this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Tiny mini pc server dilemma (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by kobazik@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Hi,

I have outgrown my current home lab setup which currently runs many docker containers a Synology NAS and looking to build a Proxmox server/cluster on one or multiple tiny mini PCs.

I will be running small docker containers for things like home assistant, radarr, sonarr, grafana and maybe prometheus. Again nothing crazy in terms of resources but I would like to have some room to play around with other projects like kubernetes.

Here are few deals I'm eyeing and can't decide to get one newer system or 3 older ones for essentially same price.

3 x Lenovo Thinkcentre M900 Quad-Core i5-6400T 2.2GHZ 12GB 120GB SSD - £165
3x Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q Mini PC Intel i3-7100T 3.4Ghz 12GB 256GB - £150.00
1 x Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny PC - i5-8400T - 8GB RAM - 256GB SSD - £145

I'm leaning towards lenovo mini PCs because I will be able to add 4 port nic via pci riser card.

M720q with i5-8400T has 6 cores and 6 threads plus intel 630 gpu which will be useful for plex transcoding.

On the other hand M910q with i3-7100T has only 2 core and 4 threads but also got intel 630 gpu. I will be able to get 3 of them for a price of just one M720q.

Lastly i5-6400T got 4 cores and 4 threads. Extra 2 cores more than M910q with i3-7100T but older cpu with intel 530 gpu which might not be as powerful plex transcoding

I'm thinking to go with just one M720q Tiny PC - i5-8400T mainly because of the cores count and intel 630 gpu. Obviously I will add min. 32GB ram.

I guess running 3 machines will use more power but they are already fairly low power so lets not take that into account for decision making ;)

Let me know your thoughts.

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[–] IllustriousLawyer656@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I had a similar situation. I went with the 3 PCs with failover. Nothing failed so after a few years I sold 1 and used the other for something else. I regret not buying 1 good machine and setting it up in a way that it can easily be recreated. If you cannot afford any down time then go for the 3. Also those PCs are awesome. Enough room for an m.2 ssd. 3.5ssd and 4 port nic as long as you remove the ssd sled. Make sure to buy the higher watt power supply

[–] Anejey@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Also one thing to consider is that running 3 Proxmox machines will allow you to use HA (High Availability). Meaning if one of your hosts go down, others can pick up the slack.

Just one node means everything depends on it.

[–] sk1nT7@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

3 nodes are nice. However, it's just a playground and in a personal lab nothing is that crucial to have high uptime.

Most of the time, all your nodes will die at the same time due to power outage or your ISP fails. As you likely won't have a fallback for these things, operating 3 nodes is likely useless.

If you want to play with kubernes etc. you can do so on a single node too. Just spawn multiple VMs or LXCs in Proxmox. That's enough to learn and play. Of course, having real physical nodes and a real HA cluster is different but you get what I mean hopefully.

Personally, I would take the most modern and powerful server and keep it down to one node.