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Home lab beginners guide (2021)

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Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#181

Post by diffeomorphism »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #98
KennyBlanken wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A media server is not a "homelab." One of the most irritating things about "homelabs" is that most people seem to think a "homelab" means "a rack of very expensive, way-overspec'd ubiquiti gear, an OTS NAS unit, and a docker container server running media server/torrent shit." I have a laptop running a dozen different containers - bookstack, torrent client, rss reader, and so on. I don't think of it as a "homelab."

Given that a homelab is basically a garage for fucking around, arguing for what qualifies for fucking around is rather pointless

Many places make a distinction between "homeserver" (e.g mediacenter, NAS,.. ) and "homelab" (learning, test bed and fucking around).

Some people are interested in only one of these, so the distinction is not pointless.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#182

Post by sponaugle »

Great to see a write up about someones experiences building a homelab. I love the homelabs, and I recently built a new house and made some dedicated space for mine.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeDataCenter/comments/ktz6yo/my_s...

I added 20KW of solar as well to offset to power usage.

It is interesting to see what other people have built, why they made the choices they did, and what they are using it for.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#183

Post by Ourgon »

deno wrote: post #180
Ourgon wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the stack has taken what it needs there are 35 solar panels left on the barn roof. Excess heat is used to heat the upper floor, given that it is well-insulated it needs no additional heating. Problem, solved.

Only if you can’t sell the excess power.

Selling that excess power is possible, as is buying some extra panels - there is enough space for at least 36 more on just that single roof. For now I choose to add panels - and batteries in the not too distant future, once the market is flooded with used EV-batteries - and continue on my course of decentralising the 'net using 'old' hardware - not a single new product is used in any of my computing endeavours. Most of it is either dumpster-dived and repaired, bought 2nd hand or acquired through places like Freecycle.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#184

Post by deno »

Ourgon wrote: post #183
deno wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you can’t sell the excess power.

Selling that excess power is possible, as is buying some extra panels - there is enough space for at least 36 more on just that single roof. For now I choose to add panels - and batteries in the not too distant future, once the market is flooded with used EV-batteries - and continue on my course of decentralising the 'net using 'old' hardware - not a single new product is used in any of my computing endeavours. Most…

I also like recycling electronics but some stuff is just not worth keeping powered on. If you can sell electricity back then your switch has an opportunity cost of (assuming 11¢/KWh, which is US avg for 2021 and 5W idle for the replacement switch) ≈45 USD/year, which is almost 90% of its value.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#185

Post by sirmike_ »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #181
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that a homelab is basically a garage for fucking around, arguing for what qualifies for fucking around is rather pointless

Many places make a distinction between "homeserver" (e.g mediacenter, NAS,.. ) and "homelab" (learning, test bed and fucking around). Some people are interested in only one of these, so the distinction is not pointless.

I have to respectfully push back here. "hw/sw" garage is the perfect way to describe it. All of this takes place at one's home. There is no arbiter, but the individual over what is in or out to one's time at home.

Distinction springs from the person themselves.

I think ClumsyPilot's way to put it was just fine.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#186

Post by diffeomorphism »

sirmike_ wrote: post #185
diffeomorphism wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places make a distinction between "homeserver" (e.g mediacenter, NAS,.. ) and "homelab" (learning, test bed and fucking around). Some people are interested in only one of these, so the distinction is not pointless.

I have to respectfully push back here. "hw/sw" garage is the perfect way to describe it. All of this takes place at one's home. There is no arbiter, but the individual over what is in or out to one's time at home. Distinction springs from the person themselves. I think ClumsyPilot's way to put it was just fine.

Sure, I never claimed that it is not "just fine".

