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Home Lab Beginners guide

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Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#161

Post by tonymet »

haunter wrote: post #150
tonymet wrote: post #142

I'll go against the grain and recommend running your lab on Windows 11 Pro and Hyper V (often included with reclaimed PCs). Hyper-V is a very capable hypervisor and Windows hardware compatibility is excellent. Remote mgmt can be done over RDP, SSH or WMI Nearly everyone has a spare PC lying around collecting dust, and within an hour it can be running a dozen VMs . Reclaimed HP & Dells are cheap and include a Windows…

Not sure why are you downvoted, Hyper V is perfectly fine Hyper V Server 2019 is also free you don’t have to pay for anything https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-... And you can install a full GUI too https://gist.github.com/bp2008/922b326bf30222b51da08146746c7...

that's an interesting option. does it boot into cmd.exe by default?

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#162

Post by nodesocket »

I'll add a #protip about UPS. Instead of getting Cyberpower or APC, I recently picked up a EcoFlow River 2 Pro[1] (portable power station). It has 768Wh capacity and 800W output and pass through charging. Crucially, it switches fast enough to not cause any outage to any of my gear (Ubiquiti, HP Proliant, Raspberry Pi, Synology). As a bonus, you also get the ability to do solar charging and USB power outlets.

[1] https://us.ecoflow.com/products/river-2-pro-portable-power-s...

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#163

Post by buybackoff »

tonymet wrote: post #153
buybackoff wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use this built-in OEM license from a Windows VM in Proxmox. Just search for that on Proxmox forum. Hyper-V is very limited in hardware support, you won't be able to pass-through stuff. And you always pay for VM layer, while in Proxmox you could use containers which give almost the host performance.

that's changed in recent years. you now have access to hardware and the gpu for inference, for example.

Maybe in the Server version. I haven't seen anything useful in Windows Pro. I could not setup SR-IOV even with Powershell after wasting a lot of time on searching for help.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#164

Post by mech422 »

znpy wrote: post #115
buybackoff wrote: post #10

The article is good, but it is intimidating buy its size and scope. A homelab could be a single NUC on a desk. I have one with 64GB RAM and it could fit so so many things. NUCs are very efficient to run 24/7, but become noisy with sustained CPU load. For that one could grow the setup with OptiPlex or Precision Tower (can haz ECC) SFF from eBay. These Dell SFFs are very good, quite small yet proper desktops/servers wi…

Intel NUCs are so *insanely* good for homelabbers. I got a few recently, and they're just great, particularly in terms of power usage. I hooked mine to tasmota-powered smart plugs, and they idle at something like 6W ... Granted, I always tune hardware (from bios config) and software (tuned profile) for low power... But long story short, my nucs rarely spike over 30W. Literally half of one of those old tungsten-based…

Personally, I thought the NUC style boxes were really expensive. I like odroid H2/H3 SBCs[0] - they have much less compute power, but support large memory (DDR4 up to 64G), SSD/NVME, dual on-board nics (up to 2.5Gbps), X86 based and just sip on power (2 watts idle, 15w stress, 18w cpu+gpu stress).

0: https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-h3

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#165

Post by sitkack »

mrob wrote: post #118
kjkjadksj wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N100 boards are ddr5 compatible which has internal ecc

Internal ECC doesn't protect the data in transit. It also doesn't have error reporting, so you could be operating with the error correction already operating at maximum capacity without knowing it, leaving no error correction available for unusual events. It's not a substitute for traditional ECC.

DDR5 ECC is an internal mechanism just to make DDR5 viable due to the speed and node size. It doesn’t increase reliability, in enables not having a reduction in reliability over DDR4.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#166

Post by neilv »

lloeki wrote: post #149

> Location For a few years I put mine inside an IKEA FRIHETEN sofa (the kind that just pulls†). Pros: - easy access - completely invisible save for 1 power wire + 1 fiber (WAN) + 1 eth (LAN)†† - structure allows easy cable routing out (worst case you punch a hole on the thin low-end) - easy layout/cable routing inside - noise reduction for free - doubles as warming in winter a seated butt is never cold - spouse enjoy…

I had a similar thought about the IKEA KIVIK sofa (non-sleeper variants), which has wide boxy armrests that are open to the underside, and could fit towers of little SFF PCs, or maybe rackmount gear sideways. There's also space underneath the seat, where rackmount gear could fit.

