Power saving tips?

[somewhatdamaged]

Using TrueNAS Scale here, and my main server has 24 drives in it. With the insane price of electricity here in the UK, due to rise again soon, i calculated around £90 a month to have it running and i'm really trying to find ways to minimise this. I know i could turn it off, but i host Vaultwarden, PiHole and Nextcloud amongst others, on an SSD pool which need to be accessible.

Are there any options for having the drives spin down at particular times of the day?
Will snapshots spin the disks up each time they run?

I'm likely not the only person in this boat, so hoping we can get some ideas floated!

 

[ChrisRJ]

Wow, you have some serious storage capacity. I would look into the direction of tiered storage. It would be rather unusual that you need all your data at all times. Perhaps you could move "stale" data to a separate system and power this up only once a week for a short time, to migrate no-longer-active data from your main system.

 

[ChrisRJ]

With the insane price of electricity here in the UK, due to rise again soon

How much are we talking about per kWh?

 

[somewhatdamaged]

Currently 22p per kWh, due to rise to 37p! Server plus switches, router etc averages around 300w, which is roughly 271 kWh per month

Just to add i say UK (as it's easier) but i'm based on the Isle of Man, which is "technically" in the UK..!

 

[somewhatdamaged]

Wow, you have some serious storage capacity. I would look into the direction of tiered storage. It would be rather unusual that you need all your data at all times. Perhaps you could move "stale" data to a separate system and power this up only once a week for a short time, to migrate no-longer-active data from your main system.

Some good ideas here, the only problem is the bulk of my storage is taken up with movies etc which are used for Plex.

Only my main server is on by the way, the second and third systems are only powered up once a month for backups!

 

[ChrisRJ]

This is not meant entirely seriously, but still: Why not move those movies you intend to watch in the coming week(s) to the SSD pool? Or add a cheap SATA SSD with 2 TB without redundancy for that purpose?

 

[somewhatdamaged]

Yeah i've even considered using a secondary server running unraid just for movies, so the disks not in use can spin down (as thats the bulk of the cost) and very few people seem to have success doing this on zfs. TrueNAS would be the "source of truth" for data integrity, and i could spin that up once a week for copies. Hmmmm

 

[N20Visuals]

I'm going to hijack this thread here, please bear with me.

I'm also looking for power saving options with SCALE but not with spinning disks down but rather CPU power states. I used to run CORE and had tunables set to allow the CPU to go to C3 which saved me about 20 watts when the system was idling.

I know there is an alternative to tunables in SCALE but I cannot find the right command to allow the CPU to go to C3, it seems like the power management that scale is using is different from standard Debian. Help is greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[Samuel Tai]

@N20Visuals, it should just be reading and writing values to the /dev and /sys trees.

For reference, see https://wiki.bu.ost.ch/infoportal/_...essor_c-state_usage_in_linux_v1.1_nov2013.pdf.

The gist is to scan /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/cpuidle/stateY/latency, where X is the CPU number, and Y is the C-state number. Then write a latency number slightly larger than your desired C-state latency to /dev/cpu_dma_latency. E.g., echo 5000 > /dev/cpu_dma_latency.

 

[joeschmuck]

the only problem is the bulk of my storage is taken up with movies etc which are used for Plex.

At some point in time a person needs to evaluate if they really need all that storage, is it worth the cost. With so many streaming services and a lot of the content online already, does it make sense to have all that storage? And Holy Cow! you have a lot of storage!

Are there any options for having the drives spin down at particular times of the day?

You know, while you likely could get your drives to spin down, the real question is could you keep them spun down? Every time a request to the NAS happens the drives may spin up. What you do not want is drives spinning up and down all day long.

I'd evaluate which content you have not viewed in the last year, and if the video is one you actually plan to watch again in the next 3 months.

One thing I did was offloaded all my video content to two external USB drives (two for redundancy). When I do feel like watching something, I just copy the video content back to the NAS and let it go. Now I don't have the storage you have so I have no idea how much content you are talking about, every movie made since the dawn of man?

I don't think you will find an easy solution here.

Currently 22p per kWh, due to rise to 37p! Server plus switches, router etc averages around 300w, which is roughly 271 kWh per month

That is about $115 USD a month, ouch! Also keep in mind that your drives are probably just over half of that consumption.

I know i could turn it off, but i host Vaultwarden, PiHole and Nextcloud amongst others, on an SSD pool which need to be accessible.

Place all your needed items on a single server, power off the other two when not needed. But I'm sure that was already and idea.

The other option, whoever is borrowing your Plex library, charge them a monthly fee to help offset the cost of maintaining the system. Think outside the box.

Good luck but I don't think you will find an easy answer. Sleeping drives is probably not the answer but maybe a multifaceted approach would work.

 

[somewhatdamaged]

Yeah the joys of being a datahoarder (mainly movies!). I guess i need to just accept that there is no simple solution really, if i want top quality blu ray / 4k movies from my library at my fingertips, and it really is what it is! First world problems hey

 

[joeschmuck]

Yeah the joys of being a datahoarder (mainly movies!). I guess i need to just accept that there is no simple solution really, if i want top quality blu ray / 4k movies from my library at my fingertips, and it really is what it is! First world problems hey

You can have all that data at your fingertips but you may need to pay for that big electric bill.

OUTSIDE THE BOX
So lets think outside the box for a minute... Let's say you have a fairly new 4K Smart TV that has a nice USB port. I know that I can, and have, filled a portable external USB hard drive with movies and played them directly through my TV USB connector. The trick is ensuring the format of the video content can be played using the built in Smart TV software. This would substantially reduce your power costs. If the external USB drive pulls it's power from the TV, even better. If the drive requires a USB case and power supply, then it may run non-stop but you still save on energy overall quite a bit. So think outside the box if you must. But this may not solve your issue but it might.

