Topic: asus eee

[meneer]

Since the asus eee comes cheap these days, would it be useful and possible to make a simple home server using the smeserver distro?
Is the ssd storage suitable for a server?

[dgs]

Are you talking the EEE sub-notebook or the upcoming EEE box?

I know its been asked before by others, but why would you wish to use a notebook as a server, its a little akin to using a screwdriver as a shovel. Right job wrong tool.

The EEE box would be more appropriate and there is no reason at least in principle why SME could not be loaded  but no guarantee.
And with only one nic and no PCI expansion and it rules it out as an easy solution for gateway/server configurations.

But unless you are looking for ultra small form factor power usage why would you bother with these tiny boxes when you can purchase a far more capable box such as the Dell T105 or SC440 for around the same money?

[imcintyre]

I have a eee asus that my daughter carries back and forth to school. Great device for that. I did consider relieving her of it but have not. There's a bank here giving them away for opening an account.

 It would in theory be a good idea as a low power home mail server/firewall etc but not really. The 2nd network card seems to be not feasible.

On a practical note, it seems to have difficulty with Samba shares that are not easy to overcome.

[meneer]

Thanks sofar!

I am looking for a replacement for an 400 watt power house system, that I only use as a mailserver and testbed for websites. It's behind a adsl router, I don't use 2 network interfaces.
I don't need real power anymore, sonce external hosting of websites is fine with me. An eee laptop, or another for that matter, would be just fine.

[Confucius]

I would suggest to have a look at the Intel ITX platform. Extremely low power consumption and a small footprint. Prices vary but for as little as 50 euro you can already have a board where the processor (Atom) is included.
I have no experience with these boards yet but I'm also looking forward to try 1 in combination with SME.

[imcintyre]

A good asus eee link

http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Internal_Upgrades

[janet]

meneer

I am looking for a replacement for an 400 watt power house system

I'm almost certain your server is not using 400 watts of power all the time and probably never uses that amount of power at all.

The rating on the power supply (eg 400 watts is typical these days since P4 CPU's), is a rating of the maximum power that the power supply component can supply to the rest of the items in the computer box. If you only have one or 2 drives spinning and the system (CPU etc) is doing very little work, and the monitor is turned off, the power consumption will be much less than the maximum rating.
It was a while ago since I last measured actual power consumption for workstations and servers, but it was more like 30 to 60 watts on average. Different systems will vary of course.

[arne]

I have also tried to measure the power consumption of a PC with a 400 W power supply, and the real power consumption was about 10 persent or 35 watt. I then calculated what 35 w of extra heating of my apartment would cost, and I concluded that I could afford it.

There is a very easy way to find out if a PC consume a lot of power or not. This is to feel with your hand on the main board controller, around the processor, the graphic adaptor, and the blow out from the power supply. If there is a lot of heat, it runs with some power consumption. If most areas are mainly cold, it consumes rather litle energy. In general: If the fan blow out from the power supply feels rateher cold, and not to hot, power consumption will normally be 50 Watt or less. (I actually as measured a number of PC's for power consumtion, and this is my general practical conclusion.)

I have also tried to run the sme server at different platforms, like old laptops and even a HP thin client and it all worked. The HP thin client did not perform well enough, but I rebuildt it to be a Asterisk telephony server, and it has been running for thas purpose for more then a year now in my friends apartment.

Generally I agree with the posts above the a laptop or a sub laptop is not a practical "hosing" for a server and it will generally not perform to well. I once tried to install SME server on my Shuttle X-Box and this worked very well. If it was not used as my desktop now, It would have been my SME server.

[meneer]

I have done some measuring, 80 watts, running an AMD Duron 1300. Too much if you ask me...

One conclusion: this box will have to go!

[janet]

meneer

80 watts....Too much if you ask me...

I don't know the price of electricty in your area, but at 10 cents per kWh, and running 24/7

365 x 24 x 80/1000 x 10/100 = $70 per year, not overly expensive.


Compare that to an electric heater, say a 2400 watt rating running for 8 hours per day for 6 months

365/2 x 8 x 2400/1000 x 10/100 = $350.40, now we are starting to get costly.

[meneer]

meneer

I don't know the price of electricty in your area, but at 10 cents per kWh, and running 24/7

365 x 24 x 80/1000 x 10/100 = $70 per year, not overly expensive.


Compare that to an electric heater, say a 2400 watt rating running for 8 hours per day for 6 months

365/2 x 8 x 2400/1000 x 10/100 = $350.40, now we are starting to get costly.

