Low Power Server with VMs for RV

[Temper]

I am looking to setup a low power server for an RV. I want it able to run virtual machines and run limetech Unraid.

 

I was thinking a system based on Intel Atom C3958..

 

 

http://www.nextwarehouse.com/item/?3308280_g10e&gclid=CjwKCAiAhp_jBRAxEiwAXbniXXfU5v2X96zilcfYYnD16VepdHDOktgBG-tRECSsxvKAdHQJp8QBOxoC6qoQAvD_BwE

[manikyath]

why would you want to run VMs on unraid on a low power box?

 

like, what actually do you intend to do with this?

[myselfolli]

Yeah, that's not gonna work too well

[Temper]

35 minutes ago, manikyath said:

why would you want to run VMs on unraid on a low power box?

 

like, what actually do you intend to do with this?

Lol.. I'm going to take it that you don't know what a VM is or something..

 

Why would I want to? Flexibility?

 

But the atom processor I linked to is very capable of doing so with a tdp of ~31 watts for the cpu with 16 cores at 2ghz..

 

The reason it needs to be low power is because in an RV, power is always a concern..

[Jarsky]

It's a very cool storage solution for a high powered and compact storage, but haven't played around with the C3000 series Atoms so no idea on what performance is like. 

 

This article seems to point to it being a good solution for *some* virtualization: https://www.servethehome.com/gigabyte-ma10-st0-review-unique-storage-platform/2/

 

This peaks my interest as I only host a few basic VM's 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Temper said:

Lol.. I'm going to take it that you don't know what a VM is or something..

you underestimate my knowledge, most likely due to your own inexperience.

2 minutes ago, Temper said:

Why would I want to? Flexibility?

flexibility of what?

2 minutes ago, Temper said:

But the atom processor I linked to is very capable of doing so with a tdp of ~31 watts for the cpu with 16 cores at 2ghz..

and those are 16 weaksauce cores, the chips do great for the stuff they are intended for, hypervisors are not that.

3 minutes ago, Temper said:

The reason it needs to be low power is because in an RV, power is always a concern..

which is also the origin of my question, which for the record you still didnt answer:

42 minutes ago, manikyath said:

like, what actually do you intend to do with this?

"running VMs" isnt a use case, it is a means of fullfilling a use case, not a usecase on its own.

 

TL:DR: i repeat: What are you actually planning on using this for?

[Temper]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

you underestimate my knowledge, most likely due to your own inexperience.

flexibility of what?

and those are 16 weaksauce cores, the chips do great for the stuff they are intended for, hypervisors are not that.

which is also the origin of my question, which for the record you still didnt answer:

"running VMs" isnt a use case, it is a means of fullfilling a use case, not a usecase on its own.

 

TL:DR: i repeat: What are you actually planning on using this for?

What does the use case matter? I want flexibility. So I want a lot of storage, so say 3x12tb Seagate drives. I want parity and I want to be able to expand the array. Then I want at minimum a virtual sophos xg firewall, Plex server, qbitorrent server, windows 10 node with  GPU passthrough to per the RV tvs.. not to mention VMs make backup and restore trivial..

[manikyath]

19 minutes ago, Temper said:

What does the use case matter? I want flexibility. So I want a lot of storage, so say 3x12tb Seagate drives. I want parity and I want to be able to expand the array. Then I want at minimum a virtual sophos xg firewall, Plex server, qbitorrent server, windows 10 node with  GPU passthrough to per the RV tvs.. not to mention VMs make backup and restore trivial..

okay, that's what i needed.

few notes:

- that's not gonna run on a single low power device, it simply wont.

- GPU passtrough VMs and low power dont mix. GPU passtrough in itself can already be tricky on platforms that were designed with it in mind, low power platforms obviously were not. and on that note, chances are you'll increase your "low power" box's power consumption by more than the power draw of a mini pc, and it would cost more per VM to implement than just buying a cheap mini pc and bolting it to the before mentioned TVs.

- the more logical solution here is to put all the features you need in a low power box, run a single VM for the firewall, and use mini PCs (or honestly.. raspberry pi?) for the vareous TVs.

 

also, mechanical storage and bumpy roads arent a good idea, i better hope you're planning on powering down this box when driving.

 

i'd say that what you're trying to achieve is an interesting idea, but is vastly impractical, to a level where i couldnt even write you up a complete list of potential issues you need to keep in mind, because i may as well just write up a list of components to this project, because that will most likely be easier to manage.

[Temper]

22 minutes ago, manikyath said:

okay, that's what i needed.

few notes:

- that's not gonna run on a single low power device, it simply wont.

- GPU passtrough VMs and low power dont mix. GPU passtrough in itself can already be tricky on platforms that were designed with it in mind, low power platforms obviously were not. and on that note, chances are you'll increase your "low power" box's power consumption by more than the power draw of a mini pc, and it would cost more per VM to implement than just buying a cheap mini pc and bolting it to the before mentioned TVs.

