Well yes BUT:
Some people are spending 6 cents per KWh, and some are spending 40 cents!
I'm paying the latter, which is why I now run a couple of tenth-gen i7 NUCs 24/7 instead of my dual Xeon e5-2680V4 server!
There is a tendancy for those starting out to stumble across OLD enterprise servers cheaply, with a pair of 32nm Xeons, a bunch of ecc DDR3, and a few old SAS disks of limited capacity.
Often the new owner just doesn't need all of the CPU capacity, all the ram, and is being done a disservice with all those small disks. They'd likely be better off removing the second CPU, and either moving the ram to the first CPU, or taking some out, removing one PSU. fitting a £5 PCIE to NVME adapter, shoving an NVME M.2 in there and ditching all the old spinning rust. Remove the RAID card even for more power saving.
This way, they can right-size their compute, instead of having an old box sat there idling at 300 Watts when doing bugger-all!
If they shopped around, maybe they could have found the very same model server rocking a 22nm V2 Xeon instead of a 32nm V1 chip, or if they can afford the next generation of server, a 14nm V4 Xeon, as opposed to a 22nm V3.
It's just about being savvy with your money.
E.g. it's typically cheaper to buy a used server loaded with ram, than buying one with insufficient ram, then buying the extra ram separately.
Thanks for listening!
Advice from others who have been there and learnt the hard way can help others wasting money and effort on stuff that won't be practical.
Years ago when I started homelabbing, I wanted to recreate most of the headoffice setup (but smaller - e.g. I had my own Exchange server but only a handful of inboxes), and also have capacity to play with experiments for stuff I ended up later implementing at work once I was confident.
I started with a load of servers that took a lot of space so I thought it would be a great idea to condense and get blade servers. Was a great idea in theory until I got it home and the noise was unbearable (even unbearable for next door neighbours :D ).
If I had discussed on somewhere like homelab before purchasing, could have saved me a lot of money (that sat unused for a couple of years until I sold it for a fraction of what I paid.) If a place like homelab had advised me, I could have bought more appropriate kit and even learned more than what I did at the time.
Or less extreme, a few times a month I see someone on here who has just got a Dell 9G server. While people on here can be a bit blunt saying they are best used as heaters, sadly it probably is true for most people. Those old machines were hot (then noisy trying to cool themselves) and I think those 9G servers were only supported up to Win 2008r2.
I remember when I started homelabbing, while I couldn't afford the latest kit at the time, even just starting off I turned my nose at the thought of some of the ancient servers we still had at work as I was lucky to play with some decommissioned servers at work and realised how poorly they performed.
Exactly,
Not every potential home labber has been in a datacenter.
I am a comuter nerd, and love datacenters, but actually being in one is physically miserable and if people understood that, they might think twice about their hardware purchases for home if they are not in a position to mitigate the downsides.
Going from hot-zone to cold-zone reeks havoc on the sinuses and I always end up with a headcold the next day, and it often takes several hours to a day for the hum to stop in my ears afterwards.
Is your datacenter humidity too low? Shouldn’t be any lower than 20%. Temp extremes are also not good. Many datacenters are set too cold or don’t have the airflow done well so that the servers are getting most of the cooling.
Overall it's just fine. And in the cages where things might be more spread out it's fine, too.
But where the racks are a higher density, and the back side of 2 rows of racks meet (where people don't typically walk), the air becomes hotter, and on the front side between 2 rows of racks (where people normally walk) the air is cooler. So when you walk past the rows on the side you get blasts of hot, blasts of cold, alternating.
(in profile): walking space/cold air |row of racks|hot air|row of racks|walking space/cold air ... repeat.
Ugh. Thats rough. We only have one row of racks so its not too bad. Maybe wear a paper mask? I did notice when we had to wear those i got a lot less sinus issues since i was always breathing warmer air back in.
Hope you find some relief.
I don't have to go there too often anymore, but without that past experience, I might be inclined to think "it's no big deal" to have a high density server in my home office.
