Author Topic: Low power consumption Zentyal  (Read 14906 times)

exekias

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #15 on: October 27, 2011, 03:51:24 pm »
Just one note,

Even if you are using webserver module you can turn off Zentyal's apache, it will free lots of memory.

*Note that slaves need it enabled to receive updates from master

christian

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #16 on: October 27, 2011, 04:04:07 pm »
What is the server behind Zentyal webserver module if you can turn Apache off ?
Isn't Apache also used for User corner ?

exekias

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #17 on: October 28, 2011, 02:26:22 pm »
They are different apache instances, so you can turn them off individually.

zentyal apache stop will stop zentyal's gui
zentyal usercorner stop will stop User corner
zentyal webserver stop will stop common apache

Cheers

B_Khuwera

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #18 on: October 28, 2011, 05:24:12 pm »
Hi

I do not use usercorner, but use the webserver for lightsquid .. never work on weekly stat in sarg .. :p
I need to monitor 12 pc, 9 of them are my neighbours community, which is deeply in love with facebook, fb games, youtube, some online movie site and 3 teenagers that could not stop playing PointBlank Online, ..

i try to disable the zentyal webserver service as per cperez said ... hope it can reduce the memory usage ..

Regards

JeanPaulvanHamond

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #19 on: November 14, 2011, 10:38:23 am »
At this moment we are testing the AMD Athlon II Neo N36L an N40L processors in combination with the Proliant solution of HP. We are using Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.10 as base platform in combination with Virtualbox (headless) with 3 Zentyal VM`s (Firewall, LDAP/PDC and Zarafa).

Hardware:
2x Seagate Barracuda Green 160GB 7200rpm (raid 1) os disks.
2x Seagate Barracuda Green 1T 7200rpm (raid 1) VM/Data disks.
1x dual port PCI-e nic (pci-e1x)
1x quad port PCI-e nic (pci-e16x)
2x 4gb DDR3

On full load 71.1 We have 5 setups running in production environment (between 4 and 10 users) and it really runs great. Thats why we are planning a new business solution for a all-inn rent with support and hardware for 149 euro a month (with full next business day support).

robb

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #20 on: November 14, 2011, 12:26:53 pm »
Hi JeanPaul,
Interesting setup. Do you have any figures about performance of the AMD processors? (load and max amount of concurrent VM's and users etc...

JeanPaulvanHamond

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #21 on: November 14, 2011, 03:04:22 pm »
Hi Rob,

We did some testing with 5 concurrent VM`s (all with dedicated nic`s) in the following configuration:

Firewall with Content Filter and IDS (2 nic - 1 wan / 1 lan)
LDAP (1 nic)
Samba (2 bound nics)
Zarafa (1 nic)
Infrastructure with DHCP, DNS and Intranet webserver (1 nic)

The main power of VM in my opinion in a small environment is that 1 error or problem in a VM/OS doesn't shutdown the whole proces in a company.

The only problem we discovered are some issues with the Zentyal OS in a Virtualbox environment. But we are working on those configuration items outself.

At this moment we are running Status2K on the Ubuntu 11.10 units. So at the end of this week i can tell you some more about load at operation, nightly cloud backup and idle.

robb

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #22 on: November 21, 2011, 09:54:27 pm »
Hi Jean Paul,

Any updates on this?

christian

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #23 on: November 21, 2011, 10:51:12 pm »
The main power of VM in my opinion in a small environment is that 1 error or problem in a VM/OS doesn't shutdown the whole proces in a company.

Could you please elaborate a bit on this? What do you mean and what is the based line:
Multiple VMs on one single hardware to be compared to many applications on on single OS?
Which would mean that you perceive VM as a way to segregate processes in "safe" (from OS standpoint) environments.
In such a case, I believe, but might be wrong, that this is supported by the BSoD syndrome  ;D

Notice I'm not saying that VM is bad, useless, or whatever like this. This is rather the opposite but I'm also willing to understand better why people are so prone to deploy such kind of environments.
I mean VM without highly available back-end storage and highly available hardware is as risky as one single server supporting all your applications isn't it?
There is an extra "cost" because of the underlying OS and extra complexity, benefit being, as you wrote, that BSoD will not crash everything but only one environment.

