Energy efficient proxmox server

[Ensarda]

Country: United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Proxmox virtulisation running low load WordPress servers and a plex server VM

 

Hi there Hope you all are doing well

 

With energy prices becoming more and more crazy in the UK my existing server I'm using is a bit of a power hog using about 80 watts which is a old dell server and not to mention it been a little noisy. The main reason I'm using this was price but RAM it has 96gb of which I'm using about 2/3 rds of that but it's CPU isn't hit that hard for the most part.

For storage i have 2 external synology NAS which holds my plex library which has about 9tb used. My only requirements minimum is 2 lan ports as I use Home assistant and all my smart devices are on a separate subnet so I need a connection to both and 64gb ram or greater.

 

I'm thinking 2 options 1 a nuc to replace the server with it having a enery efficent cpu but plenty of ram while using my existing storage which I'll upgrade down the line.

Or a new server low power and quiet which will also act as my storage server for plex.

I'm not after spending a fortune £700 max for option 1 option 2 the same minus storage as I know that will increase the price

 

Thank you in advance

 

[Dutch_Master]

Jeff Geerling build a NAS based on a Raspberry Pi some time ago. It still runs just fine and might be right up your alley.

For your 2nd network port, add a USB3 to ethernet adapter.

 

HTH!

[manikyath]

80 watts isnt a whole lot, you might want to calculate how much power you're expecting to save, and how long it'll take to pay off the budget before allocating money for the sake of saving power.

 

also, if i'm not mistaken the UK is fairly cold most of the year, so in winter any power draw from your server goes directly into reducing your heating bill.

[Needfuldoer]

I'd go for an Intel N100 board before a Pi. Cost isn't all that different (once you add all the stuff the Pi needs to be a full computer), you get hardware video encoding, and a few watts' difference in power consumption is splitting hairs.

 

24 minutes ago, manikyath said:

also, if i'm not mistaken the UK is fairly cold most of the year, so in winter any power draw from your server goes directly into reducing your heating bill.

Thing is, resistive electric heat (space heaters, computers, etc) is one of the most expensive ways to heat a space.

[LIGISTX]

2 hours ago, Ensarda said:

My only requirements minimum is 2 lan ports as I use Home assistant and all my smart devices are on a separate subnet

How do you have do 2 subnets? What router do you run?

 

If you can use vlans instead of physical subnets, you’d only need 1 NIC since Proxmox is vlan aware and you can assign vlans to VM’s. 

[Ensarda]

For ligistx I have a unifi dream machine so I have my xx.1.1.xx for normal use and xx.1.2.xx for smart home and different WiFi said 1 for both works quite well.

 

And for a micro pcb PC not entirely sure if it's for me yes super power efficient. I'm starting to think rather than having a server and NAS separate to integrate them so I save some power by getting an energy efficent chip and save even more by turning 3 synology NAS bays off. Plus if I need a new server and want to upgrade my network storage anyway why not combine it all into one will probably be cheaper.

 

I know I'd need virtual passthrough for the motherboard to allow the drives to get passed to a true nas vm and if I need a low power quatro gpu for plex encoding.

 

Any hints as I've used proxmox and know it can do it but no experience, or can most modern motherboards do it.

[manikyath]

4 hours ago, Needfuldoer said:

Thing is, resistive electric heat (space heaters, computers, etc) is one of the most expensive ways to heat a space.

yes, ofcourse when you heat with gas it's cheaper than resistive heat.. but the power still isnt free so it factors into the savings you might see from reducing your server's power consumption.

 

and when we're talking something that might take 5+ years for ROI it's actually something that factors into the ROI math.

 

only point i want to make with that is that in an overall colder climate, server bill going down does mean heating bill will go up a small bit. now if OP was in florida and running aircons for half the year, that'd affect ROI positively.