NAS Power Consumption

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨atk007@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I have been using an old PC as NAS and running docker containers (Immich, Nextcloud, paperless-ngx etc.). I got 5 3.5" HDD disks and a Nvme. Even on idle, I am consuming 50-60w. A friend of mine is selling a Qnap NAS which is a dedicated machine and probably consumes less power, although I don’t know if it’s worth it.

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LeTak@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Most of the power draw is from the hdds. I have the same issue. If you want less power consumption. Invest in SSD or SSD and HDD hybrid where you store quick access files on SSD and rare access on hdd (then you can spin them down with timeout of , let’s say 30-60 min). This should save some energy

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  In my experience using a PC as a NAS, the power draw isn’t necessarily the drives as they spin down when idle.
  
  I have an old desktop setup as NAS - with 2 drives or eight drives, idle power draw is virtually the same, about 100w, regardless of the OS (Windows, Linux, UnRAID, Proxmox).
  
  I also have an old consumer NAS, with five 4TB drives, and it idles under 20w (I think last I checked it was ~15w… I need to check it again and write that down).
  
  Two very similar systems, one designed to be a NAS, the other a desktop. It really comes down to the motherboard design and capabilities.
  
  And don’t think that SSD drives would do better - spinning disk drives generally have far better idle power than SSD does, and usually much better write power consumption.
  
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  - LeTak@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Good point. I looked mostly at the spec sheet from the manufacturer and for example the Samsung 870 Evo vs Seagate IronWolf NAS Drive. Side note, AFAIK NVME drives have a higher power consumption. Especially PCIe 5.0.
    
    My NAS with 2 HDDs from Seagate has a total powerdraw of around 30-40w. And I don’t spin the drives down.
    
    Latency of accessing files/loading times
    
    Lifespan reduction because of spin up / spin down Head moves (the most common for head crash, as I learned from my Teacher)
    
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  - WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    And don’t think that SSD drives would do better - spinning disk drives generally have far better idle power than SSD does, and usually much better write power consumption.
    
    I wonder if they can be “spinned down” like hard drives. their startup time would be much faster, so it’s shutdown could even be on a tighter schedule. I mean probably they dont have an internal idle timer, but who cares if you can just have something like hd-idle that shuts it down according to a better schedule.
    
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  - WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    In my experience using a PC as a NAS, the power draw isn’t necessarily the drives as they spin down when idle.
    
    that’s not always the default setup, especially with enterprise drives. also if you have some kind of monitoring, that can keep the drives from going down (for that, use linux hd-idle instead of drive internal idle timer), and it can also wake them up (for that, prometheus node exporter’s smart collector first checks whether a drive is up, and only then collect stats). Interestingly, checking temps with smartctl always spins up my drives, while linux hwmon can give me live temp stats even while the drives are down
    
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- Bags@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  If you can figure out how to get a qnap to spin down its disks, please let me know lol. I've been searching for months and haven't found a reliable solution. I basically only need to access it once a day at MOST, so having the disks spinning away for like 99% of their life sucking down power is something I'd like to avoid. The problem seems to be that even with a perfectly clean slate, no services running, all the system set up in their own RAID0 SSD pool, the HDD's, even with 0 bytes of data on them, are being pinged for access at least once a minute. I'm assuming it's some log being written to, but it's not anything visible in the file system, and I haven't been able to find any solution online, lots of people seem to have the same issue.
  
  I'm tempted more and more every day to just grab one of those low-power embedded ITX boards and build up a custom rig.
  
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  - WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The problem seems to be that even with a perfectly clean slate, no services running, the system set up in their own RAID0 SSD pool, the HDD’s, even with 0 bytes of data on them, are being pinged for access at least once a minute.
    
    if it’s for drive health stats, and the device runs linux, hd-idle could help. it only counts actual block device (so, storage) access as activity
    
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  - vane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I remember to have it working with default software I got but it was 10 years ago. Then they added this bloatware like media streaming addon or notification center. I have now entware with minidlna and set minidlna scanning disk once per day because media streaming was scanning all the time. I haven’t figure out how to permanently kill their /usr/local/sbin/ncd, ncdb, qNoticeEngined, qulogdb, NotificationCenter, mariadb processes. If I figure out it it probably start working again.
    
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  - Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Wow, QNAPS don’t spin down disks? Geez, what a crappy design choice. Thanks for that tidbit, I was considering one for my next NAS.
    
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the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have an old dell power edge that I got from work that I used as a NAS for a while, it sucked down more juice than the old PC I was using and was stupidly loud all the time. I ended up transferring everything back to my old PC and now that turd just sits there waiting for someone else to be dumb enough to buy it from me. I wouldn’t waste the money personally.

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- Impromptu2599@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The power edge server is going to draw way more power just because it has a “powerful” cpu(s) and other power running components. The Qnap will be much quieter and consume maybe a few watts less power than your existing setup, potentially. I wouldn’t use it though because your existing setup is way more flexible on what you can do with it.
  
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  - the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    “powerful” LOL it’s a turd
    
    www.intel.com/content/www/…/specifications.html
    
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- atk007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Thank you, this is what I am thinking too. I don’t wanna create e-waste, and apart from power consumption, the nas is very handy performance wise and tackles all load.
  
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JASN_DE@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
A big portion of that is caused by the drives, so you’d have to compare the empty QNAP vs your empty machine. Also, depending on which NAS appliance, check that the CPU is actually powerful enough to run all your services.

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Drives only consume power on reads and writes, if your NAS spins them down as it should (and apparently QNAP *doesn’t, which I didn’t know).
  
