Low-Power ATX PSU's - Where to get

[mjws00]

You can run an older version if it hits your priorities better. You can tweak FreeNAS so that it doesn't write to your pool and spin up your drives. You can have ZFS on a more aggressive power managing platform. The only thing you can't have is the current vanilla FreeNAS GUI to let you do it. Heck you can even fork the code and put it in the GUI.

Personally I think this is a minor side effect for functional gains. Not an intentional direction. I see no significant hurdle to allowing logging to RAM as it used to, and finding a way to deal with Samba 4... The code exists already as it is how it used to work. But I'd need it pretty bad to code it myself.

Even in terms of the target larger storage market. Cold storage is becoming a real big deal. Stuff gets spun down and archived until we need it... no more keeping 100 drives spinning for no reason. So at some point they may have a 'reason' to reconsider power efficiency... but right now it seems there are more important issues.

I'd love to have the functionality in FreeNas for a "cold storage" pool. I've got lots of archive data sets that I power down manually. Automated would rock. Admittedly most of the time waiting for a drive to spin-up pisses me off. I also think that spin-up is when crap goes sideways. So I'm not their guy. But if I had 100 disks in a pool and needed to access them a few times a year quickly.... awesome.

 

[mjws00]

Another simple solution might be logging to a separate pool on a sata dom. Easy to get in under 1w, and would let your regular pool spin down. Haven't been down that road myself, but cyberjock is all over it ;)

 

[FreeNASBob]

We didn't "remove" the ability. FreeNAS really never had it. People hacked it in.

Perhaps I have misunderstood the meaning of the "Hard Disk Standby Time" option in disk management?

 

[panz]

@FreeNASBob I like when people put an effort for the environment protection, a thing that here in Europe is now mandatory.

Simply put, you don't need FreeNAS.
It can't sleep the hard drives, it can't sleep the motherboard, it can't selectively switch off its peripherals and so on. It's a server, a true server, and you can't apply to it the same concepts you gained from Windows or another desktop OS.

When I was trying FreeNAS, I installed it in my workstation: it was using around 110W all the time; Windows puts the same machine to a deep "state of sleep" that it draws only 0.5W!

 

[wintermute000]

Perhaps I have misunderstood the meaning of the "Hard Disk Standby Time" option in disk management?

Wait does this feature not work???

 

[FreeNASBob]

@FreeNASBob It's a server, a true server, and you can't apply to it the same concepts you gained from Windows or another desktop OS.

There's nothing about the concept of a "true server" that would disallow power management. I know I'm in the minority here, but it seems bizarre to me that not wanting to wait 5 seconds for a file is considered a legitimate concern worth preventing users from conserving energy and reducing pollution. Even in an enterprise environment it's not likely that 24x7 instantaneous access to file storage is needed as most businesses have some period during which they're closed. Even then, there's no reason that administrators of systems that do indeed need 24x7 instantaneous file access cannot simply turn off power management while allowing it to work for everyone else who chooses to enable it.

When I was trying FreeNAS, I installed it in my workstation: it was using around 110W all the time; Windows puts the same machine to a deep "state of sleep" that it draws only 0.5W!

If you know of a Windows version that will run for a year or more without reboot and supports the ZFS filesystem, I'm in.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Wait does this feature not work???

My understanding is that by default FreeNAS disks will not enter standby. The system will write log entries to disk often enough to prevent sleep. In the past these log entries were stored in RAM, which allowed the disks to enter standby. I believe this change was made because FreeNAS has outgrown its ability to live on a USB thumb drive and needs somewhere to read/write to often. The default is to "hijack" a bit of the first zpool for that purpose.

These threads have more information:

Is constant small amounts of disk activity normal
Harddisk spindown made impossible

 

[jgreco]

Nice summary FreeNASBob.

 

[wintermute000]

Thanks. I have a ssd scratch / jail disk so I think still have the option but not doing it for now to reduce drive fail risk. 4tb drives ain't cheap