9 ms·

My $300 Home Cloud Server

155 points by theonewolf 12y ago

shanselman 12y ago
Maybe I'm missing something, why not just use a cloud VM? On and off as like and pricing turns off. Surely that would be less than $300, wouldn't be in your house blowing air, and would be (more) easily accessible anywhere.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  I do cloud research. I modify the hypervisor. I do things that no cloud in the world can do.
  - dimxasnewfrozen 12y ago
    This is particularly funny when you use the Cloud to Butt chrome extension.
    - wlesieutre 12y ago
      How do you know when someone uses a text replacement extension? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
  - shanselman 12y ago
    You had me at hypervisor. ;) (Thanks! That's all I wanted to know.)
sauere 12y ago
Unless you need ECC memory for some reason, next time, do your ears and your wallet a favor and just buy regular x86 consumer hardware. It's half as loud (those 10k RPM fans must be killing your ears) and half the price and will consume half the energy.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  So you believe I can buy 24 GB of non-ECC RAM for less than $30 ?
psophis 12y ago
Why use the term cloud? It's just a server, no cloud-ness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
- baddox 12y ago
  The fact that the primary purpose is for varying computing tasks on demand makes makes the "cloud" term appropriate in my opinion.
- fleitz 12y ago
  https://maas.ubuntu.com/ https://maas.ubuntu.com/
- gknoy 12y ago
  He's not saying he has a cloud at home, but rather that this server was likely part of one in a prior life: """ There is a lot of conjecture on where the Dell 1U rackmount model CS24-SC came from. Some people say Facebook data centers. Others just say that it was mass-produced for “clouds.” """
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    Precisely, thanks for reading. And technically I use it as a mini-cloud for cloud research. I modify hypervisors and do things no cloud in the world can :-)
- ryanthejuggler 12y ago
  > _Oh yeah, did I mention I also wanted a beefier machine at home so I could manipulate large virtual machine images?_ I think he's looking to create a setup where he can spin up and destroy networked VMs, which would indeed make the project count as a cloud. From your Wikipedia link: > The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software allows a physical computing device to be electronically separated into one or more "virtual" devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. With operating system–level virtualization essentially creating a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, idle computing resources can be allocated and used more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. Autonomic computing automates the process through which the user can provision resources on-demand. By minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the process, reduces labor costs and reduces the possibility of human errors.[27] Admittedly, it depends on what he wants to do with this that would determine whether it's "really" a cloud or not.
bnejad 12y ago
Home and cloud are mutually exclusive I think. Cool build though.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Au contraire. See the cloudlets concept: http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu/ http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu/
  - RickHull 12y ago
    Perhaps this is a cloudlet then? Cloud computing is not merely VMs on demand. An essential nature of cloud is multiple distributed machines with the ability to transfer applications (or VMs) between machines for various reasons including load balancing, fault tolerance, and high availability. Furthermore, the application user is abstracted from which physical machine the application is running on. In your case, you have a single machine which you are likely addressing directly. This is not cloud computing. Perhaps you mean "cloud storage", where your personal devices are able to store and retrieve things "in the cloud". The equivalent of a local FTP server (or NAS) does not a cloud make. I appreciated the writeup nonetheless.
shiftpgdn 12y ago
Don't bring a server into your home if you value your sanity. Those little fans spin at 20,000RPM and can be heard throughout your house.
- fleitz 12y ago
  Yeah I don't see how Xeon makes much sense for CV in the home. I think you'd do much better to pick up a milk crate miner with a core i* processor.
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    It's not just CV, but I get your point.
- bluedino 12y ago
  The 1U servers are very loud. But a 4U or tower server will be fairly quiet, and have the bonus ability to hold more disks. A must for VM's, disk contention on spinning disks gets pretty high after your 2nd VM.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    2nd disk or a single SSD. Depends on workload of course, but for most VMs they read a lot more than they write so an SSD can handle quite a few before you notice any IO-related latency (3-4 small web-apps, 1-2 medium, 1 database VM). The OP also put his two drives into RAID 1 so they won't get any benefit of having two drives.
    - fragmede 12y ago
      RAID1 does get you faster random IOPS, so it's not like there's no benefit...
      - JTxt 12y ago
        Nice, I thought RAID 1 just gave redundancy. I use mdadm's RAID 10 on 2 drives for redundancy and speed. "In mdadm, the RAID10 level creates a single complex software RAID that combines features of both RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring). Multiple copies of all data blocks are arranged on multiple drives following a striping discipline." http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_draft/raidmdadm.html#raidmdadmr10cpx http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_...
hnha 12y ago
