4 ms·

My problem with homelabs (mine and others) is the power management. Finding hardware that triangulates to energy efficient/good proxy for production/cost effec

My problem with homelabs (mine and others) is the power management. Finding hardware that triangulates to energy efficient/good proxy for production/cost effective is really hard to do.

secabeen 8y ago
Noise is the other issue. I found a nice fanless switch, but my server was noisy for years until I got serious about fans and switched everything to 4-pin Noctuas with PWM set at 50%.
- chrisper 8y ago
  I made my server near silent (it's basically just a desktop computer) but now the biggest noise comes from the disks. I can't stand the noise. Not sure how to make disks quiet though.
  - acroback 8y ago
    Get some SSDs
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    Play with the acoustic settings or switch to NAS-grade drives (WD Red)
icedchai 8y ago
I just ignore it. I have about 10 servers in my basement. Total electric bill is like $160/month.
- ianhowson 8y ago
  I've got a T710 pulling about 200W continuous and it contributes (.28 * .2 * 24 * 30) = $40/mo to our electricity bill in California. A Hetzner dedi is more cost effective for some workloads.
- bjelkeman-again 8y ago
  We had a small cluster in the basement, with a server for all the backups, a firewall etc. initially for our software development and later mainly for email. I just decommissioned it all (still have a few network hard drives for local backup of laptops etc). The power it was drawing was about 300-400 watt. That is 7.2-9.6 kWh/day and 2600-3500 kWh/year. (At about $0.1/kWh.) That is about equivalent of powering a Tesla Model 3 (160 Wh/km) 16000-22000 km, which is about what I drive per year. Our garage has a south east facing roof which with solar panels could deliver about 3000 kWh/year. That installation isn’t terribly efficent due to scale, and would cost me about $15000 to install. Instead we decided to move the email to a Swiss email provider (Migadu) that cost about $4/month. We may install solar panels later amyway, but moving the servers into the cloud cost $48/year and gave us enough equivalent electricity to drive the whole year.

My problem with homelabs (mine and others) is the power management. Finding hardware that triangulates to energy efficient/good proxy for production/cost effective is really hard to do.

secabeen 8y ago

Noise is the other issue. I found a nice fanless switch, but my server was noisy for years until I got serious about fans and switched everything to 4-pin Noctuas with PWM set at 50%.

chrisper 8y ago
I made my server near silent (it's basically just a desktop computer) but now the biggest noise comes from the disks. I can't stand the noise. Not sure how to make disks quiet though.
- acroback 8y ago
  Get some SSDs
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  Play with the acoustic settings or switch to NAS-grade drives (WD Red)

icedchai 8y ago

I just ignore it. I have about 10 servers in my basement. Total electric bill is like $160/month.

ianhowson 8y ago
I've got a T710 pulling about 200W continuous and it contributes (.28 * .2 * 24 * 30) = $40/mo to our electricity bill in California. A Hetzner dedi is more cost effective for some workloads.
bjelkeman-again 8y ago
We had a small cluster in the basement, with a server for all the backups, a firewall etc. initially for our software development and later mainly for email. I just decommissioned it all (still have a few network hard drives for local backup of laptops etc). The power it was drawing was about 300-400 watt. That is 7.2-9.6 kWh/day and 2600-3500 kWh/year. (At about $0.1/kWh.) That is about equivalent of powering a Tesla Model 3 (160 Wh/km) 16000-22000 km, which is about what I drive per year. Our garage has a south east facing roof which with solar panels could deliver about 3000 kWh/year. That installation isn’t terribly efficent due to scale, and would cost me about $15000 to install. Instead we decided to move the email to a Swiss email provider (Migadu) that cost about $4/month. We may install solar panels later amyway, but moving the servers into the cloud cost $48/year and gave us enough equivalent electricity to drive the whole year.