Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

niggyg · 19 Oct 2023 at 11:41

I'd not thought of a cron job shutdown overnight. Thats a nice little tip to save some $.

dymetrie · 19 Oct 2023 at 11:45

niggyg said:
I'd not thought of a cron job shutdown overnight. Thats a nice little tip to save some $.

Stupidly easy to do, as well!

I used this guidance.

My server now shuts down at midnight every day and wakes up at 6pm during the week and 9am at weekends. Saves a boatload of juice

Trig · 19 Oct 2023 at 12:27

Boatload?
How much juice are you pulling...?

dymetrie · 19 Oct 2023 at 13:08

Trig said:
Boatload?
How much juice are you pulling...?

75% less during the week and 33% less at the weekend is quite significant, no?

Trig · 19 Oct 2023 at 13:51

As a percentage yes, but whats your actual draw?

dymetrie · 19 Oct 2023 at 14:59

Trig said:
As a percentage yes, but whats your actual draw?

Well if full load on a fully loaded gen8 (G1610t CPU) is around 45w, then running it 24/7 is about 197 kWh a year, or ~£55 at 29p/kWh (current tariff)

So cutting down to 6 hours on weekdays and 18 at weekends, that's 77 kWh a year, or ~£21.

Not loads, but comparatively speaking it's a lot.

Feek · 19 Oct 2023 at 15:14

dymetrie said:
Not loads, but comparatively speaking it's a lot.

That's the thing, all these little savings add up. It's why my NAS powers down at midnight each night and comes back on at 08:30.

niggyg · 20 Oct 2023 at 10:17

Unless your power cycles mean you lose a drive earlier...?

I'd have thought its still worth doing though.

niggyg · 20 Oct 2023 at 10:19

dymetrie said:
Stupidly easy to do, as well!

I used this guidance.

My server now shuts down at midnight every day and wakes up at 6pm during the week and 9am at weekends. Saves a boatload of juice

Thanks, going to check if my N40L has the automatic power-on state in the BIOS.

Hades · 22 Oct 2023 at 10:40

My trusty N40L is still going strong as an Unraid server. I just power it in when I need it and leave it shut down the rest of the time.

Avathar77 · 22 Oct 2023 at 10:48

I knew I shouldn’t have sold the N54L! Now I have a need for a NAS!

img · 27 Oct 2023 at 14:16

i havent turned my n40L off pretty much since its been running other than to replace the disks and swapping from windows to unraid. Still going strong though i am considering getting just a couple of big disks and looking at alternatives

Uhtred · 28 Oct 2023 at 17:02

Well, my n40l died today. I had been using it as a zfs replication target but today I noticed it had powered down. I tried to power it up and it went pop with magic smoke. It didn’t go quietly, taking out the ring rcbo and the plug fuse :cry:

I know it’s just the psu but I’m not going to replace it, so off to the dump it goes to be replaced with a raspberry pi

edit - it was 11 years and 2 months old and was in 24/7 service for a large chunk of that

niggyg · 28 Oct 2023 at 17:10

Sorry for your loss,

Mine has mostly been running 24/7 since i got it, it needed the CMOS battery replacing at some point but other than forced windows updates causing issues its been rock solid running Windows Server 212 R2 for years now.

Deleted member 138126 · 29 Oct 2023 at 10:11

Uhtred said:
I’m not going to replace it, so off to the dump it goes to be replaced with a raspberry pi

Man that’s crazy that a Pi is powerful enough. Technology marches on!

niggyg · 29 Oct 2023 at 10:28

Uhtred said:
Well, my n40l died today. I had been using it as a zfs replication target but today I noticed it had powered down. I tried to power it up and it went pop with magic smoke. It didn’t go quietly, taking out the ring rcbo and the plug fuse

I know it’s just the psu but I’m not going to replace it, so off to the dump it goes to be replaced with a raspberry pi

edit - it was 11 years and 2 months old and was in 24/7 service for a large chunk of that

I was thinking of repurposing my N40 case to take a Pi and still use the hot swapable SATA ports. The Pi 5 has a PCIE port so could potentially use a PCIE>SATA card. This is a perfect excuse to be the guinee pig for us all

Uhtred · 29 Oct 2023 at 12:55

niggyg said:
I was thinking of repurposing my N40 case to take a Pi and still use the hot swapable SATA ports. The Pi 5 has a PCIE port so could potentially use a PCIE>SATA card. This is a perfect excuse to be the guinee pig for us all

I swear this exact thought occured to me on my morning walk! I could get a small PSU for the hard disks and to provide power for the pi. The existing fan would cool the pi nicely.

The backplane terminates to a sas connector so a pcie hba would be nice. Bandwidth will probably be an issue, I haven't done the maths yet.

Edit, I removed the heatsinks from the board today. I recommend reapplying thermal compound to the processor heatsink (u1). Mine was in a poor state. The heatsink is very easy to remove.

niggyg · 29 Oct 2023 at 13:55

Uhtred said:
I swear this exact thought occured to me on my morning walk! I could get a small PSU for the hard disks and to provide power for the pi. The existing fan would cool the pi nicely.

The backplane terminates to a sas connector so a pcie hba would be nice. Bandwidth will probably be an issue, I haven't done the maths yet.

Edit, I removed the heatsinks from the board today. I recommend reapplying thermal compound to the processor heatsink (u1). Mine was in a poor state. The heatsink is very easy to remove.

Just watching the temp whilst running CPU-Z CPU bench tester (not the greatest test but it will do). It went from 43°C idle to 50°C after 5 mins. The TJ max is listed as 100°C so it seems fine atm. There would be no harm in replacing the very old TIM though when I get round to it!

I'd be very interested if you have any good results with a N40L > Pi 5 conversion. It's always good to save something from landfill too.

q974739 · 29 Oct 2023 at 19:29

I also would have interest!

Uhtred · 29 Oct 2023 at 19:36

I've done the fag packet maths and running 4x hdd will *just* about be ok as long as I run the pi with pcie 3.0 enabled and choose an hba with pci 3 support. That will give me 1GB/s from the HBA with 4 typical HDDs maxing out at about 250 MB/s = 1GB/s

I did used to have 6 HDDs in my n40l which would work, but then each drive will only have 167 MB/s available.

The OS will be on SSD connected via USB

This all depends on the HBA actually being supported and waiting for breakout boards to come available

Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

Deleted member 138126

Deleted member 138126