Warning, this page loads 20 megabytes of huge images that might crash your mobile browser. It does that for no good reason, the images are only shown in thumbnail size..
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Fixed. Sorry, I was hosting them myself and keeping them hi-res for the magazine. ACM is fixing something at their end to host them, and at the smaller size.
  - hnha 12y ago
    thanks!
manacit 12y ago
I've got something like this sitting in my living room, but instead of using a 1U rackmount server, I opted for a Mini-ITX system with a LIAN LI PC-Q25B case. It's quiet, holds tons of drives and actually looks like it belongs next to the TV (I run XBMC on it as well). It was pricer than the OP's configuration, but it won't keep you up at night (and bleed your wallet in power bills).
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Mine runs at 400W, less at idle. We don't run it 24/7, only when we have some research jobs to run :-)
fredsted 12y ago
I hope he has a basement or something to put it with all the noise it's going to make. I wonder if he would be better off financially buying a second-hand desktop PC due to power usage.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  This guy uses 400W, less at idle. If I could find a cheap desktop with 24-32 GB RAM (again, also cheap, like $60 cheap), than that would be an option.
Someone1234 12y ago
Hmm seems like he made the classical mistake of thinking that an x86-64 server is somehow special and more worthwhile than just buying a bare-bones PC. I've managed Dell servers before (real ones) and aside from a bunch of stuff to make managing them in mass easier (like DRAC), there isn't very much value in trying to retrofit one for home use. VT-x or 24 GB of RAM support isn't exactly a hard requirement in 2014. Plus the Xeon E5410 is a 2007 chip (7 years old!) and gets it butt kicked by even a low end i3 from 2012 [0]. Plus modern systems consume less electrical power which makes running them cheaper and a PC is certainly quieter than any rack mounted server (which are designed for maximum cooling, noise be damned). Additionally if he had purchased off-the-shelf parts he would likely have a warranty for 12 months (or more). With the eBay purchased Dell machine he not only doesn't get any warranty but ALSO Dell themselves don't even support it(!) so no firmware updates. So while this was a fun read, it just reminds me of my more nieve days when I thought doing stuff like this was a good idea. Go over to any SysAdmin forum (e.g. spiceworks community) and they'll tell you the same thing. [0]http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5410-vs-Intel-Core-i3-3220 http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5410-vs-Intel-Core-i3-32... edit: Originally linked to an 2012 i5 comparison ($180 CPU). Altered it to an 2012 i3 comparison ($100 CPU) which still out-performance the 7 year old Xeon. The $100 price tag seems a lot more comparable than a near $200 CPU. Plus the i3 supports 32 GB of RAM and VT-x (the OP's requirements).
- bluedino 12y ago
  A lightly used i5/i7 with a bunch of RAM and an SSD would be a much, much better host. I rescued a Dell workstation with an i7-950 from disposal, and added 2 disks and some RAM (9GB). Still not as quick as a 2500k in a lot of stuff but great for anything I can throw at it (decent size MySQL DB, lots of Rails apps, and quite a bit of web traffic). I could bump it up to 24GB but that's still $250 worth of RAM, new.
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    Yeah, the RAM alone is a costly thing actually. I was lucky to find it so cheap :-)
  - 12y ago
RexRollman 12y ago
As a geek hobbyist, I have always liked the 1U form factor, but the noise out of those things can be crazy.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  The CS24-CS isn't so bad. Sounds like a hair drier on low, as others have reported. It's only super loud if you load it (I calculated Pi to 5 billion digits). It would spin up fans, be loud for 30 seconds, and spin down for a few minutes and repeat as it computed.
  - micro-ram 12y ago
    Don't let the sound bother you. Put it down in the basement or somewhere where you can't hear it and use the DRAC to power it on and off.
    - theonewolf 12y ago
      Precisely. We leave it in a more unused space, and the BMC is useful in remotely powering up and checking on it :-)
_asciiker_ 12y ago
how is this a cloud server? that's like calling every picture a "selfie"...
- theonewolf 12y ago
  First, what I meant, was in its past life it was in a cloud probably. Secondly, I do cloud research. I run a modified KVM/QEMU hypervisor. I run a cloud with features you can not find anywhere else in the world today. So, it is, indeed, a mini-home cloud :-)
  - _asciiker_ 12y ago
    well now you're assuming virtualization is the same as cloud, it is not, a cloud researcher should know what a "cloud" actually is instead of the marketing usage for it. for one, redundancy is always implicit in any cloud solution.
    - theonewolf 12y ago
      I don't believe redundancy, what I think you mean---fault tolerance---is implicit in the definition of cloud computing. The most general form of the term 'cloud' in my mind is elastic access to computational resources. There is no guarantee of high availability (in fact, we see failed AWS instances and horror stories all the time), nor automated failover/redundancy/fault tolerance. Chaos Monkey by Netflix is a great example of the shortcomings of the modern cloud in terms of fault tolerance and redundancy. The cloud doesn't give it to you, you have to build that yourself. I'm a very open-minded person, perhaps because of my academic background, so I would be happy to say that I agree that a subtype of the fundamental cloud could be a redundant/fault-tolerant one. But the fundamental definition of cloud does not include fault tolerance. Don't trust me. Check out the more formal definition from US NIST (years of work, 15 drafts), there is no mention of redundancy or fault-tolerance: http://faculty.winthrop.edu/domanm/csci411/Handouts/NIST.pdf http://faculty.winthrop.edu/domanm/csci411/Handouts/NIST.pdf