- the more logical solution here is to put all the features you need in a low power box, run a single VM for the firewall, and use mini PCs (or honestly.. raspberry pi?) for the vareous TVs.

 

also, mechanical storage and bumpy roads arent a good idea, i better hope you're planning on powering down this box when driving.

 

i'd say that what you're trying to achieve is an interesting idea, but is vastly impractical, to a level where i couldnt even write you up a complete list of potential issues you need to keep in mind, because i may as well just write up a list of components to this project, because that will most likely be easier to manage.

One quick question, do you even have this platform? It is a low power Xeon processor rebranded as Atom..

[Temper]

25 minutes ago, manikyath said:

okay, that's what i needed.

few notes:

- that's not gonna run on a single low power device, it simply wont.

- GPU passtrough VMs and low power dont mix. GPU passtrough in itself can already be tricky on platforms that were designed with it in mind, low power platforms obviously were not. and on that note, chances are you'll increase your "low power" box's power consumption by more than the power draw of a mini pc, and it would cost more per VM to implement than just buying a cheap mini pc and bolting it to the before mentioned TVs.

- the more logical solution here is to put all the features you need in a low power box, run a single VM for the firewall, and use mini PCs (or honestly.. raspberry pi?) for the vareous TVs.

 

also, mechanical storage and bumpy roads arent a good idea, i better hope you're planning on powering down this box when driving.

 

i'd say that what you're trying to achieve is an interesting idea, but is vastly impractical, to a level where i couldnt even write you up a complete list of potential issues you need to keep in mind, because i may as well just write up a list of components to this project, because that will most likely be easier to manage.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+C3858+%40+2.00GHz&id=3287

 

This benchmark shows it spanking a Xeon X5460 which was a mainstay for virtualization like 10 years ago, which it held for about 3 years, for server farms..

 

So what are you basing the analysis that this low power system can't do what I have designed?

[manikyath]

Just now, Temper said:

One quick question, do you even have this platform? It is a low power Xeon processor rebranded as Atom..

i dont have that specific platform, but i have quite a bit of experience with a wide range of platforms between the higher and lower power range. i see actually powerful systems struggle with the workload you're describing, and based on the spec on ark.intel.com i can make a decent guesstimation of how powerful that atom is, or rather.. how powerful it isnt.

 

this sort of board is generally aimed at very high performance networked storage, and the cpu will do very good at very high performance networked storage, as long as you dont also bog it down with a heap of tasks that it wasnt meant for, because then all you create is just a big slugfest. it is low power in the sense that with 500 of these in a datacenter a "low power" board makes a very big difference, it is not "low power" in the sense of running it off of an RV's battery.

[Temper]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i dont have that specific platform, but i have quite a bit of experience with a wide range of platforms between the higher and lower power range. i see actually powerful systems struggle with the workload you're describing, and based on the spec on ark.intel.com i can make a decent guesstimation of how powerful that atom is, or rather.. how powerful it isnt.

 

this sort of board is generally aimed at very high performance networked storage, and the cpu will do very good at very high performance networked storage, as long as you dont also bog it down with a heap of tasks that it wasnt meant for, because then all you create is just a big slugfest. it is low power in the sense that with 500 of these in a datacenter a "low power" board makes a very big difference, it is not "low power" in the sense of running it off of an RV's battery.

It is low power because it is 16 cores at 31 watts.. now depending on the motherboard the whole system could be very efficient..

 

At any rate.. I understand you don't like where I am going.. that's great.. your opinion is duly noted..

 

What I'm looking for is people with the experience you claim to have to help me get where I am going..

 

And it isn't much of a workload? The router would maybe need to handle 50mbps..

[manikyath]

13 minutes ago, Temper said:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+C3858+%40+2.00GHz&id=3287

 

This benchmark shows it spanking a Xeon X5460 which was a mainstay for virtualization like 10 years ago, which it held for about 3 years, for server farms..

 

So what are you basing the analysis that this low power system can't do what I have designed?

so.. it matching a processor that you basicly can get for free because of how poopy it is, will somehow make it capable?

 

i've messed with the xeon x5460, it was a bigger disappointment than i had prepared myself to see in a -back then- 6 year old server.

 

and besides, passmark's benchmarks are flawed in many ways, and are at best only a theoretical representation of architecture, clock speed, and core count, rather than what those translate to in real use cases.

 

i'm not telling you that your idea of an all integrated system is bad, i'm telling you that the implementation you intend to go for is based on overly optimistic expectations of hardware, and there are more practical ways of achieving this.

