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More random home lab things I've recently learned

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

#91

Post by somehnguy »

strbean wrote: post #90
skelpmargyar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proxmox is awesome! I've been running it for ~5 years and it's been absolutely stable and pleasant to run services on. The Proxmox Backup Server is the killer feature for me. Incremental and encrypted backups with seamless restoration for LXC and VMs has been amazing.

I've been looking to get offsite backups going. Where do you keep your backups? NAS + cloud? I also wanted to back up my big honking zpool of media, but it doesn't economical to store 10+ TB offsite when the data isn't really that critical.

My PBS server has 2 datasources - one local external drive & Backblaze B2. I snapshot to the local drive frequently throughout the day & B2 once in the evening.

Yeah I don't backup any of my media zpool. It can all be replaced quite easily, not worth paying for the backup storage.

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

#93

Post by heresie-dabord »

Havoc wrote: post #60
everforward wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem knowledgeable so you may already know, but it's worth looking at the x86 mini PCs. Performance per watt has gotten pretty close on the newer low power CPUs (e.g. N150, unsure what AMD's line for that is), and performance per $ spent on hardware is way higher. I'm seeing 8GB Pi 5s with a power supply and no SD card for $100; you can get an N150 mini PC with 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD pre-installed for like $16…

Yeah have a collection of minipc - they are indeed great. This build was more NAS focused. 9x SATA SSD and 6x NVME...minipcs just don't have the connectivity for that sort of thing >Imo, Raspberry Pis haven't been cost competitive general compute devices for a while now unless you want GPIO pins. I have a bunch of rasp 4Bs that I'll use for a k8s HA control plane but yeah outside of that they're not idea. Especially…

> Raspberry Pi 5s can actually support NVME drives

And Raspberry Pi 4s can actually boot from NVME via a USB enclosure.

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

#94

Post by doubled112 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #92

> 2x Xeon Gold 6248 CPU 300 are a lot of watts. ...I didn't used to pay attention but power costs keep rising. I recently opted for a i7 F (65w base) over an i7 K (125w base) even with the 15% performance hit.

I have a couple of machines that I can spin up if I need the power and performance, but it was amazing to me that the always on services that I'm actually using would run on an N95 mini PC.

YMMV, I'm not saying it's enough for every use case. The CPU will transcode my 1080p media using QSV at ~500 FPS. I don't have enough users to saturate that using Jellyfin.

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

#95

Post by lisbbb »

jrmg wrote: post #51
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.

Ubuntu Server setup running on a NUC that's been serving me well In my book, that’s a homelab, it's just a small one (an efficient one?...)

I've set up half a dozen different home labs over the years but never used anywhere near the compute or disk capacity I had. It was more about learning things, I guess. I laughed when he mentioned the number of cores he has available.

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

#96

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

doubled112 wrote: post #94
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #92

> 2x Xeon Gold 6248 CPU 300 are a lot of watts. ...I didn't used to pay attention but power costs keep rising. I recently opted for a i7 F (65w base) over an i7 K (125w base) even with the 15% performance hit.

I have a couple of machines that I can spin up if I need the power and performance, but it was amazing to me that the always on services that I'm actually using would run on an N95 mini PC. YMMV, I'm not saying it's enough for every use case. The CPU will transcode my 1080p media using QSV at ~500 FPS. I don't have enough users to saturate that using Jellyfin.

> The CPU will transcode my 1080p media using QSV at ~500 FPS.

Did you do the original encoding yourself (to insure everything is optimized for your rig)?

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

#97

Post by bigiain »

dangus wrote: post #64
everforward wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem knowledgeable so you may already know, but it's worth looking at the x86 mini PCs. Performance per watt has gotten pretty close on the newer low power CPUs (e.g. N150, unsure what AMD's line for that is), and performance per $ spent on hardware is way higher. I'm seeing 8GB Pi 5s with a power supply and no SD card for $100; you can get an N150 mini PC with 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD pre-installed for like $16…

The first thing I thought when I read this article was how raspberry pi’s just make this kind of thing more difficult and annoying compared to a regular normal PC, new (e.g. cheap mini PC) or used (e.g. used business workstation or just a plain desktop PC). And if you want GPIO pins I’d imagine that a lot of those applications you’d be better served with an ESP32 and that a raspberry pi is essentially overkill for ma…

> And if you want GPIO pins I’d imagine that a lot of those applications you’d be better served with an ESP32

I often us an Arduino plugged onto a spare USB port. There's a whole lot of GPIO pin related projects that suit 5V better than 3.3V, and Arduino IO pins are practically unbreakable compared to ESP32. I've got Arduinos that still work fine after accidentally connecting 12V directly to IO pins. I've has ESP32s (and RasPis) give up the ghost just from looking at the IO pins while thinking about 12V.

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

#98

Post by m463 »

jrmg wrote: post #51
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.

Ubuntu Server setup running on a NUC that's been serving me well In my book, that’s a homelab, it's just a small one (an efficient one?...)

I used to have a large server serving a couple important things.

I was able to put everything on a fanless zotac box with a 2.5" sata SSD, and it has served well for many years. (and QUITE a bit less electricity, even online 24/7)

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

#99

Post by fluoridation »

bombcar wrote: post #89
fluoridation wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're really not that cheap anymore, though. If you just need "another computer" you can probably find something more capable in the used market.

They never were terribly cheap, but there was a time when people who hadn't seen a single-board computer (that small) and didn't really keep abreast of the used market gobbled them up. One advantage over the used market is that you can easily keep getting the exact same one over and over again.

>They never were terribly cheap

Not really, no. Not if all you need is "a computer". They're more interesting if you want a cheap ARM computer, or a tiny computer, or a server that sips power. Although for that last one they're also kind of dubious. If you can somehow get away with running what you need off a phone, that's way better value.

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

#100

Post by petepete »

walkabout wrote: post #44
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.

Where’d we get this term? I hear “home lab” and I think of having equipment to accomplish something new, not… running ordinary server software in fairly ordinary ways. Like Tony Stark designing his suits has a “home lab”. People 3D printing Warhammer figures or with a couple little servers running PiHole and Wireguard and such… not so much? I’ve had one or two machines running serving stuff at home for a couple decad…

There’s a blurred line between self-hosting and homelabbing.

I’d classify myself in the former camp, with a small server that runs TrueNAS and serves media, runs VMs and a few apps I use for work - and a Unifi network for my home and security cameras and VPN.

I’m positive there are people with very similar setups who call it a homelab. I don’t really experiment with mine, it’s set up and works in the background for months on end.

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