I want to host a website at home. and I don't want it to raise the power bill too much. so I was wondering if anyone has any ideas for making a very energy efficient server. it could be on mostly anything (ipod, cellphone, mini-tower), but the idea is to make it very energy efficient, without being hugly expensive.

I hunted around online, but it seems that energy efficiency isn't too big an issue yet, so I didn't find much.

any help would be great, sorry that the post is kind of weird.

Thanks
-Michael

Run with the basics. Don't have too many components in your setup. Use the minimal amount of Watts for your PSU, don't use a floppy and or cdrom after installation. Use only one hard drive and get a newer cpu that uses less amount of resources. If your webserver doesn't draw much traffic, most of the time it's going to sit idle.

But no matter, if you only plan to run one machine, it's not going to bump the cost of your bill that much per month. I use to run 3 to 4 machines at all times, without a significant increase in my bills. Now I run only one 24/7 most of the time, with not that much of a change. It's my A/C and Fridge that do most of the damage to the bill...

awesome, i'll search about for which components are more energy efficient.

thanks again
-Michael

Don't forget the cost savings of using recycled components. My webserver would bring tears of joy to Victor Frankenstein's eyes -- every piece scrounged or donated. 200MHz, 64MB, 6gB, 10Mbps, etc. Orig. RH7.2, now Debian Woody, soon Sarge.

Two options are to use a second-hand laptop, or an appliance with replacement firmware. Since many consumer routers and NAS systems run Linux, people can (and do) build small distributions to provide a more fully-featured operating system than the vendor provided.

Probably the main thing is to avoid units with powerful processors like the Pentium IV, which require a fair amount of power and cooling compared to less powerful chips.

I second hobs notion: a
Linksys NSLU2
(5V/2A + external USB HDD, could be a 20G 2.5" notebook
one) http://www.nslu2-linux.org/
or a
Linksys WRT54GS
(5V, 2.5A) http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/9826
can be "upgraded" with a real Linux distro, and if
you don't expect too many hits, and the site isn't
too complex they should easily do :}


Cheers,
Tink

if I were to use a laptop, would it be a good idea to remove the battery, so that it isn't constantly charging, and instead the machine is just running off of the power from the AC socket? or is that something that could cause other problems?

thanks for all the replies.

Well, you could think of the battery as a built-in UPS
which is always a good thing to have :}


Cheers,
Tink

hey thats an awesome point. and if its a dedicated server it would need a UPS. awesome, thanks.

Most laptops I've dealt with won't work unless the battery is in the laptop, even if the battery is dead. And also most laptops when the battery is fully charged, it stops charging and the power is directly from the plug in the wall.

the laptop that i have to play with will let me turn it on with the battery out. but I wasn't sure if it would cause some common problem that laptops have or something when they are being opperated without the battery, I can't think of anything that would go wrong, so long as it initally turned on, but I had no idea.

thanks for the input.
-Michael