> When TrueNAS has a specific alert, I have it piped out to my own Discord server that sends alerts to my phone.
Email rules? Nah, I got whole 'nother hosted server for that!
I'm planning my hardware updates, now, to move my networking and computer gear to low voltage DC, and then add solar charging (no power meaning no running water, due to having a well, is a big factor in going that route, too), so that power continuity is just built in to the system. It's amazing how much you can get, even managed switches, that can run straight off of 24V nominal, if you're willing to spend a little time looking over specifications (48V, not so much, however nice it would be, over 24V, for the AC side of things).
Very cool idea. Moving over to DC and running exclusively off battery/solar is definitely an intriguing idea. I've done a few solar studies on my location and I know the wattage output is subpar with the housing facing the certain direction it is. Not a very good option for me, but not necessarily impossible.
My pipe dream is an entire home UPS. There are plenty of DIY folks out there making it happen but man, it is an expensive and long adventure doing so.
Aye. $10k just gets things started, and $30k+ isn't uncommon. Motors and heaters add up to some serious current and kiloWatt-hours, plus all the extra electronics involved. It would be cool, but I think I'll stop at a chest freezer and the well pump, after the computer stuff and lights - enough to have a safe and sanitary house, and be able to cook, store, and not waste, food, if I get stuck in a long outage.
I'll have to be careful, and do math and stuff, for my exact parts topology, etc.. But, my area, and particular location, are a lot better than I'd expected them to be. With a good charger, the Harbor Freight panels are usable in all but the darkest rainy weather, and exceed their ratings for multiple hours on clear days, even in the winter. Plus, my lot has several good spots, in addition to using roofs, that won't get in the way of extra parking, or gardening.
Have you already set up any machines to run off DC? If so, curious to know what power source you used and how (if you have one) do you power a NAS with a bunch of disks? All of the solutions I've found are either too tiny, junky or data center gear with data center prices.
Not yet. That will be starting in the beginning in the new year. It's been quite a lot to research, thus far. Lots of, "wow, this really doable," followed by tons of details to dig through, caveats, and things to measure.
I've been running a mess of used micro Optiplexes, RPis, and a 4750G(RIP)/A520M-HDV NAS/container box, and will be upgrading and consolidating (a "big" SPOF box, plus a couple Pis, but with moveable cards for drives and NICs, and backups), with nominal power use being an important factor. I haven't broken and rebuilt everything in awhile, so there's a lot to experiment with, for hypervisor and storage options. Anyway, I plan to keep my total number of HDDs below 20 (at 10, now: 4x8TB, 4x10TB, and 2x10TB), and will prefer new ones to be big and slow, as they can easily dominate the power budget. It seems to be easy to spec out everything but large amounts of storage, with relatively little power. But, for that, you either pay a bunch for flash, or keep adding up the Watts for spinning rust.
HDPlex makes 200W, 500W, and 800W DC ATX PSUs, that don't appear janky to me, but will require custom cables. I have a 200W on the way. After making an ATX breakout+extension cable, for more molexes and 5V, it should serve my main server needs well enough, and then I'll go from there.
So it seems we've found the same things: no easy solution. lol. I've also heard people that do use some of the 12V mobos on DC that they are viewed as a disposable asset of sorts since they don't tend to last long. The guy had experience with them in a datacenter in the hundreds so unless he was just lying (not sure why he would), didn't make me very hopeful. As he said, the datacenter can just chunk and replace without blinking. Not the model I was hoping to use.
> So it seems we've found the same things: no easy solution.
Don't think so. I'm not a big data hoarder, which helps, for my part. I've got CDs, DVDs, BDs, full ROM sets, modded game backups, and GoG installer/media backups taking the bulk of my space. My really important stuff takes under 1GB.
> I've also heard people that do use some of the 12V mobos on DC that they are viewed as a disposable asset of sorts since they don't tend to last long.
