Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More random home lab things I've recently learned

chollinger.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 134 posts

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#21

Post by shermantanktop »

immibis wrote: post #9

I've recently learned that "homelab" is a specific thing meaning you run certain software (like Proxmox), and not a generic term for running a 'server lab' at home.

Most “homelabs” are built by a developer LARPing as a sysadmin, with a user population of one (themselves) or zero for most of the features.

It’s the SUV that has off-road tires but never leaves the pavement, the beginner guitarist with an arena-ready amp, the occasional cook with a $5k knife. No judgment, everyone should do what they want, but the discussions get very serious even though the stakes are low.

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#22

Post by orthoxerox »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #13
immibis wrote: post #9

I've recently learned that "homelab" is a specific thing meaning you run certain software (like Proxmox), and not a generic term for running a 'server lab' at home.

some people think it's not "homelabbing" unless you're doing things the way it's done at large scale. i think these people are aiming to enter IT as a career and consider a homelab to be a resume project. but proxmox and kubernetes are overkill, imo, for most homelab setups. setting them up is a good learning experience but not necessarily an appropriate architecture for maintaining a few mini PCs in a closet long te…

k8s is definitely an overkill if your goal is not learning k8s.

proxmox is great, though. It's worth running it even if you treat it as nothing more than a BMC.

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#23

Post by Spooky23 »

fartfeatures wrote: post #18
ryandrake wrote: post #14

Not sure I understand the need to use a Raspberry Pi here. They're cool and all, but wouldn't a regular old PC be simpler to setup, maintain, and attach hardware to? It's a hobby--and you can do whatever you want, but I wouldn't involve a Pi in a home server setup unless I specifically needed something it bought me, like the small form factor, low power usage, GPIO pins and so on.

I always need lower power consumption. I'm in the UK and my power costs are $0.40 per kWh. Even running a raspberry pi 5 24/7 would cost me $25 per year

Look for used thin clients. You can get HP t630s for ~$50 or less. They have a nice AMD SoC. If mostly idle, they draw about 2x a Pi. Loaded, they are similar.

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#24

Post by baq »

srcreigh wrote: post #19

Can somebody explain the whole proxmox thing? I haven’t used it, I use k3s. I don’t get why people use VMs for stuff when there’s docker. Thanks!

it's so you can have a machine to run docker on, basically.

especially useful if you want multiple of those, and also helpful if you don't want one of them anymore.

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#26

Post by baq »

fartfeatures wrote: post #18
ryandrake wrote: post #14

Not sure I understand the need to use a Raspberry Pi here. They're cool and all, but wouldn't a regular old PC be simpler to setup, maintain, and attach hardware to? It's a hobby--and you can do whatever you want, but I wouldn't involve a Pi in a home server setup unless I specifically needed something it bought me, like the small form factor, low power usage, GPIO pins and so on.

I always need lower power consumption. I'm in the UK and my power costs are $0.40 per kWh. Even running a raspberry pi 5 24/7 would cost me $25 per year

N100 minipcs will burn about as much power as a fully decked rpi5 and they're so much more hypervisor-friendly.

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#27

Post by baq »

orthoxerox wrote: post #22
woodrowbarlow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some people think it's not "homelabbing" unless you're doing things the way it's done at large scale. i think these people are aiming to enter IT as a career and consider a homelab to be a resume project. but proxmox and kubernetes are overkill, imo, for most homelab setups. setting them up is a good learning experience but not necessarily an appropriate architecture for maintaining a few mini PCs in a closet long te…

k8s is definitely an overkill if your goal is not learning k8s. proxmox is great, though. It's worth running it even if you treat it as nothing more than a BMC.

I'm running an ubuntu server as a hypervisor only because the proxmox installer is using an older kernel than the actual system and wouldn't install on my box :/

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#28

Post by placardloop »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #13
immibis wrote: post #9

I've recently learned that "homelab" is a specific thing meaning you run certain software (like Proxmox), and not a generic term for running a 'server lab' at home.

some people think it's not "homelabbing" unless you're doing things the way it's done at large scale. i think these people are aiming to enter IT as a career and consider a homelab to be a resume project. but proxmox and kubernetes are overkill, imo, for most homelab setups. setting them up is a good learning experience but not necessarily an appropriate architecture for maintaining a few mini PCs in a closet long te…

Homelabbing is a hobby for most people involved in it, and like other hobbies, some people dip their toes in it while others go diving in the deep end. But would you say it’s “overkill” for a hobbyist fisher to have multiple fishing poles? Or for a hobbyist painter to try multiple sets of paintbrushes? Or a hobbyist programmer to know multiple programming languages?

There’s a lot of overlap between “I run a server to store my photos” and “I run a bunch of servers for fun”, which has resulted in annoying gatekeeping (or reverse gatekeeping) where people tell each other they are “doing it wrong”, but on Reddit at least it’s somewhat being self-organized into r/selfhosted and r/homelab, respectively.

Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned

#29

Post by PenguinCoder »

tom1337 wrote: post #17
srjilarious wrote: post #10

I just learned about the whole homelab thing a week ago; it's a much deeper rabbit hole than I expected. I'm planning to setup ProxMox today for the first time in fact and retire my Ubuntu Server setup running on a NUC that's been serving me well for last couple years. I hadn't heard about mealie yet, but sounds like a great one to install.

If you want to go another, related rabbit hole, check out the DataHoarder subreddit. But don't blame me, if you’re buying terabytes of storage over the next few months :)

Data Hoarding is a bit more involved than just a homelab. Don't want your data hoard to go down or missing, whole you're labbing new techs and protocols.
Post reply on HN