Recommendations for new Server Install

[barrettuk 3]

Hello,

Currently I have emby server running on a VM on an old EMC NAS and want to move it to one of my old PC's as it has become unreliable. I really hate having this running 24x7 now my kids have grown up and left home so was looking for any recommendations to using WOL for the server. I can leave the movie files on the NAS as that is working well, by the VM side doesn't support new OS very well.

The wake on LAN is the part I have no experience with so as I don't want this thing running all the time.

Thanks!

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

The difference between running 24/7 and running as a WOL is very small. Also letting your drives spin down and restarting them also causes more wear on the drives than running 24/7. The savings on your electric bill is also tiny. I have a total of 15 external drives and I measured and it costs me about $10-15 a year more than it would if I ran no drives at all. That is less than $2.00 a month for all those drives. 
I run two computers with Emby running on both 24/7 and all those drives and my electric bill is close to my neighbor's and sometimes lower in the winter when the computers can help with heating.  

In simple terms: Servers should never sleep and their drives should never sleep either. While Emby has many built in features to allow for servers to be intermittently off line it is a very bad idea. Some people do run fancy power saving features with Emby i think most that do have many unpredictable problems. When I see people wanting allow their server(s) to sleep I think of the famous saying: "Penny wise pound foolish." 

My bottom line is do NOT allow your servers to sleep. I can pretty much guarantee that they will not get cranky from lack of sleep.   And they will be happier in the long run.

BTW: Servers generally should have no other tasks except those needed for the proper operation of the server.

[Q-Droid 989]

Do keep in mind that the EMC appliance might be datacenter gear unless a rebadged SOHO Dell. This is in a different league when it comes to heat, power consumption and noise. True that the power/sleep cycles add wear to the mechanicals though in this case a good trade off. 

[barrettuk 3]

Thanks for the feedback, I was more concerned about the heat and ware on using one of my old PC's which all have AIO and SSD hard drives as a server, due to the now unreliable nature of using the Lenovo PX12-450r VM (was running for years on a Windows 7 VM image without problems before), but I'm still using that NAS for all the media, so those disks are not spinning down. It sounds like I should not worry about WOL for the server (we say server but its running on Windows 10/11 desktop)?

[Q-Droid 989]

Yeah, if the NAS doesn't bother you and it's 24/7 then the server shouldn't be a problem. The AIO (cooler?) would be my only concern if old.