Building Four Servers in One Day!

[@hongtanke]

Craft's whife: " hey hun, how come the checking account is empty" Craft: ummmmmm

[@Zbwol]

That ending was well worth the watch

[@kadinnoe4580]

in all seriousness when i saw that ending as he began to apply paste ot the second cpu i thought "no he isnt really," and then the legend did it and i laughed like a hyena for 30 seconds straight. **liked and subscribed**

[@cyberlor81]

23:29 I laughed so hard i fell off my chair. And after sitting down again, i laughed even more. That was not Xeon. That was Epic 🤣

[@eriddle]

OMG... the "after credits scene" is one of the best things I've seen recently!

[@SentureUK]

The perfect thermal paste application at the end of the video. Very well done!

[@flexxx222]

love it!

[@john39er]

Beat me to it, I laughed my arse off. Now I'm tempted to do that with all my future builds, lol

[@czarPROstock]

this method gives you 100000 IOPS more !

[@nelsonjperez9319]

I'll use it as a template for my builds! 😆

[@camofelix]

At first thought you were drawing a heart with the thermal paste xD

[@mbmumford]

13:39 - That... That was absolutely hilarious.

[@joshuajgaming]

@linustechtips

[@vincentl.8145]

I think we can improve on it ...by dropping them SAS drives!!

[@arthuralford]

And the cat shows up right when Jeff needs a cat

[@thirdwheel1985au]

Cats are good at that

[@LampJustin]

Hey, I'd love to see a whole video about power consumption! That would be insanely informative. Especially comparing Sandy to Ivy, with GPU, without GPU, with GPU installed but blacklist, with GPU blacklisted but VM started and then shut down. Please that would make a hell of a video!

[@eDoc2020]

I recently upgraded from a single E5-2620 v1 to a 2630 v2. I was surprised to find that the power consumption was nearly identical on my HP DL380p both at idle and fully loaded. This is just my personal experience, I'd expect better results with higher-tier CPUs.

[@ME-fs8ir]

Would also love to see some data on power on some of these servers and setups.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

lga2011 is terrible for idle power budget.

[@johnnyxp64]

on 1 hand i hate that the projects do not finishing in a single video...on the other i love that i see the miscalculations, mistakes or simply bad luck you have doing those things and we also learn from your mistakes! Thank you! 😊

[@Okeur75]

I'm glad to see that even being a youtuber that definitely knows what he is doing, you are still doing the same mistake as us. Cheers !

[@LeonSteelpaw]

My server stack is full of hopes, dreams, and partial research

[@mndlessdrwer]

My best recommendation is to buy Cisco or IBM server hardware if you can afford it. Dell hardware if you can't. Nothing older than an M3 for Cisco or an R720 for a Dell. IBM will just be anything with a Xeon E5 or E7 v0 series CPU. Don't buy Lenovo servers if you want to be able to safely update BIOS and BMC remotely.

[@sihker]

@@mndlessdrwer Buying the server is only part of the problem. The bigger problem is, where to find organs to sell, to buy a house, where to house your server rack? :p

[@LeonSteelpaw]

@@syn4x Nopony cares!

[@LeonSteelpaw]

@@syn4x Nopony cares!

[@buhnux]

drives moved from 6 to 4 (3 and 2 on each side) screws with the addition of extra platters... this has been standard for about 7 years.

[@unclerubo]

This video helped me find the optimal thermal paste aplication pattern!

[@gdrriley420]

You’ve got a better track record of ordering parts then the people who order fiber trunks at my work. Last time they were 40-50ft over and this time they were 20ft short.

[@DVault]

Now we know if we dont hear from Craft after this video, his wife has sent him to the dog house :D

[@CraftComputing]

Can confirm, and the WiFi out here is terrible. Maybe if I bought a really nice outdoor WiFi6 AP.......

[@davetalley]

It's not exile, it's an excuse for a man shed/studio/climate controlled doghouse

[@davetalley]

Any chance of getting a quick tutorial on the LCARS screen you had in the background previously? Didn't see it on your video list, granted I have only subbed for one day so far

[@mndlessdrwer]

@@CraftComputingnext video: running metal shielded exterior grade fiber to the doghouse.

