Power saving tips?

[Visseroth]

I don't know about you guys but pkg has been broke on purpose in the resent updates, ie...

Updating local repository catalogue...
pkg: file:///usr/ports/packages/meta.txz: No such file or directory
repository local has no meta file, using default settings
pkg: file:///usr/ports/packages/packagesite.pkg: No such file or directory
pkg: file:///usr/ports/packages/packagesite.txz: No such file or directory
Unable to update repository local
Error updating repositories!

So if powertop isn't already installed you won't be able to install it and I just tried to run it on mine and install it, no go.

But yea, if you could run it you could see what processes are using the most power.

 

[cap]

I have already read that TrueNAS Scale users have Powertop in use.
Powertop is mandatory for a power efficient computer.
Efficient mainboard + highly efficient power supply + Powertop => it is possible to get under 10 watts in IDLE without hard disks.
If you use hard disks with Helium, a hard disk needs less than 5 watts in IDLE.

=> a ZFS mirror is then possible with around 20 watts in IDLE with running disks.

 

[NugentS]

powertop exists in the current scale version.

 

[indivision]

i'm based on the Isle of Man

Cool. I know where this is from fighting over the island in Crusader Kings.

One idea for power saving:

Make a second, smaller server with the services that need to be 24/7.

Continue to use the large existing server. But, only power it up when you need to add or use media there... and remember to manually run scrubs, etc. on occasion.

Not really ideal. But, if power saving is the priority, something has to give somewhere.

 

[Albinius]

I just installed an AsRock J5040 with my 8 3.5" Drives. Runs like a charm at 30°C and 7% CPU usage. Pulls 60 watt idle from the wall with all the drives spun up.

 

[Visseroth]

While the J5040 is great for saving power it's not the right tech to be running with FreeNAS.
No ECC support and 8GB RAM max.
FreeNAS is a memory pig, it needs lots of RAM, minimally 1GB per 1TB of storage so unless you're only running 8TB of storage you are sorely lacking in memory and if a memory stick goes bad and you don't catch it in time and the server does a scrub of your data you WILL corrupt EVERYTHING in your pool.
Just giving you fair warning. While the power savings is nice I'd rather spend the extra power and keep my data intact.

 

[Albinius]

I made the personal choice not to take ECC. At the moment i have 8GB of ram, but I can add another 8GB if i see its not enough. For my personal use (Only barebone nas connected to barebone Proxmox server) this shoul be enough. I only store wifes and my phone pics on 1 pool, second pool is movies and third pool is proxmox data. All drives are mirrored, even boot pool.

This level of security seems enough for me, unless you tell me: "What the hell are you doing!?"

LOL - I'm a noob

 

[Visseroth]

My concern was for your system stability, performance and the safety of your data.
How you choose to handle your data is completely your choice but I thought it important to let you know that if a stick of RAM acts up you may find everything gone one day.

 

[Albinius]

My concern was for your system stability, performance and the safety of your data.
How you choose to handle your data is completely your choice but I thought it important to let you know that if a stick of RAM acts up you may find everything gone one day.

But thats only with alot of if's, no? I mean, this can only happen in a chain of unfortunate events I suppose like: While writing data there was a ram failure + a hdd failure?

 

[Davvo]

This level of security seems enough for me, unless you tell me: "What the hell are you doing!?"

I am the guy who tells you that.

ECC vs non-ECC RAM and ZFS

I've seen many people unfortunately lose their zpools over this topic, so I'm going to try to provide as much detail as possible. If you don't want to read to the end then just go with ECC RAM. For those of you that want to understand just how destructive non-ECC RAM can be, then I'd encourage...

www.truenas.com

 

[Albinius]

I am the guy who tells you that.

ECC vs non-ECC RAM and ZFS

I've seen many people unfortunately lose their zpools over this topic, so I'm going to try to provide as much detail as possible. If you don't want to read to the end then just go with ECC RAM. For those of you that want to understand just how destructive non-ECC RAM can be, then I'd encourage...

www.truenas.com

SO basically using non-ecc ram is like playing the lottery

 

[Albinius]

And i just changed my x79 mobo with a E5 2630L for that Asrock. Saved me 30watt idle. Thats about 9.6 euro per months saving. (115euro per year!)

Should i change it back ? LFMAO

 

[cap]

I am the guy who tells you that.

