Hi Guys,

 

I have a very powerful, but old 6 Core Xeon based old school machines with 6GB RAM, Corsair Cooling. It's got about 8 drives (1 Parity, 1 SSD Cache, and rest are data -- mix of 1TB, 1.5TB, 3TB, 3TB, 8TB, etc.) connected to an LSI controller. Works like a charm. Knock on wood. The data usage the drives in the server is about 50% give or take.

 

Since I'm in California, PG&E electricity rates are quite high compared to where I'm from (Canada). I put a Kill-a-watt on the thing, and noticed that it idles over 109KW/h. That's quite a bit, especially with all the drives spun down.

 

I have a Core i5 NUC w/16GB RAM. But since it has only one SATA port, which isn't exposed, I'm left with USB 3 ports. I was wondering... If I can reduce my data consumption down to perhaps 4-5 drives, and connect them to the NUC with some type of 3.5" External Enclosure and a USB Hub, would that work with unRAID reasonably well? Remember, I'm not aiming for the fastest speeds in terms of data transfers. My wifi network is quite shitty, though I have a pro-sumer router, and a managed switch, etc. Since I'm renting, I can't do anything with cabling etc.

 

So that's one option, I liked, since the NUC runs ESXi, and I could virtualize (if possible) unRAID, or just run it on baremetal, and use KVM/Dockers inside of unRAID (as I do now to a small degree).

 

Final option, is to get a motherboard/CPU (and RAM) combo that'll be low on power consumption, at least on idle. 

 

Are there such enclosures that anyone can recommend that do SATA to USB 3.0?

 

If anyone has read between the lines, I run a small lab at home which is kind of scattered since I'm making it piece meal as I'm not sure whether I am going to end up buying a house somewhere in San Jose/Bay Area or move back to Canada. But I have a few years until I understand what is going on with my green card. So I'd like to keep my foot print small.

 

Thanks all. unRAID has been fun, especially the community. I use NetApps at work, so I can appreciate what unRAID does at almost little to no cost.

 

D.

Hi -

 

The issues with USB drives in the array include poor error handling and capped bandwidth.  I really think you would be happier with a new motherboard.  What are you doing with your system besides basic NAS?  A motherboard with 6 or 8 SATA ports could eliminate the LSI card (which would save power) and a modern Core i3 or Pentium G4600 is a pretty powerful CPU now.

 

If you calculate the actual $ savings it won't be very impressive - but you could easily cut that power usage in half.

2 hours ago, daze said:

Since I'm in California, PG&E electricity rates are quite high compared to where I'm from (Canada). I put a Kill-a-watt on the thing, and noticed that it idles over 109KW/h. That's quite a bit, especially with all the drives spun down.

 

Confused, is that over a period of an hour, day, week, month, year?  The Kill-a-Watt is able to measure Watts, can you post that number?

3 hours ago, daze said:

move back to Canada.

^^^ This

There are impossible of 109KW/h , it should be 0.109KW/h or 109W/h.

I have an unRAID server which build by a 8 bay QNAP NAS + 5 bay USB 3.0 enclosure for backup purpose and not running 7x24. I have spend a month to make the enclosure working stable. The end-result was disks in enclosure can't spin down, otherwise it will have issue. So. this won't help in terms of power usage.

 

The point just rather small footprint, utilize existing hardware and easy swappable. I don't recommend for such setup.

Edited September 11, 20178 yr by Benson

Benson, you're right. It's actually not KW/h. It was late, and realized after posting it. 

 

I think as everyone pointed out, I'll look for a new mobo with a Core i3. I should be plenty happy with that. I'll have to do a proper savings spreadsheet, etc.

 

Thanks everyone to your input. 

 

D.

The problem, you'll find, is that the savings doesn't add up very quickly.  Let's say you're drawing 109W now (reasonable, my older system is over 80W).  That's 954 kWh/year, and at $0.22 (my rate here in expensive New England) that's $209.  But if you cut that number in half (reasonable with new hardware) you're only saving $100/year and your payback on new hardware is several years...  Retiring that old hardware is still a good idea but it's not going to make you rich.

Edited September 11, 20178 yr by tdallen

10 hours ago, tdallen said:

The problem, you'll find, is that the savings doesn't add up very quickly.  Let's say you're drawing 109W now (reasonable, my older system is over 80W).  That's 954 kWh/year, and at $0.22 (my rate here in expensive New England) that's $209.  But if you cut that number in half (reasonable with new hardware) you're only saving $100/year and your payback on new hardware is several years...  Retiring that old hardware is still a good idea but it's not going to make you rich.

 

 

I was going to post something similar to this. Sometimes it makes better sense to use what you've got until you've got a better reason to upgrade.