economize/README.md

economize - manage economy server

Background

My storage server, economy, is nearly a decade old, and has 18 spinning rust disks, so it's a bit power-hungry: when idle, it draws about 270W. If left on all day, that would consume roughly 6.5 kWh of energy, costing about $2.6. Over a month, that would be $78. (Thanks, PG&E! :( )

But, I have a newer Ryzen 5000U-based mini-PC server that consumes much less power and runs 24/7 anyway. So I can schedule periodic jobs to bring economy up and down. This program implements the logic for those jobs.

economize up will use the BMC to power on the server.

economize down will use the BMC to power down the server safely by sending an ACPI signal to the operating system.