I feel like any #homelab enthusiast knows how much fun a good benchmarking sesh is!
In this blog post, I share some CPU #benchmarks from upgrading my quad-socket #server to 4x E7-4870s
https://jdrusso.dev/posts/2022/11/better-faster-stronger-upgrading-server-cpus/
@xaseiresh Fun questions! I’m not a pro or anything myself, but a few lessons learned:
Trolling craigslist for deals is surprisingly productive. I was definitely not expecting to actually find decent and cheap server hardware there.
Get some simple energy monitoring, I just use a smart-plug. It’s, uh… good to know 👀
Use as much virtualization/#docker as you can! It’s totally bananas to me how easy, robust, and reproducible Docker stacks are. I use #DockerCompose for pretty much all my services.
Also, be prepared. I love impractical equipment in my life. I lived for 3 years in a studio where a good chunk of my living space was taken up by my #3DPrinter and soldering station workbench, and loved it. That still did not prepare me for how absurdly loud and hot a 1U rack server in your office is.
I’m not sure what the options are like but, having now purchased a 1U, I think I’d prefer a 2U so I could fit 80mm fans in it. Being limited to 40mm fans is pretty painful, it’s difficult to find quiet alternatives that maintain the same airflow as the OEM fans. (Though… Stay tuned for some #DIY #watercooling on my setup…)
And pay attention to drive bays – I got a 1U with 3 bays, which I thought would be fine, but 3 bays is peanuts. That’s an OS drive and the world’s lamest RAID array. Though for me, it’s a good excuse to DIY an external drive bay as another project :)
Not sure if any of that is helpful!
@quasifrodo You make me want to look into servers like that some more ^^’
I’m already working with a repurposed small office PC that had enough SATA ports for two HDDs and a SSD for OS etc., and I’ve been experimenting with that for various DIY hosting and similar.
But it might be nice to switch to something that has a little more room for later upgrades.
I heard that a certain brand of old Intel rack servers can be good for this, since they’re comparatively cheap but still work well.
Note that I don’t intend to do major computations. Maybe some compilation and basic data processing, but nothing bigger as of right now.
Any recommendations? Or things to avoid?