I’m wondering what folks do to optimise the power efficiency of their Linux servers. I’ve never really got to the bottom of what is the best way to do this and with the current energy crisis its a pertinent topic.

I’m talking about home servers, so the availability requirements are not the same as in a corporate environment. There might be vast chunks of time during the day or night when they sit idle, and home users are more tolerant of a lag when accessing resources if it means lower energy bills.

Specifically I’ve been thinking about:

  • allowing lower power states when idle
  • spinning-down hdd’s when they’re not in use
  • MAYBE letting machines sleep/hibernate
  • setting schedules of times where you know demand will be low/zero and efficiency can be managed aggressively
  • any other quick wins I’ve missed

It would be amazing if there was one tool or one guide that helps with all of that but thats never the case, is it 😅

Thoughts?

  • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zipEnglish
    5·
    25 minutes ago

    spinning-down hdd’s when they’re not in use

    I’ve just been through this recently. I decided to have my 2 backup HDDs spin down when not in use (99% of the time). I ran into an issue though where I needed them to wake up for SMART tests (which SMART didn’t trigger). Tried a few things that didn’t work so just set them to spin all the time. There’s about a 1-2w difference when they’re spinning all the time. So it’s just not something worth worrying about IMO (In the UK with high energy costs that comes out to 1.3 pence per day roughly).

    • JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.netEnglish
      5·
      9 hours ago

      Spinning up and down hard drives repeatedly drastically reduces their lifespan though. Once a day or so, fine, but if you set a 30 minute idle time or something and it spins them down a dozen times per day, you are putting acceleration forces on the drive many more times than intended.

      If you have to buy a new HDD twice as often because you spin it down, any financial or environmental savings is instantly negated and in the end it is much, much worse in both respects.

      • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        My NAS powers up & down about 3 times a day. Drives are all fine & healthy and some have been in there for years.

        I don’t disagree with your core point though…

        If the drive just finished spinning down and then it’s triggered for a 1 byte file, spins down, repeat… yeah, that definitely needs sorting out.

        Just the initial spin-up lag would do my head in.

        But off & on ~ daily, yeah not a problem.