Am I correct with this understanding?

robb

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #24 on: November 22, 2011, 01:06:36 pm »
I think you are right with assuming he seggregates each service in a 'sandbox' / VM.
I think it is debatable if that is the most efficient way to go since you have to devide memory over all VM's. This could end up in a lot of swapping of 1 VM while other VM's have still a lot of memory available.

However, a great advantage of VM's is the option of making backups quickly through snapshots. You have to figure out for yourself what the best/easiest/cheapest/etc... way is in your situation.

christian

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #25 on: November 22, 2011, 03:43:17 pm »
Your point about snapshot is correct and capability to reinstall easily your platform because your VM is made of one single file is pretty clear. (assuming backup is made outside of your big platform obviously  ;)
But backup is complex.
This is another very interesting topic where I've unfortunately poor (kind of) understanding.
How will VM behave compared to file system like ZFS for what concerns snapshot capability and how will this provide capability to restore consistent environment?

For platform made of flat files, almost everything works as there is very little chance to have inconsistent data. But as soon as you have relational database, snapshot without prerequisite action might not be enough to ensure that what you have saved can be reused once restored.
You may have to put your DB in "begin backup mode", take the snapshot and then "end backup" to apply pending write operations on your DB.
Will VM have some advantages from this standpoint?  I need to learn a bit more in this area...  :-[

LEGOManiac

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #26 on: December 16, 2011, 04:54:30 pm »
You want low power? We've been running a FitPC2i (2GB
RAM, 2 GBit ethernet ports) for a year now.

It consumes a whopping 7 watts at full load (I've measured it, it's about 5 watts when idle).

Primary uses: DNS, DHCP, Firewall, HTTP Proxy and Samba

My one major complaint is apache. If I use ssh -X  and lxsession to use log into the Zentyal user interface, the response is reasonable. If I connect from a workstation via https, the response ranges from ok to pathetic. I definitely wouldn't recommend it as a web server, although, come to think of it, my apt-cacher page loads instantly, although I'm not certain that it uses apache or has it's own web server.

We have a 750Mb internet connection which we regularly max out with no problems from the FitPC2i.

From an end-user's point of view, it does the job nicely. From an admin's point of view, where I depend on the web interface, it's irritating but workable. If I'm in a hurry, I just use lxsession and put up with the re-configuration of my workstation desktop.

Output from lshw, for anyone interested:

fitpc2i                   
    description: Computer
    product: CM-iAM/SBC-FITPC2i
    vendor: CompuLab
    version: Not Applicable
    serial: Not Applicable
    width: 32 bits
    capabilities: smbios-2.5 dmi-2.5 smp-1.4 smp
    configuration: administrator_password=disabled boot=oem-specific cpus=1 frontpanel_password=unknown keyboard_password=unknown power-on_password=disabled
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       product: CM-iAM/SBC-FITPC2i
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       version: 1.x
       serial: Not Applicable
     *-firmware
          description: BIOS
          vendor: Phoenix Technologies LTD
          physical id: 0
          version: NAPA0001.86C.0000.D.1009141059 (09/14/2010)
          size: 97KiB
          capacity: 960KiB
          capabilities: isa pci pcmcia pnp apm upgrade shadowing escd cdboot acpi usb agp biosbootspecification
     *-cpu
          description: CPU
          product: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU Z550   @ 2.00GHz
          vendor: Intel Corp.
          physical id: 4
          bus info: cpu@0
          version: 6.12.2
          serial: 0001-06C2-0000-0000-0000-0000
          slot: U3E1
          size: 2GHz
          capacity: 2666MHz
          width: 32 bits
          capabilities: boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority pse
          configuration: id=1
        *-cache:0
             description: L1 cache
             physical id: 5
             slot: L1 Cache
             size: 64KiB
             capacity: 64KiB
             capabilities: asynchronous internal write-back
        *-cache:1
             description: L2 cache
             physical id: 6
             slot: L2 Cache
             size: 512KiB
             capacity: 512KiB
             capabilities: burst external write-back
        *-logicalcpu:0
             description: Logical CPU
             physical id: 1.1
             width: 32 bits
             capabilities: logical
        *-logicalcpu:1
             description: Logical CPU
             physical id: 1.2
             width: 32 bits
             capabilities: logical
     *-memory
          description: System Memory
          physical id: 12
          slot: System board or motherboard
          size: 2GiB
        *-bank
             description: SODIMM DDR2 Synchronous
             physical id: 0
             slot: soldered
             size: 2GiB
             width: 32 bits
     *-pci
          description: Host bridge
          product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo)
          vendor: Intel Corporation
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
          version: 07
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 33MHz
        *-display UNCLAIMED
             description: VGA compatible controller
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) Graphics Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 2
             bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list
             configuration: latency=0
             resources: memory:d8080000-d80fffff ioport:1800(size=8) memory:d0000000-d7ffffff memory:d8000000-d801ffff
        *-pci:0
             description: PCI bridge
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) PCI Express Port 1
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1c
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.0
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci pciexpress pm bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:17 ioport:2000(size=4096) memory:d8100000-d81fffff memory:d8500000-d85fffff(prefetchable)
           *-network
                description: Ethernet interface
                product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller
                vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
                logical name: eth0
                version: 02
                serial: 00:01:c0:08:8e:69
                size: 1GB/s
                capacity: 1GB/s
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
                configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=192.168.57.200 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1GB/s
                resources: irq:24 ioport:2000(size=256) memory:d8100000-d8100fff memory:d8500000-d850ffff(prefetchable) memory:d8520000-d853ffff(prefetchable)
        *-pci:1
             description: PCI bridge
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) PCI Express Port 2
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1c.1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.1
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci pciexpress pm bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:16 ioport:3000(size=4096) memory:d8200000-d82fffff memory:d8600000-d86fffff(prefetchable)
           *-network
                description: Ethernet interface
                product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller
                vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
                logical name: eth1
                version: 02
                serial: 00:01:c0:08:8e:6a
                size: 10MB/s
                capacity: 1GB/s
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
                configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=10MB/s
                resources: irq:25 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:d8200000-d8200fff memory:d8600000-d860ffff(prefetchable) memory:d8620000-d863ffff(prefetchable)
        *-usb:0
             description: USB Controller
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #1
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1d
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.0
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master
             configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0
             resources: irq:23 ioport:1820(size=32)
        *-usb:1
             description: USB Controller
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #2
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1d.1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.1
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master
             configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0
             resources: irq:19 ioport:1840(size=32)
        *-usb:2
             description: USB Controller
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #3
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1d.2
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.2
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master
             configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0
             resources: irq:18 ioport:1860(size=32)
        *-usb:3
             description: USB Controller
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB EHCI #1
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1d.7
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.7
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pm debug bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0
             resources: irq:21 memory:d8020000-d80203ff
        *-isa
             description: ISA bridge
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) LPC Bridge
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: isa
             configuration: driver=isch_smbus latency=0
             resources: irq:0
        *-ide
             description: IDE interface
             product: System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) IDE Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f.1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.1
             logical name: scsi0
             version: 07
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: ide bus_master emulated
             configuration: driver=pata_sch latency=0
             resources: irq:0 ioport:1f0(size=8) ioport:3f6 ioport:170(size=8) ioport:376 ioport:1810(size=16)
           *-disk
                description: ATA Disk
                product: WDC WD7500BPVT-2
                vendor: Western Digital
                physical id: 0.0.0
                bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
                logical name: /dev/sda
                version: 01.0
                serial: WD-WXG1EB0NHX11
                size: 698GiB (750GB)
                capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
                configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=00078607
              *-volume:0
                   description: Linux filesystem partition
                   vendor: Linux
                   physical id: 1
                   bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,1
                   logical name: /dev/sda1
                   logical name: /boot
                   version: 1.0
                   serial: 2a106660-5d91-4484-a969-391933d05e96
                   size: 243MiB
                   capacity: 243MiB
                   capabilities: primary bootable ext2 initialized
                   configuration: filesystem=ext2 modified=2011-12-11 00:59:49 mount.fstype=ext2 mount.options=rw,relatime,errors=continue mounted=2011-11-26 00:46:02 state=mounted
              *-volume:1
                   description: Extended partition
                   physical id: 2
                   bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0,2
                   logical name: /dev/sda2
                   size: 698GiB
                   capacity: 698GiB
                   capabilities: primary extended partitioned partitioned:extended
                 *-logicalvolume
                      description: Linux LVM Physical Volume partition
                      physical id: 5
                      logical name: /dev/sda5
                      serial: fwqJpw-giIV-KUbZ-adUa-N5KM-PTKS-rFdltZ
                      size: 698GiB
                      capacity: 698GiB
                      capabilities: multi lvm2
  *-remoteaccess UNCLAIMED
       vendor: Intel
       physical id: 1
       capabilities: inbound
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 2
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:0d:f0:8d:e9:2f
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn

christian

  • Guest
Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #27 on: December 17, 2011, 09:49:31 am »
I've used FitPC in the past too (the very first version) and was very happy with this, running full internet gateway but not Zentyal. As you wrote, Apache on FitPC doesn't make sense. and the first FitPC devices were a bit short in term of CPU & memory to run efficient HTTP filter. On the other hand, power consumption was very low meaning UPS was able to keep network and firewall up in case of power failure for a while  ;)

I would be happy to do the same with Zentyal but this is another story  :-[

christian

  • Guest
Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #28 on: April 14, 2012, 02:14:26 pm »
At this moment we are testing the AMD Athlon II Neo N36L an N40L processors in combination with the Proliant solution of HP. We are using Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.10 as base platform in combination with Virtualbox (headless) with 3 Zentyal VM`s (Firewall, LDAP/PDC and Zarafa).

I had a look at this server few days ago (mainly thanks to this topic) and this is indeed a very interesting server for perfect Zentyal deployment (although not with VMs as Jean Paul does).
- one additional NIC (ou dual or quad depending on how many interfaces you need)
- small SSD as system disk
- 8GB of memory if you want to use ZFS

This is going to be much faster than any Atom based config and even cheaper  ;D

I'm definitely going to give a try very soon and will let you know. Stay tuned  ;)

Kurtis

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Re: Low power consumption Zentyal
« Reply #29 on: June 29, 2013, 02:09:11 am »
I know this topic is old, but thought I would post my experience running Zentyal on a low power pc.

I have been running Zentyal on my hardware for about a year and have had no problems at all! The server runs without a monitor attached and remote access is performed via xRDP. The server is just being used as a home server with about 6 devices on the network.

The hardware is:
- Intel Atom D525 (1M Cache, 1.80 GHz) http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-d525mw.html
- 4GB Ram
- 1TB HD
- 1TB USB External HD for Backups
- 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports

The following modules are enabled:
-  HTTP Proxy
-  DHCP
-  DNS
-  NTP
-  OpenVPN
-  File Sharing (Active Directory PDC)
-  Printer Sharing
-  Zarafa
-  Webserver (with OwnCloud)

I have enabled and disabled various other modules over the course of the year and the server had coped well, understandable the only limitation is running virtual machines.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2013, 02:12:03 am by Kurtis »