Let's say €0.20 per kWh and the picture changes, €140 per year, around $200/year.

[janet]

meneer

Let's say €0.20 per kWh and the picture changes, €140 per year, around $200/year.

That's still not overly expensive for a device left running 24 hours a day doing, I assume, a valuable service for you or your business.
Do you expect to get electricity for free ?

[meneer]

meneer

That's still not overly expensive for a device left running 24 hours a day doing, I assume, a valuable service for you or your business.
Do you expect to get electricity for free ?

Free, only the software I fear...

It's just a personal mailserver and testbed for websites. Nothing critical. A left over of my old hobby, playing with smeserver

After some checking I think buying/building a new server will reduce the load to some 30watts. It takes a little investment into new hardware, but the reduction will pay for it in a few years.

[Reinhold]

Not to doubt anyones figures but "powerhouse" doesn't sound like PII or M to me ...

Perhaps - just in case - you guys could (should?) measure your basic measured power consumption again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_power_dissipation
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/perf/spec/otherPower-c.html

 

[arne]

It is a big difference between TDP Thermal Design Power and what a processor consume of power more or less on idle. But it is a good idea to chose a processor that consume little power. A soldering iron uses typically 20 Watt. The heat of a soldering iron represents 20 Watt. All electric power that is consumed by a PC is converted to heat. My servers processor has a TDP of 65 watt. Running on idle it does not produce the same amount of heat like 3 soldering irons. When a PC is hot inside and at the fan blow out it consumes much electric energy. If it is cold it consumes littele elecric energy.

From an economical point of view to heat your apartment useing heating using a processor will cost identical the same as using an electric oven. If you are using your PC while you are reducing your indoor temperature with 3 degrees you will save money. Burning electric energy in an electric oven is booring. Burning electric energy in a processor is fun. It is more fun to have a computer heated apartment then an apartment heated by other electrical things.

[mercyh]

It is more fun to have a computer heated apartment then an apartment heated by other electrical things.

I like your viewpoint...

unfortunately not all of us live in the Antarctica, so we may be actually paying to undo the heating.. (possibly a bigger cost then the electricity to run the computer )

[mercyh]

Just for interest sake. My UPS shows usage. Here is what I get.

2-PC's

1-has two hardrives and an intel quad core processor
1-has one hardrive and a P4 2.8ghz processor
1-19" LCD monitor
1-17" CRT (which is normally powered down as it is now)
1-Tape adding machine

Total power usage = 207 watts.

[imcintyre]

and occasionally, people have to cool their apartments/homes so less can be more. The appeal can also be to do what is necessary consuming the least amount of space. No need for a monitor, keyboard, UPS etc.

[arne]

Possibly slightly off topic according to the original question, but if saving energy is a main issue, this alternative looks very interressting:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,review-31253.html

I think I would like to try this alternative ..

[dgs]

Since this topic has evolved into into a discussion on low power consumption options, I'll throw Via Artigo into the mix as well.  http://www.mini-itx.com/2007/12/10/via-launch-artigo-pico-itx-builder-kit.

And along the lines AMD have taken there is also a lower power option which will run without fan cooling.
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=41

The advantages of these mini sized packages potentially are
- Potentially Silent
- Small form Factor
- Ultra low power consumption.

The disadvantages are
- much more expensive relative to much more capable budget servers such as Dell T105 or Dell SC440
- performance will probably be unacceptable for most SME server applications
- I have yet top see any configurations on offer with 2 NIC interfaces so Server/Gateway operation is pretty much ruled out.

(If anyone knows  of any of these micro systems with 2 on-board NICs I'd love to source one, though not for use as an SME replacement)

I would be interesting to see any feedback from those who have tried any of these mini sized solutions in SME applications.

[christian]

unfortunately not all of us live in the Antarctica, so we may be actually paying to undo the heating.. (possibly a bigger cost then the electricity to run the computer )

exactly, I am in a northern climate so about 10 months of the year my server and peripherals are net contributors.

In hotter climates what you will find is for every 1 Watt of power you consume in direct electricity, you will need 0.85W of power to extract/cool the excess heat. If you then add UPS overheads, power supply inefficiencies (good ones are about 80% efficient), and distribution losses you are looking typically at 2x-3x the actual electrical draw of the appliance (in a home environment). Data Centres can be anywhere from 2x to 4x thus why 3x is often approximated.

You can buy or borrow a "Kill-A-Watt" meter which will do a good power consumption approximation. To buy is about $20 though in Ottawa at least you borrow them from the library.