[@CraftComputing]

www.lcars47.com

[@KalebSmart]

All the little mishaps here reminded me of my journey upgrading my 3D printer recently. I feel your pain. Also, I thought you were going to demonstrate how that thermal paste application was actually fine, but it was even better

[@memadmax69]

When I saw the stack of hard drives, I was like, OK linus, lololol

[@SlevinKalevera]

Stumbled onto you a few weeks ago. I love that you include your mistakes. you're 100% relatable to anyone who does this stuff for a living. And your beer choice is almost always top notch. Cheers, bruv!

[@TechnoTim]

lol the end. Nice!

[@victorbart]

Nice blue color! Would be nice looking in my purple sun rack 😍

[@CraftComputing]

Awwww.... I love my APC NetShelter, but I'd love a Sun Sparc Rack!

[@victorbart]

Yes as your second rack you should get a sun rack! Only issue is I have no cage nuts. Instead I have tapped holes. Do many rail kits won't fit 😭

[@CraftComputing]

Oooo, that would definitely be a deal breaker. Rails are a MUST!

[@victorbart]

To mount my supermicro 2U freenas server I used my angle grinder to made slits for the rails to fit 🙈 and my apple xserve needed center hole drilled out. Maybe if I will keep the rack for a long time ( i like it alot and it looks good ) I will make cagenut rails in the rack. I can easily pull out the rail strips while the rack stays intact. And it came with the complete power distribution kit! I can feed it with 4x 16A 230volt. And have 2 full size strips with 64x C13!

[@stuartlittle4433]

Love how you also show the problems that you face, it makes your videos all the more genuine and interesting! Plus it shows a great quality to your character, keep up the great content!

[@GearSeekers]

bUt CaN iT rUn LiNuX

[@CraftComputing]

Just for you, I'm going Hyper-V

[@jamess1787]

Rifk

[@Lazbotable]

What about crysis?

[@mndlessdrwer]

@@CraftComputing My, my. Windows Server 2016 licenses still don't come exactly cheap, but they can be easier to manage drivers and firmware on compared to the Linux variants. My go-to solution is just to keep a Windows-To-Go image around for updating more troublesome hardware firmware with.

[@thebugg333]

@@mndlessdrwer I don't have an issue with Hyper-v like most people. It works for my needs, and runs on a W10 Pro Box. Have an older i7 with 32Gigs of ram. Raided storage and the os lives on an SSD. Have 4 debian vms because they run well compared to Ubuntu with pfsence, unifi controller and a web server, and a spare for projects.

[@dangstalker]

0:13 The 4 clacks of the CPUs hitting the table contact side down made me cry

[@rrmuller723]

His wife is canceling all their credit cards and closing the bank account tied to eBay tomorrow...

[@ctlaurin]

Still have the option for money orders to AliExpress.

[@jimiscott]

Packed bags and left years ago.

[@CraftComputing]

@Collin 👉😏

[@BenCos2018]

LOL

[@Alexcide007]

Not editing the mistakes makes this very relatable, well done!

[@daddydeadpool1531]

Amazing video - where did you purchase your star trek t shirt from please.

[@RubyRoks]

90% of the server software stuff goes over my head, but servers are just so dang interesting.

[@peterg.8245]

Me too, I understand the hardware but don’t do software.

[@CodyLane153]

I bought the same server. It DOES support SAS drives for the 8 disks on the LSI controller.. You could buy a physical adapter that converts SATA to SAS but you can also do what I did and Dremel out the power and SATA connector ends to allow for the SAS pin out. Lastly the server can support two SSDs near the power supply bringing the drive count to 14! I want to be clear that this is a very unique circumstance and that typically you would have needed another raid card.

[@Innocentdarkness72]

Jeff, nice builds have a great weekend !!

[@ghomerhust]

dude, that pride starship shirt is badass

[@AlistairBrugsch]

I love it! Need one

[@MshnryMan]

Know I'm a little late to the game here, but FYI a few SAS drives in the Chenbro is not an issue. 8 of the ports are on a LSI SAS2008 controller.

