Going greener

[Wills]

My power hunrgy Dell Poweredge Server is next inline for replacement, it runs most of the day 16-18 hours with the power saving features was a good buy. Now it consumes more power than all the other computers together and since switch to Apple gets little use other than mail and storage sharing.

Thoughts are going the Drobo route for storage, the new Drobo Pro is very fast but expensive in relative terms, with drives increasing at a fast rate the need for 16 slots is a little bit of overkill. The standard Drobo is not ethernet connected so a round about route I can do without, as the other computers need 24/7 access to data so sharing is out. Netgear do one but nothing implements the disk management as effectively as the Drobo.

I intend looking further into the greener computing area as our electricity charges are now almost 200% higher than 2 years ago and it's like burning money.

 

[Canary Dwarf]

Hi Wills
How many machines do you have running off it.

I use a 1TB 2-disk D-Link DNS-323 with runs 24/7 and also serves as an iTunes server. It only uses 25w compared to a server. I have an ftp server on a domain so i can access it anywhere across the web. Although most of these SOHO NAS boxes benchmark slow, but run across Gigabit ethernet, I can hardly notice any difference when opening files. I run it in power-saving mode, which shuts off the drive after about five minutes of inactivity, and this is where the hit is. You'll wait about 5 seconds for it to wake after it has spun down.

I looked into a Ubuntu server at the time, but this was by far the most energy-efficient choice.

 

[Wills]

Marc I have six machines accessing the files on the server though most are small documents, my Mac is my main editing workstation and the files are about 1G - 2G depending how large the prints are, the main printer used to be served off the Dell but the Mac didn't offer the same control as plugged directly into the machine through the usb port.

Printer wise I have a CD disk printer, a HP A4 colour for the odd colour stationery, HP laser for most of the business needs, a Dye sub for photo prints and a 44in large format printer for main work.

Disk space I use about 1T a year, archiving off the finished files to dvds as these are only rarely needed. I have a few ext disks 250-750GB hand but choke if I load big files so not an option. Network is 1G wired to a switch and the server I run duplex but see little benefit.

So The server doesn't do much basically files and printers it has 9 drive bays, 7 fans, twin Xenon processors all generating a lot of noise and heat.

The ability to hook up a NAS box to the switch through a 1G link appeals, also some sort of basic print server box maybe part of the hub/switch would remove the dependency on the server to host the printers.

 

[Canary Dwarf]

Wills, the NAS also acts as a USB print server, but it will only handle one printer. The trouble is it's limiting in terms of drive size. Two 1TBs are economomically viable, but if your needs are greater than that you need something that will take more.

I might be tempted to look at a energy efficient tower to act as a file and print server. Put as many Samsung F2 1TB drives (very energy efficient) as you need in a RAID formation and just swap them out (or add to them) one by one when the need arises.

Put in an 80-plus certified PSU which will cut your power consumption, and i think that will do the job nicely for you.

It won't need excessive cooling, so will run quietly and will require little power

 

[Wills]

Thanks again Marc I'll take a look at that arrangement. Whilst in the Apple store I had a chance to talk to the assistant on the Apple Mac Pro options as these are very power efficient, have flexible drive bays and quiet, one could replace two of my present machines the server and workstation.