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.