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I've spent a lot of time down this rabbit hole recently. I have a Dell M1000e blade server (16 blades, each with dual CPUs). A comical amount of compute for a h

by abound 3y ago

I've spent a lot of time down this rabbit hole recently. I have a Dell M1000e blade server (16 blades, each with dual CPUs). A comical amount of compute for a home, sounds like a leaf blower. Hosted a couple dozen small apps on it. Power usage was 1.5kW (ouch), made less painful by large rooftop solar. Just today, I replaced the whole thing with a single mini PC with a laptop Ryzen chip (6900HX). Pulls like 60W at the wall under load. This is a circuitous way of saying that, for non-mission critical stuff, you can self-host and save a ton of money over the equivalent hosted option. You don't even need server hardware necessarily, depending on what you're trying to learn from the experience. Standard caveats about securing your home network apply. (Note: I'm not actually seriously saying a 16x blade server and a mini PC are equivalent. I got the blade server to learn things (more networking, mostly), it was very, very overpowered for my workloads)

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Yeah I think this likely where I'll end up going as well. What MiniPC did you end up working with? The thing I'm building/hosting can benefit from plenty of cores, but for the start it's just prototype with a limited audience, so I don't need to go hardcore. But I have a friend who has rackspace in a DC, and my thought was if I bought something in a rack form I could move it there and pay him to host it later. But I suspect it doesn't make a lot of sense, really.
- abound 3y ago
  I ended up with a Beelink GTR6, picked up used on eBay for $430. It's been great so far, but it's too early to vouch for it. You lose the nice IPMI/other server management features using consumer hardware, but that's part of the tradeoff. Rack stuff can be efficient (<100W idling), especially recent model year stuff, but it gets pricey quickly. You could spec a used 1U single socket Epyc Rome or Milan for under $2,000 if you're willing to shop around, but if you don't have other rackmount equipment, I'd stay away as it's such a price (and power) premium
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    There's plenty of 10-yearish old PowerEdge servers around here for $500ish CAD full of SAS drives and high core count Xeons and a pile of memory. But yeah, power and noise. And I don't have ethernet running down to the basement yet, so not super enthused about having that share office space with me. The laptop I'm typing on is a Ryzen 6850H, so not too far off from the 6900 you're talking about and it has plenty of oomph. I might consider such a thing.
bogantech 3y ago
> I have a Dell M1000e blade server (16 blades, each with dual CPUs). A comical amount of compute for a home, sounds like a leaf blower. That's pretty awesome! I would have loved that at one point but they're extremely loud and I remember them needing 16 amp IEC leads
- abound 3y ago
  Loud is an understatement, I wear ear protection when I'm physically in the room for more than a minute. And indeed, the power supplies run on ~200V, my house serendipitously is wired with a dedicated 240V/50A circuit because the previous owner did glasswork and had a massive electric kiln.

by abound 3y ago

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Yeah I think this likely where I'll end up going as well. What MiniPC did you end up working with? The thing I'm building/hosting can benefit from plenty of cores, but for the start it's just prototype with a limited audience, so I don't need to go hardcore. But I have a friend who has rackspace in a DC, and my thought was if I bought something in a rack form I could move it there and pay him to host it later. But I suspect it doesn't make a lot of sense, really.

abound 3y ago
I ended up with a Beelink GTR6, picked up used on eBay for $430. It's been great so far, but it's too early to vouch for it. You lose the nice IPMI/other server management features using consumer hardware, but that's part of the tradeoff. Rack stuff can be efficient (<100W idling), especially recent model year stuff, but it gets pricey quickly. You could spec a used 1U single socket Epyc Rome or Milan for under $2,000 if you're willing to shop around, but if you don't have other rackmount equipment, I'd stay away as it's such a price (and power) premium
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  There's plenty of 10-yearish old PowerEdge servers around here for $500ish CAD full of SAS drives and high core count Xeons and a pile of memory. But yeah, power and noise. And I don't have ethernet running down to the basement yet, so not super enthused about having that share office space with me. The laptop I'm typing on is a Ryzen 6850H, so not too far off from the 6900 you're talking about and it has plenty of oomph. I might consider such a thing.

bogantech 3y ago

> I have a Dell M1000e blade server (16 blades, each with dual CPUs). A comical amount of compute for a home, sounds like a leaf blower. That's pretty awesome! I would have loved that at one point but they're extremely loud and I remember them needing 16 amp IEC leads

abound 3y ago
Loud is an understatement, I wear ear protection when I'm physically in the room for more than a minute. And indeed, the power supplies run on ~200V, my house serendipitously is wired with a dedicated 240V/50A circuit because the previous owner did glasswork and had a massive electric kiln.