 

EDIT: case in point: the pentium J5005, which is basicly a glorified embedded processor like found in synology's base model NAS's, reaches over half of the score of your 16-core chip, and i have quite a bit of experience choking out the 4 cores on this chip.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+Silver+J5005+%40+1.50GHz&id=3144

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Temper said:

 

What I'm looking for is people with the experience you claim to have to help me get where I am going..

 

And it isn't much of a workload? The router would maybe need to handle 50mbps..

in RV terms, i'm attempted to steer you away from a cliff.

 

and the router is the least of my problems with your idea, other than i dont understand why you'd even need that in an RV.

[Temper]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

in RV terms, i'm attempted to steer you away from a cliff.

 

and the router is the least of my problems with your idea, other than i dont understand why you'd even need that in an RV.

Lol.. will I didn't even need the RV.. and no one ever needs a computer.. bottom line I am putting a server in this RV.. I thought I would go low power because it would be smart but if I can't do what I want the low power is just a dream..

 

I ran a virtualized server based on the x5460 series Xeon up until a few months.. it ran 6-7 VMs for like 3-4 years without issue..

 

Here is the server I ran XenServer on for years.. https://quadix.co/ix/cart.php?gid=1

 

And we are talking like 3 linux and 4 windows VMs..

[manikyath]

18 minutes ago, Temper said:

Lol.. will I didn't even need the RV.. and no one ever needs a computer.. bottom line I am putting a server in this RV.. I thought I would go low power because it would be smart but if I can't do what I want the low power is just a dream..

 

I ran a virtualized server based on the x5460 series Xeon up until a few months.. it ran 6-7 VMs for like 3-4 years without issue..

 

Here is the server I ran XenServer on for years.. https://quadix.co/ix/cart.php?gid=1

 

And we are talking like 3 linux and 4 windows VMs..

yup. and i'm doing that on dedicated low power hardware for the same sort of powertarget as the sort of system your choice of board is intended for.

 

i didnt need a media center pc for every TV in the house, i didnt need a linux server with heaps of storage, i didnt need an additional physical box for stuff that doesnt like to be ran in a VM.. but since i wanted all those things, and had the necessary knowledge and documentation (internet is a powerful tool ) i decided to figure out the best means of achieving these things. 

this research showed me how powerful the pentium silver really is, why one type of "powerful processor" isnt the same as another, and that all in all.. if it's for the sake of "want", trying to make one "monster" machine is one hell of a waste of money.

 

my J5005 box cost me €260 to build, not even having cheaped out on any components. i have a few other similar systems dotted around the place that do a very good job at the *single* task they were meant to perform, and the greatest power efficiency is pressing the power button on the things you dont need

[Temper]

15 minutes ago, manikyath said:

yup. and i'm doing that on dedicated low power hardware for the same sort of powertarget as the sort of system your choice of board is intended for.

 

i didnt need a media center pc for every TV in the house, i didnt need a linux server with heaps of storage, i didnt need an additional physical box for stuff that doesnt like to be ran in a VM.. but since i wanted all those things, and had the necessary knowledge and documentation (internet is a powerful tool ) i decided to figure out the best means of achieving these things. 

this research showed me how powerful the pentium silver really is, why one type of "powerful processor" isnt the same as another, and that all in all.. if it's for the sake of "want", trying to make one "monster" machine is one hell of a waste of money.

 

my J5005 box cost me €260 to build, not even having cheaped out on any components. i have a few other similar systems dotted around the place that do a very good job at the *single* task they were meant to perform, and the greatest power efficiency is pressing the power button on the things you dont need

Yeah I get you don't like the idea.. that's nice..

 

And a 12v to 12vdc computer power supply is very cheap and efficient.. see something like this: RGEEK 24pin DC ATX PSU 12V DC Input 250W Peak Output Switch DC-DC ATX Pico PSU Mini ITX PC Power Supply for Computer https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H58SDTH/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_SgGACb9192ZT1

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Temper said:

Yeah I get you don't like the idea.. that's nice..

 

And a 12v to 12vdc computer power supply is very cheap and efficient.. see something like this: RGEEK 24pin DC ATX PSU 12V DC Input 250W Peak Output Switch DC-DC ATX Pico PSU Mini ITX PC Power Supply for Computer https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H58SDTH/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_SgGACb9192ZT1

except that you dont need 12v input, unless your RV got magical batteries that are always at -within margin- 12 volts.

 

EDIT: that "list of potential issues" i mentioned earlier, this detail is one of those.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Have you looked at something like a ryzen 1700? I have used one for vms before, pretty fast, failry cheap, and will sip power(a bit more than that atom, but full system is still under 100w with hdds and max cpu load.

 

 

[Slayerking92]

I went with a HPE Microserver.

 

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/product-catalog/servers/proliant-servers/pip.hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10.1009955118.html

 

its enough to run my DC a few VM's, and 4 drive bays for whatever storage you want to add.