Unlike too many tech UA-camrs, this guy speaks slowly enough that you can actually follow what he is saying. I have many decades in IT and cannot follow the others. There are so many software products to deal with it is difficult to keep up with them all. Those Dell servers are excellent. Rock solid, built like tanks and cheap (in the USA through eBay). I have three: R510 and R710. But for beginners there warnings. 1) They are big and heavy. 2) They are loud and 3) It does take some time, more than other options, to become familiar with the hardware, like the different hardware options, configurations and even part numbers. Initially, I took the leap and installed XigmaNAS (similar to TrueNAS) on them with ZFS, both of which have a significant learning curve. I did this because I have extensive data storage needs (data hoarder here). Someone just beginning might consider a Dell of Lenovo SFF/USFF machine which can be had for real cheap, like $50; I have a number of them and are excellent. Reliable AND easy to open up and work on/replace parts. $50 is half of what Raspberry Pi go for. They can run Linux or Windows and (I presume) Open Media Vault and TrueNAS/XigmaNAS as well as other homelab stuff. I do NOT recommend Raspberry Pi except as a toy.
Thanks so much for the kind feedback. Agree with everything you say! Will be doing a video on my servers and how I've tried to make it more home friendly (less noisy!).
Appreciate the kind words, Travis. I'll hopefully have the high availability Sophos episode in the next week or so. Let me know if there's any other topics you'd like to see.
@@Jims-Garage I've worked in IT for 20 years and really only started messing with homelab stuff in the past year or so outside of a home nas. I am in the process of building out a 2 node cluster probably on Proxmox and always looking for new ways of doing things. Especially interested in the k3s setup, it's a technology I am still learning about and haven't wrapped my head around all of it yet.
I think it may boil down to what you need. I needed to run bitwarden, (LastPass sihtshow sorta push me over) anything else is a bonus. My setup is a N6000 Celeron 4 2.5gbe box from china. Price $90. Recycle some old 512gb m.2 and 240gb SSD and bought 16gb of sodimm and a USB fan. Total spent: $140. Running. Esxi host. Openwrt guest. Xpenology guest. -> 3 docker container. I will see if I outgrow my needs. ☺️
Not just noise reduction, a full video on modifications you can or should make to an enterprise server you just bought and the process of setting it up in your homelab would be a great resource. That would really explain the difference between handling a consumer grade device vs an enterprise device.
Thanks Jim, very useful rundown of the options and the pros and cons of new vs. old. Personally I think the 'white goods' enterprise servers are also an interesting option. You get some of the enterprise benefits that a rack mount has, but in the more familiar tower or minitower case. My 10 yo HP Proliant is a real workhorse with redundant PS, multiple NICs, cheap as chips ECC Ram and a bunch of hot-swappable SATA bays for NAS. Runs TrueNAS Scale and about 20 pods for media (no transcode, mind!) and private cloud stuff. All for a few hundred bucks. I used to be a real snob when it came to homebuilds and shun corporate offerings from HP, Dell which lock you in to some extent. But I've also come to appreciate that one can look up the service tag of any machine they built and get instant access to all tech specs, config options and caveats. We're lucky we have so many different options these days. Keep up the great work, you're hitting the sweet spot for many home labbers out there ;-)
Just dipping my toe into Proxmox but looks exciting. I have 3 x tower PCs running Win 10 from Win7 CD + free upgrade, so digital licences as I understand it. Biggest question at the moment is whether I can 'migrate' these licences into a Proxmox environment. The best PC has an Intel Core i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz with 32 GB RAM, so I'm thinking that hardware will be best for the PM bare metal. Or should I grab a Dell PowerEdge T620 Server for sale with 32 Gb RAM that I've seen - and try to sell the tower PC's? Thanks for your advice.
A good question, I'm not 100% sure how the licencing works, I know that some are tied to the hardware which will obviously be different inside a VM. I recommend that you ask Microsoft a question on their forums. The flip side is that you could just create new machines without registering, there aren't too many features you lose without registering although it's a bit of a grey area... It's difficult to recommend what to do without knowing what you intend to use them for. I'm about to release a buyer's guide in a few hours, perhaps watch that and then come back to me if you have any further questions.
P.s., you can run a tool to virtualise an existing physical machine (P2V I believe, I think there is also an official Microsoft offering). I'm not sure if that has some magic to preserve the licencing. Worth checking.
@@Jims-GarageIf you know by chance: Do you think it is possible to build a small rack based system with the same capabilities (KVM!) and somehow equal stats as the ms-01 within its price range?
Unlike too many tech UA-camrs, this guy speaks slowly enough that you can actually follow what he is saying. I have many decades in IT and cannot follow the others. There are so many software products to deal with it is difficult to keep up with them all.
Those Dell servers are excellent. Rock solid, built like tanks and cheap (in the USA through eBay). I have three: R510 and R710. But for beginners there warnings. 1) They are big and heavy. 2) They are loud and 3) It does take some time, more than other options, to become familiar with the hardware, like the different hardware options, configurations and even part numbers. Initially, I took the leap and installed XigmaNAS (similar to TrueNAS) on them with ZFS, both of which have a significant learning curve. I did this because I have extensive data storage needs (data hoarder here). Someone just beginning might consider a Dell of Lenovo SFF/USFF machine which can be had for real cheap, like $50; I have a number of them and are excellent. Reliable AND easy to open up and work on/replace parts. $50 is half of what Raspberry Pi go for. They can run Linux or Windows and (I presume) Open Media Vault and TrueNAS/XigmaNAS as well as other homelab stuff. I do NOT recommend Raspberry Pi except as a toy.
