Small/Low Power Server Recommendation?

[RW]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:17:26 -0500
Lowell Gilbert wrote:

> Chris Maness <chris at chrismaness.com> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 10:05 AM, Colin Barnabas
> > <colin.barnabas at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The Raspberry Pi B+ would be hard to beat in terms of power
> >> consumption (500 mAh). Could comfortably run a web or file server
> >> (512 MB RAM) for a home
> >> business. Not sure on the state of FBSD ARM though, if you're
> >> intent on running FBSD on the thing.
> >>
> >> http://www.adafruit.com/product/1914
> >>
> >>
> > I thought of that for a Linux server running JNOS, but I think I had
> > something more traditional in mind, so I could just restore the
> > dumps of the old server, and be up and running in short order.  I
> > am currently working on my masters in physics, and spare time is in
> > short supply.
> 
> Keeping a drive running dwarfs the power consumption of a small
> motherboard anyway. I would switch to an SSD for my own home server,

The system would have to be *very* low power for that to be true. A
typical 2.5 inch drive intended for laptops uses about 0.7W just
spinning and <3W  in constant use. Most home servers spend most of
their time idle, so even a desktop drive can average about 4W (even
without allowing it to spin down).