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An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

sour.coffee

91–100 of 101 posts

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#91
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically you want stability and predictability in a server. A platform that has a long support lifecycle is often more attractive than one with a short lifecycle. If you can stay on v12.x for 10 years versus having to upgrade yearly yo maintain support, that’s ideal. 12.x should always behave the same way with your app where-as every major version upgrade may have breaking changes. Servers don’t need to change, typi…

Yeah, and that's the take I assumed to hear based on what was said. However, for something like ARM and the use case this particular device may have, in reality you would _want_ (my opinion) to be on a more rolling release distros to pick up the updates that make your system perform better. I'd take a similar stance for devices that are built in a homelab for running LLMs.

Depends on what you're building an ARM system for. There are proper ARM servers out there; server work isn't the exclusive domain of x86, after all.

For homelabs, that's out the window. Do whatever you want/fits your needs best. This isn't the place where you'd likely find highly available networks, clustered or highly available services, UPS with battery banks, et. al.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#92

$599 seems like a lot to me. You can get numerous older, much more powerful Mini PCs (e.g older ThinkCentre Tiny series) or even a base brand new M4 Mac Mini for that kind of money. Admittedly, the 10G interfaces and fast RAM make up for some of it, but at least for a normal homelab setup, I can't think of an application needing RAM faster than even DDR3, especially at this power level.

2x10G is the biggest selling point of this device. This can be very useful in certain use-cases, when you need a high speed interconnect with SSD-backed NAS, for example. Or between a Ceph-cluster nodes for the faster replication.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just picked up a NAS - a ugreen dxp2800 - for £300. It has 2x nvme slots and 2x 3.5 bays. It’s x86 so if you don’t like the ugreen os you can change it. It runs docker (supports docker compose) and vms and has the usual raid stuff. They also do an arm version for half the price but I wanted the intel gpu for transcoding.

Does it take ECC RAM?

It doesn’t - I’ve had a quick look and I don’t think even their top model does.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#96

$599 seems like a lot to me. You can get numerous older, much more powerful Mini PCs (e.g older ThinkCentre Tiny series) or even a base brand new M4 Mac Mini for that kind of money. Admittedly, the 10G interfaces and fast RAM make up for some of it, but at least for a normal homelab setup, I can't think of an application needing RAM faster than even DDR3, especially at this power level.

Good luck finding a Mac mini in stock

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#97
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Apple also famous for not offering replacement parts other than replacing the whole thing and charging you accordingly?

In some cases yes, but having used Macs for decades and also working in companies with Macs for all the developers one thing is clear; these things don't easily break. Built extremely well. (One exception being the GPU issues a few years back though on Intel MBP's)

Can you provide any more objective support outside of your obvious Apple fan vibes?

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#98
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Apple also famous for not offering replacement parts other than replacing the whole thing and charging you accordingly?

In some cases yes, but having used Macs for decades and also working in companies with Macs for all the developers one thing is clear; these things don't easily break. Built extremely well. (One exception being the GPU issues a few years back though on Intel MBP's)

Other than that whole butterfly keyboard on their laptops for several years, culimnating in a $50 million class-action lawsuit for laptops between 2015 and 2019, totally!

No, wait, there was also bend gate and the iphone battery thing as well.

Uhhhh something about airpod ANC crackling.

There's more I'm forgetting.

God why do I keep buying Apple shit. I'm in a toxic relationship with an abuser.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#99
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

559 vs 720? That's literally like a few coffees. I went to Amsterdam (assuming you're dutch) and I paid 5 euro for a coffee. Go for the Mac Mini, the hardware incl thermal is also built exceptionally well. That's why you still have 20 year old Mac Minis still running as home servers etc.

If you're spending 170 euros on coffee then you're either abnormally rich or abnormally bad with money for a Dutchman. Without the ability to upgrade either storage or RAM, a 256GB SSD with 16GB RAM is quite useless for a home server. Minisforum doesn't offer any options with that little RAM and storage it seems (you can pick between barebones and 1TB models). The bare minimum spec for the Mac Mini sits at an interes…

> a 256GB SSD with 16GB RAM is quite useless for a home server

Not that I would buy it new, no, but 16GB for a home server can be quite fine. If I didn't have the 2x3 TB NAS disks (sounds ridiculously small now, right) - that would actually be enough.

Re: An ARM Homelab Server, or a Minisforum MS-R1 Review

#100
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the CPU performance being much more powerful for some shit-stained NUCs found on ebay, but one selling point for these minisforum machines are hassle-free dual 10G interfaces which are required for decent cluster performance - see ceph or proxmox ( with ceph ) or even kubernetes with, you guessed it - rook-ceph. Getting 10Gbit interface to work on ThinkCentre is possible, but not guaranteed to be relia…

> Not sure about the CPU performance being much more powerful for some shit-stained NUCs found on ebay The 10 GBit/s NUCs you find on eBay are enterprise-grade stuff: 10 Gbit/s hasn't really been a consumer thing. A used Fujitsu, Intel or Mellanox dual 10 Gbit/s bought on eBay isn't a "stained shit" that's "not guaranteed to be reliable". It's enterprise grade hardware. (that said the machine in TFA looks nice)

My point was they are not guaranteed to work reliably when shoved into a NUC, with janky adaptoprs and lack of airflow
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