For reasons unexplained, you have no homelab hardware, but $1,000 in cash earmarked for the purpose.
What are you buying, what are you installing on it, and how is it different from what you’ve done previously (i.e. lessons learned)?
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What do you guys do with these home labs?
At least 2 mini desktops with as much RAM and ssd that I can get I’m it. Running proxmox and truenas and then setting up my jellyfin, homeassistant, and the rest will be a playground. I am a simple man
https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/ Small foot print, low wattage, modern CPU can run anything I can try and throw at it just get a lot of ram. Id run Ubuntu or Debian all apps go in docker containers, maybe install cockpit if I wanted web gui. And run vms if I want via KVM https://ubuntu.com/blog/kvm-hyphervisor If you want to go nas Plex rute you can add a hd via 10g usb Great level1techs video about mini PC home server https://youtu.be/GmQdlLCw-5k?si=VrdfDRfmpNHCZz-H
can you make ZFS pools across devices with Proxmox? Otherwise idk what you do for storage redundancy or RAID unless you run like longhorn or ceph or something across the cluster - all those machines have a single drive
Everyone here recommending tinylabs, but what if you need lots of TB’s? Is there a solution then? I have a Microserver Gen 8 (which is plenty powerful enough) but need way more space, and was going to buy something that can fit 10+ Hard drives…
There’s lots of solutions.
Cheap:
But a full tower PC case with room for 10+ HDDs. Lot of options like those from Fractal, CoolerMaster, etc.
Enterprise (expensive):
Buy a JBOD with a backplane that you plug all your discs into then plug that into a server.
UDM-PRO, USW-Aggregation, USW-Enterprise-24-POE, U6-LR… build a server with i5/32GB NVMe boot drive, then some RAID drives… I took out a loan in this scenario as $1,000 wouldn’t cover my entire rack getting blown up.
Depends on the requirements. Is the purpose to learn virtualization management? Linux sysadmin stuff? Virtual networking + firewalls? For my purposes it’s all of the above and more.
Having said that, I have not had an ounce of trouble out of Intel NUC 12 Pro NUC12WSHv5. So for $1000 I’d start with that and add NVMe storage and max ram in my budget. Running ESXi 8.
3 optiplex 7040s micros - put 32gb ram and a 2tb ssd in each and call it a day
An am4 mobo+4500 = <150 euros. Cheap atx case + psu = 75 Leaves you 75 for ram to price-match those 7040 with lots more expandability and ecc support.
I like the optiplex micros because they’re small
I would only add a single SFF so that I can fit a couple of big 3.5 disks for my backup and data hoarding needs.
Other than that, yeah… Micro/tiny/micro is the way
I figure you need to buy networking equipment too?
I already have one 7040 Micro and I really wish I had two more for this exactly. Just cluster those puppies.
This is what I did with 3060s. Eventually added a 4th, because… well… 3 is less than 4 and I had an empty slot in my rack.
Would you also recommend 7050 if those are available?
Legit same
What is your job? Do you have exposure to life cycled hardware?
2-3 second hand small form factor PC’s running Proxmox, cheap 2 bay Synology NAS for backups.
Where would your primary storage live?
2 bay?
I would buy a single $1000 42u rack…
And do what with it? if your budget was $1000 and you only bought a rack, it’d be empty.
That’s it. A $1000 rack and call it a day! Done.
Homerack achieved
All used: 2019ish Intel NUC i7, 32-64GB RAM, run ESXi 7, 4 Bay QNAP or Synology with a Celeron, 8TB spinners, TP-Link ER605, an Omada POE switch, and an Omada AP.
You end up with a great setup for VMs, a reliable Plex server using the NAS CPU, multi-WAN, rock solid VPN, and a UniFi/Meraki like experience, and you don’t notice it on the electric bill, your ears, the shelf, or the room temperature.
This doesn’t differ at all from my existing setup. My only regret was not starting with 64GB of RAM on the NUC instead of the 32GB I started with.
I will just get a nice amd board with ipmi and dump a good Ryzen cpu, Any linux, be debian or any Rhel based distro or even Proxmox and tons of drives plus a few nvme raids. Pretty much about that
Wish I had skipped the Frankenstein and mini PC steps.
Here’s two reasons enterprise servers are the way to go:
- Remote management is awesome. Remote KVM, remote serial terminal, mounting ISOs remotely. If your homelab is in a not-so-accessible place (e.g. cupboard or garage), this saves so much frustration.
- High quality rack rails. You’re more likely to be tinkering around the back of your server than a company that throws it in a data centre. It’s almost like rack rails were built for homelabs.
I wouldn’t worry too much about noise. $1000 will easily get you an R730 or T630.
$1k wouldn’t get me started for the electrical runs and cabinets for the hardware.
Just chiming in that the consensus on Mini PC clusters is pretty cool.
Completely agree. That’s where it’s at!
I have a rack full of R710s that barely get used anymore because energy is so freaking expensive. I’d either do everything in the cloud or use lots of low powered machines at home.