Its taken a while but I have now completed the migration of all my “always on” computing services to the two Raspberry Pi’s, both running Ubuntu.
So before I had three enterprise servers. One was acting as a NAS, plus running the web services on a virtual machine. Also it ran the weather station services. This machine was “Always on”. Then a second server was an archive system. Another was a media stream service. These two were powered only when needed.
Now, an RPi-3, with two 1 TB HDDs proves all the NAS and archive storage. I have another 1 TB disk to add but I don’t need to yet. This device also runs the weather station services.
Then the RPi-4, with a 500 GB HDD is responsible for the web services, including this website.
As a result I have one Enterprise Server that still provides media streaming, but I switch that on only when I need it. The other two machines have no function at all now, and that is a shame.
But, I now have my first electricity usage result in. The transfer was completed during this period so its not as low a reading as it could be, and next month will reveal the real truth. However, right now I am using 8.5 units a DAY, less than I was. That is a 36% drop! And its only going to get lower!
Performance wise the systems are working acceptably. When I get the opportunity I would like to upgrade to a RPi-4 on the NAS side. The real advantage is the external HDD being USB-3 capable but the RPi3 only supports USB-2. Additionally the RPi-4 support 1 GB networking.
Getting my hands on another RPi-4 is the challenge, so I will make do for now.
