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[asbokid]

Please delete if this sort of message is not appropriate.

The consumer-heads of hotukdeals.com are raving over this Hewlett Packard server.



Several sellers, including ebuyer.com, are flogging them off for £230 including cashback.  For the price, the Xeon CPU scores well on comparative benchmarks. The downside is perhaps the server memory which has to be ECC, and the cooling requirements.

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-ml110-g7-xeon-quad-core-384-now-234-after-150-hp-cashback-serversplus-1257623

CPU benchmark:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1220+%40+3.10GHz

Processor: Intel® Xeon® E3-1220 (4 core, 3.10 GHz, 8MB, 80W)
Number of processors: 1
Processor core available: 4
Memory: 2 GB
Memory slots: 4 DIMM slots
Maximum memory: 16 GB
Memory type: PC3-10600E-9 - DDR3 SDRAM - ECC
Expansion slots: 4 - PCIe2  x16 x8 x8 x4
Network controller: (1) 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) RJ45 Ethernet 2 Ports
Power supply type: (1) 350 W
Graphics: 64MB shared supporting all display resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 16bpp @ 75Hz
Storage controller: (1) Integrated 6 port SATA RAID
Hard disk: 250GB
Optical drive type: None
Form factor: 4U
Warranty - year(s) (parts/labor/onsite): 1/1/1 WW

cheers, a

[sevenlayermuddle]

Looks good, if you can use the cashback.

Spectacular deals do seem to come around on these Proliant servers from time to time.  I bought one myself (a ML110 G5) three or four years back for circa £110 with no regrets at all.  That Even included three years HP on-site warranty.

They are of course entry-level servers and some folks criticise them for that, but mine turned out to meet and exceed my own quality expectations.  The disk, for example, turned out to be what Seagate called server-grade or enterprise-grade, and would have cost more than the server to buy.

Mine has been running 24/7 since I bought it, now fully loaded with 5TB disk space and 4 USB TV sticks, provding Mythtv for the 7LM household.  It also hosts SVN source control and all our music/video/photo media.  Fan is a impressively noisy at start up but quietens down in use.  You sometimes hear it when it's stressed on a hot day, but no noisier than when new.  A recent board inspection revealed no bulging caps either.

[asbokid]

Sounds like you got an even better deal out of HP!

That server, above, initially looks attractive, but after some back-of-envelope calculations, its power consumption 24/7 would be a killer for a professional scrooge like myself 

There is a server project in Health & Efficiency, our Wayne's favourite environmental magazine. To help save the planet, they are designing a server at the very lowliest end of the spectrum. Based on the ultra-efficient socket s1g1 (AMD64) platform, the effort below runs fanless and with SSD.

Not yet undervolted or underclocked, and using an AMD Sempron 2100+ intended for netbooks, the system ticks over at 17 watts and maxes at 22 watts.

Though, according to great uncle Ebenezer Asbo, that still adds sixpence a day to our fuel bill. Or £20 a year! Not to be sniffed at:  it's enough to buy our Wayne the 60 B&H he always gets for his birthday 

cheers, a

The 20 watt webserver?


Installed in a Novatech Vision half-height case


16.91 watts - Sell your shares in Southern Electric!

[sevenlayermuddle]

Sounds like you got an even better deal out of HP!

That server, above, initially looks attractive, but after some back-of-envelope calculations, its power consumption 24/7 would be a killer for a professional scrooge like myself 

The server's power consumption does play on my conscience, but with a sensible HD spindown policy it's not that bad.  About 50W idle, if memory server me right.  I always approximate that 1W 24/7 is somewhere near  £1 a year, give or take 20% or so.  And the benefits and convenience it brings are worth that to me.  And of course, in the winter months, every kwh of energy emitted from the server is a kwh less that's needed from the central heating.

Not to say I won't someday try and make it sleep properly when idle, if I ever have spare time again.   I think that's do-able but hard work, as it needs to awaken automatically when TV recordings are due, and the myth  frontends need to send it a wake-on-lan magic packet to watch TV.  Similarly, the MAC and the windows PC would need to send a WOL to access SVN.

[asbokid]

50watts sounds good. I had visions of it burning 150 watts an hour or some such.  There is an energy consumption calculator designed by Dell. It's only for their own branded PC configurations, but it seems okay for general estimates.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/global/products/landing/en/client-energy-calculator

If the electricity bill for running a server is upwards of £20 a year, it puts the cost of professional web hosting into perspective.   The economies of scale are keeping the cost of pro-hosting very reasonable, imho.

Even as 20Mbps upstream VDSL2 services become the norm - the electricity bill from running a webserver will perhaps remain the sticking point that deters users from "home-hosting" their own websites.

The plan for a MythTV box was intended for one of these mini-itx mainboards (a slightly better board that sells for €40).  There's a dual tuner DVB-T PCIe card waiting to be installed and a couple of DVB-T USB sticks bought for $3 from China.  All we need now is a Freeview signal!   I rarely watch any TV so torrent'ing currently solves that trifling problem :-)  Fun project all the same :-)

cheers, a

[sevenlayermuddle]

I use one of these to evaluate consumption of most individual appliances.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/plug-in-mains-power-and-energy-monitor-38343

Cheaper ones are available from amazon etc and are probably fine.  Only catch is to make sure to buy one that reads Watts as well as (or instead of) Volt-Amps and, for evaluating financial cost, make sure it's set to read Watts.   That device revealed that the power (about 10W) of each HDD when spun up was reflected almost entirely in machine's total consumption, hence I made sure that idle spin-down worked properly.