    - theonewolf 12y ago
      Also, my setup is a private cloud (in the NIST definition). There are two tenants: myself, and my fiancee. We use VM technology to share the same set of physical resources. Our VMs are managed via Vagrant. VM technology does not imply cloud, you are right; however, it is often used to implement clouds as an abstraction layer over hardware.
guyzero 12y ago
Is this super-loud? I have an old 1U server which seemed cool until I booted it up. It's like vacuum-cleaner-loud.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  It's not horrible, sounds like a blow drier on low setting when idling.
zacharycohn 12y ago
How is that cloud? Isn't that just... a server?
- theonewolf 12y ago
  First, what I meant, was in its past life it was in a cloud probably. Secondly, I do cloud research. I run a modified KVM/QEMU hypervisor. I run a cloud with features you can not find anywhere else in the world today. So, it is, indeed, a mini-home cloud :-)
- morganvachon 12y ago
  I think he meant it's a repurposed cloud server, i.e. in its original home it was used in a cloud computing scenario. I'm with everyone else though, in thinking that a good quality workstation would be a better fit for his purposes. For the same $300 you can get a decent workstation with a quad core CPU and hardware virtualization on eBay that can handle 32GB of memory, and room in the case for at least 2 HDDs and 4 SSDs if you use a stacking mount.
- jrockway 12y ago
  "Home cloud" is 100% buzzword-compliant. Servers are those things with tape drives and blinkenlights from the 80s!
mimog 12y ago
Just buy a Synology NAS and be done with it.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  I run a customized hypervisor for cloud research. I do things no cloud in the world can currently do. My use case is not a NAS :-)
- kstrauser 12y ago
  That was my first thought. For storage, a Synology would wipe the floor with his setup. He's using it as a compute node, though, and even the newest DS415+ wouldn't hold a candle to this server project.
kordless 12y ago
On-the-fly survey for what I'm currently working on: http://utter.io/ http://utter.io/. Vote up if you have a server(s) at home which you are already virtualizing. I have 5 machines running OpenStack at the house.
cherry_su 12y ago
I'm pretty sure the E5410s (or any Harpertown/Woodcrest processor) in a standard configuration use fully buffered (FB-DIMM) RAM, as opposed to unbuffered. Super cool that Dell did some trickery in the CS24-SC (apparently CS means "custom server") to bypass that obnoxious requirement. EDIT: Apparently this family of servers use a bastardized chipset that doesn't require FB-DIMMs; nothing special on Dell's part.
post_break 12y ago
$300 for the server, $50 a month to power that heater.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  With my 400W and around 10 cents per kilowatt hour in my area I'm seeing for 750 hours a cost of $30.00 estimated. Now, I do not have this running 24/7. Only when I or she wants to run a research job. So we're talking 8-10 hours, 2-4 times a week. Pretty cheap actually overall :-)
Animats 12y ago
If you want previous-generation rackmount gear, try Weird Stuff Warehouse, in Sunnyvale, CA. Weird Stuff is where Silicon Valley data centers go to die. Typical: "HP Proliant DL160 G5 2x Quad-Core Xeon E5472 @ 3.0GHz 4GB RAM 1U Server - $189.95" They have lots of older Cisco gear and all the accessories you need to build a retro data center. Not that you'd want to.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  That's already more expensive than what I paid for the 1U server :-) And I packed in 24 GB RAM for less than $190 (I think $188). Only the HDDs bring the price up, and a couple other accessories, to $300.
Xdes 12y ago
Personally I want to make a huge Raspberry PI and Netduino cluster.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Sounds awesome :-)
- ja27 12y ago
  Or PogoPlugs.
dorfsmay 12y ago
This is a home server, not a cloud server: - no remote access to the console if ssh stops working - no possibility to remotely power it down/up - if the hardware dies, no possibility to restart on a different hardware remotely There's nothing wrong with a home server, I have one or three myself, but these limitations are why I move "essential" services (e.g.: email) to the cloud. Home servers are better suited for exactly this, need of high CPU, and also need of a lot of storage, for a backup server for example. I used to run everything on home servers and back them out to the cloud, but I have now started to reverse this, run the services in the cloud (cheap for small service, remotely accessible etc...), back them up to the home server (cheaper large storage, it's fine if they go offline for a few days while on holiday for example).
- theonewolf 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374003 Not sure if I should repeat myself a lot or not.
  - mserdarsanli 12y ago
    Latter would be more preferable.
- e12e 12y ago
  > - no remote access to the console if ssh stops working That the depends on what you install, obviously. But more importantly, this is an intel cpu, so there is remote management, and: > - no possibility to remotely power it down/up Again, intel cpu, see below... > - if the hardware dies, no possibility to restart on a different hardware remotely That also depends: backup and automation is orthogonal to it being "cloud" or not -- not to mention with vtx support, one might set up the actual services as vms, even if just running on a single physical machine -- you would have to do off-site backup -- but then again you should be doing that anyway... But, back to the intel remote management stuff: I recently scared the willies out of myself, by setting up remote management on my laptop. Full console and serial access, optionally with dial-out over wlan support. Just from running an intel chip/bios on my laptop. That's this stuff here: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-technology https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-techno... http://blog.yarda.eu/2012/09/intel-amt-quickstart-guide.html http://blog.yarda.eu/2012/09/intel-amt-quickstart-guide.html http://www.howtogeek.com/56538/how-to-remotely-control-your-pc-even-when-it-crashes/ http://www.howtogeek.com/56538/how-to-remotely-control-your-... http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology_(AMT) http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Techno... (etc)