[@timadkins7794]

Can confirm that using the gommets as standsoffs works fine, i had the same issues when i built mine. I also took some 3m heavy duty double sided tape and attached to the inside of the case cover, 2 small strips per drive. This was probably overkill but i figured better to error on tne side of caution. I can say that this works with shucked western digitial drives with no problem. Thanks again for your content.

[@nathan_tasker]

Congratulations on reaching 200k subscribers. Your videos are always exciting to watch, and your explanations are straightforward, and not overly complicated. Keep up the great work 🍻🍻

[@tylertc1]

I, for one, really appreciate the honesty and the showing of the mistakes. These are issues that, even having built several servers, I would have not thought to consider. Such as risers being of different heights even for 1U servers. Or the hard drive mounting being for the third hole that the hard drives didn’t even have. I definitely wouldn’t have thought of that. So, with showing these the value you’re providing to us only goes up. Would the remote video editing be enough to make it’s own video - I find that very interesting and would really like to see both how you go about setting it up, but also how it actually is to use and edit remotely. What would you say (or find) to be the most important pre-reqs for doing such a setup, etc. And I would certainly have watched a time lapse of the “off camera” work, but understand if that would be too much of a PITA to do with needing to blur out links etc.

[@zraylin.khalitzburg2968]

You will probably be happy with it for awhile. I run a dl380p g8 and a DL 360 g7 with a small prodesk 600 g2. Honestly pretty happy.

[@namtech425]

Ok I do server installs and upgrades on a daily basis, first thing to always do is planning, second is more planning, third is checking and then ordering, fourth is completing the upgrade/install. But these will serve you quite well for a bit of time. These machines have been cropping up all over the show and they are still good to go for quite some time.

[@shawnhartmann1750]

I usually don't comment or thumbs up videos but I loved the end. Also, you make me was to spend lots of money as my home lab consists of an RPi4 and a repurposed A10 apu laptop that runs my pihole, unifi, raid, and network shares. You keep showing me more things I want to do and don't have the means to :-)

[@al.d9592]

I’m wondering what these critical service are, that your house needs. Is there a video about it? I think you mentioned pihole in another video, but that’s run on a raspi zero here. Nas, proxmox?

[@Bob_Smith19]

For the vast majority of people a commercial NAS and a Rasperry Pi is all you need. I know it is for me and there’s a lot running on those two. I like hardware as much as the next person. But I also like low electric bills.

[@stevearkwright]

Proxmox for the Virtual Machines running Plex Server, et al. TrueNAS (or Proxmox Backup Server) controlling the storage array.

[@rmorris003]

I am watching everything I can to build a plex server with the most space available as I currently have like 15+ externals hosting my movies and I just figure I should build a media server and looking to go the dual xenon route with 4k direct play. Love the channel and very informative.

[@joshharding6925]

I recently setup 2 x HP Elitedesk G1 boxes with i7 CPUs and 32gb of ram running Proxmox, plus my old firewall was converted to Proxmox Backup (HP Compaq 8000, 4 core Cpu with 16gb ram and 14Tb Seagate Ironwolf) and Proxmox Backup works AMAZINGLY well.... And all my drives and cards fit also. Your cat is awesome also!!!

[@peterg.8245]

Yeah my server stack is a DS920 and fits in a cabinet with the cable modem. It’s mostly Plex but I’m wanting to try pihole.

[@GeoffSeeley]

Don't blacklist the drivers. Use driverctl to bind a specific PCI card to vifo driver for pass through. While I haven't done this with video cards, it works great for two identical HBA cards where I want to use one for Proxmox and the other passed through to a VM. Should work the same for video cards.

[@rhodges26]

I currently have a full server rack with HP gen 8 dl360p, cisco 2960-s gigabyte 24 port switch. I have three desktop computers in the rack as well in my office. Two battery backups although they dont keep my server up due to some unknown issue. Eventually I will be shutting down one of my computers and retiring it as it old and outdated. I keystone 12 port with other items as well. I need more servers lol.

[@droidchevere]

Tom , just the tip ....Rolf

[@blackbird1234100]

5:00 wait the mobo in the zeus ISNT limited to the 2600 series cpus?

[@amnottabs]

23:49 Jeff had enough of being always the nice guy huh

[@CraftComputing]

Just because I'm nice doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humor.