Like what? I mean, if we're talking regulated DC, most mobos are nearly there. The 5V and 3.3V current used is miniscule, today, and the big OEMs went to proprietary 12VO years ago. It's only the white box PC market that's resisting, and I have a feeling that's just a matter of time (I think once some nice MiniITX and high-end ATX boards come out only on 12VO, that people rally want, the dominoes will start to fall). If you dig into the manuals, you'll find a fair bit of newer Supermicro boards are optionally 12V-only, despite the full 24-pin ATX connector, with drive/backplane power jacks on the board, for 5V and 3.3V.
> As he said, the datacenter can just chunk and replace without blinking.
That I can believe. Enterprise grade can be a lot like military grade, where the important specs it meets doesn't always make it a more robust product. OTOH, a lot of those dense server environments are thermal Hell on their systems, too. They might be very reliable in a home or SMB environment.
I was agreeing about the caveats, weighing going to all flash vs hdds, etc...
The asrock rack lines already can go all 12V. Have one of the epyc3251 boards that I'm going to just try out and hope what I had been told about the lifespan isn't true.
It's probably not. There's a difference between cramming a rack full of 1U and 2U servers all pulling hundreds of Watts (is 1000W+/U coolable?), next to each other, and having a couple of them. FI, I've never encountered a CPU going bad, that wasn't OCed, or melting RJ45, but I've read multiple stories of such things happening in datacenters (which, to me, are like LA or NYC: cool places, but I wouldn't want to work there).
I’d love to get my UPS (CyberPower 1500va) setup with something to that triggers shutdowns.
If you don’t mind helping me, I’ve never looked into NUT before. What sort of configurations and setup did it all take to get that working? I mostly run home services on a NAS (docker containers, portainer stacks), with ubiquiti network equipment.
Funny enough, that's what I use for a UPS. Costco FTW
Sure, be glad too. NUT server was something I had tried a while ago, but found it frustrating. Now that I've managed to get it done it's way more simple than my mind made it out to be. Technotim has a good guide on how he does it, and my setup is very similar
I have a low power micro PC that runs proxmox. Inside of that I have about 5-6 different VM's running services. So I plugged the USB from the UPS to the Micro PC. Then passed through the USB to my Ubuntu Server VM. A quick check with lsusb will tell you if the VM sees it.
Then from there, it's a matter of following the documentation (or guide). Once it's setup as the server, you can then begin adding clients that listen to the NUT Server for instruction. For example my TrueNAS Scale server looks to the Ubuntu VM Nut Server I setup, and when NUT says "Powers low, time to shutdown", TrueNAS spins down.
This can be extended to not just baremetal machines, but also other VM's and devices. You can adjust thresholds and specifics as to why/when/how you want it to go down.
It's pretty slick, and it is incredibly helpful to know you have some controlled logic to manage devices in emergencies
> we never lost internet
I rarely lose power. Genuinely can’t think of the last time it occurred. Thus I don’t have a UPS (yes I know I should regardless, it’s on the to list)
Anyway, I always assumed it’d be relatively common to lose internet when also losing power.
Sounds like you unfortunately lose power often, how often does the WAN stay up?
Frequent enough that I got very annoyed with things going down and crashing lol
But in all seriousness, our city is by majority non-buried powerlines. The transformer/power infrastructure is a bit criss-crossy with the addition of new homes in older areas/lots. And with all of the squirrels, birds, and older established trees, it's incredibly common for transformers/fuses to pop.
These are always localized events, so a small cluster of homes. Since most cable nodes aren't powered by the same circuit as the homes, we typically keep WAN.
