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Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#11

Post by bean-weevil »

toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

I feel like this concept will be useful in other situations, too, not just homelabs. I wouldn't be surprised at all to spot one of these controlling a temporary venue.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#12

Post by toprerules »

opan wrote: post #6
toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

Low power device to leave on all the time, particularly for people who don't leave their clients on all the time. Like a router, but more versatile (although with a better OS on it, an actual router may do the same job).

You can buy a Synology NAS for less than the cost of this rack and it will do everything this rack can do including running containers. You can build your own NAS and run Unraid or FreeNAS or what have you for even less.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#13

Post by monkmartinez »

toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

I generally agree with this sentiment and have struggled to put it into words. I have a beefy Dell Precision that I bought used for $200. This is where I simulate all the things; networking, container orchestration, services and more. I have upgraded to 128GB of ECC RAM, PCIe NVMe drives, and a 24GB quadro card. All in, I have about $800 invested. It's brittle as it is also my desktop so I delay updates and what not because I don't want to break anything. Not ideal.

So, now I am left with building another system and I need to decide form factor. Is this going to be headless or run a GUI of some kind with a monitor attached? Should I buy a big ole tower case or move to a 6u or 12u rack system. I want more VRAM and I need as much PCIe as possible. One thing for sure is that I don't want it to be Raspberry Pi based. I have two Pi4 collecting dust that were fun and impressive for what they are.

I saw these mini racks and wondered how they would work with an extended ATX board. Could these be useful as some kind of "open air" or mining type case where you simply bolt stuff on. Definitely going to investigate, so while the exact application of mini-racking pi's is not my jam, I am thankful that it was brought up.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#14

Post by plagiarist »

andrewaylett wrote: post #7
toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

The reason I'm considering a Pi cluster is resilience and repeatability. The reason I don't have one yet is because (like you) I'm unconvinced it's the right way to get that. At least in theory, a Pi cluster has better failure modes than a single machine even if it's less powerful overall. And yes, I'm currently running on an old laptop -- but it's all a bit ad-hoc and I really want something a bit more uniform, idea…

Some people suggest the thin clients as an option. You can buy them used and they're x86, usually expandable RAM and storage.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#15

Post by toprerules »

andrewaylett wrote: post #7
toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

The reason I'm considering a Pi cluster is resilience and repeatability. The reason I don't have one yet is because (like you) I'm unconvinced it's the right way to get that. At least in theory, a Pi cluster has better failure modes than a single machine even if it's less powerful overall. And yes, I'm currently running on an old laptop -- but it's all a bit ad-hoc and I really want something a bit more uniform, idea…

Your house a single failure domain, you're not really going to be resilient to a lot of common failures, and most of these home labs have every device plugged into the same UPS, so there's really no difference between the power failure domain of 10 Pis and one desktop computer plugged into a UPS connected to your home router.

Do yourself a favor and buy a NAS and a compatible UPS. Any modern NAS software will speak one of the UPS IP protocols to handle graceful shutdown if your power goes off. Once you have the money, buy a second NAS and put it in a relatives house, set up a wireguard/tailscale tunnel between the two devices, and use it for offsite backups.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#16

Post by geerlingguy »

toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

Just a nit; the mini rack has nothing to do with Pis per-se. One of the racks in the post features a Radxa N100 as the primary node, and other builds in the showcase feature various mini PCs (new and quite old). All of which have a lot more oomph than a Pi.

There are also other Arm SBCs that are much faster (and more efficient) than a Pi, like the Orange Pi 5 Max. Many homelab-related apps run just as well if not better on that, just have to make sure to settle on a supported OS distro.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#18

Post by irskep »

toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

In my case, it's because all my client devices are laptops, or locked down like Apple TV. It's nice to have a low-stakes experimentation box that can also be a Jellyfin server.

On the other hand, I don't go to the trouble this guy goes to. I just have a cheap mini PC plugged into Ethernet sitting on top of my router.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#19

Post by Zanfa »

toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

I don’t think most people have the space to fit a 24U rack at home. Or tolerate the noise and power consumption of typical 19” hardware. Or cost.

Re: Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

#20

Post by skydhash »

toprerules wrote: post #2

The one thing I don't understand about these Pi based mini-racks is why you would build a home lab that's less powerful than your client devices. My 24 U rack exists precisely because I want on demand, large amounts of compute/GPU for compiling, transcoding, encrypting, etc. and the cloud is too expensive. If you're going to make the investment into any type of home labbing, why gimp yourself with devices that can on…

I don't have a homelab, but I have an old mac mini (that I put Debian on) as an always-on file server and other self-hosted software. I also have a 1L office pc as my main desktop (freebsd) with a couple of dev VMs (alpine linux). Both draw very little power, which is important for me as I'm on solar.

I have an M1 Mini which is more powerful than any of these, but MacOS is not really suitable for tinkering and anything that's not Apple(TM).

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