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How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

2 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago
A few thoughts and questions occur: 1. Traffic and load aren't mentioned. If the system is serving continuous requests, suspending or switching to a low-power / hibernation mode isn't viable, but if it isn't, then utilising a wake-on-demand service (wake-on-lan, inetd) might offer some server efficiencies. 2. System performance tuning. Ruthlessly pruning all unnecessary processing to match available power. Disabling cronjobs either at night or when power reserves are below a specified threshold might help somewhat. 3. Scheduled or batched jobs. RSS feeds especially might be slotted such that they're served en mass at a specified interval. These tend to be automated (rather than human-initiated) requests, and if a combined burst of activity allows the system to return to quiet mode, might be worthwhile. Otherwise, RSS could also be disabled at night. 4. A router-based server-side cache. Move static pages/requests further off the webserver itself. 5. Hardware-accelerated crypto / TLS termination. Either on the webserver or router -- moving crypto to a dedicated hardware implementation might reduce processing load. Performance monitering should indicate if this is the case. 6. Detailed system power monitoring: This seems missing from the analysis. A breakdown of power usage by process / function would be interesting. 7. Geographically-distributed service. One obvious alternative to single-site provisioning would be to have a globally-distributed set of servers, possibly serving numerous websites, spread across both latitudes and north/south hemispheres. The likelihood of all instances being simultaneously power-starved is low. Even as few as 2-4 systems should provide considerable availability improvements. DNS load balancing (with some indication of "I'm going to sleep soon") might be an approach. So long as this consolidates multiple websites, the overall embedded energy should remain feasible, and reliability enhancement should be much easier than trying to supply larger panels and/or battery storage.

2 points by oftenwrong 7y ago

A few thoughts and questions occur: 1. Traffic and load aren't mentioned. If the system is serving continuous requests, suspending or switching to a low-power / hibernation mode isn't viable, but if it isn't, then utilising a wake-on-demand service (wake-on-lan, inetd) might offer some server efficiencies. 2. System performance tuning. Ruthlessly pruning all unnecessary processing to match available power. Disabling cronjobs either at night or when power reserves are below a specified threshold might help somewhat. 3. Scheduled or batched jobs. RSS feeds especially might be slotted such that they're served en mass at a specified interval. These tend to be automated (rather than human-initiated) requests, and if a combined burst of activity allows the system to return to quiet mode, might be worthwhile. Otherwise, RSS could also be disabled at night. 4. A router-based server-side cache. Move static pages/requests further off the webserver itself. 5. Hardware-accelerated crypto / TLS termination. Either on the webserver or router -- moving crypto to a dedicated hardware implementation might reduce processing load. Performance monitering should indicate if this is the case. 6. Detailed system power monitoring: This seems missing from the analysis. A breakdown of power usage by process / function would be interesting. 7. Geographically-distributed service. One obvious alternative to single-site provisioning would be to have a globally-distributed set of servers, possibly serving numerous websites, spread across both latitudes and north/south hemispheres. The likelihood of all instances being simultaneously power-starved is low. Even as few as 2-4 systems should provide considerable availability improvements. DNS load balancing (with some indication of "I'm going to sleep soon") might be an approach. So long as this consolidates multiple websites, the overall embedded energy should remain feasible, and reliability enhancement should be much easier than trying to supply larger panels and/or battery storage.