Shrink your carbon footprint
DisksWhen you replace disks, use the newer Western Digial GP (green power) series. They use less juice. Also, if you have a machine with multiple old drives (say 4 250GB drives) and replace them with 2 500GB green drives, you will cut down on power.
Replace: 4 old disks = 44W 2 GP disks = 12W Savings: 0.34 Amps AC Caculation: assume old disks use 11W each, assume new GP disks use 6W, assume power supply has an 80% efficieny rating (EnergyStar standard). Amps saved = [ (11W*4 - 6W*2) / 80% ] /117V = 0.34 Amps line current
Hmmm... looks like 1 W =~ .01 Amps. I'll use that as a rule of thumb.
Here are some specs on drives MonkeyBrains.net uses.Drive info:"tw_cli co p0 model" or "atacontrol list"
| Size | Drive | Watts Active/Idle/Standby |
|---|---|---|
| 300GB | WD VelociRaptor (10k RPM) WD3000GLFS | 6.1/4.5/0.4 |
| 1TB | WD RE2-GP WD1000FYPS | 7.4/4.0/1.0 |
| 500GB | WD RE2-GP WD5000ABPS | 6.0/3.3/1.0 |
| 500GB | WD RE3 WD5002ABYS | 8.3/7.7/1.0 |
| 320GB and 250GB | WD RE3 (eg WD3202ABYS) | 6.6/6.2/1.0 |
| 120GB - 500GB | WD RE2 (eg WD5001ABYS) | 9.5/8.75/1.6 |
| 750GB | WD RE2 WD7500AYYS | 11.5/8.5/1.0 |
| 400GB | Older WD RE2 (eg WD4000YS) | 10.75/8.9/2.0 |
| 250GB - 750GB | Barracuda ES (eg ST3500630NS) | 13/9.3/1.0 |
| 250GB - 1TB | Barracuda ES.2 (eg ST3500320NS) | 11.2/8.0/1.0 |
| 250GB - 750GB | Barracuda 7200.10 (eg ST3500630AS) | 12.8/9.3/1.2 |
| 80GB - 160GB | Barracuda 7200.10 (eg ST3160815AS) | 8.7/5.3/1.2 |
| 200GB - 400GB | Barracuda 7200.8 (ST3200826AS) | 9.5/7.2/1.2 |
CPUs:
Opteron makes 'HE' CPUs that use 55W instead of 95W... (that is about 0.4 Amps AC)
The Core Duo by Intel is a modest 65W (vs the 95W Pentium-D cpu... if your motherboard supports both, upgrade! 0.3 Amp savings.)
Power Supplies:
Efficient power supplies are critical. 80plus.org has efficiency ratings for server (and desktop) power supplies. Emacs (aka Zippy) has good ratings. We use mostly Ablecom (aka 'Super Micro Computer') and some Zippy power supplies.
The SeaSonic has been recommeneded to us by Lonnie. Just this past month, Supermicro has come out with a new case that has an 85% efficient 200W power supply.
200W *.80 = 160W usable. CPU = 65W, two HE drives = 12W. That leaves 83W (enough?) for the motherboard, RAM, and fan.
SC512-200 with SDD drive, core duo (65W), couple gigs of ram...
Save Power and your Money
You should think of 1Amp == $50. So, the cost of hosting a 1.5 A machine vs a 1.0 Amp machine over a year is $300. $600 over two years. If you can upgrade your box to save 0.5A, then the savings will show up quickly! If you have a bunch of servers in a rack, you can really cut down on costs by saving juice.... also, you can combine low traffic machines into one machine using jails or a commercial virtulization package.
Get greener,
Rudy