walterbell 12y ago
Dell (T20) and Lenovo (TS140) sell quiet and low-power servers which are targeted at homes and small business. Prices start at $300. Model with VT-d and vPro Xeon E3 is $500. Dell model officially supports RedHat Linux, so there's no Windows tax. http://www.rackrealm.com/dell-t20-server-and-openmediavault-review-rolling-your-own-nas/ http://www.rackrealm.com/dell-t20-server-and-openmediavault-...
- theonewolf 12y ago
  How much are they with 8 real cores and 24 - 32 GB RAM? And two hard drives?
rwmj 12y ago
HP-built Itaniums go for $100 on eBay. I bought one the other day (for kicks). The performance is pretty nice.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  It's pretty fun :-) Also, if you're the real RWMJ, hello :-) I work on introspecting virtual disks with QEMU/KVM (someday hoping to patch QEMU to support my research). We've interacted a few times before.
  - rwmj 12y ago
    Interesting .. got a link?
    - theonewolf 12y ago
      Off and on, little threads like this: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2013-05/msg01687.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2013-05/msg016...
deleted 12y ago
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andmarios 12y ago
I once had a 2U rack server. Proper double Pentium III's inside, ECC RAM, serial console, alarms on the case, everything. Doubled as a coffee table in my living room. Alas, I was young. Nowadays I have an Array R2 pc case with six HDDs, one SSD for the OS, a mini-itx board and an Intel CPU with virtualization support (I really don't remember the model) and a few gigs of RAM. All (except the HDDs) were bought new at about the same cost. The SSD is a 32GB chinese model from eBay. The machine is powerful, quiet when the HDDs are spinned down, relatively small and elegant and acts as NAS, Server, testbed, etc. Also at idle it consumes about 20W.
sciurus 12y ago
If you want old hardware, Ebay is one route. If you don't want to deal with bidding or need a warranty, there are places like http://www.servermonkey.com http://www.servermonkey.com that specialize in refurbishing and reselling old servers and workstations.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Totally agree, as a hobby eBay is fine. I avoided these guys (and others like them) because of the premium cost on top.
mdellabitta 12y ago
> Figure 4. The HDDs connect fine without caddies. Uhhh....
- theonewolf 12y ago
  So the SATA/SAS ports are low enough that the hard drives fit fine in there and connect nicely. They're at a very slight angle. Are you worried about vibration? Or something else? I am a little bit.
  - mdellabitta 12y ago
    Yeah, vibration, or accidental removal. I have cats, dogs, and kids.
ja27 12y ago
If you have a local makerspace / hackerspace, check with them. We get quite a few decommissioned servers donated to ours but we generally don't have much use for them. Noise and heat we can sorta manage, but the power usage is a bit steep. We'd be happy to host them for people if they pay for the power and aren't doing anything too crazy with the network.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Thanks for the tip!
noonespecial 12y ago
My Kill-A-Watt meter helped me determine that the best home server is a almost always going to be a fast laptop (around 2 years old) stashed in your bedroom closet. You'll get the most computer per dollar of purchase price/power price available plus a built-in UPS and quiet operation as a bonus.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  That makes sense. Unless you need, like me, 24-32 GB++ of RAM. Dual HDDs, and a whole lot of cores to run 3-4 VMs at a time. Then the laptop is so resource-poor that it is rendered useless for the workloads I described in the article. This article wasn't about how to make a "cheap home server"---it was about replicating real data-center-class hardware in the home and how to do that cheaply.
  - noonespecial 12y ago
    Ymmv I guess. 20gig ram (2 8s plus onboard 4), 1.5 tb 7200 rpm and an i7 was enough for me to do my handful of vms. Granted no ecc, no mirroring, no future expansion. But then no 18$/month power bill either. To each their own.
    - theonewolf 12y ago
      How much did your 20gig of RAM cost you? We don't run 24/7, only when we need to do our experiments. So the power bill is much lower than what a lot of people are worried about. This setup is definitely used on-demand :-)
deleted 12y ago
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esaym 12y ago
"We’d need CPUs with VT-x or AMD-V so we could run VMs with accelerated hardware support. VMs run slow as a snail without acceleration." This is false. This is why I use xen on a debian host with paravirtualization. I can then have many linux guests all served with cheap older hardware that doesn't have the hardware hooks.
- cthalupa 12y ago
  If you do have hardware extensions for virtualization optimization in your CPU, you're probably missing out on performance with Xen by using paravirt. System calls and memory access are slower in PV than HVM (See: Problems introduced with paravirt when x86_64 removed two of the protection rings from CPU architecture) , and PV-on-HVM drivers for block/network devices get you PV level performance.
mp4box 12y ago
How long it took to complete the Memtest ? just curious.