[@douglasmannor6510]

I'm currently running dual x5680 on a super micro board. I also have 48gb of triple channel ECC memory.

[@davidsomething4867]

Purchased 3 servers in all during lockdown, what I haven't spent in fuel and going away I have certainly made up for. HP Gen8 MIcroServer, Dell T620 and a Dell R730 (oh yeah and a few Dell workstations for pfsense). Now to start selling the old servers and getting some funds back. I only live in a flat so noise is a concern, the Dell R730 is just about as loud as some of my switches in kitchen cupboard but the T620 is dead quiet in my use and lives in the bedroom, lol. I still have my old HP MicroServer N36L and I'm not sure that will ever go, it is in a bit of a mess so not worth much but with 8GB of ram still useful as a lab. Are you sleeping on the couch yet?????

[@netpok]

I never done it but as far as I know there is no need to blacklist the video driver, the card can be stubbed out with pci-stub. Of course if the host doesn't use an amd card it's easier to disable the whole driver.

[@chrisbaker8533]

"anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" Especially while recording it.

[@Geo255420]

I get the storage. Still wondering about the processing power. Seems like over kill. You went into great detail of how they will be backed by failover for never ending service. I do question your virutal machines. Do they need that level of power?

[@SkipsTinyBeard]

Dude. You rock. I would have been 3 pints deep after realizing I ordered the wrong drives. I can't wait to see these up and running!

[@thatLion01]

Amazing learning video. Do you mind to explain how the fail over happens in promox if you got gpu passthrough. Do you need indentical gpus in both servers?

[@MajorGlory01]

Can't believe I'm getting fooled in to thinking this guy knows what he's doing every time... Guess that's part of the fun

[@peterg.8245]

Tacos fall apart and we still love them!

[@realFoxBox]

My server stack is an old HP Storageworks 1600 G2 as a NAS, an HP DL380 G7 as a game server, an old Dell CS24-SC to run a very very old project. I need a couple more blades to finish the rack though.

[@buddybleeyes]

Nothing more real world problems than this 😂 keep up the good work dude, also that thermal paste application was perfect

[@ghomerhust]

BuT tHe ThErMaL pAsTe!!!!11!!

[@andersthorsen8862]

I use to run XCP-NG on my main server (Xeon E5-2650v4, 64GB RAM, 2xNVMe and 6x10TB HGST), but after seeing you work with Proxmox I tested it and are now using it in stead. I can highly recommend the CPU by the way. Thanks for a very good video 👍

[@l0wr3z]

Best part about buying used Dell or HPE is the docs and parts reference. Nothing better than an exact part number.

[@tbirdguy76]

Why does blacklisting drivers in the OS preclude you from BIOS access?

[@andrewmcewan9145]

There is no reason why you cant get bios acces. I'd assume youd want a kvm plugged in so the vm would just have a random monitor connected or the gpu is just drawing power if not passed to a vm as it will never enter idle state. The real solution woud be to grab a matrox or slilcon graphics 2d acclerator. And i know its not possible in windows due to a craptonne of file conflicts but mabye in linux you coud allow a legacy ati or nvidia driver to initiate a legicy card and it wont touch the newer cards giving output and passthrough but that is just a theroy.

[@andresmoerland9806]

ESD protection while working on hardware?

[@ObliterationOfMankind]

You can get a DL Gen7 that supports DDR3 for even less. DL Gen8 are popping up cheap on eBay as well. However, it supports DDR4 and RAM can be pricey as of today. I would definitely go with the Proliants. I wonder what’s the reason behind your choice Jeff. (Edit: typo)

[@mndlessdrwer]

HP servers can be incredibly nice to work on, but ongoing support for them can be quite tedious if you aren't willing to pay out the nose for a support contract to download their SPP. Like, you can download individual firmware packages and update them, but it is more annoying than I'd like. Cisco and Oracle are, unfortunately, the same way about their driver and firmware support, with Dell and other third party companies being more open with their firmware downloads.

[@Anaerin]

My setup? A Dell R200 with Core2Duo processor and 2GB RAM, and IBM X3650 M3 for my "NAS". Need to get a lot more high-capacity 2.5" drives, 'cause I'm running out of space FAST.