Christian

[Trashman]

Maybe i can add some helpfull info here, im runing actually my SME server on an old notebook, p3 500mhz, 320mb ram, 40gb hdd, its runing fine and im pretty sure it consumes a ridicule amount of energy and generates even less heat, do a search on google and/or ebay for Compaq Armada M300, even the price you pay for it is ridicule this days, more if you manage to get one without the screen (be carefull to get one with the base dock, no internal cd can be a pain to install sme)...this model have integrated ethernet and a pcmcia slot, so you can add a second network card (and it can be either wifi or wired) and its VERY small (that was my desicive point as i kinda dislike bulky things, i prefer thing appliance like)...it also have an usb port...the ac adapter says 18,5W but im pretty sure that without screen, the base (you can remove it after install, it only have the drives) and battery the thing must be consuming kinda 12W or less...
This particular lappy model also have a strange thing very usefull in some situation...if you plug it without the battery it turns on automatically...this is usefull because if you get a blackout the system turns itself on when the power comes back, you dont need to do it yourself, very appliance like...and very usefull in some parts of the world where the power network is not 100% reliable...(anyway im not sure if that kind of spontaneous turn off is any good to a linux install, some1 please shed some light on this unrelated subject)

[meneer]

I just had a look at asus eee box pc, not the laptop, but the desktop version, with an 80 GB harddisk (enough for me).
It's a very small unit and it only consumes some 18 watts. I calculated that the energy savings alone will save me the cost of the unit in 2 years.

Here's a link.

[dgs]

The EEE box looks good, biggest negative I can see (assuming it works for SME) is on a single NIC rules out using an EEE box as a SME server/Gateway.

I found another box, that's even smaller and better spec-ed then the EEE which has models available with dual LAN, I've ordered a few for another project and was going to try to run up SME on one, and see what works and what doesn't.

http://www.compactpc.com.tw/ebox-4852.htm

It's still cheaper to buy a more powerful budget Dell poweredge, but that does not have the small form factor and power saving advantages. 

[meneer]

The EEE box looks good, biggest negative I can see (assuming it works for SME) is on a single NIC rules out using an EEE box as a SME server/Gateway.

It does have both a lan interface as a wifi (B/G/N) adapter. So it could be used as a server/gateway

[Trashman]

Also dont forget those usb-ethernet adaptor...maybe not the best option but there must be some usb 2.0 and speedy enough...(also some isp provide their modems with usb access, not very common tho)

[arne]

Another option is a second hand laptop with a PC-card (PCMCIA) slot. I have not tried it yet, but I would guess it would work with a PC-card network adapter, so it can run in gateway mode. It the switch that is activated when you close the laptop, and if there is not to much heat, this might be an interesting and quite compact server gateway. Have not done this project yet, but have the parts, and guess I will try it out .. If eee, laptop or stationary is used, I guess the important thing will be to use a model with "clasical harddisk" as this will be a bether solution for a server.   

[kevinb]

Not to get off topic but this may be of interest .... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,1997.html.

I have also seen a setup which used an automobile PC (low power, solidstate, no fans, SSD for hard drive) with a USB external drive for storage capacity. It was very clean. The computer was about the same size as the USB drive.

[Trashman]

Maybe i can add some helpfull info here, im runing actually my SME server on an old notebook, p3 500mhz, 320mb ram, 40gb hdd, its runing fine and im pretty sure it consumes a ridicule amount of energy and generates even less heat, do a search on google and/or ebay for Compaq Armada M300 yada yada yada yada......

Another option is a second hand laptop with a PC-card (PCMCIA) slot. I have not tried it yet, but I would guess it would work with a PC-card network adapter, so it can run in gateway mode. It the switch that is activated when you close the laptop, and if there is not to much heat, this might be an interesting and quite compact server gateway. Have not done this project yet, but have the parts, and guess I will try it out .. If eee, laptop or stationary is used, I guess the important thing will be to use a model with "clasical harddisk" as this will be a bether solution for a server.  

Ajem...original idea?

Also i want to point out that the lappy i mention there also allow a second hard drive to be installed INTERNALLY...how? in the dock, the optical drive can be replaced with a hard drive caddy that goes on the same slot...this gives a lot of options in security, backup, redundancy, etc that you usually cant get so easy from a lappy...
The dock with the optical is factory standard in this model...and the caddy is also ridicully cheap...and also this dock support dvdrw as example, another good option to have in mind...