155 points by theonewolf 12y ago

Maybe I'm missing something, why not just use a cloud VM? On and off as like and pricing turns off. Surely that would be less than $300, wouldn't be in your house blowing air, and would be (more) easily accessible anywhere.

theonewolf 12y ago
I do cloud research. I modify the hypervisor. I do things that no cloud in the world can do.
- dimxasnewfrozen 12y ago
  This is particularly funny when you use the Cloud to Butt chrome extension.
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    How do you know when someone uses a text replacement extension? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
- shanselman 12y ago
  You had me at hypervisor. ;) (Thanks! That's all I wanted to know.)

sauere 12y ago

Unless you need ECC memory for some reason, next time, do your ears and your wallet a favor and just buy regular x86 consumer hardware. It's half as loud (those 10k RPM fans must be killing your ears) and half the price and will consume half the energy.

theonewolf 12y ago
So you believe I can buy 24 GB of non-ECC RAM for less than $30 ?

psophis 12y ago

Why use the term cloud? It's just a server, no cloud-ness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

baddox 12y ago
The fact that the primary purpose is for varying computing tasks on demand makes makes the "cloud" term appropriate in my opinion.
fleitz 12y ago
https://maas.ubuntu.com/ https://maas.ubuntu.com/
gknoy 12y ago
He's not saying he has a cloud at home, but rather that this server was likely part of one in a prior life: """ There is a lot of conjecture on where the Dell 1U rackmount model CS24-SC came from. Some people say Facebook data centers. Others just say that it was mass-produced for “clouds.” """
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Precisely, thanks for reading. And technically I use it as a mini-cloud for cloud research. I modify hypervisors and do things no cloud in the world can :-)
ryanthejuggler 12y ago
> _Oh yeah, did I mention I also wanted a beefier machine at home so I could manipulate large virtual machine images?_ I think he's looking to create a setup where he can spin up and destroy networked VMs, which would indeed make the project count as a cloud. From your Wikipedia link: > The main enabling technology for cloud computing is virtualization. Virtualization software allows a physical computing device to be electronically separated into one or more "virtual" devices, each of which can be easily used and managed to perform computing tasks. With operating system–level virtualization essentially creating a scalable system of multiple independent computing devices, idle computing resources can be allocated and used more efficiently. Virtualization provides the agility required to speed up IT operations, and reduces cost by increasing infrastructure utilization. Autonomic computing automates the process through which the user can provision resources on-demand. By minimizing user involvement, automation speeds up the process, reduces labor costs and reduces the possibility of human errors.[27] Admittedly, it depends on what he wants to do with this that would determine whether it's "really" a cloud or not.

bnejad 12y ago

Home and cloud are mutually exclusive I think. Cool build though.

theonewolf 12y ago
Au contraire. See the cloudlets concept: http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu/ http://elijah.cs.cmu.edu/
- RickHull 12y ago
  Perhaps this is a cloudlet then? Cloud computing is not merely VMs on demand. An essential nature of cloud is multiple distributed machines with the ability to transfer applications (or VMs) between machines for various reasons including load balancing, fault tolerance, and high availability. Furthermore, the application user is abstracted from which physical machine the application is running on. In your case, you have a single machine which you are likely addressing directly. This is not cloud computing. Perhaps you mean "cloud storage", where your personal devices are able to store and retrieve things "in the cloud". The equivalent of a local FTP server (or NAS) does not a cloud make. I appreciated the writeup nonetheless.

shiftpgdn 12y ago

Don't bring a server into your home if you value your sanity. Those little fans spin at 20,000RPM and can be heard throughout your house.

fleitz 12y ago
Yeah I don't see how Xeon makes much sense for CV in the home. I think you'd do much better to pick up a milk crate miner with a core i* processor.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  It's not just CV, but I get your point.
bluedino 12y ago
The 1U servers are very loud. But a 4U or tower server will be fairly quiet, and have the bonus ability to hold more disks. A must for VM's, disk contention on spinning disks gets pretty high after your 2nd VM.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  2nd disk or a single SSD. Depends on workload of course, but for most VMs they read a lot more than they write so an SSD can handle quite a few before you notice any IO-related latency (3-4 small web-apps, 1-2 medium, 1 database VM). The OP also put his two drives into RAID 1 so they won't get any benefit of having two drives.
  - fragmede 12y ago
    RAID1 does get you faster random IOPS, so it's not like there's no benefit...
    - JTxt 12y ago
      Nice, I thought RAID 1 just gave redundancy. I use mdadm's RAID 10 on 2 drives for redundancy and speed. "In mdadm, the RAID10 level creates a single complex software RAID that combines features of both RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring). Multiple copies of all data blocks are arranged on multiple drives following a striping discipline." http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_draft/raidmdadm.html#raidmdadmr10cpx http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_...

hnha 12y ago

Warning, this page loads 20 megabytes of huge images that might crash your mobile browser. It does that for no good reason, the images are only shown in thumbnail size..

theonewolf 12y ago
Fixed. Sorry, I was hosting them myself and keeping them hi-res for the magazine. ACM is fixing something at their end to host them, and at the smaller size.
- hnha 12y ago
  thanks!

manacit 12y ago

I've got something like this sitting in my living room, but instead of using a 1U rackmount server, I opted for a Mini-ITX system with a LIAN LI PC-Q25B case. It's quiet, holds tons of drives and actually looks like it belongs next to the TV (I run XBMC on it as well). It was pricer than the OP's configuration, but it won't keep you up at night (and bleed your wallet in power bills).

theonewolf 12y ago
Mine runs at 400W, less at idle. We don't run it 24/7, only when we have some research jobs to run :-)

fredsted 12y ago

I hope he has a basement or something to put it with all the noise it's going to make. I wonder if he would be better off financially buying a second-hand desktop PC due to power usage.

theonewolf 12y ago
This guy uses 400W, less at idle. If I could find a cheap desktop with 24-32 GB RAM (again, also cheap, like $60 cheap), than that would be an option.