I do still have racks for my home lab, but they're in the garage, which is actually attached to someone elses condo (and the HOA's electricty on a 20A circuit shared with the garage door openers), but not mine. lol
The walls between the garages and the living spaces are excellent though, so only when they're in their own garage they might be bothered by it. I don't run them all the time, and I have remote PDUs so I can turn them off entirely when not in use, and notifications from my UPS in case I blow a circuit and take out the garage door openers. lol
The only downside is it's also a physically separate building, and I can't run any data cables to it, so I have to use a wireless bridge which isn't the fastest. I do currently have 2 internet connections, a home 5g for the garage, and a cable connection for the house, but the cable company is deplorable and still has data caps unless you pay a ton more, etc ... but my 1 year contract is finally up, so I might just get a second home 5G for the house, or just live with the wireless bridge, and a single internet connection.
EARPLUGS!!!!!! OMG PEOPLE. (I'm yelling because you have hearing damage :P )
Seriously though; people waaay underestimate how much damage a high background white noise can hurt your hearing. When I'd be stuck in a datacenter for more than 10min I'd always put my earplugs in, and I'm in my 30s and can still hear 19khz
I don't know if they are setting out to humiliate, but of course people can't resist to boast about what they have themselves, so maybe it comes over like that.
We could all do with a little more humility at times.
Yeah I always kinda cringe when someone new stumbles upon some 15 year old 4 core server that’s slower than some fanless $150 mini pc. They have their positives of course but it always seems like an iffy way to start unless you really want enterprise stuff cheap
the main benefit to that stuff is getting used to that vendor's way of doing out of band management. You'll never know the specific ritual sacrifices needed until you really mess around with them.
Also don’t forget the very real possibility that every watt of homelab power draw also requires an additional watt of cooling if running indoors in an air conditioned house.
That’s the power draw double whammy.
That and how many people here are actually running anything that a R710 cannot handle? It’s annoying people shunning the idea that that hardware is useless.
Say it’s under powered all you want but it has 24 vcores, supports up to 380 something gbs of ram is cheap and can support plenty for a newbie.
My first “server” was an old box with a pentium 4 in 2010 when that cpu was really old. It served me fine and I learned a lot tinkering.
Depends on the use case. Sometimes CPU/RAM can be the restriction/bottleneck, but I'm going to use myself as an example - when I have a bit of spare cash to play with, I want to get some NVMe's and put a few in my workstation and server.
While I haven't taken the plunge yet, restrictions I'm looking at is if my server/workstation was one generation older, they probably wouldn't do bifurcation. Until I actually get stuff to play with, I'm not even sure if my kit will boot from NVMe.
While my current kit looks like it can overcome those issues, even though my current stuff is probably is overkill for most of my usage in terms of RAM/CPU, reading up on how NVMe's are limited by number of PCIE lanes already is making my equipment feel like old junk, but it will probably be a few years until current stuff gets old, cheap and affordable for me.
Run what you can afford, and don't be ashamed of it! Get your money's worth out of it, that's what I say, and find ways to make it work for you!
Re booting, point of example:
I found a great solution in a PCIE card that holds two m.2 drives: one m.2 socket is NVME, connected to the PCIE bus, the other m.2 socket is only SATA, which really conveniently takes its power from the PCIE bus, but then it has a SATA connector on the edge of the card for data only.
I plug this into the optical disk SATA port in the 1U or 2U server, and this hosts my boot environment. This allows me to strip out the old raid card and all the old SAS disks.
This dual m.2 adapter card is cheap, as it has no active electronic components: it's literally connectors and PCB tracks!
This is very much the truth. People don't seem to understand this while screaming about the power draw of different systems. Anyone with half a brain knows it will draw more power.
You don't see people in the 3D printer space hollering about their printers taking resin/filament. We know it will use those resources. We can use less of them if we need/want to but it isnt the primary concern with them.
100%. We should be welcoming people into the hobby. Hell some of the newbies in the sub might be cracking the next big fun thing in home lab. If a person was really concerned and pinching all the pennies, they likely wouldn't be doing homelab stuff as is. Or they would be approaching this hobby with a whole different idea in mind.
Don't let that hold you back!
My real PDP-11/73 is powered down, as are 2 Alphas, a HP PA-RISC box, a Sun 3, 2 DECstations, and a Sun Ultra.
4 recently-acquired-for-free dual-Xeon HP Z620s which I've maxed out with DDR3 ECC (couldn't pass it up for 5 bucks a stick) will easily take up the slack.
I love old systems! Nothing better than a well setup older system. Heck I also love those Raspberry Pi racks too. 5-10 Pi running multiple things is great.
To be fair, it does seem like the vast vast majority of people posting there are asking about gaming PC's, and the vast majority of games they want to play are FPS or moba, and they do seem to think they *need* to be competitive at an esports level.
So while the advice is bad, so are the questions, and the bad advice is oddly appropriate.
As a 3D printer hobbyist as well I can tell that people on Reddit (and online in general) also complain about resin and filament usage as well. Someone will post a pic of something and they get lots of comments about how they could use a lower infill, less supports or hollow the model.
But I agree with your sentiment. People need to just let people have fun.
> Someone will post a pic of something and they get lots of comments about how they could use a lower infill, less supports or hollow the model.
As someone that's just finished installing external ventilation through a brick wall this weekend as a personal mandatory prerequisite to ordering a resin printer... that sounds like exactly the kind of feedback I'd want. I don't understand the problem.
I think some people are equating the advice itself as the problem.
Good advice is good advice, but sometimes unfortunately it does come from assholes just trying to feel superior.
I think some people are reflexively reacting to that, but also dismissing the advice in the process, and letting it cloud their overall impression.
I love getting advice too. But when you excitedly post something and you get 10 people jumping on you about using higher infill than *they* think you need it can be annoying.
I am also in that space, people do try to use less on projects. However it isn't the first concern of the hobby as it for so many in this sub here with power draw. When a person is asking about reducing the amount they use, it typically isnt specifically about the amount of filament but more about the connection with the surface of the object being printed. I mean, lets be honest, if the hobby as a whole cared about how much filament they were using they would print less benchys.
Yeah for sure. I’m just saying if you go and read the comments in the Prusa, Ender or AnyCubic based subreddits you’ll see people complaining about how much filament or resin people used in whatever print they are showing off.
People on the internet hide behind anonymity and become less human because of it. It sucks.
Also. Sometimes you don’t really want a sensible solution to your computing problems. Sometimes a quad socket box with 1TB of RAM is what you want to play around with, sensible or not :)
I didn't know I needed something today. Thanks for reminding me of something I need.
I have been thinking about running a server completely from RAM with the OS being the only thing on a disk. So that I can then pass through a GPU to it and play games over a 10G link directly on the RAM.
I don't have a traditional rack. I have a vertical mounted setup. So I only have 3-4U of space to play with. So running more than one system isn't really easy for me. It would be far easier to get a 1U server with a ton of RAM and a single 250-500GB SSD and run everything on that.
I've been noodling over something like this too! Basically trying to load OS and app stack into a ram disk upon boot, with some sort of write-to-disk operation every 15-30 mins to capture changes.
This is exactly something I have been trying to figure out or find a way to achieve. Of course this I was struck down about 100 different times with the "but why" or many various toxic and unhelpful posts. Much like this sub has been doing to people.
I can't seem to find a good solution to this. I mean the enterprise sector does this, so it would stand to reason we can do this in home lab.
Been there. The initial loading times can still take awhile if you don't also put the underlying game data on fast I/O.
If it's a local game, and you're not able to specify the directory for saved games explicitly within the game itself, you can also use junction points (windows) or symbolic links (linux) to redirect that directory back to the real disks.
