187
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Trainguyrom@reddthat.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

I placed a low bid on an auction for 25 Elitedesk 800 G1s on a government auction and unexpectedly won (ultimately paying less than $20 per computer)

In the long run I plan on selling 15 or so of them to friends and family for cheap, and I'll probably have 4 with Proxmox, 3 for a lab cluster and 1 for the always-on home server and keep a few for spares and random desktops around the house where I could use one.

But while I have all 25 of them what crazy clustering software/configurations should I run? Any fun benchmarks I should know about that I could run for the lolz?

Edit to add:

Specs based on the auction listing and looking computer models:

  • 4th gen i5s (probably i5-4560s or similar)
  • 8GB of DDR3 RAM
  • 256GB SSDs
  • Windows 10 Pro (no mention of licenses, so that remains to be seen)
  • Looks like 3 PCIe Slots (2 1x and 2 16x physically, presumably half-height)

Possible projects I plan on doing:

  • Proxmox cluster
  • Baremetal Kubernetes cluster
  • Harvester HCI cluster (which has the benefit of also being a Rancher cluster)
  • Automated Windows Image creation, deployment and testing
  • Pentesting lab
  • Multi-site enterprise network setup and maintenance
  • Linpack benchmark then compare to previous TOP500 lists
(page 2) 45 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] mmhmm@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

So on one I would suggest frigate. Those support (I think) and pci-e coral ai chip.

Home assistant would be great bare metal

[-] Blort@social.tchncs.de 2 points 7 months ago
[-] Charadon 1 points 7 months ago

distcc cluster?

[-] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 1 points 7 months ago

25 screens, 25 dancing gandalfs

[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

I don't understand why people want to use so many PC's rather than just run multiple VM's on a single server that has more cores.

[-] towerful@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

Having multiple machines can protect against hardware failures.
If hardware fails, you have dono machines.
It's good learning, both for provisioning and for the physical (cleaning, customising, wiring, networking with multiple nics), and for multi-node clusters.

Virt is convenient, but doesn't teach you everything

[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'm not sure if running multiple single SSD machines would provide much redundancy over a server with multiple PSU's and drives. Sure the CPU or mobo could fail but the downtime would be less hassle than 25 old PC's.

Of course there is a learning experience in more hardware but 25 PC's does seem slightly overkill. I can imagine 3-5 max.

I'm probably looking at this from a homelab point of view who just wants to run stuff though, not really as the hobby being "setting up the PC's themselves".

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
187 points (94.3% liked)

Selfhosted

40443 readers
489 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS