Building an Energy Efficient MS Exchange server

[Alec]

Hi guys,
I am going to be studying Cisco a lot over the next few months as it goes well with my job as a computer engineer (some of the jobs I will be doing will be network oriented). And so for me to practice and fiddle with a real life server of my own through a network I am looking to make a MS exchange server which shall also be a fileserver for my backups etc.

I am planning on having two 1TB drives in RAID1 initially and to interface with my other machines through a gigabit switch.

Since this machine will be running 24/7 I would want a system which won't be pulling a huge amount of power- 200W or less would be ideal, with the hard disks spinning. I have been reading up on the intel Atom, it seems promising but they seem to be lacking in performance, and since I shall be using this as an exchange server it will be performing tasks on a regular basis. People say that the Atom processors are only really great if you are looking explicitly for a file server.

I have been looking around online for articles in regards to more "green" server oriented CPUs, but most of the articles have been from the 2006-2008 period; I am sure there have been movements in the technology since then.

If any of you guys have had experience with servers which aren't absolute power hogs and still provide a good level of performance I would be glad to hear your input on this matter.

Thanks for reading,
Alec

[fbmbirds]

i was using a dell poweredge server well more like 4 of them. and they were running 24/7 and i dont these servers were that bad on power. they have 2 power supplies and you can turn one off to help conserve energy btw these systems are like 2-3 years old.

[Alec]

i was using a dell poweredge server well more like 4 of them. and they were running 24/7 and i dont these servers were that bad on power. they have 2 power supplies and you can turn one off to help conserve energy btw these systems are like 2-3 years old.

Hi fbmbirds, thanks for the reply. Yes I have seen a few of them on ebay, they are going cheap now for what they are! Also its nice to hear they aren't power monsters, will definitely have to check them out some more. :D

Cheers for the guidance. :up:

Alec

[Budwise]

I use an i3 for my low power server. I upgraded from an Atom 330 and its an upgrade I never regret. A fantastic little chip and the entire system runs at less than 100W.

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

Idk how much processing power an exchange server needs, but can you buy a lower end intel / amd processor and undervolt it? I know you could undervolt an amd x3 or take your chances and try to unlock an AMD sempron to a dual core. 45w dualcore @ 2.7ghz should be fine. i

[Alec]

I use an i3 for my low power server. I upgraded from an Atom 330 and its an upgrade I never regret. A fantastic little chip and the entire system runs at less than 100W.

Hey Budwise, thanks for your comment. Wow the i3 really doesn't eat up many watts to have an entire system running at less than 100W! :) Also good to hear your experience with the Atom 330, it does indeed seem evident that the chip really can't cope with much more than some web browsing.


Synthetickiller;4377219']Idk how much processing power an exchange server needs, but can you buy a lower end intel / amd processor and undervolt it? I know you could undervolt an amd x3 or take your chances and try to unlock an AMD sempron to a dual core. 45w dualcore @ 2.7ghz should be fine. i

Hi Synthetickiller, thanks for your reply. Yes I have just been reading up on the amd x3, there is a version (AMD Athlon II X3 405e) which pulls only 45Watts, so even at stock vcore that thing is great energy efficiency wise- but undervolting that thing, must be quite impressive!

You're right though I could probably look into some cheap older dualcore or quadcore cpus and do the same thing- will have to read up more on that. :)

Cheers for the replies so far guys!

Alec

[zir_blazer]

I think that it would have been more useful to post your doubt that just sending a PM, so others can also have some input on the matter.

If you already have an Core i7, there is absolutely NO reason to get rid of it. The Nehalem architecture is in general very power efficient (I think that they are a step above 45nm K10 that you want to switch it for), they are power hungry because you are talking about models that were intending for high performance (And high power consumption...) desktop users, that also happens on the Phenom II X4 high end. So if you have a way to underclock and undervolt, you should first try doing so and see if you are confortable with it instead of spending on replacing Hardware. The good thing is that you can always pick a fast part knowing that it should bring you no issues scaling down, while you can't say the same of a slow part to begin with (Like Atoms) that if severely caps the performance that you requiere, you are going to need to change Hardware, while if you need more performance with the Core i7, you could play with settings until it suits your needs again.
Keep in mind that many low power parts can be nothing more than the same as standard power parts but with lower nominal Frequency and Voltage (That is why they consume less), that doesn't even warrants you that they are of a higher quality Bin. You can take as example the era of the Mobile Athlons XP, at the same Voltage, they could work at considerabily higher Frequencies that regular Desktop ones because they were of better Bins, and that is why they were a scucess among enthusiast (Something similar happened with Socket 939 Opterons, much higher quality Bins), but so far these days things like that doesn't repeat because low power models that archieve so with both lower Frequency and Voltage, are possibily of the same Bin quality than a standard power part because they fit in the same places of the Frequency/Voltage curve.

[Alec]

I think that it would have been more useful to post your doubt that just sending a PM, so others can also have some input on the matter.

If you already have an Core i7, there is absolutely NO reason to get rid of it. The Nehalem architecture is in general very power efficient (I think that they are a step above 45nm K10 that you want to switch it for), they are power hungry because you are talking about models that were intending for high performance (And high power consumption...) desktop users, that also happens on the Phenom II X4 high end.

The i7 isn't being replaced. It is my desktop machine and its primary use is for gaming and for 3d modelling, what I am intending on making is a separate machine for an entirely separate purpose. A server which shall serve as my file server via active directory as well as an exchange server for my phone and other machines to sync with. Since the server is going to be up 24/7 to run its tasks I am looking for power efficiency.


The good thing is that you can always pick a fast part knowing that it should bring you no issues scaling down, while you can't say the same of a slow part to begin with (Like Atoms) that if severely caps the performance that you requiere, you are going to need to change Hardware, while if you need more performance with the Core i7, you could play with settings until it suits your needs again.
Keep in mind that many low power parts can be nothing more than the same as standard power parts but with lower nominal Frequency and Voltage (That is why they consume less), that doesn't even warrants you that they are of a higher quality Bin. You can take as example the era of the Mobile Athlons XP, at the same Voltage, they could work at considerabily higher Frequencies that regular Desktop ones because they were of better Bins, and that is why they were a scucess among enthusiast (Something similar happened with Socket 939 Opterons, much higher quality Bins), but so far these days things like that doesn't repeat because low power models that archieve so with both lower Frequency and Voltage, are possibily of the same Bin quality than a standard power part because they fit in the same places of the Frequency/Voltage curve.

Good words there. :) I can see sense in why lower voltage chips may not scale so well, and so it may well be worth getting a higher end chip and underclocking/undervolting it like you did with your AMD chip in your thread. At the end of the day you always have some headroom incase you require some more performance.

Cheers for the advice and appologies for the confusion caused. I PMed you because it was more oriented to relating to your thread.

Alec

[bot@xs]

processing power is not that important on an exchange server and is a lot dependent on the traffic for the exchange server.
if you have a dozen medium traffic accounts the cpu won't have much to do and a decent low end cpu should be able to handle it.
a bigger concern is memory. exchange uses a lot of it. you should calculate 6-8gig for exchange alone. the performance of the exchange server is very memory dependent.
so if you go p55, h55 or h57 route then you pretty much limited to 8gig or it gets very expensive.
8gig total system memory would be the least i would recommend if you run exchange server 2007 or 2010. .. effectively
also, newer version of exchange will be x64 only. i think 2010 is x64 only and 2007 had a derivative for x86 but is primarily x64. something to take in consideration for an exchange box