Re: [Hampshire] Power usage

Paul Tansom wrote:
> Not a huge amount, although it appears, now I'm down to a single server
> handling web/mail/dns/dhcp/proxy/spam/etc. a bit more than an old
> Celeron 533 can deliver. Clearly the new boxes have more than enough,
> but, although I've considered virtualisation, 3 separate boxes seem a
> better option. Two internal ones to share the load and provide fall back
> and data backup between the two (virtualisation here would kill both at
> the same time should there be a failure!), and one DMZ box processing
> the incoming mail and providing some extranet/internet functionality
> (security is the barrier to virtualisation here, although I've not read
> up on the risks of a compromise excalating the the host OS and/or
> between VMs - clearly care would need to be taken to isolate the
> internal VMs and external one and prevent each from any risk form the
> NIC used by the other).
>

Another thing to consider, with modern hardware, you can have machines
that going into suspend mode, then either wake on LAN or wake at an
appropriate time or even power off and wake up again if boot time isn't
an issue. Unfortunately my VIA low power system that I use for my media
centre doesn't support suspend properly :( so gets left on 24/7. This
would be a good way to reduce the power output of the more powerful
servers, for example do you really need the web server running all
night? Shutting down for 8hrs or so over night would dramatically reduce
the power bill :)