ECC vs non-ECC RAM and ZFS

I've seen many people unfortunately lose their zpools over this topic, so I'm going to try to provide as much detail as possible. If you don't want to read to the end then just go with ECC RAM. For those of you that want to understand just how destructive non-ECC RAM can be, then I'd encourage...

www.truenas.com

Of course, it is better to have ECC-Ram. But it is the same with other file systems.

Will ZFS and non-ECC RAM kill your data?​

=> https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/

I don’t care about your logic! I wish to appeal to authority!​

OK. “Authority” in this case doesn’t get much better than Matthew Ahrens, one of the cofounders of ZFS at Sun Microsystems and current ZFS developer at Delphix. In the comments to one of my filesystem articles on Ars Technica, Matthew said “There’s nothing special about ZFS that requires/encourages the use of ECC RAM more so than any other filesystem.”

 

[Davvo]

Of course, it is better to have ECC-Ram. But it is the same with other file systems.

In-memory errors [...] are a thing. They do happen. And if it happens in a particularly strategic place, you will lose data to it. Period. There’s no arguing this.

To me this is reason enough to use ECC in my NAS.
It's nice to have a source with a different opinion about the subject.

 

[Visseroth]

Heck, with the price of ECC RAM I've started using it in everything I can.
My desktop (AMD Ryzen 5950x) had stability issues with standard RAM. The RAM kept failing, twice! I got tired of it and put ECC RAM in, haven't had a problem since. Performance hit is very minor and I'm happy to take a performance hit to not have to deal with a failed stick that I don't notice until it is causing problems.
As for power savings, minus turning things off there is only so much you can do. As I've said before, if you want to save power then invest in some solar panels and wind turbines and grid tie them or if you really want to go crazy figure out how to run them completely off the grid.
This is something I've been mulling over for a while, I have yet to figure out how to power all my equipment (primarily my POE switch) from 48v DC.
The server and firewall can be powered with a 48v DC power supply but the switch I might have to Frankenstein a bit so I haven't done it yet but I do plan to do some more grid tying.
If you get enough panels up and if your power company support net metering you could potentially zero out your electrical bill with enough panels.

As for the lack of ECC on FreeNAS, yes, it's like playing the lotery, you are at risk of loosing everything you have stored on there.
So, if you are running backups and/or don't care if you loose your data then sure, run it like that.
But if you don't want to loose your data then you need to run ECC RAM, the bonus is not only will you get error correction but if a stick does fail the system will start telling you about it vs, "uh, why is my data gone, what's going on, oh crap a stick failed, I wonder when that happened?!?"

 

[N20Visuals]

I've just found something a couple of days ago:
My SCALE system was upgraded from core a couple of months ago. This week i had to reinstall the os from scratch because i basically bricked my boot volumes. Restored the config and was good to go.
After the fresh install the system consumes about 10-15watts less and as far as i can tell that is due to cpu power management.

before the upgrade the lowest C-state my cpu could reach was c1e, which has basically no power savings at all, now the cpu seems to go to c6 which is the lowest state it can go to.
i tried to reduce consumption even further by allowing disks to spin down, but that didn't work or made such a minor difference that it's not worth the added wear to spindles, heads and bearings.
(system dataset got moved to an ssd pool, maybe this is also a thing that helps with power consumption)

Maybe i'm misinterpreting something here, but maybe i actually found something that might help others to save a bit of energy.

 

[HootleTootle]

I've just found something a couple of days ago:
My SCALE system was upgraded from core a couple of months ago. This week i had to reinstall the os from scratch because i basically bricked my boot volumes. Restored the config and was good to go.
After the fresh install the system consumes about 10-15watts less and as far as i can tell that is due to cpu power management.

Was your fresh install CORE or SCALE?

 

[N20Visuals]

Was your fresh install CORE or SCALE?

SCALE. so my way was:

CORE -> upgrade SCALE -> fresh SCALE

 

[MjSmith]

@NugentS

u said powertop is alread inclueded in scale 22.12?
why cant i run it from console then? it cant find a program/ command with that name.

am i missing something?

Cant find any information with google either ... me current consumption is 32W with a AMD 4650G (35W, UV), 32GB ECC, 3x 4TB WD Red Plus, B550 ITX Board + NVME, 550W Be quiet.

Would be cool to get a idle consumption around 10Watt with no running disks at all, because the nas is located in the living room and it should be quiet most of the time. thats the reason why im thinking to switch to expensive 4TB SSD ( additional to the power consumption).

 

[NugentS]

When I run powertop I get a program running.
Are you using root, or an alternative admin?