 

[somewhatdamaged]

Yeah i think for what i'm wanting to have at home which is all of my movies instantly playable on demand any room in the house, (many are full resolution 4K remux files), with Atmos sound and Dolby Vision to all of my Nvidia shield, then i am likely just going to have to foot the electricity bill (at least on my main server), and just run the backup servers once a month for a data sync. USB to a smart TV just isn't going to be good enough - some good outside the box thinking there though mate, appreciate it! Again, i know this is first world problems when some people are struggling to heat their house or buy food, so i am aware there is a certain perspective of what an actual "problem" is

 

[alugowski]

This works really well to spin down disks: https://serverfault.com/questions/965692/how-to-get-freenas-to-spin-down-disks

Yes they'll spin back up on access, but it sounds like you think yours are mostly idle. As long as your system and apps are hosted on an SSD, then "access" really means someone is asking for data on your disks. If you only have movies then that's playing a movie, if someone is using it for Time Machine backups then that means once per hour. Yes they'll wake up for replication tasks. The upside is that the only convenience cost is waiting a few seconds for the disks to spin up on first access.

 

[Tim1962]

Again, i know this is first world problems when some people are struggling to heat their house or buy food, so i am aware there is a certain perspective of what an actual "problem" is

One thing you WONT need to do is heat the house though

Interested in the thread, as trying to save the kW myself but at a MUCH lower level
Even my much more modest set up is probably 20-25 quid/pcm including seperate firewall/wifi/Hue Bridge etc.
I like to think my warmish server room offsets the central heating a little

 

[joeschmuck]

Hey, I just found out my electrical service is going up again. They raised the rates 2 months ago and of course said they did not expect another rate increase for a long time, but two months later another increase. I can't fault them given the world situation on energy but if Solar wasn't such a huge initial cost and I reasonably thought I'd live in my current home for more than 10 years (if I live 10 more years) then I might think harder about it. And my electric company would only buy back 3 cents per excess kW generated, not an even swap for what I pay for power from them. Maybe I just need to generate solar heated water and that will reduce some of my electric bill. Or better yet, I replace my HVAC system with a Geothermal heat pump, after all my big electric use is HVAC and Hot Water. The Geothermal solution also will preheat an extra water tank while cooling the house. It' very efficient. Hum, would that help offset the cost for the electricity for a home theater server? Yes, but it's a long term solution with significant initial costs. A solar house, geothermal HVAC, and maybe I could be off the grid? LOL, nice dream, time to wake up.

 

[ChrisRJ]

What do you pay per kWh? Here in Germany, if you close a new contract it is about EUR 0.65

 

[Visseroth]

Why not just use some solar and wind with grid tie to offset your electrical use?
Granted solar won't do anything at night but it will during the day.
Wind will be periodic day and night.
I know here where we live my network equipment runs me about $50/mo to use at 10 cents per KWh.
I have two grid tie inverters that are VERY ineffective but during the day they but out around 300W together to offset my costs so at this point, sure they help but I can tell you what not to get, do NOT get those 200 to 1000W chinese grid tie inverters.
I have around 1200W worth of solar panels and I get 1/4 of what they are capable of.
I only know this because I use a Brultech electrical monitoring system which monitors my mains and each breaker in my panel which when enabled does detect reverse flow such as grid tie inverters feeding back into my home.

Energy Monitoring | Brultech Research Inc.

Brultech Research Inc has been a pioneer in the design and development of Energy Consumption Monitoring for residential appliances and loads.

www.brultech.com

The more efficient option might be to do the grid tie inverters that directly attach to the panels but I wanted the option be be able to use the DC for other things so I didn't go that route.

Granted there are things you can do to reduce the server's power consumption but you can only do so much.
My server seems to idle at about 150W or so and can peak 400W. I have 2 pools but the one I don't use much is set to sleep after 60 minutes.

@ChrisRJ OUTCH! Yea I've heard about the energy crud going on out there, that HURTS! I expect in the coming years that prices like that will be seen over much of the world which is why I plan to go off grid in the future as it's currently difficult for me to do.
Wind, Solar, hydro if possible with at least a 48,000 Ah Nickel Iron battery bank.
Nickel Iron, while having many disadvantages has the advantages of lasting a lifetime, being alkaline instead of acidic, it's impossible to under or over charge them and when the fluid change schedule comes up you can save the fluid and use it in your garden as a fertilizer.
Stay away from the Chinese batteries though. Reports have suggested that because they layer the metal plates they have a tenancy to separate when under or over charged. Something nickel iron batteries don't usually care about.

Yea, not ALL of this is related to what you are trying to do but it might spark some thoughts about how to save some power and money, well once some extra money is spent.

 

[joeschmuck]

What do you pay per kWh? Here in Germany, if you close a new contract it is about EUR 0.65

We are now paying a flat $35 USD fee plus ~13.29 cents per kW. The current exchange rate has the USD and EUR at almost equal, so .1328 EUR per kW. But adding in the $35 and since I use about 1700 kW a month, that is an additional 2 cents per kW on my bill, which equals ~15.29 cents per kW. It's not even close to what you are paying. But I'm sure there are people here in the US that do pay significantly more than what I pay, it depends on the area. California is not a cheap location and i never want to live there again, visit yes, live no.

 

[cap]

Try Powertop. You should be able to install it in Scale

Powertop - ArchWiki

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