  As per my other comment - 8 drives or 1 drive, same idle power for desktop hardware. My actual NAS uses about 1/8 the power at idle for 5 drives.
  
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  - WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    Drives only consume power on reads and writes, if your NAS spins them down as it should (and apparently QNAP *doesn’t, which I didn’t know).
    
    not really. not all drives spin down by themselves, by default. and even if they do, it’ll happen relatively long after reads and writes, a the while it’ll consume power.
    
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BrightCandle@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I use a 5600g on b450 ITX board and 4x 8GB Seagate drives and see about 35W idle and about 40W average. It used to be 45W because I was forced to use a GPU in addition to a 3600 to boot (even though its headless, just a bad bios setup that I can’t fix) and getting a CPU with graphics dropped my idle consumption quite a bit. I suspect the extra wattage for your machine is probably the bigger motherboard and the less efficient CPU.

It is possible to get the machine part down into single digits wattage and then about 5W a drive is the floor without spinning them down, so the minimum you could likely see with a much less powerful CPU is about 30-35W.

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philpo@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Old PCs often have that problem. My “NAS” is more a full on proxmox server with an AM5 CPU, 64GB ECC and yet it halved my power consumption compared to its predecessors.

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smq@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
How do you monitor power consumption? I’m new to self hosting and I want to do that.

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- greybeard@feddit.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I use a KillaWatt device. It is a simple device you plug into the outlet and then plug the device you want to measure into it. I've had mine for a long time so I have no idea what a new one would cost, but I'm guessing sub $30.
  
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- Novocirab@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Some local libraries (e.g. in Heidelberg) or ecological initiatives lend devices to measure electricity consumption at the power plug. In particular, this is useful to measure other appliances as well.
  
  Specifically for computers, they probably have some means that tell you their own consumption, but they may not be accurate or complete and will most certainly omit any peripherals, e.g. external hard drives.
  
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  - smq@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Thank you! I will see if I can get my hands on one of those.
    
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- atk007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I actually have an extension cord with IoT chip. Can measure power consumption via home assistant.
  
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just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
“Old PC” meaning what, exactly? Need some specs.

In general, a Qnap or Synology box is going to be much lower wattage than a full PC.

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- atk007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s 6th gen i5 processor with gigabyte motherboard. And Qnap is ts-531x.
  
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  - tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I switched from an I3-530, nominal TDP 73W, to an N-100, nominal TDP 7W, and power from the wall didn’t change at all. Even the i3 ran around 0.1 CPU load, except when transcoding, and I’m left with the impression that most of the power goes into HDDs, RAM, maybe fans, and PS losses. My sense is that the best way to decrease homelab power use is to minimize the number of devices. Start with your seyrver at 60W, add a WAP at 10-15W, maybe a switch at 10-15W… Not because of the CPUs, necessarily, but because every CPU every CPU comes with systems to keep the CPU going, keep the power regulated, etc.
    
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beeng@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If the aim is to save money, figure out how long it will take you to break even. Then the service life of such a machine

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cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My NAS uses a similar amount of power. The drives use most of the power. The PC uses less than 20W on its own. Upgrading to a couple of large helium filled drives will save a good bit of power. SATA drives tend to use a little less power than SAS drives too.

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- HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Instructions unclear, now my server is slowly floating into the sky…
  
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  - zorflieg@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Instructions unclear, now my NAS’s voice is squeaky.
    
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philpo@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Easiest way is to use a tasmota based power plug. They need to calibrated once,but then are pretty reliable and can be found for 15 bucks.

Nous A1T (or similar nous,but watch out for the T at the end, Z is zigbee) is popular in central europe. They are well built and cheap as fuck. But again,they need to be calibrated once which you need a steady user (e.g an old incandescent light bulb ) and a multimeter for… It’s easy and only needs to be done once.

Another option are the Inter-Tech PDUs, they costs around a 100 Bucks, are fully IP, can switch channels but only measure the consumption of the whole strip. If you have a more advanced USV they often have a total power consumption measurement.

If you want to go all in you need to look for “switched and metered” PDUs, but they are fucking expensive. The Cyberpower PDU81005 is the cheapest “good” one and is over 400 bucks here . So… Most people won’t do that,even in a professional setting.

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rarbg@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This is the reason I use a NAS specific box. So much more power efficient

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merthyr1831@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m probably in a similar boat thanks to 4x NAS drives (in 2x mirror vdevs so essentially half as power efficient too). I wonder if using an SSD or two for things like caches would help with power draw since you could defer disk usage for longer by relying on a more efficient cache.

SnapRAID is also an option. One benefit is that multiple disks don’t need to be spinning at once to access data. Downside is that your parity isn’t calculated in real time so less data redundancy.

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- atk007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I am already running Snapraid and machines do spindown after sometime, but it’s still around 50w.
  
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hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You'll want to look up the QNAP as well. I've seen reports with quite some variety on the power consumption. Depending on the exact model, it could be somewhere in the range from 25W to 55W... So could be less, could be the same.

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- atk007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ram is definitely abysmal on Qnap, so it’s one reason for hesitation. But I wanted to get some idea how much power saving is possible on dedicated NAS. If it’s not much, I would rather keep my PC.
  
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  - hendrik@palaver.p3x.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Sure, I have an old PC with an energy efficient mainboard and a PicoPSU and I wouldn't want anything else. I believe it does somewhere around 20W-25W though. And I have lots of RAM, a decent (old) CPU and enough SATA ports.... Well, I would go for a newer PC, they get more energy efficient all the time... But it's a lot of effort to pick the components unless some PC magazine writes something or someone has a blog with recommendations.
    
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