Server "power management" settings | OS possible ?

[NinthWave]

System: Poweredge T610

In the BIOS, under Power Management, a few options are possible like: Max Performance / Max Efficiency / Custom / OS

My NAS is idle 99% of the the time and I was looking for a way to reduce power consumption as I have 2x 80W TDP CPUs.

Is FreeBSD / TrueNAS able to manage power consumption if BIOS is set to : OS ?

 

[jgreco]

The setting may not matter too much, almost every OS out there has focused to some extent on energy efficiency for at least a decade.

What the setting does on your specific platform does, I don't know. It won't hurt to plug in a Kill-a-Watt and experiment.

FreeNAS deprecated the most obvious user-visible feature, powerd, in 11.2

https://redmine.ixsystems.com/issues/49398

An 80W TDP CPU is unlikely to be using a ton of idle power, but you could see if removing one of the CPU's is supported.

 

[jgreco]

Oh, a T610 isn't what I thought it was. The pre-Sandy-Bridge CPU's are all very power hungry even when idle, so removing a CPU is your best bet.

 

[NinthWave]

Oh, a T610 isn't what I thought it was. The pre-Sandy-Bridge CPU's are all very power hungry even when idle, so removing a CPU is your best bet.

It's currently installed with 2x E5640
But I do have 2x L5630

It came with 2MB memory stick for a total of 24 MB so if I disable one CPU, I'll lose half the RAM as all slots are populated.

Unless I want to buy new RAM, I think it would be fare to swap the CPUs for the low power L5630.

As mentionned in OP, the system is runing mostly at 1-3%.

What do you think ?

[EDIT] there is actually a bug on CPU benchmark as I can't get a single L5630 to display but you get the point.