Someone1234 12y ago

Hmm seems like he made the classical mistake of thinking that an x86-64 server is somehow special and more worthwhile than just buying a bare-bones PC. I've managed Dell servers before (real ones) and aside from a bunch of stuff to make managing them in mass easier (like DRAC), there isn't very much value in trying to retrofit one for home use. VT-x or 24 GB of RAM support isn't exactly a hard requirement in 2014. Plus the Xeon E5410 is a 2007 chip (7 years old!) and gets it butt kicked by even a low end i3 from 2012 [0]. Plus modern systems consume less electrical power which makes running them cheaper and a PC is certainly quieter than any rack mounted server (which are designed for maximum cooling, noise be damned). Additionally if he had purchased off-the-shelf parts he would likely have a warranty for 12 months (or more). With the eBay purchased Dell machine he not only doesn't get any warranty but ALSO Dell themselves don't even support it(!) so no firmware updates. So while this was a fun read, it just reminds me of my more nieve days when I thought doing stuff like this was a good idea. Go over to any SysAdmin forum (e.g. spiceworks community) and they'll tell you the same thing. [0]http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5410-vs-Intel-Core-i3-3220 http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5410-vs-Intel-Core-i3-32... edit: Originally linked to an 2012 i5 comparison ($180 CPU). Altered it to an 2012 i3 comparison ($100 CPU) which still out-performance the 7 year old Xeon. The $100 price tag seems a lot more comparable than a near $200 CPU. Plus the i3 supports 32 GB of RAM and VT-x (the OP's requirements).

bluedino 12y ago
A lightly used i5/i7 with a bunch of RAM and an SSD would be a much, much better host. I rescued a Dell workstation with an i7-950 from disposal, and added 2 disks and some RAM (9GB). Still not as quick as a 2500k in a lot of stuff but great for anything I can throw at it (decent size MySQL DB, lots of Rails apps, and quite a bit of web traffic). I could bump it up to 24GB but that's still $250 worth of RAM, new.
- theonewolf 12y ago
  Yeah, the RAM alone is a costly thing actually. I was lucky to find it so cheap :-)
- 12y ago

RexRollman 12y ago

As a geek hobbyist, I have always liked the 1U form factor, but the noise out of those things can be crazy.

theonewolf 12y ago
The CS24-CS isn't so bad. Sounds like a hair drier on low, as others have reported. It's only super loud if you load it (I calculated Pi to 5 billion digits). It would spin up fans, be loud for 30 seconds, and spin down for a few minutes and repeat as it computed.
- micro-ram 12y ago
  Don't let the sound bother you. Put it down in the basement or somewhere where you can't hear it and use the DRAC to power it on and off.
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    Precisely. We leave it in a more unused space, and the BMC is useful in remotely powering up and checking on it :-)

_asciiker_ 12y ago

how is this a cloud server? that's like calling every picture a "selfie"...

theonewolf 12y ago
First, what I meant, was in its past life it was in a cloud probably. Secondly, I do cloud research. I run a modified KVM/QEMU hypervisor. I run a cloud with features you can not find anywhere else in the world today. So, it is, indeed, a mini-home cloud :-)
- _asciiker_ 12y ago
  well now you're assuming virtualization is the same as cloud, it is not, a cloud researcher should know what a "cloud" actually is instead of the marketing usage for it. for one, redundancy is always implicit in any cloud solution.
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    I don't believe redundancy, what I think you mean---fault tolerance---is implicit in the definition of cloud computing. The most general form of the term 'cloud' in my mind is elastic access to computational resources. There is no guarantee of high availability (in fact, we see failed AWS instances and horror stories all the time), nor automated failover/redundancy/fault tolerance. Chaos Monkey by Netflix is a great example of the shortcomings of the modern cloud in terms of fault tolerance and redundancy. The cloud doesn't give it to you, you have to build that yourself. I'm a very open-minded person, perhaps because of my academic background, so I would be happy to say that I agree that a subtype of the fundamental cloud could be a redundant/fault-tolerant one. But the fundamental definition of cloud does not include fault tolerance. Don't trust me. Check out the more formal definition from US NIST (years of work, 15 drafts), there is no mention of redundancy or fault-tolerance: http://faculty.winthrop.edu/domanm/csci411/Handouts/NIST.pdf http://faculty.winthrop.edu/domanm/csci411/Handouts/NIST.pdf
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    Also, my setup is a private cloud (in the NIST definition). There are two tenants: myself, and my fiancee. We use VM technology to share the same set of physical resources. Our VMs are managed via Vagrant. VM technology does not imply cloud, you are right; however, it is often used to implement clouds as an abstraction layer over hardware.

