upgrade current setup to more power efficient solution

[sly2k]

Hey all,

 

i'm looking forward to your input to change my current plex media server to a more power efficient solution that may also be less in physical size and noise.

 

What is the current setup?

Dell PowerEdge R710
2x Xeon X5675 @3.07GHz - 6cores

Quadport Gbit Ethernet-NIC onboard
148GB RAM

870W PSU

5x 6TB WDReds 6Gb/s SATAs HDDs, running Raid5

DELL PERC H700 SAS/SATA RaidController

iDRAC

ESXi 6.0 U2 Dell customized image with free license
currently running 2 VMs @ 8vCPUs

This setup maybe a bit oversized for my purpose, nevertheless it's running flawless.

 

So this current Setup takes in average about: 167W/hr | 570 BTU/hr

 

What am I looking for?

- Lower Power Consumption

- Lower Form Factor

- Keep the WD HDDs, they were fine so far

- Keep the HW-Raid, therefore keep the H700

- Keep Quad-NIC, i have an HP Quadport Ethernet NIC

- Increase performance by newer CPU generation or at least keep current performance (>= 12739 passmark points)

- Keep ESXi - i love freedom of virtualization

- if possible, fanless or very good silent wings

- if possible MiniATX, i have a case for this purpose

- Budget: maximum invest 1000-1500$

 

 

So i'm looking forward to keep the existing drives and raid controller and switching to a desktop solution that consumes less power, being more silent and if possible has more performance. ESXi is must have.

 

Is a Supermicro architecture the way to go?

 

 

Love to get in touch with you and talk about this.

 

BR,

Matthias

[paddy-stone]

Gigabyte MA10-ST0 with Intel Atom C3958 Released

 

 

[sly2k]

Hey paddy,

 

generally interesting - just a few questions on that:

 

- the Atom C3958, how good does this perform? are there any benchmarks? can't find this thing on passmark.

- the onboard SAS controller is ESXi certified - or lets say, can the ESXi recognize it as a raid storage? otherwise i'll have to use the H700 on the given PCI-e slot.

that being said, there are 2 RJ45 GBit Ports, which should be sufficient for my purpose.

 

last thing ... where can it be bought? can't find it listed anywhere.

[sly2k]

5 minutes ago, sly2k said:

Hey paddy,

 

generally interesting - just a few questions on that:

 

- the Atom C3958, how good does this perform? are there any benchmarks? can't find this thing on passmark.

- the onboard SAS controller is ESXi certified - or lets say, can the ESXi recognize it as a raid storage? otherwise i'll have to use the H700 on the given PCI-e slot.

that being said, there are 2 RJ45 GBit Ports, which should be sufficient for my purpose.

 

last thing ... where can it be bought? can't find it listed anywhere.

ok nevermind, found it:
https://www.servethehome.com/intel-atom-c3958-16-core-top-end-embedded-qat-linux-benchmarks-and-review/

[Blake]

9 hours ago, sly2k said:

Hey all,

 

i'm looking forward to your input to change my current plex media server to a more power efficient solution that may also be less in physical size and noise.

 

What is the current setup?

Dell PowerEdge R710
2x Xeon X5675 @3.07GHz - 6cores

Quadport Gbit Ethernet-NIC onboard
148GB RAM

870W PSU

5x 6TB WDReds 6Gb/s SATAs HDDs, running Raid5

DELL PERC H700 SAS/SATA RaidController

iDRAC

ESXi 6.0 U2 Dell customized image with free license
currently running 2 VMs @ 8vCPUs

This setup maybe a bit oversized for my purpose, nevertheless it's running flawless.

 

So this current Setup takes in average about: 167W/hr | 570 BTU/hr

 

What am I looking for?

- Lower Power Consumption

- Lower Form Factor

- Keep the WD HDDs, they were fine so far

- Keep the HW-Raid, therefore keep the H700

- Keep Quad-NIC, i have an HP Quadport Ethernet NIC

- Increase performance by newer CPU generation or at least keep current performance (>= 12739 passmark points)

- Keep ESXi - i love freedom of virtualization

- if possible, fanless or very good silent wings

- if possible MiniATX, i have a case for this purpose

- Budget: maximum invest 1000-1500$

 

 

So i'm looking forward to keep the existing drives and raid controller and switching to a desktop solution that consumes less power, being more silent and if possible has more performance. ESXi is must have.

 

Is a Supermicro architecture the way to go?

 

 

Love to get in touch with you and talk about this.

 

BR,

Matthias

Just grab a HP Microserver or similar. Gen 8 has good esxi support.

 

If your going to be trans coding you'll have issues going low power. If you instead rely on the client device to to the trans coding, you can use a raspberry pi.

 

What are you actually using the server for? that will dictate the end build.

 

In b4 randoms claim that $10 a year is the cost difference for electricity: you are looking at 200w/hr difference at a minimum, x 24hr in a day x 365 days in a year = 1752kwh difference. if 1kwh = 1c then your looking at 17.52/year (and you live in Saudi Arabia), if you live in the west you'll likely be on ~20c/kwh + local takes which is closer to 350/year. When your spending ~400/qtr on the power bill that is a massive difference.

 

 

[leadeater]

Just get a system one generation newer than you have, really bare bones and reuse all the parts from the current one as much as you can. PSUs should be reusable (assuming sticking with Dell), everything else will work.

 

E5-2600v1 is much more power efficient with ESXi and you can go with low power Xeons, you'll have to get these separately from the base system so get the cheapest R720 you can find.

 

You can as mentioned earlier go with a much lower spec system if you aren't actually using the full performance of the system which is most likely the case.

 

1 hour ago, Blake said:

In b4 randoms claim that $10 a year is the cost difference for electricity: you are looking at 200w/hr difference at a minimum, x 24hr in a day x 365 days in a year = 1752kwh difference. if 1kwh = 1c then your looking at 17.52/year (and you live in Saudi Arabia), if you live in the west you'll likely be on ~20c/kwh + local takes which is closer to 350/year. When your spending ~400/qtr on the power bill that is a massive difference.

Completely agree, other than the 200W/hr difference since the current system average is only 167W/hr. I generally say a 5500/5600 generation dual socket Xeon system costs $80 a month to run so even a 40% power decrease is worth it over an entire year, $386. That sort of saving is a used server off ebay every year basically.