AshleyOops! Might have treated myself to a new(er) server to replace my old one...
Cue days of firmware updates, RAID migrations and setups.
Could have worse hobbies! 😂
Graeme C.@Smash_1980 Thats quite a homelab server, I used to use them in companies!
What are you planning to do with it projects wise?
@glc I don't have a rack but this is my current little setup. It's been great fun learning.
@Smash_1980 often tough to find a small rack thats deep enough for those server(and circulates air enough). I used to have a 9u with a micro server, switch, patch panel in it.
Thesedays im all about reducing the noise and power usage. I tend to use Synology for NAS and raspberry Pis for individual projects.
@glc the IT cupboard is away from everywhere so the noise isn't an issue. Plus the R7## servers aren't too loud for commercial servers.
Energy... That's a different issue! 😂. I do want to move my pfsense pc into a lower energy device but my logic with the server is I would need several PCs for the same tasks so it's not too bad. I know a lot of this could be run by Raspberry PIs etc but I wanted to play with servers and learn more.
@Smash_1980 yeah its good to learn on the "big boxes". Before I left working in IT there was definitely a shift towards dedicated Blade servers connected to SANs for storage, but for smaller organizations a device like that with a stack of drives in the front was the way to go.
If I ever need to scale up again I'll probably rent a cloud server with Hetzner. The rental cost on some of the auctions is equivalent to the power cost running at home. Server for free
@Smash_1980 re. The server rentals, it was this post got me thinking and doing the math.
https://mast.solarisfire.com/@solarisfire/109800342365739812
Stephen Greenham (@[email protected])
I just did the math... If you say the average home server draws 150W from the wall. That's 3.6kwh per day. At current UK electricity prices that's £39.06 per 31-day month. You can get a decent server in a hetzner server auction for €40.44 (~£36.10). So it's actually cheaper to pay for datacenter power and get a free server and networking than to run lab boxes at home right now 🤯
@glc I've looked at it before but never seen auction prices like you have said. Plus when I consider storage costs also it doesn't work for me.
@Smash_1980 yeah storage can get pricey and bandwidth can be an issue. which is why i tend to always have a low powered NAS at home.
Those servers on the lower cost brackets are handy when you need a fair bit of reliable 24/7 CPU power for a project without overheating your house
@glc yeah. In the summer the heat is a problem but in winter it's like a really inefficient space heater! 😂