Has anyone worked out how much it costs to keep their server on each day?


mbc0

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I have just bought some energenie power monitors due to my monthly direct debit for gas/electric increasing to £476!

 

I have found my HP Microserver (runs Sophos router software/nextcloud etc) and my main unraid server (2950x Threadripper with 100TB storage)  is using combined 550w which equates to just under £4 per day.

 

I am already thinking of changes/replacements to bring the cost down just wondering if anyone else is in the same boat?

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I would be looking at any GPU's if your idle power usage is 550 watts.  Also make sure that you are setting your Array disks to spin down when not in use. 

 

One of my servers is using 74W and the other is at 78W.  (Details in my signature...)  Both are idling at this point of the day and all the drives are spun down.

 

I would not think that replacing working hardware to reduce power consumption would have a very good rate-of-return.

 

EDIT:  One more thing, in the winter, this power consumption is also assisting in heating your residence...

Edited by Frank1940
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Hi @Frank1940 

 

I do not have any GPU's and my Hard Drives are set to spin down after 30 mins (except my SAS drives never do as I believe there is an issue with these being able to spin down on linux/unraid?)

 

Also my servers are in the detached garage so not benifiting from any heat! 😄

 

My HP Microserver with i5-3470T 4X Mech Drives & 1 X SSD is about 50W idle

 

I have not measured my 2nd unraid server independantly I am just measuring the whole cabinet with the 2nd server in it and it is drawing 500W but consist of the following

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unraid Server 2

Gigabyte X399 Designare Motherboard

2950X Threadripper

48GB RAM

24 Mechanical Disks

2 X NVME Drives

Mellanox MCX311A 10gbe Network Card

 

External Devices

MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S 10gbe switch

Zyxel GS1900-24 Network Switch

Huawei B535-333- 4G+ Router 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

So considering neither of my unraid servers have GPU's does 500W sound wrong? is something a bit off here?

 

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15 minutes ago, Squid said:

I make a conscious decision to not investigate that completely as I probably don't want to know.  I estimate though that between the servers and my desktop it costs me a couple hundred a year.  Just the cost of doing business IMO

 

I honestly would be VERY happy if it only cost a couple of hundred a year but I am looking at just under £1500 for my main server and a HP Microserver! not including my Desktop and currently offline 3rd unraid server 😄

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It is in the garage but I laid 10gbe cables underground to the house and use it for

37 Dockers & 3 VM's

 

Admittidly it is currently being used for encoding (tdarr) so I will look later to see how much that drops the wattage when it has finished.

 

image.thumb.png.36ceddbea6dc3819df8a2919c92f9057.png

 

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Yes I know exactly what it costs.  
 

This photo is from my Emporia system: it’s my server and a small intel NUC computer.

 

I have a UPS so I have another chart in UNRAID.  I don’t remember if the UNRAID chart does pricing or just kWh.  I also have a SuperMicro board, chassis and PSU so I know how much just that machine pulls VS everything else.  
 

 

572FD603-9DC3-4E56-870F-A51887FF9F66.png

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Thanks for this, less than half of mine! 😄

 

I have seen something similar to this with another brand that there is a plugin for on unraid  (easier to get in the UK) I cannot remember what it is called so will have to do some digging.

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  • $156 a year
  • $13 a month
  • $.43 a day

Based on local electricity price of $.11 to $.12 per kilowatt hour and an average of 150W with the server running 24/7.

 

The 150W "average" is if the server is doing video transcoding with the iGPU and that tends to be in spurts and is not constant.  Still, in those cases it can exceed 200W for that time but a 150W average for the day is still high.

 

The server idles at a little less than 50W and background processes can take it close to 80W from time to time.

 

At this very moment it is using 120W while it runs both a cloud backup and is backing up two network PCs to the server.

 

This also factors in my router and POE switch being connected to the same UPS.

Edited by Hoopster
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3rd - £4.41

4th - £4.43

5th - £4.41

6th - £4.25

 

Kind of the same boat but that covers pretty much all the IT equipment I run.  4x Unraid Servers, Untangle UTM, S3300 switch, 2x GS108PEv3 PoE switches, 3x Unifi AP via PoE, 2x RPi 4 via PoE, 2x RPi 4 via PSU, APC SMT3000RMi2U and APC SM1500iRM2U.   The only things that are not accounted for are my desktop monitors (desktop PC is a VM with GPU passthrough on one of the Unraid servers) and another S3300 24port switch.  I expect it to go up by another 60W as the summer takes hold, the extractor fan on the room containing the majority of the kit hasn't needed to run since last year.

 

Evaluating my options but my current choice is to just suck it up, everything works as I need/want it to with minimum intervention.  I imagine that will change during the next round of price hikes!

 

EDIT:

 

Interesting side note:  I upgraded my Untangle box yesterday with an Emulex dual 10G SFP+ NIC (1x 10g LC SFP+ module fitted) instead of using the 1GB LOM.  Just checked the wattage on the servers iLO and it has increased by 20w just from the addition of that 10gbe card.

 

Edited by BigJuanKer
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On 4/3/2022 at 3:10 PM, mbc0 said:

I have found my HP Microserver (runs Sophos router software/nextcloud etc) and my main unraid server (2950x Threadripper with 100TB storage)  is using combined 550w which equates to just under £4 per day.

 

This combo is running at 268 W when idle. Costs are EUR 0.29/kwh plus EUR 169.00/year fix. I do expect exploding energie rates.

 

Text in German.

 

 

 

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  • 3 months later...
On 4/4/2022 at 3:49 AM, givmedew said:

Yes I know exactly what it costs.  
 

This photo is from my Emporia system: it’s my server and a small intel NUC computer.

 

I have a UPS so I have another chart in UNRAID.  I don’t remember if the UNRAID chart does pricing or just kWh.  I also have a SuperMicro board, chassis and PSU so I know how much just that machine pulls VS everything else.  
 

 

572FD603-9DC3-4E56-870F-A51887FF9F66.png


so for the off topic question but how do you like the Emporia system?

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Server's about 50W idle / 100W full load. Modem/router/server are on a UPS that wastes about 10W. On average it's about 80W to power the lot, so about 2kWh/day or... 50 cents or so?

 

Main PC with displays runs 300ish W.

Edited by Kilrah
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  • 2 weeks later...

I went through this about 3 years or so ago.   (i have an expensive day rate and a cheaper night rate for power)

I sold my 2990wx and bought a 15w intel itx board and set the hdd's to power down after 15mins. ("main" server is barley measurable at idle) 

I build a second system with a 5700x and underclocked to 3ghz, I have that system running a script that turns off resilio_sync so that Handbrake gets no new jobs during the day when power is expensive and it gets to work at night.

I also got a few solar panels (inverter, transfer switch etc) and put them on my shed and ran a cable to my systems.

Also also i got a couple of GPU's for the render box and set up HiveOS as a VM with the GPU's on passthrough so i could mine ETH (plus a lot more mining stuff around the house that i won't go into) but basically my servers MAKE money Instead of Costing.

 

How much they make depends on how much sun there is, how many handbrake jobs they get and the price of ETH but it seems to be between £1 - £2 a day profit.

 

I some of these things were not an option to me i would just run all my compute on %100 solar and aim for ultra low power from the grid

(basically I'd have my render box on a separate circuit that was only powered by the sun and I'd have to try and make do with 3 hours (average) compute a day)

Edited by mdrodge
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