cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24850430

EDIT: i had an rpi it died from esd i think

EDIT2: this is also my work machine and i sleep to the sound of the fans

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    17 hours ago

    the best home server is a computer you’re not using, the second best home server is a bajillion dollar server rack you looted from behind a meta LLM farm

  • eletes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    1 day ago

    I went overboard but only because I was having fun with it and didn’t like the octopus of hard drives plugged into my NUC

  • kratoz29@lemm.eeEnglish
    12·
    1 day ago

    My only “server” is a modest DS218+ which runs more mainstream services that I see in those huge ass servers like in the pic, what am I missing? (I have 6 GBs of RAM):

    • Arr stack (Bazarr, Sonarr, Radarr, Overseerr, Prowlarr)
    • Plex
    • Calibre and Calibre web
    • DizqueTV
    • Dozzle
    • Flaresolverr
    • Heimdall
    • Iperf3 server
    • JDownloader2
    • Komga
    • Openspeedrest
    • Pi-hole
    • Plex-Auto-Languages (for the Synology PMS and my Nvidia Shield TV Pro)
    • PlexTraktSync
    • Portainer
    • Qbittorrent
    • Riven/Rclone/Zurg
    • Speedtest
    • Tautulli (X2)
    • Vaultwarden
    • Zerotier

    Everything is silent and running with Docker, aside from a bunch of stock Synology services (and Tailscale), I really feel like the only reason to own better hardware is for a better transcoding experience… And usually you don’t want to transcode.

    • mugdad1@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      dayem buddy thats cool i’m still a noob in selfhosting and using docker im using some containers like adguardhome and metube photoprism and memos still tweaking cuz i started 1 week ago

  • zod000@lemmy.ml
    22·
    2 days ago

    If wanting to have cool oscilloscopes and blinkenlights is wrong then I don’t want to be right.

    • Tja@programming.dev
      7·
      2 days ago

      I recently got a M710q with an i3 7100T. It uses around 3W on idle. I threw 8GB of RAM and a 512GB ramless NVMe for a total of under 100€. Absolutely would recommend (if you don’t need too much storage). Also Dell has some machines.

      For more info, servethehome (they have a YouTube channel and a blog) has a whole series on “tiny mini micro” machines.

        • Rudee@lemmy.ml
          7·
          2 days ago

          DRAM-less NVMe drives don’t have what basically amounts to a cache of readily accessible storage that makes large reads and writes faster. So they’re cheaper, but slower, and wear out faster

        • Sinaf@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 days ago

          Some fancy SSDs have additional DRAM cache:

          The presence of a DRAM chip means that the CPU does not need to access the slower NAND chips for mapping tables while fetching data. DRAM being faster provides the location of stored data quickly for viewing or modification.

          Source

  • todotoro@midwest.socialEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    I think the issue for some people (why they may buy expensive hardware) is that their server is not “enterprise grade”, literally meaning a whole server rack with a SAN, firewall, etc. If you’re new to this hobby, please consider this unsolicited advice:

    Use whatever hardware you already have or buy only what you need to achieve your goals.

    Some people want to “cosplay as a sysadmin” like what Jeff Geerling sells on his tshirts. That can mean doing this stuff for fun or maybe self teaching for a job. For those folks, buying “enterprise” could possibly make sense. But I would argue that even the core concepts of that hardware can be learned on stuff you already have.

    Enterprise hardware is loud, inefficient, and will likely have idiosyncrasies that making them run at home kinda suck. An old laptop is perfect as a place to host stuff or play with software.

    One of the things engineers/admins have to do in a datacenter is plan for rack power efficiency. That often means planning for the capacity you are going to use, for the space you have and choosing the cheapest solution for that.

    I think its considered generally more impressive with how much you can do within the constraints you have, vs having so much capacity for a cheap price. Like, how many services can you run on a Raspberry Pi? Can you create “good enough” performance for a storage area network using just gigabit? The skills you get by limiting yourself probably out perform working with “the real stuff”, even if your purpose is trying to get a job. I’d argue the same for folks who simply want to self host. Run what you got until it stops, and then try to buy for capacity again.

    Your power bill, the environment, and your wallet will thank you.

    • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      Downsizing from an ex biz full fat tower server to a few Pis, a mini PC and a Synology NAS was the best decision ever here.

      The new hardware was paid for quickly in the power savings alone. The setup is also much quieter.

