, you do have to be careful with what drives you use, but if you are using modern NAS-oriented drives, you should be OK.

As for the price, there have been many offers on the G7 MicroServer over the past few years in the UK. I got my first one 2.5 years ago for £120 and the second one I got in June of 2013 for £86. I think they went even lower, perhaps down to £75 towards the end, but by that time you were playing a game of "chicken" as the G8 was out and the G7 was end of line.

The net of £65 is £85 minus the price I sold the included 250GB drive for (~£20).

Cheers,

Neil.

Is it really worth trying to reduce the cost of running your server? Running the server with all the drives spun up, 24/7 is costing you ~£8.50 per month. Based on 16p per unit for electric.

I'm hoping to have 10 drives in the N54L I just bought.  2 laptop drives under the Optical drive bay (looks like 6 would fit but getting more than 4 in would probably be impossible).  4 laptop drives in a 4 x 1 cage in the optical drive bay.  And 4 3.5 drives in the standard mounts.  Was going to move my WHS install here but am getting BSOD's trying to install currently so maybe using my last unRAID pro license and VirtualBox for WHS on it.

What's the point of all the laptop drives? Why not use 3.5"?

There are 6x 2.5" -> 5.25" thingies available: http://n40l.wikia.com/wiki/Miscellaneous#Miscellaneous_Hardware_for_2.5.2F3.5_SSD_or_Hard_Drive.2C_Mods.2C_and_Other_Cards_Expansion

My laptop drives are too big for a 6 x 1 cage (The ones I've seen only support up to 9.5mm and mine are 12.5mm).  I am attempting to using WHSv1 (don't like 2011) but if that doesn't pan out then I can switch to larger drives if I'm using unRAID and I will drop the 2.5 drives - eventually.  I already had the 4 x 1 cage and the 6 laptop drives so I don't need to purchase new drives immediately - even with unRAID.