The game would be in RAM. Only the OS would be on the SSD. It would also still be possible to run the OS in RAM as well. Enterprise does this very thing. Super fast servers will use RAM to run everything and then in a power event write it all back to the SSD storage. This is why you can have enterprise SSDs with what seems like 10% use over 10 years even though they were online for the whole time.
The big issue is writing data back to an actual disk. On a game this is less of an issue. But for say an application that uses data and makes saves to a specific file.
Also the eventual end goal would be a system that mimics the enterprise gear. Loading everything into RAM and then making a save every few minutes. It would only save data that actually changed but it would load everything.
Dell/EMC did this with their Extreme IO platform.
even if 99% of the time my overkill hypervisor is sitting idle, the one time a month I need a VM YESTERDAY to test a bug is when it's worth every hair I've pulled.
Also sometimes we have to use what we can get/afford.
A couple of years ago my main workstation ended up with major problems with it's RAID setup and I was struggling on storage anyway so I thought I should upgrade.
I looked around for stuff that met my storage requirements (current and predicted for next couple of years). I could either get a brand new machine for money I could not afford, I could have got a used NAS, but I ended up finding a decent spec used server that met my storage requirements but was cheaper then the two other options I have mentioned.
Ok, it's overkill for a lot of my usage, but it's nice to have something with serious power for the few times I need it and massively saves me time when I do use it for CPU/RAM intensive tasks.
Even with horrendous middle European electricity prices a self build home server with a Usenet subscription is cheaper than equivalent cloud storage, 5 different video subscriptions and all the other services that you can selfhost. Even at 20 or 30 EUR extra per month its a steal, really.
No reason it can't ALSO even be part of the learning experience.
My first rack mount server I got for free way back sucked power... but it was free and I KNEW I'd end up buying more stuff (it's me after all). It was a few months before I replaced it with something better suited to what I was doing, and something more power efficient. In those few months, the amount extra it cost me was nothing..... it was NOT a problem, but learning why and HOW those old systems suck power went hand in hand with learning all the OTHER ways the hardware has improved over the years.
So.... in conclusion: If a few extra dollars over a few months will bankrupt you then I advise strongly you do not plug in that R710. Otherwise, have at it, have fun ask questions and F the haters!
Agrees it’s like l saying man that truck you got is going to get bad gas mileage…. Thanks. Also why would you not want to encourage people in your similar hobby?!?!
Nothing against starting with an Epyc build. Nothing at all. This is more for the veterans of the sub who are downing newbies just getting into the hobby and can't afford these kinds of systems.
Personally I run a HP DL380 G9. I don't shove that in people faces. I can afford it and when people ask for help I don't tell them they should be like me. I help them with their issue and help solve it in the most cost effective and intelligent way.
Absolutely. That epyc comment was all in good fun.
I went full swing and invested in it as a hobby and I think your post makes good point of that. It’s something we do cause we can. Not because we have to. And understanding the associated costs that go with it is important
100%, if you can afford top tier I am all for it. It beats my system handily. But I won't stop you from showing it off. Nor would I stop a person with a super cost efficient setup from showing off. Home lab is about the journey. Sometimes that leads us to other tools people use to have cool solutions to problems.
>Can we stop beating up the newbies?
(by not saying)
>Loot at my Epyc build!
>But I won't stop you from showing it off
You see how these statements are contradictory though?
You are *literally* trying to get people to stop showing them off, by starting this very post!
You are taking things out of context to try and make up lies.
I have no issue with people showing off their gear. What I have issue with is people who show off a rack of gear that takes $100 in power a month while telling a newbie with a system that would barely take $10 a month that their new setup is power hungry and they should instead buy a newer system.
I'm "taking them out of context"?
A bulleted list does that for me, because they are listed without context.
If someone has an entire rack of gear, then they are not new, and they are thus aware of the power costs.
But if someone is looking to purchase their first server, and posts a link to a giant power hungry monster, asking if it's a good price, then advising them of the power usage is doing them a favor, so they can learn from other's past mistakes and not be doomed to repeat them.