      You don’t think about power consumption a lot when working with someone else’s supply (unless it’s your actual job to), but it becomes very visible when you see a server gobbling up power on a meter at home.

      You’re right about the impressiveness of working creatively within constraints. We got to the moon in '69 with a fraction of the computing power available to the average consumer today. Look at the history of the original Elite videogame for another great example of working creatively and efficiently within a rather small box.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    211·
    2 days ago

    Good choice. I think people often invest too much into hardware and SBCs, when an old laptop does just fine. Just monitor the battery or remove it, if you run that for years and unsupervised in the broom closet.

    • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 days ago

      Depends. If you want something that will keep your files reasonably safe and accessible then a laptop isn’t great because most of them won’t let you mount multiple hard drives without doing something silly like running everything over USB.

      Of course that’s where an old desktop is the computer of choice.

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, it really depends on the use-case. I’ve attached several external harddisks via USB to unsuitable hardware before. That kinda works, but isn’t a good choice. But for some selfhosting of Bitwarden, home autiomation and calendar sync, an old laptop is more than enough. After that I bought an efficient mainboard, lots of RAM and built my own NAS for my files, and it does the other stuff as well.

        • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 day ago

          Yeah, it doesn’t take a lot to build a decent home server. I just rebuilt mine (the old one’s Turion II Neo was perhaps a bit too weak) and the most expensive part were the HDDs. I didn’t want to reuse the old ones.

          A slightly underclocked Athlon 3000G, 16 gigs of spare RAM, and three 4 TB WD Red Pluses give me all the power I actually need at a reasonable power budget. I initially wanted to go with an N100 but those never support more than two SATA drives directly.

            • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 day ago

              My bad. I went with the WD Red Plus, model WD40EFPX. It’s basically the successor to the old CMR Red line. The Pro line has 7200 RPM and is a bit noisier, which isn’t great for a living room server.

              I’ll correct my earlier comment.

    • StitchIsABitch@lemmy.world
      5·
      2 days ago

      I started out with a laptop and it worked fine, but I always wondered, wouldn’t the energy consumption be much higher? Even with the screen off, a laptop isn’t made to run 24/7, right?

      • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        I think it’s mainly the battery that isn’t made for 24/7 charging. The other components are fine. And as a laptop is made not to waste electricity, it’s efficient with the energy consumption, too. Just turn off the screen and it’ll use as much as a Raspberry Pi or less…

  • Redex@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 days ago

    Here’s mine. Might need to repaste it tho, the fans are literally always running pretty noticably loudly and CPU temps are at ~49° even though it’s idiling all the time at max 1%-2% CPU usage.

    On a side note - is it normal for Redis to always be using 1-2% CPU even when there’s no traffic?

      • Redex@lemmy.world
        2·
        19 hours ago

        Do you mean specs wise or software wise? It’s a Lenovo Y50 with 8 gigs RAM, an i5 4210H, and a GTX 960M.

        I’m running Ubuntu server with docker and a few containers (mainly Nextcloud)

  • Synapse@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 days ago

    Is having a bunch of oscilloscopes in your electronics lab self-hosting now ?

    Using old laptops or other repurposed computer for self-hosting is just great! Who does have an old computer collecting dusk in their home ? Anyone had the potential for self-hosting :)

  • thezeesystem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    10·
    2 days ago

    I got like 6 old computers from 2000 to 2016 all doing different things. If I had a choice between a high end server and cobbled together mess I would always choose the mess. Lot more entertainment and fun to figure out

    • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca
      1·
      2 days ago

      Mine are a bit more recent (2012-202*) but same thing. Old hardware gets used for something, my “server” is just my old i5 11500k with as much ram as I could throw at it and as many drives as I can fit in the case. Oldest is a laptop that’s my bench computer.

      Helps me justify upgrades, hardware’s been capable for a long time, always impressive to me just how capable things are, and sometimes it’s part of the fun (if you enjoy problem solving) to work around limitations. Off-lease enterprise stuff interests me, would need to figure out where it lives though.

  • panicnow@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 day ago

    I use an Asus laptop I bought during COVID as my server. I dropped in 64GB of RAM, a pair of NVM drives and an old 2.5” SATA SSD. More than enough for my use cases. The only real software tweak I made was limiting battery charging to 60%.

      • panicnow@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        For my Asus laptop the setting is maintained at the hardware level. I didn’t bother trying to find Linux software that could control it (I think there is one) but instead just booted into Windows and set it there and it will persist after that in Linux.