some ruminations on saving money, power, etc.

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

Dan Ritter wrote:
> Turns out that frequency scaling doesn't actually save power on
> older Athlon chips (i.e. my main server).

Interesting. References? What's the cut-off (i.e. parts newer than X
support it)?

I wonder why that's the case. Did they emulate scaling with no-op loops
or something, rather than actually cranking down the clock frequency?


> The Myth box is not particularly stable.

Do you have an idea why? My Ubuntu 8.04 LTS-based MythTV server isn't as
stable as my Debian server, but it still generally has uptimes measured
in quarters, rather than months or days.


>> ...you'd need to build some software that queries the scheduler for
>> upcoming recording times...then scheduling a wakeup task on another
>> box.
> 
> ...the startup time is significant to anyone who
> wants to watch tv at an unexpected time.

Oh yeah, I forgot about *watching* TV. :-)


>> Have you considered consolidating your main and MythTV servers? (I hear
>> some people have even had success running MythTV in a VM.)
> 
> The idea fills me with dread.

Do you use the live TV feature? If not, maybe a blended solution would
work...

First, spin off your MythTV storage to your main server or a low-power
NAS appliance.

Then run a MythTV slave server in a VM on the main server. This slave
would be stripped down and used only for serving up recordings.

Meanwhile, your main MythTV server continues to be used for recordings,
transcoding, and anything else that can be batched or scheduled, while
automatically shutting itself down when not needed.

(The slave/master arrangement might need to be swapped for that to work.
I don't recall exactly what capabilities each type has.)

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/