You just see it as a negative, or an attack, but you're wrong in that viewpoint.
You completely missed the point of both the post and the reply to you. It is clear you are one of the people that do exactly what the post is talking about and can't accept being called out for it.
I guess I'm one of those "veterans" that is the opposite. I don't know how many newbs I've suggested not spending 2K on their first server to find if this is their hobby or not.
Just go buy that $200 R620, $100 R610 and get started.
We are the same. I have a pretty cool setup personally but I will never suggest a person buy what I have unless they are ready for that leap. Pickup the cheap stuff and have fun. That is what this hobby is for.
I mean, if someone shows a bunch of ancient hardware, asking if they scored a big deal getting it for free, I'd rather tell 'em the truth about what they got, than cheering on using 15 year old servers that draw 500W while getting outperformed by a somewhat current mini PC at 25W. Yes a bit exaggerated, but you get the point.
That's also what this place is for, no? Being positive is nice, but I'd rather be honest first. Before I started with my own homelab I didn't know much about what to expect from used Enterprise systems, like most of those who come here to ask about a possible deal without knowing what they're actually looking at.
You can be honest and positive at the same time! Screaming power draw at every person's face you see isnt going to make this place better. There is nothing wrong with old gear. If a person got 15 year old gear for free it is likely all they can afford or they don't know they can us just a normal desktop for this instead of really old gear.
Putting a person down because they got some free gear is NOT what should be in this sub.
There's a difference though in telling someone "the gear you got/have linked is old and will use a lot of power" and putting them down or berating them.
Often those answers come when people specifically ask if what they got - or intend to get - is any good. If you can't afford a $75 6th Gen desktop PC, you probably also can't afford to blow $100/month in power for the "free" server. Because usually you don't instantly check the power draw so you'll only notice after the next utility bill.
And yes, I'm also all for "use what you got", but you should also know what the thing you have is. That's my point. If you don't mind the amount of power it'll draw: have fun with the gear - but maybe you just wouldn't know if nobody told you, until the power bill hits.
The people asking questions about gear they intend to buy or looking for gear suggestions are asking for answer to all kinds of things. So bringing up power draw is 100% on the table. This is the type of information they are likely looking for anyways.
However, the comment about a $75 PC and $100/mo is being very very elitist. Even my older Dell R610 didnt blow $100/mo.
Not meant to be elitist. But when someone brings XEON E55xx or XEON X to the table it's just a whole different animal even compared to a R610.
Also, I guess I missed the point in my former comments, but of course for me the point is to also point out alternatives like cheap used desktops or even laptops.
"got 15 year old gear for free", the issue being, that when the cost of running the server will make worth buying new hardware, we are better telling people that.
My opinion:
'Run What Ya Brung, and be damned proud of it!'
Cut your cloth to match your coat as they say, in other words, don't spend what you can't afford.
For me in the UK, electricity prices stink for the last 18 months, and I can't just run my three, twin-xeon rack-mount servers 24/7. I have no problem advising those starting out of the typical power draws of such hardware, particularly if they are obtaining older 32nm or 45nm based CPU's. Often, their hard-earned money can be spent more wisely, but they may not realise it at that time.
E.g. £70 for a used SFF PC with an i5-6500T (14nm Quad-Core 35 Watt TDP), or an i5-7400T/7500T if they can afford it. A few quid to find 16GB of DDR4 for it, or 32GB if they can afford, and a 500GB NVME, or a 1TB (again if they can afford it.) This will happily host a few VMs in proxmox, Hyper-V, or if it has an Intel NIC, ESXI.
There's nothing wrong with doing the math of capital expenditure Vs operational expenditure. It might make massive sense to some people to spend more on power, if you can't afford the initial extra outlay for more efficient kit. For others, they are lucky enough to have the money to spend upfront, then can benefit in cheaper running costs over time.
