"Andrew M.A. Cater" <amaca...@galactic.demon.co.uk> writes:
> On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 03:51:54AM +0200, lee wrote: >> Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglas...@affinityvision.com.au> writes: >> >> > Whilst it is usually quite easy to find older server class hardware at >> > bargain prices (compared to new), it is often the case that older >> > hardware is slower and much less power efficient to newer hardware and >> > the pricing on lots of new gear has collapsed enough to make buying new >> > a much better option in many cases. >> >> Hm, would you have an example for this? As far as I have seen, the >> difference in price is somewhere around EUR 6000 when you're looking at >> 19" servers. The difference in power efficiency is about 59W (at best) >> vs. 180W at idle. IIRC, the HP Microserver is rated at 30W. >> > That depends very much on what you want to do / how much you need. For the purpose of this thread, I guess that would be a storage solution for "at home". > Take a fairly common example of the sort of thing you have in a data centre. Of course, you have very different requirements in a data centre. You probably want the best performance in the least amount of space with the lowest power consumption possible because every tiny factor matters, especially since it may be multiplied by hundreds or thousands. And you want to make sure that you actually use the processing power you have rather than having machines (mostly) idling. > An IBM 3550 1U server. They're up to about the fourth generation in the same > series. > > So you go from 2 Intel Xeons five years ago, with 73G SCSI disks and an old > RAID controlller > to 2 x Intel Xeons today with 2 x 300G disk and a newer RAID controller - > but faster disks, > higher capacity, probably Hyperthreading/2 more cores, significantly faster > memory bandwidth - and probably the option of better > than 1G Ethernet connectivity for a similar sort of price point. > > Pick up the oldest version of the IBM 3550 and you might be talking a 15W > power difference > and 20 - 30% slower than the newer kit for some tasks and the memory may not > be straightforward > to find. [Nor is the newest - and in both cases, you'll probably have to buy > IBM branded parts] I've been reading that Dell has their Poweredge servers down to 59W at idle. Apparently, they all reduced power consumption on the current generation of their servers quite a bit. > If you recycle your hardware on a three year cycle / rent on a three year > contract, that's the sort of > improvement you'll see as the generations change. You have the advantage that you can write your servers off and adjust your prices to your costs. > If you're at home and "just want a server" then it > probably doesn't make too much of a difference. If you're running racks full > of kit, ti starts to matter, > not least because you have to keep spares around for different generations. Still you pay the electricity for your server at home --- and you can't write off the costs. I actually payed more to get a server with slower CPUs than you usually find (in that generation) because it may use less electricity. It doesn't take too long before that pays out, and for what I'm doing with it, I don't need the most performance I could get. If I do some time, I could buy the same model with the fastest CPUs they put into these cheaply and replace the CPUs ... If a PSU fails, I might just buy another server anyway and have a full set of spare parts. It won't cost much more than the PSU alone. > Likewise, the four year old desktop machine I've given away was £699 when > bought by my father and is worth nothing now. > For £150, I can now buy a faster better desktop machine than I can build, > given that my time probably costs > £20 > an hour and I have all the problems of matching components etc. Well, I can't buy anything better than I can build myself. > I can buy a last generation HP microserver with > 4GB of memory for £149 brand new or the latest greatest for about £800 fully > kitted out, run it for three years > and write it off. For a server at home? If you run it only three years, why would you spend 800 instead of 149? > My daughter's machine was one of the £150 quad core machines. Add a graphics > card for £50, an SSD for £100 and > it's close to the spec of the £800 "top end family desktop" machines. That depends on what you want to do with it. Play some games and you need a decent graphics card which costs more than 150, depending on what games you play. Compile sources and you want more than only 4 cores. > Two years on, and the base machine is now an 8 core, with double the basic > hard disk at the same power consumption ... You don't re-use the disks? Double disk capacity would mean 14TB (plus double of what's in the server). I doubt that you get that for 150 or so in two years. You might get a 6TB disk for that in two years. >> Of course, don't buy too old, that's not worthwhile for many reasons. >> > > Unless you go round picking up non-working machines / old machines for nothing > and use them as spare machines to play around with. Yes --- you could even do that. > See above - a four year old desktop machine costs nothing You might be better off buying thin clients for 30--50 than desktops for 150. For 150, you get pretty much only junk. This junk would be usable, depending on what you're doing --- I only call it junk because it would be junk for what I'm doing. Anyway, buying a server for around EUR 6000 to have one at home, as you suggested, doesn't seem to pay out. -- Knowledge is volatile and fluid. Software is power. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/87a95tf5h0....@yun.yagibdah.de
