Looking for a small server that can minimize power consumption & heat

[oldtrlrnr]

Hello,

I'm looking for a used ProLiant server for a small office, and important criteria are power management and heat.  I understand that ProLiant Power Regulator is compatible with G6 & newer servers.  I'm thinking maybe a DL160 or 165 - just need at least 300GB of disk, preferably mirrored RAID-1.

I'm trying to get a handle on what the power consumption & heat generation would be when the server is idling, which would be most of the time.  By contrast I have an old DL380-G3 with 5, 72GB drives - it used too much power & generated too much heat for my environment.

I've read various opinions about benefits of turning off the HD's when idle; not even sure if this can be done by Power Regulator or the Windows OS.

Appreciate any suggestions.

Bob

[Marko71]

Hi Bob,

Is this going to be a racked solution if it's only for a small office or just sitting on a desk in an old cupboard? 

For racked in a very light workload environment like you suggest it is I'd go for a DL320 series server & if you can use a tower system then a ML110 series or ML310.

Even a G5 variant of any of these systems will be substantial faster, quieter & less power hungry than the DL380G3 you have used previously.  The main issues you have with the G3 is it's power hungry Netburst Xeons & those old SCSI drives & moving to G5 means core 2 architecture cpu's which draw half the power with almost twice the processing oomph per MHz & also newer generation SATA/SAS drives which offer lower power usage and larger capacities.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Mark

[Jimmy Vance]

You should take a look at the new Gen8 MicroServer. It is small and very quiet. It has the embedded B120i RAID controller which will allow you to do RAID 1 with Windows and a few of the Linux distributions.

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=c04123182&docLocale=en_US

[Moderator edit: Updated the working link.]

[Matt_H]

All the Gen8 products have a power capping feature that may assist you with your power requirements. Solid State drives may offer you better power savings as well. Let me know if you need power specifics, don't forget to select the high efficiency power supplies, and select the minimum wattage ones you need as they place the major power load.