The device does bust a few myths, such as the cost of leaving TVs etc in standby.  Turns out to be a few tens of pence per year each for the various TVs and DVD players I've accumulated.   Older CRT devices used much more, I think.  But I'm at a loss to explain the figures published recently by the govt, quoting Consumer Association tests, that cited savings of £85 per year by switching TVs etc off from standby.

[roseway]

But I'm at a loss to explain the figures published recently by the govt, quoting Consumer Association tests, that cited savings of £85 per year by switching TVs etc off from standby.

Many years ago, there were a few TV sets which consumed appalling amounts of energy in standby, but that situation hasn't existed for a very long time (certainly not in this century). Other things like DVD players, Sky boxes, etc., use very little power in standby. Those government-published claims must surely be long out of date, perhaps repeated only for political reasons.

[sevenlayermuddle]

[ Those government-published claims must surely be long out of date, perhaps repeated only for political reasons.

Cynically, I suspect we are seeing an equivalent of 60s cold-war propaganda, where the Govt told us that in nuclear war broke out, all we had to do was take the doors off the hinges and hide under them.  We'd be fine.  It was of course utter twaddle, but it allowed them to claim they had thought things through.  And since nobody could be bothered taking the doors down, the advice kept them quiet.

Similarly today, the Govt knows people are deeply concerned about energy costs, whether financial, environmental, or both.  By distributing nonsense about 'just switch off stuff in standby,that'll help', they can pass the responsibility (or guilt) back to the population, without lifting a finger to address the underlying problems of energy costs.

[roseway]

I'm sure your cynicism is entirely justified.

[kitz]

Please delete if this sort of message is not appropriate.

Not at all, I encourage anyone to share any good deals that they come across..  in fact the forum even has a specific section for it...  hence my finger hovering over the moderate button about to move the thread 

...  but then the topic digressed to power consumption, so Im leaving it here

[asbokid]

Aha! Glad some good came out of it, even if it was in the wrong place!

cheers, a

[Blackeagle]

If the electricity bill for running a server is upwards of £20 a year, it puts the cost of professional web hosting into perspective.   The economies of scale are keeping the cost of pro-hosting very reasonable, imho.

Even as 20Mbps upstream VDSL2 services become the norm - the electricity bill from running a webserver will perhaps remain the sticking point that deters users from "home-hosting" their own websites.

cheers, a

My main PC runs 24/7 anyway !!    Mainly because most components fail at powerup so if I leave it running ..... I have absolutely no idea how much it costs !

[Bald_Eagle1]

My main PC runs 24/7 anyway !!   

That's only because you are obsessed with graphing everything 

Thank the Lord that I'm not like that 

[sevenlayermuddle]

My main PC runs 24/7 anyway !!    Mainly because most components fail at powerup so if I leave it running ..... I have absolutely no idea how much it costs !

I don't entirely agree.

A large proportion of failures of modern consumer electronics are attributable to aluminium electrolytic capacitors, the lifetime of which is governed by a chemical process which is a function of temperature.  As a rule of thumb, life of these caps is halved for every 10 degree increase in temp.

Equipment that is swithed on usually creates a warmer environment, leading to shorter life expectancy of these components.

I always conduct post mortems when my own equipment fails, and it is quite rare these days to find failure that is attributable to any component other than these cap's.   For that reason, even if not for energy saving, I like to power things off.

[asbokid]

My main PC runs 24/7 anyway !!    Mainly because most components fail at powerup so if I leave it running ..... I have absolutely no idea how much it costs !

It doesn't bear thinking about! 

A large proportion of failures of modern consumer electronics are attributable to aluminium electrolytic capacitors, the lifetime of which is governed by a chemical process which is a function of temperature.  As a rule of thumb, life of these caps is halved for every 10 degree increase in temp.

Equipment that is switched on usually creates a warmer environment, leading to shorter life expectancy of these components.

I always conduct postmortems when my own equipment fails, and it is quite rare these days to find failure that is attributable to any component other than these cap's.   For that reason, even if not for energy saving, I like to power things off.

Browsing the documentation for Fujitsu industrial motherboards has uncovered some interesting 'thermography' tests. These tests (see example below) use an infrared thermal imaging camera to monitor a motherboard for signs of hotspots ("What is a Hot Spot not?!"  "A good spot!"):

Motherboard Thermography

Professional cameras for IR thermography cost a fortune ($10,000 and upwards).   Then it struck me that perhaps there are low-cost PC-based IR-sensitive cameras that could at a pinch be used instead?

The sensitivity of the camera, and specifically its true spectral response to infrared light, would presumably be the factors critical to success. Camera makers don't seem too keen to divulge this data.

Does that sound like it could work?

Also mentioned above is the undervolting of a CPU to reduce the core temperature and extend the MTBF of the system.

Most CPU have a voltage tolerance built into their specification.   For example, the low-powered TK-42, an AMD Athlon64x2 core designed for netbooks, has a listed Vcore of 0.8000 volts.

Yet by very gingerly dropping the Vcore by just a few millivolts at a time (until the system crashes) it's possible to discover the point where it still runs stably but at a much lower voltage than officially listed for the CPU.

Due to manufacturing differences, each core is different, but I got one TK-42 to run at 0.6750v,  about 15% less than the listed VCore for that CPU.   In that case, undervolting the CPU also lowered the core temperature by roughly 15°C, even with the CPU at full utilisation.

On a website called elrepo.org (run by a frightening bunch of bearded *Nix fanatics) there are some excellent instructions on using Linux tools for (k8/k10) CPU undervolting   

http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-powernow-k8

Next stage is to discover other appliances that can be undervolted!

cheers, a