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30 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
30 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Server Upgrade!
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date: 2020-01-15
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categories: projects
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excerpt: I started off my winter break by finally upgrading the Pi 3 that had been powering my website to a proper x86-64 server.
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header:
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teaser: /assets/img/2020/server_1.jpg
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gallery:
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_1.jpg
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_2.jpg
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_4.jpg
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_5.jpg
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_6.jpg
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_7.jpg
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- image_path: /assets/img/2020/server_3.jpg
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---
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To kick off the start of my winter break, I finally replaced the Raspberry Pi 3 that had been powering my website for the last couple months with a proper x86-64 server. The Pi 3 was simply too slow to complete basic tasks on a WordPress site with reasonable speed.
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The main thing I considered when speccing out the server was the cost of upkeep. Once hosting a website gets to about $10 a month it starts to become more economical to find a third party host. The Pi 3 very conservatively draws about 5W continuously, which running 24/7 puts it at about $6 a year to run. So a sub-50W draw was roughly what I was aiming for.
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Initially I looked into old Xeon processors which are dirt cheap, but I’d be trading price for higher energy consumption. Then I considered buying a refurbished Dell PC, which did have its merits. At the end of the day, I decided to splurge a little and buy all new components, centering around an ASRock DeskMini A300 and Ryzen 3 3200G. Native support for NVME drives which I’ve been hearing about for so long was the cherry on top. After ordering everything on Black Friday and surviving finals week, I was finally able to put the computer together.
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{% include gallery %}
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Measuring the power draw when idle puts it at about 15W, which is about $18 a year to run. Not too shabby. Considering my website doesn’t get that many visitors, it’ll be running idle a great deal of the time. Even pinning one core to a 100% put power draw at about 30W. Despite the initial ~$350 investment, this server was well worth it. And it’ll provide something to tinker around with when I’m bored.
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Backing up the site takes seconds instead of minutes. Experimenting with new themes and settings is no longer such a chore. Saving a post happens just like that. I can actually watch images being uploaded in real time. The performance difference is absolutely beautiful.
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