guyzero 12y ago

Is this super-loud? I have an old 1U server which seemed cool until I booted it up. It's like vacuum-cleaner-loud.

theonewolf 12y ago
It's not horrible, sounds like a blow drier on low setting when idling.

zacharycohn 12y ago

How is that cloud? Isn't that just... a server?

theonewolf 12y ago
First, what I meant, was in its past life it was in a cloud probably. Secondly, I do cloud research. I run a modified KVM/QEMU hypervisor. I run a cloud with features you can not find anywhere else in the world today. So, it is, indeed, a mini-home cloud :-)
morganvachon 12y ago
I think he meant it's a repurposed cloud server, i.e. in its original home it was used in a cloud computing scenario. I'm with everyone else though, in thinking that a good quality workstation would be a better fit for his purposes. For the same $300 you can get a decent workstation with a quad core CPU and hardware virtualization on eBay that can handle 32GB of memory, and room in the case for at least 2 HDDs and 4 SSDs if you use a stacking mount.
jrockway 12y ago
"Home cloud" is 100% buzzword-compliant. Servers are those things with tape drives and blinkenlights from the 80s!

mimog 12y ago

Just buy a Synology NAS and be done with it.

theonewolf 12y ago
I run a customized hypervisor for cloud research. I do things no cloud in the world can currently do. My use case is not a NAS :-)
kstrauser 12y ago
That was my first thought. For storage, a Synology would wipe the floor with his setup. He's using it as a compute node, though, and even the newest DS415+ wouldn't hold a candle to this server project.

kordless 12y ago

On-the-fly survey for what I'm currently working on: http://utter.io/ http://utter.io/. Vote up if you have a server(s) at home which you are already virtualizing. I have 5 machines running OpenStack at the house.

cherry_su 12y ago

I'm pretty sure the E5410s (or any Harpertown/Woodcrest processor) in a standard configuration use fully buffered (FB-DIMM) RAM, as opposed to unbuffered. Super cool that Dell did some trickery in the CS24-SC (apparently CS means "custom server") to bypass that obnoxious requirement. EDIT: Apparently this family of servers use a bastardized chipset that doesn't require FB-DIMMs; nothing special on Dell's part.

post_break 12y ago

$300 for the server, $50 a month to power that heater.

theonewolf 12y ago
With my 400W and around 10 cents per kilowatt hour in my area I'm seeing for 750 hours a cost of $30.00 estimated. Now, I do not have this running 24/7. Only when I or she wants to run a research job. So we're talking 8-10 hours, 2-4 times a week. Pretty cheap actually overall :-)

Animats 12y ago

If you want previous-generation rackmount gear, try Weird Stuff Warehouse, in Sunnyvale, CA. Weird Stuff is where Silicon Valley data centers go to die. Typical: "HP Proliant DL160 G5 2x Quad-Core Xeon E5472 @ 3.0GHz 4GB RAM 1U Server - $189.95" They have lots of older Cisco gear and all the accessories you need to build a retro data center. Not that you'd want to.

theonewolf 12y ago
That's already more expensive than what I paid for the 1U server :-) And I packed in 24 GB RAM for less than $190 (I think $188). Only the HDDs bring the price up, and a couple other accessories, to $300.

Xdes 12y ago

Personally I want to make a huge Raspberry PI and Netduino cluster.

theonewolf 12y ago
Sounds awesome :-)
ja27 12y ago
Or PogoPlugs.

dorfsmay 12y ago

This is a home server, not a cloud server: - no remote access to the console if ssh stops working - no possibility to remotely power it down/up - if the hardware dies, no possibility to restart on a different hardware remotely There's nothing wrong with a home server, I have one or three myself, but these limitations are why I move "essential" services (e.g.: email) to the cloud. Home servers are better suited for exactly this, need of high CPU, and also need of a lot of storage, for a backup server for example. I used to run everything on home servers and back them out to the cloud, but I have now started to reverse this, run the services in the cloud (cheap for small service, remotely accessible etc...), back them up to the home server (cheaper large storage, it's fine if they go offline for a few days while on holiday for example).

theonewolf 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374003 Not sure if I should repeat myself a lot or not.
- mserdarsanli 12y ago
  Latter would be more preferable.
e12e 12y ago
> - no remote access to the console if ssh stops working That the depends on what you install, obviously. But more importantly, this is an intel cpu, so there is remote management, and: > - no possibility to remotely power it down/up Again, intel cpu, see below... > - if the hardware dies, no possibility to restart on a different hardware remotely That also depends: backup and automation is orthogonal to it being "cloud" or not -- not to mention with vtx support, one might set up the actual services as vms, even if just running on a single physical machine -- you would have to do off-site backup -- but then again you should be doing that anyway... But, back to the intel remote management stuff: I recently scared the willies out of myself, by setting up remote management on my laptop. Full console and serial access, optionally with dial-out over wlan support. Just from running an intel chip/bios on my laptop. That's this stuff here: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-technology https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-techno... http://blog.yarda.eu/2012/09/intel-amt-quickstart-guide.html http://blog.yarda.eu/2012/09/intel-amt-quickstart-guide.html http://www.howtogeek.com/56538/how-to-remotely-control-your-pc-even-when-it-crashes/ http://www.howtogeek.com/56538/how-to-remotely-control-your-... http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology_(AMT) http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Techno... (etc)

