FYI

I used to have this zoo of computer systems here at home. Something to act as a NAS for backups, something to do custom RPM builds (OBS), a few test systems (I develop DB replication systems), a Web Server, a machine running Squid ... you get the idea.

Finally I gave in and got myself a refurbished Dell PowerEdge 2950. It came with a PERC-6i RAID controller, a DRAC-5, 32GB of ECC RAM, 2x Quad-Xeon @2.66 GHz and 4x 1TB SATA drives. Redundant hot-swap power, dual Gigabit Ethernet ... <$600 shipped to my door (UPS driver was complaining about the weight of that box).

The hardware, although 7 years old, is good enough to run VMware ESXi 5.5. And THAT is the key. It also was squeaky clean. Don't know if they power washed it or what, but there wasn't a speck of dust in that thing. Had to get a replacement battery for the RAID controller ... d'oh. But now I have 256 MB write back, battery backed. You normally don't get that in your average home PC.

The system replaced several physical PCs by running VMs. Overall power consumption went down. Overall noise level went up, so don't attempt this unless you have an unfinished basement like I do.

How is this related to SETI@home? Well, I was getting annoyed with all this unused CPU. 8 Xeon Cores @2.66 GHz is a lot of wasted computing power, if they are just sitting there twiddling thumbs. And that is what they did most of the time, unless I was running some regression tests or replication stress scenarios. So I remembered SETI, created another VM with 8 vCPUs but only a small amount of CPU shares. This means that the boinc VM can max out all 8 cores, but will only get CPU cycles if no other VM needs them. My server acts still the same. No difference in performance when I need it. But when I don't use it, all the CPU goes hunting for ETs.

If you run more than 2 PCs in some sort of "server" role at home, consider this as an option. It really pays off to go "industrial" on it at some point.


Regards, Jan