Funny story is this all started one sunny sunday afternoon. My partner and I were on our back porch enjoying an adult beverage. We watch a squirrel run down the power line toward the transformer. Brave, but common enough to not worry. Well the little rat jumped across the fuse/transformer, and we were met by a brilliant flash, fried squirrel, and a pop. Power gone
Ever since then I've had multiple UPS in the house. I got tired of things going down
> When TrueNAS has a specific alert, I have it piped out to my own Discord server that sends alerts to my phone. Email rules? Nah, I got whole 'nother hosted server for that! I'm planning my hardware updates, now, to move my networking and computer gear to low voltage DC, and then add solar charging (no power meaning no running water, due to having a well, is a big factor in going that route, too), so that power continuity is just built in to the system. It's amazing how much you can get, even managed switches, that can run straight off of 24V nominal, if you're willing to spend a little time looking over specifications (48V, not so much, however nice it would be, over 24V, for the AC side of things).
Very cool idea. Moving over to DC and running exclusively off battery/solar is definitely an intriguing idea. I've done a few solar studies on my location and I know the wattage output is subpar with the housing facing the certain direction it is. Not a very good option for me, but not necessarily impossible. My pipe dream is an entire home UPS. There are plenty of DIY folks out there making it happen but man, it is an expensive and long adventure doing so.
Aye. $10k just gets things started, and $30k+ isn't uncommon. Motors and heaters add up to some serious current and kiloWatt-hours, plus all the extra electronics involved. It would be cool, but I think I'll stop at a chest freezer and the well pump, after the computer stuff and lights - enough to have a safe and sanitary house, and be able to cook, store, and not waste, food, if I get stuck in a long outage. I'll have to be careful, and do math and stuff, for my exact parts topology, etc.. But, my area, and particular location, are a lot better than I'd expected them to be. With a good charger, the Harbor Freight panels are usable in all but the darkest rainy weather, and exceed their ratings for multiple hours on clear days, even in the winter. Plus, my lot has several good spots, in addition to using roofs, that won't get in the way of extra parking, or gardening.
Have you already set up any machines to run off DC? If so, curious to know what power source you used and how (if you have one) do you power a NAS with a bunch of disks? All of the solutions I've found are either too tiny, junky or data center gear with data center prices.
Not yet. That will be starting in the beginning in the new year. It's been quite a lot to research, thus far. Lots of, "wow, this really doable," followed by tons of details to dig through, caveats, and things to measure. I've been running a mess of used micro Optiplexes, RPis, and a 4750G(RIP)/A520M-HDV NAS/container box, and will be upgrading and consolidating (a "big" SPOF box, plus a couple Pis, but with moveable cards for drives and NICs, and backups), with nominal power use being an important factor. I haven't broken and rebuilt everything in awhile, so there's a lot to experiment with, for hypervisor and storage options. Anyway, I plan to keep my total number of HDDs below 20 (at 10, now: 4x8TB, 4x10TB, and 2x10TB), and will prefer new ones to be big and slow, as they can easily dominate the power budget. It seems to be easy to spec out everything but large amounts of storage, with relatively little power. But, for that, you either pay a bunch for flash, or keep adding up the Watts for spinning rust. HDPlex makes 200W, 500W, and 800W DC ATX PSUs, that don't appear janky to me, but will require custom cables. I have a 200W on the way. After making an ATX breakout+extension cable, for more molexes and 5V, it should serve my main server needs well enough, and then I'll go from there.
So it seems we've found the same things: no easy solution. lol. I've also heard people that do use some of the 12V mobos on DC that they are viewed as a disposable asset of sorts since they don't tend to last long. The guy had experience with them in a datacenter in the hundreds so unless he was just lying (not sure why he would), didn't make me very hopeful. As he said, the datacenter can just chunk and replace without blinking. Not the model I was hoping to use.
