NAS Hardware advice

[Peter007]

Hey I'm going to setup/build a NAS,

My only concerns right now is the power consumption per year. If I have IP cameras installed controlled by zoneminder and wake on LAN activated does the server consumpt power?

I found this 19" dell R510 Server Server Dell R510 for 220€ with: 1x Intel Xeon L5640 Six Core 2.26 GHz
16 GB DDR3 RAM (4x 4 GB Module)
2x 1000 GB SAS Hot Swap 3.5"


But I've also in mind the Asrock J3455 motherboard. How will be the performance compared to the Dell R510 server and most importantly how is the power consumption?

Thanks for your support in advance

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

If I have IP cameras installed controlled by zoneminder and wake on LAN activated does the server consumpt power?

If I am understanding correctly you're suggesting to have the server turn on and off based on the cameras? Generally folks want to avoid booting up and down their systems like this. The reason is that HDDs wear out faster if they have a lot of spin up and spin down cycles. You'll consume a LOT more power in total, and money, if you blow the HDDs at a significantly higher than expected rate. Now; I don't know the exact numbers so take that with a grain of sale. Most folks are trying to keep their drives alive to mitigate the chances of data loss and save money on drives and probably not calculating the net energy consumption.

As for those parts; that Asrock J3455 looks less than ideal. it uses a RealTEK NIC which may give you compatibility issues. It also seems like a consumer board with a bunch of features you don't need such as audio support. I think used server boards are the way to go; they are designed to be used as a server and have nice features like ECC ram support, IPMI, etc.

 

[Peter007]

Thanks for your fast response!

How much would be the power consumption in idle? Is it between 0-10W or 50W? And how about normal use is it under 100W or more?

 

[Pitfrr]

About power consumption I can give some numbers on a similar generation system:

HP DL380 G6
RAM: 208GB
CPU: 2x L5640

Power consumption (measured at the socket with a socket power meter):

• 136W idle (under vmware)
  • no disks
• 170W idle (under vmware)
  • 6 HDD @5400rpm
  • Extra controller (LSI)
  • 3 system disks @5400rpm

The idle consumption is the most important since that is the state your server will be most of the time.
I was surprised because I expected much more.
I also made some measurement with different CPU (X5670) and the idle values are roughly similar.

 

[elorimer]

I have an install on an ASRock J5005 board with an SSD boot and 3x4TB WD Reds. Power usage is around 28 watts. Dead silent except for a fan blowing past the disks.

As noted, not ideal for the use case: no Plex hardware decoding yet, no ECC, no IPMI

 

[Peter007]

I have an install on an ASRock J5005 board with an SSD boot and 3x4TB WD Reds. Power usage is around 28 watts. Dead silent except for a fan blowing past the disks.

As noted, not ideal for the use case: no Plex hardware decoding yet, no ECC, no IPMI

Wow only 28 watts, that's really low! Is it just for data savings?

 

[Peter007]

About power consumption I can give some numbers on a similar generation system:

HP DL380 G6
RAM: 208GB
CPU: 2x L5640

Power consumption (measured at the socket with a socket power meter):

• 136W idle (under vmware)
  • no disks
• 170W idle (under vmware)
  • 6 HDD @5400rpm
  • Extra controller (LSI)
  • 3 system disks @5400rpm

The idle consumption is the most important since that is the state your server will be most of the time.
I was surprised because I expected much more.
I also made some measurements with different CPU (X5670) and the idle values are roughly similar.

And when wake on Lan is active, is it similar to the idle, or am I wrong? So I want to use 4 Cameras and the server as a file server, but I don't wanna pay over 200€ per year for power consumption... - Is there any possibility to run a power/cost-efficiency server? Also, the IP cameras are recording 24/7 (if I'm understanding this right) is the server in idle all of the time or in standby?

 

[elorimer]

I have movies and music on it, and a plex server. Plus storage for the home users, backing up the home computers, and cloud syncing down from my OneDrive and some of it up to Backblaze. The CPU is at 1-2% except around 30% when transcoding a stream. I didn't intend it for FreeNAS (for stated reasons), and I intend to upgrade it to a more suitable used set of components. But I was pleasantly surprised it came up fine with a transplanted prior setup and I figure the savings will pay for the upgrade and re-transplantation down the road.

I don't think WOL works the way you think it does. I have two windows machines that sleep at around 4 watts, and I use WOL to bring them to an active state after a minute, when they are at 45+ watts. After I've used them, I put them back to sleep. But they aren't available for anything when asleep. It's not like they pop up when there is LAN activity addressed to them. I'm probably misunderstanding you.

 

[Pitfrr]

And during sleep the HDD are powered down. Which you want to avoid if you have spinning HDD...

You could also go for more power saving systems. I have an asrock C2750 as backup/test server, it's quite power efficient (although I wouldn't recommend this one specifically given the watchdog bug). I measured about 30W idle (no disks, all DIMM populated).

Of course if you use a server like an R510, the power consumption will be much more. They are designed to be power efficient but not necessarily low power!
In the DL380 there a 6 fans, each one is rated for 25W... :-O
This is a choice then you have to make depending on your needs. But, since we addressed wake on LAN, the WOL might put higher stress on your HDD and cause premature replacement which, in terms of costs savings might not cover for the power savings costs of using WOL...