[geeks] Ran the numbers - V240

[Joshua D. Boyd]

There are much better arm machines for server use than the Raspberry Pi, for
similar cost and power. The Raspberry Pi's continue to share a single USB
interface for both 100mbit Ethernet and any external storage you choose to
use. Looking elsewhere you can get gigabit and/or dedicated storage
interface.


The odroid hc1 (
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G150229074080 )
looks promising and is from a fairly reputable company. It had 2gb ram,
gigabit Ethernet and a SATA port. I think the SATA may use a USB 3 converter
chip on board, which is still very fast. The price is $49. They come with a
stackable frame, so it might avoid buying the Etsy case, evening it the price
difference a bit.

Alternatively, if you don't want the hard drives, the same company offers a
cluster product (
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G150152508314 ).
That comes in 4 node chunks with attached fan for $220.

In the past, I've used pogo plug devices, which I would also recommend over
the Raspberry Pis for server use, but they are getting a little old, so if I
was making a new purchase, it would probably be the above device.

On November 9, 2017 9:17:23 AM EST, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Wow.
>
>So last night I sat down and ran the numbers, and I can see why sun
>V240 are available so cheaply... The cost to run them is quite high!
>
>Here in Texas, using a state average of 9 cents/KWhr, the numbers look
>like this:
>
>24 hours/day x 365 days/yr equals 8,832 hr/yr
>
>The fully-loaded V240 consumes 385 watts/hr, based on an in-line
>"watt-a-meter".
>
>So to run this machine for a year the cost is:
>
>385 watts/hr x 8,832 hr/yr equals 3,400,320 watts/yr, and when divided
>by 1,000 watts/KW
>give you an annual power appetite for the V240 as 3,400 KWhr/yr.
>
>Multiply the 3,400 KWhr/yr times the cost per KWhr of $0.09/KWhr and
>you are looking at $306/yr.
>
>Divide that $306 by 12, and that means running the machine for a month
>will add about $25.20 to my monthly power bill.
>
>Wow.
>
>For my 24x7 purposes, I was going to run a handful (5) of small VMs,
>serving up small personal websites - I can almost justify the monthly
>cost (it would work out to $5/month per site), but then something
>caught my fancy, a nifty rack that is no bigger than a half gallon
>carton of milk that holds 6x Raspberry PI boards for about $30, and
>that got me thinking...
>
>I googled "power consumption raspberry pi 3" (no quotes) and found
>that at 400% CPU load (all 4x cores running at 100%, worst-case), the
>Pi 3 consumes about 750 ma/hr or 3.7 watts/hr.
>
>Running the same calculations again, a single RPi 3 consumes about 34
>KWhr/yr, and at a cost of $0.09/KWhr, a single RPi 3 is about
>$3.94/yr, or about $0.75/month. And thinking about my application, a
>single RPi 3 could likely handle the any worst-case load any of my
>sites would ever see, so the numbers come down to this:
>
>To run the V240 on older Solaris without access to security patches
>(but scoring booku "Geek Points for running a public Solaris web
>server at home) would cost me $5/month. Hardware costs are zero, I
>have the server already.
>
>To run 5x Raspberry Pi 3 running Linux on them, with full access to
>security patches (and scoring slightly fewer "Geek Points" for having
>a Raspberry Pi datacenter on my desktop) would cost about $3.75/month.
>Hardware costs are steeper:
>
>5x Raspberry Pi 3B at $35/each = $175
>5x 32 Gig microSD cards at $10/each = $50
>1x multi-port cellphone charger (6x USB ports, 60 Watt capacity) = $20
>5x micro USB to USB cables (power for RPis) = $10
>5x 1 ft Cat 5 cables = $10
>1x 8 port Ethernet switch = $15
>6x RPi rack from etsy = $30
>
>Total Hardware cost: $310
>
>Total first-year cost is nearly identical ($0 + $306 = $306/yr for
>V240, $310 + (5x $4/yr for 5 RPi) = $330/yr for the desktop RPi
>datacenter, but for year 2 of operation the cost is another $306 for
>the V240 vs $20 for the RPi datacenter...
>
>Looks like I may be going out shopping for some Raspberry Pis!
>
>Thought others might find the math/numbers interesting.
>
>Lionel
>--
>Lionel Peterson
>lionel4287 at gmail.com
>_______________________________________________
>GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks

--
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