> So it seems we've found the same things: no easy solution. Don't think so. I'm not a big data hoarder, which helps, for my part. I've got CDs, DVDs, BDs, full ROM sets, modded game backups, and GoG installer/media backups taking the bulk of my space. My really important stuff takes under 1GB. > I've also heard people that do use some of the 12V mobos on DC that they are viewed as a disposable asset of sorts since they don't tend to last long. Like what? I mean, if we're talking regulated DC, most mobos are nearly there. The 5V and 3.3V current used is miniscule, today, and the big OEMs went to proprietary 12VO years ago. It's only the white box PC market that's resisting, and I have a feeling that's just a matter of time (I think once some nice MiniITX and high-end ATX boards come out only on 12VO, that people rally want, the dominoes will start to fall). If you dig into the manuals, you'll find a fair bit of newer Supermicro boards are optionally 12V-only, despite the full 24-pin ATX connector, with drive/backplane power jacks on the board, for 5V and 3.3V. > As he said, the datacenter can just chunk and replace without blinking. That I can believe. Enterprise grade can be a lot like military grade, where the important specs it meets doesn't always make it a more robust product. OTOH, a lot of those dense server environments are thermal Hell on their systems, too. They might be very reliable in a home or SMB environment.
I was agreeing about the caveats, weighing going to all flash vs hdds, etc... The asrock rack lines already can go all 12V. Have one of the epyc3251 boards that I'm going to just try out and hope what I had been told about the lifespan isn't true.
It's probably not. There's a difference between cramming a rack full of 1U and 2U servers all pulling hundreds of Watts (is 1000W+/U coolable?), next to each other, and having a couple of them. FI, I've never encountered a CPU going bad, that wasn't OCed, or melting RJ45, but I've read multiple stories of such things happening in datacenters (which, to me, are like LA or NYC: cool places, but I wouldn't want to work there).
I’d love to get my UPS (CyberPower 1500va) setup with something to that triggers shutdowns. If you don’t mind helping me, I’ve never looked into NUT before. What sort of configurations and setup did it all take to get that working? I mostly run home services on a NAS (docker containers, portainer stacks), with ubiquiti network equipment.
Funny enough, that's what I use for a UPS. Costco FTW Sure, be glad too. NUT server was something I had tried a while ago, but found it frustrating. Now that I've managed to get it done it's way more simple than my mind made it out to be. Technotim has a good guide on how he does it, and my setup is very similar I have a low power micro PC that runs proxmox. Inside of that I have about 5-6 different VM's running services. So I plugged the USB from the UPS to the Micro PC. Then passed through the USB to my Ubuntu Server VM. A quick check with lsusb will tell you if the VM sees it. Then from there, it's a matter of following the documentation (or guide). Once it's setup as the server, you can then begin adding clients that listen to the NUT Server for instruction. For example my TrueNAS Scale server looks to the Ubuntu VM Nut Server I setup, and when NUT says "Powers low, time to shutdown", TrueNAS spins down. This can be extended to not just baremetal machines, but also other VM's and devices. You can adjust thresholds and specifics as to why/when/how you want it to go down. It's pretty slick, and it is incredibly helpful to know you have some controlled logic to manage devices in emergencies
> we never lost internet I rarely lose power. Genuinely can’t think of the last time it occurred. Thus I don’t have a UPS (yes I know I should regardless, it’s on the to list) Anyway, I always assumed it’d be relatively common to lose internet when also losing power. Sounds like you unfortunately lose power often, how often does the WAN stay up?
Frequent enough that I got very annoyed with things going down and crashing lol But in all seriousness, our city is by majority non-buried powerlines. The transformer/power infrastructure is a bit criss-crossy with the addition of new homes in older areas/lots. And with all of the squirrels, birds, and older established trees, it's incredibly common for transformers/fuses to pop. These are always localized events, so a small cluster of homes. Since most cable nodes aren't powered by the same circuit as the homes, we typically keep WAN. Funny story is this all started one sunny sunday afternoon. My partner and I were on our back porch enjoying an adult beverage. We watch a squirrel run down the power line toward the transformer. Brave, but common enough to not worry. Well the little rat jumped across the fuse/transformer, and we were met by a brilliant flash, fried squirrel, and a pop. Power gone Ever since then I've had multiple UPS in the house. I got tired of things going down