[ale] Thoughts on PC hardware.

[DJPfulio at jdpfu.com]

On 10/16/22 22:18, Chuck Payne via Ale wrote:
> So I got a half rack of servers, most are SuperMicro servers, and
> Can't go to ESXi 7.x because they are older hardware. I like to get
> something that I can run a couple graphic cards in run Proxmox, and
> setup cloud gaming server for the kids. So let me know what you do, I
> like to follow along.
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:08 PM Bob Toxen via Ale <ale at ale.org
> <mailto:ale at ale.org>> wrote:
> 
> I have found Dell & HP to be junk.
> 
> I assume that one system running VMware or similar won't do.
> 
> Bob
> 
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 02:26:07PM -0600, Robert Harris via Ale
> wrote:
>> Right now I've got a quad dell server in a rack.  It won't go past
>> VMWare 6.7 due to the CPU.  I want to get 3-4 servers again for my
>> lab but can't afford the dell again.  I've got a rack that has room
>> for 1 desktop on its side, so I'm a bit limited.  Thoughts?
>> 
>> Robert

If you aren't tied to VMware stuff, there are lots of F/LOSS options that are used in the real-world around the globe.  Just depends on what you want/need to learn.  There are good reasons to staying current on VMware ESXi and all those tools (since that's where lots of money is).  But the Linux kernel has KVM/QEMU which is what almost every VPS provider uses to avoid VMware's high license costs.

Lots of companies switched to KVM around 2010 and haven't looked back. I used to run ESX and ESXi, Xen, VirtualBox, but after switching to KVM/QEMU that is part of the kernel project, the performance and flexibility completely won me over.  Add on libvirt and whatever management system you like (oVirt/VMM/virsh/..../proxmox) and everyone with a minimal laptop can have a VM server.  More hardware gets you more capacity.  At one point, I was running 20 VMs on a Core2 Duo system - and it was fine.

Gotta say that I much prefer my home lab on Ryzen 65W systems. The power bill and noise are much less. As for redundancy, 2 Ryzen systems with a dedicated LAN interlink can support clustered storage in an N+1 setup.  Hard to be 2 separate, cheap, systems for redundancy, if you limited to a single building.

Proxmox has automatic failover between 2 nodes, I believe.
https://www.ovirt.org/develop/ha-vms.html has other methods.

No need for "server" stuff, unless you demand ECC RAM - don't get me started as to why every laptop/desktop should already have ECC for the least 15 yrs, but doesn't. Sigh.