Turning off the E3K

I used to run a Sun E3000 server in my basement. I served up this blog, the DaisyCutter site for my band, several friends web sites, I hosted my own subversion repository, ran my own sendmail and IMAP server, etc... It was pretty neat, having a big enterprise-class machine of my own... you could think of it as a gift from PowerAgent.

I knew it ate a lot of power based on the amount of heat it put off - I'd run it in a 2-CPU configuration in the summer and a 6-CPU configuration in the winter! But then I got a Kill-a-watt power meter, and realized that I was paying around $20.00/mo for the privilege of having a big machine warming up my basement.

So, it's now turned off, and the bits that you're reading are coming from a shared hosting service named Dreamhost somewhere in Los Angeles. I'm paying significantly less for the shared hosting service than I was paying Xcel Energy. It took about a day to get everything moved over.

I feel less geeky now, since I don't have a 6-way SPARC/Solaris box running in my house anymore, but I feel greener.