One of the reasons I didn't do this was I didn't want a fire with sofa fuel right above/around it. I wasn't concerned about the servers, but a bit about the UPS. Sheet metal lining of the area, with good venting if the UPS battery type could leak gases, I'd feel a bit better about, but too much work. So the gear ended up away from upholstery, in rack/shelving, where I could keep an eye on it.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#167

Post by natebc »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #20
buybackoff wrote: post #10

The article is good, but it is intimidating buy its size and scope. A homelab could be a single NUC on a desk. I have one with 64GB RAM and it could fit so so many things. NUCs are very efficient to run 24/7, but become noisy with sustained CPU load. For that one could grow the setup with OptiPlex or Precision Tower (can haz ECC) SFF from eBay. These Dell SFFs are very good, quite small yet proper desktops/servers wi…

I've been thinking about upgrading my current "homelab" (just an old PC), and I've been waiting for a small form factor with an integrated power supply and a bunch of NVMe slots. Does that exist yet?

Maybe give this thing a look? it's newish and a little expensive but pretty dang well equipped. (not internally powered though)

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#168

Post by mech422 »

bombcar wrote: post #83
MrVitaliy wrote: post #31

Surprised author didn't mention https://labgopher.com/ for finding used enterprise hardware at low cost on ebay. This hardware is cheap and typically out-of-service for enterprise, but great for home labs.

The big problem with off-lease enterprise hardware is the power usage can quickly outrun the original costs - but that may not be an issue for everyone. The nice thing about off-lease enterprise hardware is there is so much of it, and it's enterprise. You can easily find replacement parts, and working on that stuff is a joy, everything is easily replaceable with no tools.

THIS! My Dell and HP blade chassis/server EAT power (10+ Xeon blades). I actually shut them down and started moving to SBC based stuff like odriod H2/H3's. Basically silent and just sips power. All much less heat (I live in a desert, so thats important)!

0: https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-h3

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#169

Post by jjeaff »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #92
AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #13

I know it's becoming the new "I use arch btw" meme but if you go down this route I highly recommend using nix as the distro. Ideally you can just leave these systems running once they're working and using nix means all your system state is logged in git. No more "wait, how did I fix that thing 6mo ago?" or having to manually put the system back together after a Ubuntu dist upgrade explodes. Every change you've made,…

I want to love arch, but it is way too complicated. I _love_ complicated things, but arch just didn't seem worth it. My home lab journey was: manual installs -> Ansible -> Docker + Docker Compose -> Kubernetes (I told you I loved complicated things) I kept everything source controlled. This repo documents my long journey: https://github.com/shepherdjerred/servers Docker and Docker Compose are nearly perfect. Here's a…

I use a single to set everything up, including docker and docker compose. most applications are running in docker compose. but ansible allows me to handle all the hard drive mounts and other stuff that can't be run inside docker containers.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#170

Post by duped »

tills13 wrote: post #111
tivert wrote: post #80

> Attic > Pros: Less noise, easier cable runs. > Cons: can get hot depending on where you live, roof leaks, humidity/condensation, and creepy at night. Where do attics not get hot? I live in northern climate, and ours regularly gets hotter than 140F during sunny summer days. And I say hotter, because the remote temp sensor I have up there maxes out at 140F. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually gets up to 150F or mo…

Conditioned attics are the new rage. Once it's conditioned, you can move other mechanical devices up there like HVAC etc to reduce the amount of ducting your home needs (especially if it's single-story). It's nice because that loose, shredded insulation is garbage and so easy to mess up (walking on it can change it from R40 to R20, for example). With a conditioned attic you use standard batting in between the roof me…

Sounds like a nightmare for your energy bills. At least with interior ductwork the losses go to heating/cooling your home instead of your attic, which even with insulation is going to act like a giant heatsink that you get nothing out of.
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