A few years ago I had three Xeon E5 rack servers with 64GB of RAM each and a bunch of HDDs.
I then cut it down to three mini PCs with 16GB of RAM each.
Just recently I cut it down even further to just my single Linux desktop running Kubernetes in the background.
Why? I realized that my interests are all on the software side and more hardware doesn't contribute much to improving my experience either building or using the lab.
I also tend to make improvements in my software stack when resources are more restricted and my lab became so much more reliable and efficient over the years.
I've been downsizing.
A few years ago I had three Xeon E5 rack servers with 64GB of RAM each and a bunch of HDDs.
I then cut it down to three mini PCs with 16GB of RAM each.
Just recently I cut it down even further to just my single Linux desktop running Kubernetes in the background.
Why? I realized that my interests are all on the software side and more hardware doesn't contribute much to improving my experience either building or using the lab.
I also tend to make improvements in my software stack when resources are more restricted and my lab became so much more reliable and efficient over the years.