Hello,

thought I should share my experience with the HP Microserver Gen8 running WCG.

Two years ago a bought a HP Microserver Gen8 (MS) in its basic configuration with a Celeron 1610T ( a lot of bang for the buck)
Over time I pimped the MS with 2x8GB ECC RAM and an E3-1220V2 (non L). The higher 69 Watt TDP was never an issue since I run the CPU without Turbo Speed at its base frequency of 3.1 GHz.
Drive bay 1 is equipped with a Samsung 850 Pro 256 GB as the main boot drive and for the VM files.
Drive bay 3 is loaded with a WD RED 2TB most of the time in spin-down.


The MS runs my home network 18 hours a day under Microsoft Hyper-V Core (2012R2 and now 2016) with the following VMs:
- Sophos UTM Home Firewall
- Windows 10 pro (Unifi Controller)
- Openmediavault 2.0/3.0 (NAS)
- some not always active other VMs for testing

Power Management is through a Cyberpower UPS.
Also connected to the setup is a Unify POE 16 Port Switch and one Unify Access Point.
Prior Installation of WCG the whole setup consumed around 50 Watt.

Recently I gave WCG again a chance and installed it in an Ubuntu Server 16.10 VM (Generation 2), assigned
two vCPUs (E3-1220 does not provide hyperthreading so it equals two real cores) and gave Boinc 100% utilization.
Interestingly the system still operates at 9-10% fan speed at 18 degree Celsius ambient temperature - so it is not getting hot from two utilized cores.
I do not have exact data yet but depending on the projects selected it looks like the MS can generate 10.000 points during the 18 hours per day for only approx. 15 Watt extra cost. I did another test and installed
a second Boinc client in the openmediavault VM but with lower 60% boinc utilization and only 80% of two vCPUs to avoid negative impact on the Firewall.
This generated additional >2000 points at not more than additional 5 Watt - so 70 Watt in total for LAN-Switch, WLAN-AP, UPS, Firewall, NAS, and Boinc.

For me this was an interesting finding and I'm considering an upgrade to an HP Proliant DL Gen9 Rack Server such as a DL20 E3-1230v5, or DL120/DL360 E5-2620v4. Currently I'm playing with an old Gen7 with Dual L5640 which is fast and also a lot of bang for the buck. But at 140 Watt (CPU 1 mainly idle with my above VMs while Boinc fully utilizes the second CPU with 6 cores, again no turbo speed) + 30 Watt for my LAN/WAN in total 170 Watt a bit too much on the electricity bill.

Comments welcome
Thomas