Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : Low power 1u

[bobrepus]

We are looking for a couple of new servers and it seems power is a big factor in the price of a colo at the moment.

Objective
PC based system (as opposed to Apple MAC)
1u case with Rails
Less that 0.5 amp at all times, including boot time
& max utilisation
Processor(s) with as many cores & clock cycles as we can get with the available power

Target Minimum specification
4gb RAM
2 x 250GB hot-swap hard disks, RAID1
100mb Ethernet
IPMI 2.0 system monitoring
1 USB port
Basic integrated display adapter
Keyboard & mouse ports


Thanks for any advice...

[stuartornum]

Good luck finding something less than 0.5amps inc boot.

I take it you are talking about UK power supply also @ 240v, as this will obvioulsy effect things!

Example of 1U server

Core 2 Duo E6420, 2.13Ghz
Intel based 946GZ motherboard, onboard VGA, NIC
1GB DDR2 RAM
1 x 250GB WD HDD

On boot = 0.51 amps
Idle = 0.4 amps
100% = 0.5 amps

Putting in 4GB of RAM (Im assuming 4 x 1GB..?) and another HDD will increase power on boot, and that is what they will measure your power usage as, on boot, im guessing around 0.65 amps... possible / probably more.

Hope this helps

PS there is a new AMD dual core "BE" chip that has really low power consumption, might be worth looking at those.

[KDAWebServices]

We run Tyan systems with 3 drives + RAID card + AMD Dual Core (EE versions), with 2GB RAM and they draw <0.5A, I think around 0.35A from memory when lightly loaded, still <0.5A when loaded as I recall. I should add, that we generally try and use single platter drives and as few DIMMs as possible as well, to keep the power usage down. I think the largest single platter drive you can get at the moment is 250GB (which is fine for 90% of our customers).

[nitrohosting]

Dell PowerEdge R200

EDIT: You said hotswap disks - sorry...not the R200 then...

[Zitibake]

Originally Posted by KDAWebServices

We run Tyan systems with 3 drives + RAID card + AMD Dual Core (EE versions), with 2GB RAM and they draw <0.5A, I think around 0.35A from memory when lightly loaded

I have a similar need for a lightly loaded server, low power, but need lots of disk. The disk doesn't have to be fast. And no, a firewire hub and a pile of 80G iPods won't work .

Has anyone used the 1TB low-power Caviar:

http://www.pcconnection.com/IPA/Shop...tm?sku=7897535

? They claim 4 watts at idle, 7.5 read/write. I think that would mean 0.1A at 240v, for 3T of disk. Any better options for low power disk?

[KDAWebServices]

We looked at them, but the performance isn't there when we do need it, so we avoided them, don't think they were certified to run with the Areca card on the job we looked at them for.

[Lewcy]

I think you are possibly getting far too worried about this. We only get charged £3 per .1 of an amp for overage which isnt a lot really. However you would be scarificing a lot in terms of server spec if you worried about keeping it under .5. Note, an athlon dual core 5200+, 4gb ram, 4x 250gb drives for us draws 0.55 on boot and between 0.4 and 0.5 when in use.