Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 87.186.65.133]
on October 17, 2008 08:20 AM
I'd like to repudiate some statements made by earlier posters:
1) Using an old computer is much more environmentally friendly - simply because you are recycling old components
2) Often is old hardware uses less power that modern
3) Unlike mechanic hardware - electronic equipment has the same statistical chance of failure at any point in their life. Hence you should never swap out old electrically components out simply because they are old.
While it is true that _every_ new piece of equipment will comsume energy in production and create waste, you'll have to offset this against savings in power comsumption and eqipment reliability.
And, if one were to follow the 'old = better' argument all the way, then nobody should be driving a clean Toyota Prius, and we all should still be using our great-grandparents Ford Model T.
As for power consumption: The Bubba 2 uses (depending on the used hard drive) between seven and twelve Watts of power. Compare this to modern power guzzling several-hundred-Watt computers, and do the math yourself: Let's take my 4 year old rig, which had a 300W power supply, and though I never measured it's average power consumption, let's assume it's 20% of peak capacity. That gives us about 50W saved by using a Bubba 2 server.
Now keep this machine running 24h, 360 days a year and this will get you ~430 kWh of power saved per year.
Regarding the 'electronic equipment has the same statistical chance of failure at any point in their life' I cannot even begin to tell how wrong that statement is.
Every piece of equipment suffers wear-and-tear. In electronics you have thermal stress (check Nvidia latest graphics chip CF), Capacitor aging, and you should *really* check that nasty little number called 'MTBF' on your hard drive ;)
I'm using a Fit-PC which IMHO superior in every aspect:
... it is an X86 CPU. Runs Ubuntu or Gentoo ... With these special distro version for PowerPC you are the last to get updates, and your software stack is limited. The software you get is only what the manufacturer has prepared. With X86 you have the freedom to choose.
Last I checked Debian Etch (which is running on the Bubba 2 server) listed 2 million entries in it's x86 contents overview compared to 1,96 million for PowerPC (with 1,90 million for ia64) which amounts to about a 3.5% difference.
Alas, if you just *have* to run some windows x86 emulated software on wine, then any x86 distribution is clearly the way to go, but claims like 'special distro version' and 'last to get updates' are utterly rediculous.
Neither bubba or fit-pc has gigabit ethernet.
The Bubba 2 server actually offers *two* GBit Ethernet ports.
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Bubba Two: The little server that could
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 87.186.65.133] on October 17, 2008 08:20 AM1) Using an old computer is much more environmentally friendly - simply because you are recycling old components
2) Often is old hardware uses less power that modern
3) Unlike mechanic hardware - electronic equipment has the same statistical chance of failure at any point in their life. Hence you should never swap out old electrically components out simply because they are old.
While it is true that _every_ new piece of equipment will comsume energy in production and create waste, you'll have to offset this against savings in power comsumption and eqipment reliability.
And, if one were to follow the 'old = better' argument all the way, then nobody should be driving a clean Toyota Prius, and we all should still be using our great-grandparents Ford Model T.
As for power consumption: The Bubba 2 uses (depending on the used hard drive) between seven and twelve Watts of power. Compare this to modern power guzzling several-hundred-Watt computers, and do the math yourself: Let's take my 4 year old rig, which had a 300W power supply, and though I never measured it's average power consumption, let's assume it's 20% of peak capacity. That gives us about 50W saved by using a Bubba 2 server.
Now keep this machine running 24h, 360 days a year and this will get you ~430 kWh of power saved per year.
Regarding the 'electronic equipment has the same statistical chance of failure at any point in their life' I cannot even begin to tell how wrong that statement is.
Every piece of equipment suffers wear-and-tear. In electronics you have thermal stress (check Nvidia latest graphics chip CF), Capacitor aging, and you should *really* check that nasty little number called 'MTBF' on your hard drive ;)
I'm using a Fit-PC which IMHO superior in every aspect:
... it is an X86 CPU. Runs Ubuntu or Gentoo ... With these special distro version for PowerPC you are the last to get updates, and your software stack is limited. The software you get is only what the manufacturer has prepared. With X86 you have the freedom to choose.
Last I checked Debian Etch (which is running on the Bubba 2 server) listed 2 million entries in it's x86 contents overview compared to 1,96 million for PowerPC (with 1,90 million for ia64) which amounts to about a 3.5% difference.
Alas, if you just *have* to run some windows x86 emulated software on wine, then any x86 distribution is clearly the way to go, but claims like 'special distro version' and 'last to get updates' are utterly rediculous.
Neither bubba or fit-pc has gigabit ethernet.
The Bubba 2 server actually offers *two* GBit Ethernet ports.
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