Lower power usage of my homelab

tags: #linux #power #usage #homelab #wakeonlan

For now more than a year, I have my homelab running all day long.

With my homelab, I can create VM's, launch applications on docker in seconds, get my website online from my home, ...

I realized recently that all my applications that need to be online should use 1% of my CPU at the time.

The others that can use more CPU don't need to be online all the time. So I decided some weeks ago to reduce my electricity usage by migrating all my necessary online apps to my raspberry pi.

I have on the Raspberry Pi:

- Nginx Proxy Manager

- pihole

- gemini caspule

- web proxy for my capsule

- heimdall

So what is laying on my homelab ?

- Plex

- file sharing with my relatives

- game servers (like minecraft)

- Gaming Windows VM

Now my homelab only has apps that I don't really need to run all the time.

But... It could be smarter. You see, sometimes, I would like to listen musics or watch movies from Plex, download some files or game on my Windows VM remotely. I think this could be my Graal.

After an eternity of thinking how I could do that (it's wrong!), I found an answer, the holy answer : WakeOnLan. Just execute a command and your stopped server is now starting <3

Of course, not all motherboard has this capability, but mine has it! What a luck!

Finally, I can VPN to my router, SSH to my pi and execute this cute little command `wakeonlan mac:address` and boom! Server started, ready for work (or gaming).

Last-Updated: 2022-08-10