5 ms·

I wonder what the environmental impact of a 24/7 running system with such high-end specs is. Desktops are worse with a graphics card (just yesterday I noticed m

by lucb1e 5y ago

I wonder what the environmental impact of a 24/7 running system with such high-end specs is. Desktops are worse with a graphics card (just yesterday I noticed my system's power consumption doubles when the GPU turns on: 20W with 100% CPU on all cores and WiFi stressed; 37W with additionally primusrun glxgears running), but desktops only run on demand. Dedicated non-mobile hardware doesn't scale to demand that well and has fairly high idle draw. Don't get me wrong, my server also runs a ton of crap, like git/email/backups/irc/mysql/etc. plus a couple websites and some python scripts (3x doing continuous data logging, 2x providing some service), but it draws less than a traditional light bulb and also runs everything in linux containers. Unless you're doing large data processing tasks like machine learning on a weekly/daily basis, odds are you don't need more than two consumer-grade cores (I've got more since I repurposed an old laptop, but they're very rarely used). Large RAM is nice, though, I do have to say that. My 8GB is stretching it a little, considering that my favorite email server software is a Windows GUI thing and so I run virtualbox to have this guilty pleasure, which consumes about a quarter of the system's RAM just for one service. Aside from Owncast, no idea what requirements that has, I think all of OP's services would be fine with a Raspberry Pi as well, just RAM would be tight with so many individual containers. Especially given the static site hosting, and doubly especially with that offloaded to a CDN, the only dynamic things (screenshot hoster, pastebin) are own use and won't see a dozen concurrent users continuously or anything. Edit: I read over the -track API websites part. I don't know whether those might fit on a Pi as well, but that sounds like various people make use of it and this server is not just single user.