I just said that the distinction is not "pointless" or "gatekeeping", as some people accused, but pretty common convention which can be quite useful for readers. In particular, you are pushing back against something nobody said.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#187

Post by agencies »

mcovalt wrote: post #47
marginalia_nu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality, at home, we have some serious CPU horsepower just spinning billions of empty cycles per second. Consumer hardware is insane. Yeah. I've got my search engine basically a beefy gaming PC with no graphics card and 128 Gb ram. I've not only gotten supposed HN death hugs multiple times, I've had my search engine see multiple queries per second without as much as flinching. It took Elon Musk tweeting a link t…

Very cool! Running the not-well-maintained https://hndex.org search engine (and other memory hungry linear algebra based services) was also my original motivation for tunneling to my home as opposed to hosting on a VPS. Are you hosted via a residential ISP? It's my hunch that peering agreements favor routes of consumer -> data center -> consumer as opposed to consumer -> consumer. That's mainly why I tunnel. Has that…

Nice! Have you considered publishing your crawl data?

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#188

Post by mnycombinator »

MrFoof wrote: post #140
kernelbugs wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1L Zen 3 Ryzen 7 PRO APU What computer is this, if you don't mind sharing? Sounds great for getting 1 or 2 and hosting a lot of VMs.

HP ProDesk 405 G8 Mini, or HP EliteDesk 805 G8 Mini. The ProDesk 405 G8 can take a 35W RYZEN 7 PRO 5750GE. This includes AMD DASH (IPMI), and the Ryzen Pro has a few extra security features from EPYC/Threadripper. I got mine shipped for just $665 including tax, and did the SSD (1TB 980 Pro) and memory (64GB DDR4-3200 CL16) myself for another $300ish. If you get three of them, you can have a pretty fantastic Spark clu…

Did you get it yet? Multiple reports of 1-month-plus shipping delay notifications after the order is placed. I ordered one of these myself and canceled after the delay. Still plan on ordering one albeit with a different config.

Originally I opted for the 5700GE (apparently slightly faster than the 5750GE) thinking I wanted the most power possible in the box. But my new thinking is I really want a 5300GE to pull out and put in an AM4-based silent HTPC for the living room, then upgrade the HP with a separately purchased 5700GE. QuietPC seems the only vendor selling these "GE" 35W models -- but not any 53X0GE parts. In other words buying one of these non-vendor-locked HP minis and ripping them out might be the only way on Earth right now to get one's grubby hands on any 53X0GE.

Also, are you sure there are two M.2 slots on the EliteDesk G8's? I know they are on the G6 but haven't found confirmation the G8's continue the tradition.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#189

Post by mnycombinator »

MrFoof wrote: post #140
kernelbugs wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1L Zen 3 Ryzen 7 PRO APU What computer is this, if you don't mind sharing? Sounds great for getting 1 or 2 and hosting a lot of VMs.

HP ProDesk 405 G8 Mini, or HP EliteDesk 805 G8 Mini. The ProDesk 405 G8 can take a 35W RYZEN 7 PRO 5750GE. This includes AMD DASH (IPMI), and the Ryzen Pro has a few extra security features from EPYC/Threadripper. I got mine shipped for just $665 including tax, and did the SSD (1TB 980 Pro) and memory (64GB DDR4-3200 CL16) myself for another $300ish. If you get three of them, you can have a pretty fantastic Spark clu…

(nvm about the m.2 slot question, confirmed elitedesk = 2 slots, prodesk = 1 slot)

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#190

Post by nomel »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #66
nomel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consumer hardware is insane. With less technical management, I've had repeated, and bewildered, conversations trying to get them to understand that our one "computer" sitting on my desk is many many times faster than the "server" our IT team provides. "But it's a server!".

Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it takes up 4-6x more space than it needs to in what is likely the most expensive commercial real estate the company owns/leases. Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it can't be remotely lights-out managed and its hardware monitored using standardized tools (or at all.) Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't have redundant PSUs. Many times faster doesn't mean shit…

> Imagine IT people are the same, instead of assuming they're all idiots who are too stupid to go out and buy desktop computers instead of servers like your genius self.

Nearly all of your assumption here are incorrect or flawed, except the redundant PSU (we only had one). But, I do think they're just like me: working in a non-ideal environment with constraints outside of our direct control. The non-ideal constraint that they had, in that instance, at that time, was that they could only give us a VPS with 4 threads. It wasn't possible to do what we needed with their server. Or, to put it into your language, five nines doesn't mean shit if, in practicality, it makes a reliable space heater.

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