this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
39 points (93.3% liked)

Selfhosted

58044 readers
759 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
39
Power efficiency (lemmy.zip)
submitted 7 hours ago by jobbies@lemmy.zip to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
36 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm wondering what folks do to optimise the power efficiency of their Linux servers. I've never really got to the bottom of what is the best way to do this and with the current energy crisis its a pertinent topic.

I'm talking about home servers, so the availability requirements are not the same as in a corporate environment. There might be vast chunks of time during the day or night when they sit idle, and home users are more tolerant of a lag when accessing resources if it means lower energy bills.

Specifically I've been thinking about:

  • allowing lower power states when idle
  • spinning-down hdd's when they're not in use
  • MAYBE letting machines sleep/hibernate
  • setting schedules of times where you know demand will be low/zero and efficiency can be managed aggressively
  • any other quick wins I've missed

It would be amazing if there was one tool or one guide that helps with all of that but thats never the case, is it 😅

Thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (3 children)

spinning-down hdd’s when they’re not in use

I've just been through this recently. I decided to have my 2 backup HDDs spin down when not in use (99% of the time). I ran into an issue though where I needed them to wake up for SMART tests (which SMART didn't trigger). Tried a few things that didn't work so just set them to spin all the time. There's about a 1-2w difference when they're spinning all the time. So it's just not something worth worrying about IMO (In the UK with high energy costs that comes out to 2.5 pence per day roughly).

[–] JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Spinning up and down hard drives repeatedly drastically reduces their lifespan though. Once a day or so, fine, but if you set a 30 minute idle time or something and it spins them down a dozen times per day, you are putting acceleration forces on the drive many more times than intended.

If you have to buy a new HDD twice as often because you spin it down, any financial or environmental savings is instantly negated and in the end it is much, much worse in both respects.

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago

backup HDDs

They were spun down the majority of the time. I'm not an idiot.

load more comments (1 replies)