amaccuish 5y ago
Out of interest, what is the email server? Your server's EHLO wasn't very revealing.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  It's an old thing that I should probably not mention for opsec reasons since, honestly, it probably can get pwned (I would be surprised if no intelligence agency has a 0-day for it), and I keep thinking I should switch to linux-based solutions, but it just never floats to the top of my todo list. It's also a fairly big operation since I'd have to coordinate the switchover with some people and I have no idea how to go about IMAP message copying other than telling them to move it over in Thunderbird which seems error-prone. If anyone has a good suggestion for an open source system where I can: - Give people access to control their domains via a web interface (create accounts, set a catch-all, such things) - Have aliases and server-side rules (e.g. blackhole email coming into spamaddr2021december@lucb1e.com; move From "bank" Subject "balance change*" Into inbox/notifications), preferably via the web interface - Optionally: have IMAP and SMTP without a lot of moving parts (I've looked at typical Linux setups before and they're usually quite finicky) Then please let me know!
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I’ve had this before with webmin and virtualmin (I think), but they do a lot more and effectively take over your whole server, so I’m not sure if that’s what you are looking for.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      That should be fine if I can just run it in a container and simply use only the mail server part. I'll take a look, thanks!
  - justsomehnguy 5y ago
    > my favorite email server software is a Windows GUI thing > [list of features] hMailServer it is? And regarding SMTP replacement... for personal uses I moved to Fastmail years ago. It does everything listed except "control domains" - but does it in a reseller account (so you can have the control too). Of course it's all costs money, so...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - fhackenberger 5y ago
    I guess mailcow would suit your needs. Two years ago I replaced an old OpenXchange setup with mailcow and it was fairly easy to switch over. It also support IMAP copy from the admin UI.
    - amaccuish 5y ago
      What made you switch from OpenXchange?
Gigachad 5y ago
I briefly ran a home server on desktop grade hardware. Ryzen 5 with 2 hard drives. The thing was pulling a constant 70w while basically idle. Insanely inefficient compared to adding an extra user to an existing app/service.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Following this rationale, many people run small hosting coops from home, for example as part of the chatons.org or libreho.st federations. The author of the article even acknowledges they host some services for their sister and some other people. That's a great way to mutualize resources (reduce waste) and at the same time is arguably much greener than datacenter/cloud services which require dedicated infrastructure (a great source of energy/pollution), and often have layers and layers of user tracking/profiling and detailed logging which consume great amounts of resources.
- detaro 5y ago
  That sounds quite bad for "doing nothing", modern desktop class hardware can do quite a bit better than that.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    I had to stick a little GPU in it since there were no built in graphics and the machine refused to boot without a GPU. That would explain some of the power. The rest I assume went to the fans and hard drives.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    > modern desktop class hardware can do quite a bit better than [70W idle] If a €1200 built-from-parts desktop from March 2020 counts as modern desktop class hardware... this system uses 85W idle. It has an AMD CPU+GPU, is Intel and/or Nvidia any better in this regard or are you talking about more low-end hardware?
est31 5y ago
From what I saw, both Intel and AMD are trying to adopt hybrid CPUs that hopefully have a power consumption curve closer to M1 systems. So I hope that this improves in the future.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  That would be very welcome from both a planet but also simply a normal end user perspective indeed!
- southerntofu 5y ago
  That's great, but from an ecological perspective, repurposing second-hand hardware will always have more benefits than producing new "green" hardware, as most of the energy spent across the lifecycle of a computer happens during production. Buying a raspberry pi for selfhosting is certainly not greener than repurposing your old desktop/laptop. Although i have to admit the economic incentives are skewed due to foundries and global supply chains paying energy orders of magnitude cheaper than we pay our electricity.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Where did you read that? It doesn't sound implausible, but if we're talking 70W idle for a 24/7 server, that does add up so I'd be interested in where the cut-off point is. Edit: just realized the 70W figure is in a sibling thread, not a (grand)parent, but I'm still interested regardless!
    - BeefWellington 5y ago
      From the environment perspective, it also really matters where that 70W comes from generation-wise. If you're in an area that primarily uses Nuclear or things like Wind, Solar, Hydro, or Geothermal, that 70W of electricity isn't going to be particularly bad for the environment compared to places where it comes from Oil, Coal, or Natural Gas plants.
      - lucb1e 5y ago
Jhsto 5y ago
I guess that in this very specific environment, the only practical reason against the Pis are the containers. Spotty support for ARM images seems to be a continued problem.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  I didn't know that was a problem. I run all my services in containers (only service on the host is ssh) but it's all from Debian repositories and so would run on basically any architecture. I guess it depends on how specialized the software is that you require but what is built into Debian is quite extensive in my experience.
alohahola 5y ago
I run a home-server with pretty high spec and how much extra juice it has left over has been bothering me. It feels wasteful. My server isn't bound by CPU almost at all - the most intensive thing is the occasional trans-coding for jellyfin, however it does use quite a bit of ram for a couple of minecraft servers and ZFS. I'd really like some sort of preferably arm or maybe risc-v based server (in the future) that can take sata and a good bit of ram but most of the SBCs I see would require that my drives work over USB which is annoying and usually dont have more than 4/8gb of ram.

by lucb1e 5y ago

amaccuish 5y ago

Out of interest, what is the email server? Your server's EHLO wasn't very revealing.

lucb1e 5y ago
It's an old thing that I should probably not mention for opsec reasons since, honestly, it probably can get pwned (I would be surprised if no intelligence agency has a 0-day for it), and I keep thinking I should switch to linux-based solutions, but it just never floats to the top of my todo list. It's also a fairly big operation since I'd have to coordinate the switchover with some people and I have no idea how to go about IMAP message copying other than telling them to move it over in Thunderbird which seems error-prone. If anyone has a good suggestion for an open source system where I can: - Give people access to control their domains via a web interface (create accounts, set a catch-all, such things) - Have aliases and server-side rules (e.g. blackhole email coming into spamaddr2021december@lucb1e.com; move From "bank" Subject "balance change*" Into inbox/notifications), preferably via the web interface - Optionally: have IMAP and SMTP without a lot of moving parts (I've looked at typical Linux setups before and they're usually quite finicky) Then please let me know!
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I’ve had this before with webmin and virtualmin (I think), but they do a lot more and effectively take over your whole server, so I’m not sure if that’s what you are looking for.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    That should be fine if I can just run it in a container and simply use only the mail server part. I'll take a look, thanks!
- justsomehnguy 5y ago
  > my favorite email server software is a Windows GUI thing > [list of features] hMailServer it is? And regarding SMTP replacement... for personal uses I moved to Fastmail years ago. It does everything listed except "control domains" - but does it in a reseller account (so you can have the control too). Of course it's all costs money, so...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- fhackenberger 5y ago
  I guess mailcow would suit your needs. Two years ago I replaced an old OpenXchange setup with mailcow and it was fairly easy to switch over. It also support IMAP copy from the admin UI.
  - amaccuish 5y ago
    What made you switch from OpenXchange?