[@eDoc2020]

For lower-performance bulk storage you might want to look into shucking portable Seagate external drives. Or if you're crazy add a USB3 card and connect USB drives externally.

[@84Actionjack]

I feel your pain. I'm in a similar process building an HA Proxmox cluster but I try to avoid some of your challenges by sticking with 2U rackmount cases. So far, so good. We'll see.

[@mdkos]

Ordered SAS instead of SATA... yeah... I've done that. Recently. Luckily my storage server is a tower with plenty of PCIe slots. Since it's no longer running a host card for my nVidia Tesla units, I just replaced that with an SAS controller and got some SATA to SAS adapters for the power connections. Another note on the Tesla units... We moved to a house without a basement and my wife won't let me run the jet engines out of my networking (formerly linen) closet... something about wanting to be able to sleep without ear bleeds or something. I'm thinking I'm going to have to build an Air-conditioned shed with soundproofing just to house all my servers and run a 10 Gbps line out to it.

[@ForSquirel]

'Today we build 4 servers!' Me, installs RAID for the first time, ever.

[@-Good4Y0u]

I still think 2U is the sweet spot. You're kind of stuck on 1gig networking if you put those GPU's in as well.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

everything except 4U is kind of a wasted power consumption in terms of PCE lanes.. there are not enough slots even there.

[@-Good4Y0u]

@@Mr.Leeroy 2u can go sideways in slots thanks to risers... Which have been common in servers for years.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

@@-Good4Y0u you may even use flexible risers of meter lengths, but it won't help with the fact that your expansion cards do not fit in volume wise. 1-3U platforms are made to be optimized for density compute in colocation where value per $ for 1U is an important consideration. It does not make sense for homelab, where there are no such constraints and other requirements like sound output and density per Watt (PCIe wise inclusive) are more important.

[@-Good4Y0u]

@@Mr.Leeroy you don't need the bulky cooler/fan in the 2U unit. Have you seen a real data center grade gpu ? They can fit, and it uses the high rpm chassis fans to move air. You don't use flexible risers in servers usually. This isn't new stuff.

[@Mr.Leeroy]

@@-Good4Y0u we are in the context of homelab here. What high RPM low diameter fans are you talking about? You are missing the point.

[@nerdydad8544]

Can you make an update on this setup? i would like to know if it was worth it.

[@ZachTangen]

I love when I'm at my computer desk getting frustrated as hell and one of my cats climbs into my lap. Sometimes it feels like they know when they need to interfere lol.

[@mrmotofy]

A wife/GF would be better...then again usually they just come to tell you something else is broken haha

[@emrod38]

Thanks for all your videos, definitely have learned a lot from your channel. keep the great content coming!

[@guywhoknows]

You order like I used to... Double check first and second to make sure it's right. I try to avoid hit drives as they have been the worst drives I've had in terms of breakdown. I would spin load, bench and full write and read and see if you get problems... Mine were new and only have 3-4k hours on them. Personally if I had those units, I would attach them to a das. All high speed. Maybe even a pxe?? If I don't have local storage, or at least linked it doesn't feel right. (Self primary backup) Then of course it's all in the HA. All my servers have a DAS/SAN. Each, only now doing a share. (Next week). Then I have a surprising backup which I got last week. (Costing around the same as one of your CPUs 45w tdp underload) Did you select SATA due to sas running costs? It is inviting for a $167 12 bay... Can't get prices like that here..

[@bwzes03]

I bought myself a SuperMicro board with a Xeon-D 1537 SoC. That has 8 cores, 16 threads, right now 64GB of unregistered ECC ram, it has a LSI SAS2116 chip, with 16 ports of SAS/SATA and builtin IPMI. It runs Proxmox, the LSI chip is PCIe passthrough to a fileserver VM, where CentOS runs a ZFS data set on 8 Ironwolf Pro drives. An HP NX3031 based networkcard connects it to the network with a 10GbE DA Cable. It is capable of 128 GB on memory using registered ECC , so I have some room to grow. Its protected by a BlueWalker PowerWalker 1500 UPS that has saved me two times already.

[@StephenCunningham1]

I run a hyve with dual 2689 128 gb ram. It's a great machine but noisy. I can't help but think there is something newer that would be more powerful and competitively priced, but I couldn't find it. I'm interested in seeing what you think of performance with the P400 so I can add one for transcoding.

