Over the past year I’ve been running a HP Proliant DL 38 G3 to host this website and other web apps. For the age of this server its a power house but this server consumes massive amounts of power using its two 575W power supplies.

Since the Raspberry Pi 2 model b was released I have been very interested on getting my hands on one. After receiving an excessive power bill I took the plunge and ordered my first Pi 2

With a 900 MHz quad core CPU and 1 GB RAM they pack some grunt in a small form-factor. The power saving is massive with a 2A micro USB charger using a mere  10W. Even if you used 2 or 3 Pi’s to run your website the power saving is huge.

Have a look at my awesome test bench. Still unsure of the type of case I want yet.

Currently I have one configured as a web server running Apache2/PHP5/APC and another running MySQL server. Not sure if a single web server will be enough grunt but time will tell. After performing some load tests I’m impressed on how well the Pi holds up.

If load becomes a real issue I’ll run a Pi with Varnish. I’ve used Varnish reverse web proxy in the past and its awesome at reducing web server load.

When I get my hands on some more Pi’s I’ll perform some bench marks comparing Apache2 and Nginx.

I’m sure you will see many more Pi related posts to come..