Hardware for homebrew webserver

[Afasoas]

Hullo,

I currently have a client hosting a wiki on a VMware Player VM. The machine it's on is about to be retired.
At the same time:
 - I'd like to start running my own personal wiki
 - Run a e-ticketing system for bug reports and enhancement requests
 - I'd like an always on web dev platform

So I'm thinking about running a server. I already have Ubuntu server on a PIII that's mothballed. Also got P4 and Core2Duo PCs I could use as soon as I've extracted all the pictures and documents from them.

The idea of using an old PC is great, esp. when I have an abundance of them and I like reusing old stuff instead of binning it, but I'd rather have just the power consumption of Rasp PI for something that's left on all the time. That said, if I can get it to auto power down in the evening (easy) and then auto-matically start-up in the morning (bios timer, WOL) that'd be great.

It's only low bandwidth / small userbase so I'm content to go down the self-hosted route.

Any recommendations on hardware? A friend has suggested a Mac Mini. I figured I could just use an old laptop, subject to check reliability. I realise if I spend $$$ on something, it's gonna be a while before it's paid for itself versus running a webserver on an old PC.

I'm going to be looking after IT fully for a small business, and I'm working on my 2nd and 3rd websites for clients - I'd kinda like to have something in place if this becomes a bit more my mainstream line of work.

[contango]

Hardware for homebrew webserver? Visions of beer-cooled processors run through my mind...

[Kim]

Having done the maths, a server has to use slightly less electricity for an awfully long time before it makes economic sense compared to hardware you've already got.  If you're buying hardware anyway, then obviously it makes sense to choose with power consumption in mind.


In my mind (and admittedly our server does important things like run the central heating and phones, as well as internetty stuff), reliability, serviceability and noise are important considerations.  They may rule out obsolete hardware by default.  RAID and/or automated backups means multiple disks, which rules out most small cases.  Big boxes are neater than spaghetti.

I'm wary of laptops, because although they are low power and have their own UPS, they have extremely difficult to maintain cooling systems which will clog rapidly when running 24/7.

Raspberry Pis are cheap, low power, passively cooled and have the USB and network performance of a very crap thing.  Great for tedious things like DHCP, DNS, NTP, print servers or internetifying sensors.  Probably okay for a low-volume web server.  Possibly frustrating as a development environment.  Something like the SheevaPlug may be a better alternative if you're running headless and don't care about the GPIO.  Non-Intel architectures may complicate virtualisation.

The Mac Mini is a lovely machine, but you pay a hefty premium for that loveliness.  Much better under your telly than in a cupboard serving files.

http://linitx.com/ is the first place I look for low-power hardware.  Anything that's passively cooled is a good place to start.

[Chris S]

Raspberry Pis are cheap, low power, passively cooled and have the USB and network performance of a very crap thing.  Great for tedious things like DHCP, DNS, NTP, print servers or internetifying sensors.  Probably okay for a low-volume web server.  Possibly frustrating as a development environment.  Something like the SheevaPlug may be a better alternative if you're running headless and don't care about the GPIO.  Non-Intel architectures may complicate virtualisation.

How about a Raspberry Pi Cluster server?

http://raspberrywebserver.com/raspberrypicluster/raspberry-pi-cluster.html

[Kim]

How about a Raspberry Pi Cluster server?

http://raspberrywebserver.com/raspberrypicluster/raspberry-pi-cluster.html

Seems reasonable.  As the article says, the performance sucks, but it's a cheap way building an experimental distributed computing environment.  It's also not a bad way of driving an array of monitors (assuming it's something you can synchronise over the network).

Would be better with Revision 2 Pis, which have proper mounting holes so you can use spacers to stack them rather than lego or rubber bands and lolly sticks.

Also, the Southampton approach of powering them with a zillion phone chargers and distribution boards irks me.  Even if you don't want to do any soldering, a few powered hubs would be a bit saner.   

[fuaran]

I'd look at the HP MicroServer. There's often cashback offers, so you can get one for under £150.
It is a proper computer, so should be powerful enough for any sort of office server etc.
Yes, the power consumption will be much more than a Raspberry Pi etc, but not too excessive. Probably about 50W. How many hard drives you are using would make a big difference.

[tonycollinet]

I know you said you want to host it yourself - but for each watt of power it costs aprox £1/year. An old desktop is probably going to run at about 80W - so £80/year. if your space requirements are not huge, you can have high quality paid hosting for £15/year (if 500mB will suffice)

https://www.tsohost.com/

[Kim]

I know you said you want to host it yourself - but for each watt of power it costs aprox £1/year. An old desktop is probably going to run at about 80W - so £80/year. if your space requirements are not huge, you can have high quality paid hosting for £15/year (if 500mB will suffice)

https://www.tsohost.com/

A tempting option if it's for webby stuff.  There's a lot to be said for the hardware being Somebody Else's Problem.