Thanks so much for the kind feedback. Agree with everything you say! Will be doing a video on my servers and how I've tried to make it more home friendly (less noisy!).
Very happy to see another Sophos user. Excited to see more videos on how you have everything set up. Keep it up!
Appreciate the kind words, Travis. I'll hopefully have the high availability Sophos episode in the next week or so. Let me know if there's any other topics you'd like to see.
@@Jims-Garage I've worked in IT for 20 years and really only started messing with homelab stuff in the past year or so outside of a home nas. I am in the process of building out a 2 node cluster probably on Proxmox and always looking for new ways of doing things. Especially interested in the k3s setup, it's a technology I am still learning about and haven't wrapped my head around all of it yet.
@@travis_smartley perfect, sounds very similar to what I have setup currently. Hopefully my videos will be useful (I'll be sharing configs etc).
@@Jims-Garage I will make sure to watch for those videos
I think it may boil down to what you need. I needed to run bitwarden, (LastPass sihtshow sorta push me over) anything else is a bonus.
My setup is a N6000 Celeron 4 2.5gbe box from china. Price $90. Recycle some old 512gb m.2 and 240gb SSD and bought 16gb of sodimm and a USB fan.
Total spent: $140.
Running.
Esxi host.
Openwrt guest.
Xpenology guest. -> 3 docker container.
I will see if I outgrow my needs. ☺️
That's a solid setup, and likely has plenty of headroom. Now you just need a couple more for a cluster... 😉
@@Jims-Garage definitely. But stealthy, we all have a big boss at home.
@@gmichia haha, so true! A few NUCs inside a desktop case.
Not just noise reduction, a full video on modifications you can or should make to an enterprise server you just bought and the process of setting it up in your homelab would be a great resource. That would really explain the difference between handling a consumer grade device vs an enterprise device.
A great idea 💡 and something that ties in quite nicely with where we are in the homelab journey and what I did. Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks Jim, very useful rundown of the options and the pros and cons of new vs. old. Personally I think the 'white goods' enterprise servers are also an interesting option. You get some of the enterprise benefits that a rack mount has, but in the more familiar tower or minitower case. My 10 yo HP Proliant is a real workhorse with redundant PS, multiple NICs, cheap as chips ECC Ram and a bunch of hot-swappable SATA bays for NAS. Runs TrueNAS Scale and about 20 pods for media (no transcode, mind!) and private cloud stuff. All for a few hundred bucks. I used to be a real snob when it came to homebuilds and shun corporate offerings from HP, Dell which lock you in to some extent. But I've also come to appreciate that one can look up the service tag of any machine they built and get instant access to all tech specs, config options and caveats.
We're lucky we have so many different options these days. Keep up the great work, you're hitting the sweet spot for many home labbers out there ;-)
Great content! Got a spare rig with an AMD 5600G which hopefully will be sufficient for learning purposes.
It's perfect, and as mentioned that chip has an integrated GPU. Can be used to hardware accelerate your VMs or containers. I'll cover that soon
Thanks!
You might want to check out my later videos on hardware and builds
Just dipping my toe into Proxmox but looks exciting.
I have 3 x tower PCs running Win 10 from Win7 CD + free upgrade, so digital licences as I understand it.
Biggest question at the moment is whether I can 'migrate' these licences into a Proxmox environment.
The best PC has an Intel Core i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz 4.00 GHz with 32 GB RAM, so I'm thinking that hardware will be best for the PM bare metal.
Or should I grab a Dell PowerEdge T620 Server for sale with 32 Gb RAM that I've seen - and try to sell the tower PC's?
Thanks for your advice.
A good question, I'm not 100% sure how the licencing works, I know that some are tied to the hardware which will obviously be different inside a VM. I recommend that you ask Microsoft a question on their forums. The flip side is that you could just create new machines without registering, there aren't too many features you lose without registering although it's a bit of a grey area...
It's difficult to recommend what to do without knowing what you intend to use them for. I'm about to release a buyer's guide in a few hours, perhaps watch that and then come back to me if you have any further questions.
P.s., you can run a tool to virtualise an existing physical machine (P2V I believe, I think there is also an official Microsoft offering). I'm not sure if that has some magic to preserve the licencing. Worth checking.
Jim,
internet protocal managment interface = IPMI
didnt know if you wanted to share exact name
Unfortunately you brought this one out just a few months too early. Now the simple answer probably would be: Minisforum ms-01!
@@roidiklitt5055 ha, it's certainly a great all in one solution. However, it is pricey and you can buy a lot of good second hand gear for that price.
@@Jims-GarageIf you know by chance: Do you think it is possible to build a small rack based system with the same capabilities (KVM!) and somehow equal stats as the ms-01 within its price range?
@@roidiklitt5055 if you have a full sized rack buy a dell r730. It's what I had before it. Does everything.
I love this video! So cool. Wish you and me good luck!
Thanks, good luck 🤞