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Home lab beginners guide (2021)

haydenjames.io

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Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#21

Post by 7speter »

genewitch wrote: post #10
mcovalt wrote: post #6

This is fun. I'm more of a minimalist with my homelab setup. It's a laptop and an old NAS. I love it either way: running a homelab is a nonsensical and fun hobby in any case. I feel like we live in a world in which it's either racks or cheap VPSs. In reality, at home, we have some serious CPU horsepower just spinning billions of empty cycles per second. Consumer hardware is insane . I've handled 10's of thousands of…

looks better than my quick and dirty wireguard setup to get NAT Type: A behind CGNAT on game consoles - Basically put whatever is connected to a device in a "public DMZ", separate from your network: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/genewitch/opensource/maste... Wireguard is both very frustrating and very cool. I'm currently using it similarly to give a VM a public IP, and i'm testing the details on getting multiple…

> Speaking of "CPU horsepower" i just replaced a 1.5kW HP[0] server with a .2kW Ryzen 5950x "server" that is about 5% faster overall - don't forget that old stuff, while capable, adds to the electric bill, usually at a constant rate.

What I’ve observed is people on subs like r/homelab and r/sysadmin ridicule people who appreciate the available horsepower with modern consumer tech because “no ecc memory” or the like and I wonder if you people who are looking to make labs using the latest ryzen or i7/i9 (really, I’m thinking of getting started by converting an old thinkcentre with a 4th gen i5, possibly undervolting the cpu, and 24gb ddr3 into a pfsense router and some sort of server) will really be missing out on some necessary enterprise feature?

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#24

Post by heavyset_go »

mcovalt wrote: post #6

This is fun. I'm more of a minimalist with my homelab setup. It's a laptop and an old NAS. I love it either way: running a homelab is a nonsensical and fun hobby in any case. I feel like we live in a world in which it's either racks or cheap VPSs. In reality, at home, we have some serious CPU horsepower just spinning billions of empty cycles per second. Consumer hardware is insane . I've handled 10's of thousands of…

> running a homelab is a nonsensical

Depends, I get a lot of utility from mine, as it manages my media collection for streaming at home and on the go. I've tried using SaaS alternatives and managed hosting of the apps I run, but those experiences were both lackluster and relatively expensive. And since the apps I run and my media collection aren't locked behind proprietary systems or limited APIs that might disappear, the amount of integration and automation makes for a very pleasant experience.

> In reality, at home, we have some serious CPU horsepower just spinning billions of empty cycles per second. Consumer hardware is insane.

I just add my old devices to my cluster and call it a day. Even ancient hardware is suitable for it, especially if you're using old laptops that are optimized for power savings. Even old Core 2 processors in laptops can idle at a low wattage, and TDP can be less than a light bulb's when maxed out.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#25

Post by sgt »

neilv wrote: post #11

For the UPS, I always err on the side of ones that are PFC-compatible, pure sine wave, line interactive. Partly because some of the gear I rack has PFC PSUs, but also because I don't want to be flirting with edge cases in other gear. I've owned 3 such rackmount UPSes, but it doesn't seem to be the default.

Just had a PFC capable APC UPS fail on me. Not that it necessarily means anything. UPS's do fail, that's all.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#26

Post by moondev »

candiddevmike wrote: post #22

Just get a 12 core+ Ryzen and a bunch of RAM (64GB+). It'll be more efficient/faster GHz than a bunch of old servers and more than capable for running three node clusters.

I went the "prosumer" route too. Threadripper maxed with 256G memory.

It runs esxi that auto boots my "workstation" vm on startup. This vm has my GPU, nvme, and usb passthru.

This way I can boot my workstation "on metal" if needed, but the vm works great. I then manage my lab infra running on the same machine via vCenter html5 ui.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#27

Post by ocdtrekkie »

gigel82 wrote: post #20

It's time to update this kind of guides with at least 2.5GbE networking. I suspect most FTTH ISPs will start defaulting to 2 or even 5 Gbps soon (mine already offers theses speeds in PNW, but at premium costs). There's very few consumer options at 2.5 / 5 GbE; you can usually pick up cheaper 10 GbE gear (but on older standards, non-multi-gig compatible).

The areas this sort of thing is available is way too scarce to matter. I'm in a major metropolitan highly competitive area, and 1.2Gbps non-symmetrical coax is the fastest option.

Most PCs where I work run through 100 Mbps switches.

Your experience is very far from the average.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#28

Post by powersnail »

As someone who has never done this before, what's the benefit of setting up a server rack, compared with just using my desktop? Is it purely for the fun of tinkering with hardware? Is there something that's not doable on a desktop?

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#29

Post by MrFoof »

candiddevmike wrote: post #22

Just get a 12 core+ Ryzen and a bunch of RAM (64GB+). It'll be more efficient/faster GHz than a bunch of old servers and more than capable for running three node clusters.

Honestly, depending on what you're doing? Not even that.

* Don't underestimate the number of services you can having running in containers on a Raspberry Pi 4B with 8GB of RAM, sipping just 2.1W (yes, that little!) at idle over PoE or as low as 1.35W over WiFi powered by USB-C. With distributions like DietPi you can have a mere 10 processes at startup (using just 44MiB of RAM), but still all the flexibility in the world.

* Also don't forget you can cluster them. Want Kubernetes experience? Perfect opportunity to have a cluster than pulls at most like 17W under extreme loads.

* Have an old laptop? Fantastic. Great second life for it. You get the bonus of an integrated keyboard, UPS and display if and when you need it, even if it's normally headless.

* Don't forget Mac Minis and 1L form factors. I have an 1L form factor (that weighs about 1.3kg) 8-core Zen 3 Ryzen 7 PRO APU that boosts to 4.6GHz, with 64GB of memory, a 1TB SSD and 2.5GbE that sips a mere 10W at idle, and pulls maybe 45W at full bore. Its silent. takes up as much space as like 25 paper napkins, and I can pass the GPU cores through to VMs.

* Don't forget hypervisors as well. For truly ephemeral stuff you can just spin up virtual machines on your main desktop or laptop -- just stuff more RAM in it.

-- ----- -----

What's great is you can put the power sipping stuff basically ANYWHERE. It can be easily accessible, but entirely hidden from view. It makes no noise. It's not spewing heat or demanding cooling. There's no blinking lights. You're not driving up the electricity bill. Yet you can do very real work on them.

For cost? Raspberry Pis aside (sorry, use rpilocator!) check eBay or other marketplace completed listings to establish a price floor, and just be patient and only grab quality stuff that approaches the price floor. Nothing better than getting new (but open box) or barely used modern hardware for peanuts (60-70% off) because the seller is impatient or ignorant.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#30

Post by candiddevmike »

sgt wrote: post #23
candiddevmike wrote: post #22

Just get a 12 core+ Ryzen and a bunch of RAM (64GB+). It'll be more efficient/faster GHz than a bunch of old servers and more than capable for running three node clusters.

At what cost though?

$500-800 for the CPU and RAM ish? I just built a 16 core Ryzen with 32GB of RAM and a bunch of HDDs for about that a year ago.
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