[@zbc_152]

I think those servers are *great*, but running HP/Dell/Lenovo Servers might give you a better availability for parts, compatibility, and documentation. As well as with most you can still get firmware, and ipmi updates for still supported hardware. I ran 2x Dell R410, R610, R710, 2x DL380 G6s, 3x DL380 G8s, 1x Supermicro (something something...), and a DS4243 connected directly to the supermicro for large disk storage. And yes, my power bill was disgusting. :-) Great build, Jeff!

[@dangingerich2559]

I used to be sysadmin in a storage corp test lab. 4 servers in a day is easy. I've done 10, with 35 in that week, for prototyping. Then again, I didn't have to deal mounting hard drives. I had drives on sleds and a backplane.

[@CraftComputing]

4 servers is easy if all of the parts are already guaranteed to fit.

[@mwils51]

How loud will those be? i am looking for a 1U rack mount server to put my untangle box into. I have a Dell R720xd 128GB memory. 10x 4TB SAS drives in Raid 10 and 2x 4TB SAS dynamic spares. 2x Xeon E5-2689 CPUs running Xen Orchestra 8.2 w/ a paid starter subscription. My TrueNAS is currently running on a Dell Precision T5500 w/ 32GB mem and 6 4TB SATA drives in RAID 5 and is used for backup and NFS shares. I plan to move the TrueNAS to a rack mount server also and I just ordered a 42u raising electronics rack off ebay. Edit: also forgot, my R720xd boots of a pair of RAID-1 500GB Crucial MX500 SSDs mounted in the two rear bays

[@Leviathan609]

Did you only buy 4 new sata cables? In theory could could have used one of the cables to have one server with properly routed cables.

[@krebosh]

this is pretty much why I bought three Dell R620.. no hassle it just works and they have three expansion slots since I need atleast two, one for a FC HBA card and a 10Gb NIC for my vmware cluster.

[@nelsonjperez9319]

Great video feel sorry for all inconveniences next build maybe you should consider the HP DL360 g8 servers they offer a pretty good deal with great features and a great price with 4lff or 8sff bays. I personally get them pre-configured from the esiso inc guys in ebay (no promo) with the ram that I want because it tends to be cheaper than buying it separately and maybe a bit lower-end cpu and consider upgrading it if I can get it cheaper by buying it separately then I end with twice the cpu's. To play around I got myself one with 2x E5-2640 with 64gb of ram for $190 + 4 trays $7-8 each. But the ones with E5-2650v2 64gb i think they are ~$284. Happy shopping again great videos and hopefuly everything is ok with a the flooding that you had. 🍻 cheers

[@BrianMartin2007]

You could keep the SAS drives and just use adapters. And get a SAS HBA card and use the breakout cables.. :)

[@Drunkenvalley]

Fun fact: PCI slots are spaced 0.6 inches apart last I recall checking. So you're probably off by a slot with that PCIe riser.

[@barefooter2222]

I would also like to know power consumption info on this. How does it compare to say an r710?

[@antman5827]

okay i am totally new to the whole rack setup but curious question on the plex pass threw issue could you use a nvidia tesla card for that since it has no output of its own and twin gpu's with 24 GB of ddr6 ram ? oh and it is passively cooled as well

[@miguelmcnamara8405]

I am currently running 4 Dell Poweredge R720 with 2 quadro 4000 in each and also some 2x Xeon 2630v2 cpus in each.

[@BenLMitchell]

My homelab: 2 x HP DL360P Gen 8's. With 1 x Xeon E5-2620 in each with 48Gb's of RAM. 2 x HP MSA60's with 12 x Seagate Constellation 3TB SAS drives. 24 total drives. Both DL360P's are connected to both MSA's using SAS cables and they're both using HP P822 RAID cards. 1 x I5-4570T, 8Gb of RAM and a GTX 980 in my old Antec 400 for Plex with a direct 1gb link back to each server for direct storage. For live migrations I have a 10Gb Link between each server and another 10gb link between each server and my workstation. VM's have a dedicated 1Gb Intel quad port NIC. 2 x APC UPS 1000's.