walterbell 12y ago

Dell (T20) and Lenovo (TS140) sell quiet and low-power servers which are targeted at homes and small business. Prices start at $300. Model with VT-d and vPro Xeon E3 is $500. Dell model officially supports RedHat Linux, so there's no Windows tax. http://www.rackrealm.com/dell-t20-server-and-openmediavault-review-rolling-your-own-nas/ http://www.rackrealm.com/dell-t20-server-and-openmediavault-...

theonewolf 12y ago
How much are they with 8 real cores and 24 - 32 GB RAM? And two hard drives?

rwmj 12y ago

HP-built Itaniums go for $100 on eBay. I bought one the other day (for kicks). The performance is pretty nice.

theonewolf 12y ago
It's pretty fun :-) Also, if you're the real RWMJ, hello :-) I work on introspecting virtual disks with QEMU/KVM (someday hoping to patch QEMU to support my research). We've interacted a few times before.
- rwmj 12y ago
  Interesting .. got a link?
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    Off and on, little threads like this: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2013-05/msg01687.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2013-05/msg016...

deleted 12y ago

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andmarios 12y ago

I once had a 2U rack server. Proper double Pentium III's inside, ECC RAM, serial console, alarms on the case, everything. Doubled as a coffee table in my living room. Alas, I was young. Nowadays I have an Array R2 pc case with six HDDs, one SSD for the OS, a mini-itx board and an Intel CPU with virtualization support (I really don't remember the model) and a few gigs of RAM. All (except the HDDs) were bought new at about the same cost. The SSD is a 32GB chinese model from eBay. The machine is powerful, quiet when the HDDs are spinned down, relatively small and elegant and acts as NAS, Server, testbed, etc. Also at idle it consumes about 20W.

sciurus 12y ago

If you want old hardware, Ebay is one route. If you don't want to deal with bidding or need a warranty, there are places like http://www.servermonkey.com http://www.servermonkey.com that specialize in refurbishing and reselling old servers and workstations.

theonewolf 12y ago
Totally agree, as a hobby eBay is fine. I avoided these guys (and others like them) because of the premium cost on top.

mdellabitta 12y ago

> Figure 4. The HDDs connect fine without caddies. Uhhh....

theonewolf 12y ago
So the SATA/SAS ports are low enough that the hard drives fit fine in there and connect nicely. They're at a very slight angle. Are you worried about vibration? Or something else? I am a little bit.
- mdellabitta 12y ago
  Yeah, vibration, or accidental removal. I have cats, dogs, and kids.

ja27 12y ago

If you have a local makerspace / hackerspace, check with them. We get quite a few decommissioned servers donated to ours but we generally don't have much use for them. Noise and heat we can sorta manage, but the power usage is a bit steep. We'd be happy to host them for people if they pay for the power and aren't doing anything too crazy with the network.

theonewolf 12y ago
Thanks for the tip!

noonespecial 12y ago

My Kill-A-Watt meter helped me determine that the best home server is a almost always going to be a fast laptop (around 2 years old) stashed in your bedroom closet. You'll get the most computer per dollar of purchase price/power price available plus a built-in UPS and quiet operation as a bonus.

theonewolf 12y ago
That makes sense. Unless you need, like me, 24-32 GB++ of RAM. Dual HDDs, and a whole lot of cores to run 3-4 VMs at a time. Then the laptop is so resource-poor that it is rendered useless for the workloads I described in the article. This article wasn't about how to make a "cheap home server"---it was about replicating real data-center-class hardware in the home and how to do that cheaply.
- noonespecial 12y ago
  Ymmv I guess. 20gig ram (2 8s plus onboard 4), 1.5 tb 7200 rpm and an i7 was enough for me to do my handful of vms. Granted no ecc, no mirroring, no future expansion. But then no 18$/month power bill either. To each their own.
  - theonewolf 12y ago
    How much did your 20gig of RAM cost you? We don't run 24/7, only when we need to do our experiments. So the power bill is much lower than what a lot of people are worried about. This setup is definitely used on-demand :-)

deleted 12y ago

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esaym 12y ago

"We’d need CPUs with VT-x or AMD-V so we could run VMs with accelerated hardware support. VMs run slow as a snail without acceleration." This is false. This is why I use xen on a debian host with paravirtualization. I can then have many linux guests all served with cheap older hardware that doesn't have the hardware hooks.

cthalupa 12y ago
If you do have hardware extensions for virtualization optimization in your CPU, you're probably missing out on performance with Xen by using paravirt. System calls and memory access are slower in PV than HVM (See: Problems introduced with paravirt when x86_64 removed two of the protection rings from CPU architecture) , and PV-on-HVM drivers for block/network devices get you PV level performance.

mp4box 12y ago

How long it took to complete the Memtest ? just curious.