Dedicated remote server vs local home lab

[rmcdougal01]

I'm curious about what you guys and gals think about having a dedicated server for virtualization/multimedia purposes VS running that locally.

My main concern is power (as in electricity bill), so if you pay for colocation or for a dedicated server let's say 130 a month (forget about specs) but that is VS paying a higher electricity bill plus the noise and space it is occupying.

 

[HiFormance]

I guess you have to consider if you want a reliable solution or just a developer sandbox. If it's a sandbox you can just shut off the boxes when you are not using them. If you need reliability (need it powered on and connected 24/7) then collocation is probably what you are looking for.

 

[oneilonline]

Personally, I have an Atom media server that's on 24/7. All the hardware was specifically chosen to use minimal power without sacrificing too much performance. I house a bunch of teenagers so it gets a lot of use. 4x 2TB @ 75% capacity.
I also have a dev server for testing and web dev, this automatically powers on in the morning and automatically shuts down in the evening. Yes, my work hours are set based on this LOL.
DC hosting is locally <10ms so there isn't too much difference in latency performance between the dev server and production server.
My home network is 1Gbps so there are advantages and the added security of being on a completely different network internally, I don't have Comcast snooping
It's all a matter of preference and usage requirements.

 

[raj]

I think it depends also on what software you run and how much horsepower you need. For me, I've got over a half dozen SBC boards (mix of Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi and ODROID) doing various functions with minimal power draw. Since I run software that I can simply apt-get, I have no issues with having dedicated single, quad or octo core ARM boards running Debian or Ubuntu pre-compiled ARM packages.

ODROID-C1 NAS with a pair of 3TB USB drives in RAID1 shared over SMB and NFS
Orange Pi PC as a Plex+Deluge+Sickrage multimedia hub
A handful of Orange Pi Zero boards with USB cameras running motion as a CCTV
First gen Raspberry Pi board with a LNMP stack
Orange Pi Zero as a Pi-Hole DNS server
ODROID-XU4 as my daily driver.

Tons of cabling for power and ethernet, but overall plenty of horsepower in those boards to tackle more than the tasks currently assigned, with minimal total power draw.

 

[CenTex Hosting]

@rmcdougal01

If you are paying 130 a month for COLO you might want to look for a new provider.

A few things to look at when you have servers at your house. If what you are running doesn't have to stay online and mission critical then its fine.

Your power bill will go up. Depending on what you pay for power. Depending on how old the server and how much power it pulls.
Your internet connection. Your speed could be limited based on your location and what connections that you can get.
Also none of this would be redundant.

So to answer your question yes you can have servers at your house, but is it the best solution? NO

 

[Liquidips]

130 a month for COLO is way too much, there are better provider out there