I've noticed a paradox.

[oncdoc]

This is my first post. I came to these forums researching on building a truenas PC.

My intentions were having the PC on all the time to do backups and run virtual machines. I wanted to have a power efficient system. Something that won't crush me with a high electricity bill.

Rightfully so, a 24/7 PC that is a server for backups does not need cutting edge hardware.

However, if you start running virtual machines that are hardware resource hogs you do need a powerful machine.

Hence, I am feeling torn and it's been bothering me.

I can see why people come to these forums with a higher end build specs in mind and then get talked out of it.

It's a conundrum.

 

[jgreco]

How so? If you were going to want a VM that's a hardware hog, you're likely to be doing that instead of having separate machine(s) to handle the VM tasks. That is going to save energy in most cases.

If you don't want to use so much power, what you do is you lose (or adjust) the workload. You can choose not to run your Plex server as a separate host. In that same manner, you can also choose not to run your Plex server as a VM. This is really almost the same choice and both save power.

If you have ongoing VM tasks that process stuff, you can choose to adjust it so that it uses the least amount of resources possible. This tends to be more adjustable on a hypervisor and you may end up in a better position in the end.