"Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?
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I have a couple of "white" box systems running Windows 10 that I run for various every day use, gaming and for Plex but I hibernate them a lot of the time to save money on the electricity bills. I have been considering getting some server hardware to run some VMs but I am not sure if I would be better off setting up a hosted environment or paying for the increased electricity, as it is kind of expensive here, in Southern California.
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I learned long ago that colocation is cheaper for that. Hit up @colocationamerica and see if you can get a 1U in one of their SoCal datacenters. Get a nice SuperMicro or Dell 1U physical box and put it there. You'll get a better education experience, more to talk about in interviews or over drinks at the bar, and a more powerful, extensive lab experience than you would likely get having anything inside the walls of your home.
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@scottalanmiller said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I learned long ago that colocation is cheaper for that. Hit up @colocationamerica and see if you can get a 1U in one of their SoCal datacenters. Get a nice SuperMicro or Dell 1U physical box and put it there. You'll get a better education experience, more to talk about in interviews or over drinks at the bar, and a more powerful, extensive lab experience than you would likely get having anything inside the walls of your home.
Glad I asked.
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I was wondering this too. I have 7 servers that are sitting doing nothing because I don't want to pay the bill.
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@mattbagan said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I was wondering this too. I have 7 servers that are sitting doing nothing because I don't want to pay the bill.
I would call you Mr. Money Bags, but then I got to the end of the sentence. LOL
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If you can limit your home to just a Raspberry Pi or even an Intel NUC you might be better off keeping it at home. But once you get to anything hard core or extensive, the power savings along generally make it all worth it.
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I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
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@mattbagan said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I was wondering this too. I have 7 servers that are sitting doing nothing because I don't want to pay the bill.
I moved two at home to colo back around 2003 and saved rather a bit of money.
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@fuznutz04 said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
You are probably just not paying close enough attention. That should be rather a lot.
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The one thing that changes... when running systems at home you tend to have sprawl as you start to collect "any hardware people let you have". When you go to colo, you tend to focus your investment on density and you get your best bang for the buck squeezing everything that you want to do out of a 1U space.
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@scottalanmiller said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
The one thing that changes... when running systems at home you tend to have sprawl as you start to collect "any hardware people let you have". When you go to colo, you tend to focus your investment on density and you get your best bang for the buck squeezing everything that you want to do out of a 1U space.
This makes sense.
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@scottalanmiller said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
@fuznutz04 said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
You are probably just not paying close enough attention. That should be rather a lot.
I actually compared bills to last year and this year. Only slight difference. But electricity in my house varies greatly from time to time, depending on what projects I’m doing around the house. If I would have noticed a big jump is price, it would have been gone months ago.
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I’m sure it depends on where you live. I have a DL380 and an R710 at home. They each are about $10 a month in electricity.
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@fuznutz04 said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
For Tier 1, which is a very small tier, it is a little over 8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents for generation. The next tier is 16.8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents per kWh for generation.
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@wrx7m said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
@fuznutz04 said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
For Tier 1, which is a very small tier, it is a little over 8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents for generation. The next tier is 16.8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents per kWh for generation.
Geeze. Ours is 7.5 total.
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@stacksofplates said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
@wrx7m said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
@fuznutz04 said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
For Tier 1, which is a very small tier, it is a little over 8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents for generation. The next tier is 16.8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents per kWh for generation.
Geeze. Ours is 7.5 total.
Yet another reason I want to move out of state.
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@stacksofplates said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I’m sure it depends on where you live. I have a DL380 and an R710 at home. They each are about $10 a month in electricity.
Yeah, I wouldn’t notice 10 bucks, so that makes sense.
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@wrx7m said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
@fuznutz04 said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
I have a 2 u Dell r710 that I set up about a year ago. Runs 24x7 with Plex , various other VMs, and general storage. I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference on my electric bill at all. How expensive is electricity in CA?!
For Tier 1, which is a very small tier, it is a little over 8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents for generation. The next tier is 16.8 cents per kWh for delivery and 7.5 cents per kWh for generation.
Yikes!
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@scottalanmiller said in "Home" Lab - Is it Cost-Effective to Run at Home?:
If you can limit your home to just a Raspberry Pi or even an Intel NUC you might be better off keeping it at home. But once you get to anything hard core or extensive, the power savings along generally make it all worth it.
I have 4 pi's. One is setup with the official display running a web server, streaming my dog cams. Another running a portable kodi player with a 1TB hdd. Other two are doing nothing.
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Yeah we try to stay in the lowest tier. Some months are discounted and only a few bucks for some reason. Sometimes we're over, but what can ya do.