Obviously there are applications requiring high bandwidth, lots of storage or physical hardware where it's worth the effort of having them hosted locally, but it doesn't sound like any of the OP's really come into that category.

[sizbut]

For the same purposes I'm being drawn towards a Synalog NAS drive. I need to replace an old Buffalo NAS that stores/streams my music and the fact that the Synalog also support an Apache web server makes it tempting.

Yes you need to provide a couple of disk drives but it would fulfill a lot of roles on top of just web server.

[Afasoas]

There's hosting and there's hosting.

Past experience tells me you get what you pay for. I think if I wanted to host one website or a couple of websites TSOHosting would be fine. I'm using a similar host for my own website and also for a couple of websites I'm developing at the moment - I'm sailing close to the PHP memory limit at times and if I say trial a wordpress plugin that blows that limit, I take down my own business website too.

I want an environment for developing in which I can tweak, for example running memcached etc..  I figure I'd be looking at a VPS to do that with a host.


Quite like the look of the HP Microserver.
I'm thinking I might use my netbook for now - it's already running Lubuntu so it's half way there.
Once I'm earning a bit more lucre go for an edition of the HP.

BTW: I have a Synology NAS on which I'm running quite a few services (mail server, DLNA streaming, IP camera monitoring etc.) and I'm kinda reluctant to throw anything just now. I'm sure it'd be fine running a single wordpress instance say, but I can see me wanting to run several, plus two wikis and a web-based ticketing system from the off.

[hazeii]

A PIII linux server will do everything you want (assuming you're going to use pre-built software). The power consumption will be a lot lower than a P4 or anything of its ilk - and while a modern set-up might just take less power, it'll cost  much more and be overpowered for the job.

[David Martin]

Would an old wireless router be a suitable base for such a thing?

[Afasoas]

My current wi-fi router runs at 680 mhz with 64 MB memory. I don't have an old one lying around.
I suppose it's feasible and on a par with the Rasp Pi.

I used the Pi (Rev 2, 512 MB memory) for some wordpress web development and soon as the website grew to any size with >10 plug-ins progress slowed down considerably waiting for pages to refresh.



I've got two netbooks on hand.
Both Acers.
1) Aspire 1 ZG5 - 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom N270 processor, 200 GB storage, 1 GB Memory (upgradable to 1.5 GB)
2) Aspire 1 D255 - 1.5 Ghz Intel Atom N450 processor, 160 GB storage, 1 GB Memory (upgradable to 2 GB)

Number 1 is mine. Number 2 I've the option to buy for beer tokens - it's something that someone's never gonna get around to selling and has hardly been used.

1 has a single core 32-bit processor.
2 has a dual core 64-bit processor.

In term's of performance difference, there's a gnats hair in it
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html

Passmark of 283 (1) and 285 (2)
(By comparison my desktop PC gets a passmark of 9,421, the laptop 1,358 and the AMD Turion II Neo N54L in the HP Microservers, 1412)

Anyway, more interesting are the comparisons between the Rasp Pi and the Intel Atom N270. There's plenty of stuff around on this including this geekgasmic comparison by Roy Longbottom:
http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/Raspberry%20Pi%20Benchmarks.htm

I have to confess I didn't really understand very much of that (although part of me would very much like to) but it's cleary the Netbooks are a much more practical choice.

I've been rooting around trying to find out what their power consumption would be.
I've seen 9 watts as the quoted figure for 1 at idle, wireless switched on and screen at lowest brightness setting. Turning the screen off saves 2 watts.
Then for 2, I've seen "4 watts minimum drain, 12 watts rendering video".

I've no idea how this has been measured nor how accurate it is. Rasperry Pi is allegedly about 3.5-5 watts depending on what paraphanailia you have connected to it.

The Pentium III btw has 733 Mhz processor and 640 MB ram and 80 GB storage. I can't find any benchmarks for it, but the Netbook will probably still trounce it. The pentium will draw 60 watts with it's hard disks spun down, 85 watts at normal usage allegedly.

I think we have a clear winner, but it was useful/fun to do the comparison anyway.
I'd really like to work out the processing power/watt comparisons between the netbooks, laptop, desktop. I should get a powermeter or something to measure them!

[Kim]

FWIW the Rev 2 Pi I've got on the bench is pulling about 2.5W (measured on the 5V DC input, obviously in the real world you'll have to account for the efficiency of the mains power supply - maybe 60-80% for a typical phone charger).  That's with an 100Mbit Ethernet connection up, the CPU basically idle, a USB keyboard attached and an LED and a couple of negligible-power logic chips on its 3.3V line.  Power consumption goes up by maybe another half a Watt if you make it do some work.

Obviously to be a useful server, you're going to want to add some storage to that.