[@skatar01887]

As for the wrong HDDs shit happens all the time when not paying attention to the details. Work for HPE & some of the build configurations we get are horrendous, due to the fact that sales keep going around the engineering configurator. Which in turn keeps the customer from getting what they want when they need it. (great system) It usually takes an engineer to contact the customer to straighten it all out

[@dionmiller8547]

The Linus dig was Super Bowl commercial worthy. 🤣

[@TheBitKrieger]

I am never against buying new toys but at least the blacklisting is not an issue as you can individually block gpus (replace the driver by a stub or vfio one) so you can plug in any gpu you want and have it work, while passing through the others. The arch wiki "PCI passthrough via OVMF" is a good starting point (will work on ubuntu)

[@jjws600]

I'm running 1 haswell PC as my server, its running proxmox, with a GTX760 Passed through to mac-os / windows (when i want to switch, as long as the other is off you can passthrough both) and X-Penology with 2 16TB seagate exos (shucked from Expansions) passed through to that in raid 1 PiHole, nginx, apache, plex, minecraft servers. all run in LXC containers too.

[@AceBoy2099]

I by no means need any kind of servers for VMs and such, I do however want a file server running (don't know of this is a real thing or not) twin-stripped&mirrored raid (or whatever it's called) so there is 2 backups of the files. I've had drives crash on me before and have lost a bit of data.

[@MrKalodis]

Honestly. Those Zeus servers from ebay are amazing. Grabbed one myself with 2x 10 core processors and never looked back

[@Phelper99]

I run a Dell R710 with 6 3.5" SAS drives and dual x5690 chips. Runs ESXI and virtualizes a pfSense machine and a windows server. Windows server runs Unifi Video, a bedrock Minecraft server, and hosts my work-from-home files. Seems to always pull about 250 watts, 24x7. Would I be better off converting a Ryzen 2700X into a server?

[@JoshuaEdinborough]

I bought the Hyve Zeus servers to set up a lab at work. They’re noisy, but three of them were less than $500.

[@dermothoyne2393]

Guessing another rack will be necessary, at this growing rate of 1U additions?

[@Arachnoid_of_the_underverse]

I hope you tested the efficiency of that thermal paste technique just to prove a pint.

[@phychmasher]

12:22 Every time, man. Every. Single. Time. I feel you on this one.

[@freednighthawk]

Wait a sec. I saw the fresh thermal paste go on, but it looks like the old compound is still on the heat sink (15:40)

[@cavick]

The end is pure gold!

[@fightingfalconfan]

I don't have a rack. I have a unraid server that's mostly idling and don't get used much. My ultimate plan for it is to run two gaming VM's on it when taxes come in early next year and have thin clients do remote sessions when someone wants to game. Currently in the planning stages for an upgrade to it so it has more then enough hardware to do that plus be my Pfsense router and use my nighthawk as a wireless access point. I originally bought a 8 core 16 thread xeon cpu for the upgrade but in the move I did about two months ago it got lost. Plus finding a 2011 socket motherboard with enough x16 slots on it is rather difficult. Server motherboards are really expensive and getting knockoff ones from aliexpress is a 50/50 at best.

[@dksmar]

You ve been an inspiration to evolve my Homelab. i started with a Dell R520 and bought a grid K2 to do what you did for remote gaming, but thease are gone and now I have a Dell R730XD with a Quadro M4000. 96 GB ram and a mix of bunch of sas&sata drives that I could find. Fun fact I bought a male-female extension sata cable and could fit a 4TB 3.5" sata drive that I had spare too😊 For backup and for running some of the 20 vms I have a Qnap TS563 with the qm2 10 Gb dual NVME card direcly connwcred to the dell. In Greece is not as easy to find such cheap servers as you have in US. Taxes and shipping is to expensive..

[@kienanvella]

My main storage server/vm host/workstation is running dual opteron 6276 CPUs, and my monitoring, logging and routing proxmox host is about to be upgraded to an e5-2630L v2 from an atom C2000 system. Hopefully I'll be upgrading the opteron soon, it's in dire need of replacement. I'm undecided if I'll go to a dual 2011-3 platform or if I'll pick up a used epyc.