Gigachad 5y ago

I briefly ran a home server on desktop grade hardware. Ryzen 5 with 2 hard drives. The thing was pulling a constant 70w while basically idle. Insanely inefficient compared to adding an extra user to an existing app/service.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
southerntofu 5y ago
Following this rationale, many people run small hosting coops from home, for example as part of the chatons.org or libreho.st federations. The author of the article even acknowledges they host some services for their sister and some other people. That's a great way to mutualize resources (reduce waste) and at the same time is arguably much greener than datacenter/cloud services which require dedicated infrastructure (a great source of energy/pollution), and often have layers and layers of user tracking/profiling and detailed logging which consume great amounts of resources.
detaro 5y ago
That sounds quite bad for "doing nothing", modern desktop class hardware can do quite a bit better than that.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  I had to stick a little GPU in it since there were no built in graphics and the machine refused to boot without a GPU. That would explain some of the power. The rest I assume went to the fans and hard drives.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  > modern desktop class hardware can do quite a bit better than [70W idle] If a €1200 built-from-parts desktop from March 2020 counts as modern desktop class hardware... this system uses 85W idle. It has an AMD CPU+GPU, is Intel and/or Nvidia any better in this regard or are you talking about more low-end hardware?

est31 5y ago

From what I saw, both Intel and AMD are trying to adopt hybrid CPUs that hopefully have a power consumption curve closer to M1 systems. So I hope that this improves in the future.

lucb1e 5y ago
That would be very welcome from both a planet but also simply a normal end user perspective indeed!
southerntofu 5y ago
That's great, but from an ecological perspective, repurposing second-hand hardware will always have more benefits than producing new "green" hardware, as most of the energy spent across the lifecycle of a computer happens during production. Buying a raspberry pi for selfhosting is certainly not greener than repurposing your old desktop/laptop. Although i have to admit the economic incentives are skewed due to foundries and global supply chains paying energy orders of magnitude cheaper than we pay our electricity.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Where did you read that? It doesn't sound implausible, but if we're talking 70W idle for a 24/7 server, that does add up so I'd be interested in where the cut-off point is. Edit: just realized the 70W figure is in a sibling thread, not a (grand)parent, but I'm still interested regardless!
  - BeefWellington 5y ago
    From the environment perspective, it also really matters where that 70W comes from generation-wise. If you're in an area that primarily uses Nuclear or things like Wind, Solar, Hydro, or Geothermal, that 70W of electricity isn't going to be particularly bad for the environment compared to places where it comes from Oil, Coal, or Natural Gas plants.
    - lucb1e 5y ago

Jhsto 5y ago

I guess that in this very specific environment, the only practical reason against the Pis are the containers. Spotty support for ARM images seems to be a continued problem.

lucb1e 5y ago
I didn't know that was a problem. I run all my services in containers (only service on the host is ssh) but it's all from Debian repositories and so would run on basically any architecture. I guess it depends on how specialized the software is that you require but what is built into Debian is quite extensive in my experience.

alohahola 5y ago

I run a home-server with pretty high spec and how much extra juice it has left over has been bothering me. It feels wasteful. My server isn't bound by CPU almost at all - the most intensive thing is the occasional trans-coding for jellyfin, however it does use quite a bit of ram for a couple of minecraft servers and ZFS. I'd really like some sort of preferably arm or maybe risc-v based server (in the future) that can take sata and a good bit of ram but most of the SBCs I see would require that my drives work over USB which is annoying and usually dont have more than 4/8gb of ram.