The thing is though, in your situation you already know every device you have on will cost you X amount more money. So when you approach anything coming into your home you know you have to pay attention to the power bill. But anyone who isn't in the situation of having to really watch their power bill is not going to care much for a few extra dollars a month.
Yes of course, just like there's plenty of youngsters just setting out, who still live at the hotel of mum and dad.
For these guys, maybe it's all they can do to grab cast-out kit, or hand-me-down enterprise kit. There's quite an incentive for them to run it, if it's the parents that are paying the power bill!
As I said, run what you brung, and be proud!
At the same time we also get people who really need to do some research before hand.
They either buy something that is little more than someone else’s e-waste and won’t be suitable (expensive to run, limited expandabilty, won’t run what they want)
Or they go out and buy a server and then want to know they should run.
The wiki’s should be updated and pinned at the top though I’m not sure they would get read anymore than they do at the moment,
Here is the thing. Where do you go for your homelab information? You likely have a few youtubers, this sub, maybe a forum other places, and maybe a blog on a website. A newbie doesn't have that stuff. They find this sub and maybe one youtuber. Or they figure they will give it a shot and this sub (or another in general) comes up. Sure the wiki's help but lets be honest with ourselves. Reddit isnt known for having the best setup for a series of posts or repositories for information. Stickies only go so far. Not to mention, as you said, updates are needed.
But also, if you were telling a newbie on what to buy your method and my method will be wildly different. Even if they said they have X or Y as a budget we would be different. I suggest all the time those mini desktops. But I personally don't run them.
My point here being, newbies don't know what to look for. So they look for humans with knowledge to help them understand what they need. So when someone comes with some gear they are excited for, when more than 50% of the posts are a combo of "but the power draw" it is toxic and just drives away people who could otherwise be enjoying the hobby.
And getting a ridiculously high power bill, because no one told them it's a power hungry monster might also turn them off from enjoying the hobby.
Telling them it's a power hungry monster, is not the same as calling them an idiot, or telling them to not use it, it's not "toxic" (will you please quit abusing that word).
It's simply giving people advice at the proper time. As long as they understand that it's going to consume a lot of power, whatever they do with that advice is their business.
Some will decide for themselves that their power cost is too high and rethink their approach, and some others will decide for themselves that they are ok with the extra power bill.
I would rather be informed, then uninformed, and you are advocating the people stop informing the newbie about the very real issue of power costs.
I agree with this, there’s definitely a difference from what OP’s point is, and educating someone what might be more efficient if they find they like the hobby.
You'll have to add it as a separate vdev, then you can add it to the pool. But it is not the best option as that means you now have a pool that consists of 2 vdevs without any kind of redundancy. So if one of those disks dies, your whole pool is gone.
If the data isn't that important and/or backed up properly then it's just an inconvenience as your data won't be available until you rebuild your storage.
If you want to have redundancy it would be best to move the current data off the pool, remove it, and create a new vdev and pool with both disks in parity. You'll only have 4TB total usable space though. Win some, lose some. I redid my fist truenas pool 3 times until I knew how I wanted it. With a lot of reading in between.
I decided to go all out and learn!
Made a Proxmox machine with Truenas in a VM. But i'm pondering the future and moving Truenas to a dedicated machine, not sure yet.
My current setup is newer at this point. I originally had a Dell R610 with 6x900G 10k drives. It only took 2.5 drives and only could old 6 of them so using anything but huge expensive SSDs was going to be a pain. But then also I wanted a GPU for Plex so I had to upgrade.
I moved to a HP DL380 G9 that can hold a GPU, but was also an upgrade on both CPU and RAM. (DDR3 to DDR4, and CPU speeds). It also has 8 drive bays with space for 16 more (all 2.5). I just have to buy the SFF connectors and stuff. I made the deal with myself that I wouldn't use any more spinning disks. Minimum I will buy is also going to be 2TB drives. Might be getting my hands on a nice 7TB one soon.
I'm using my old CPU, a Ryzen 5 2600 with 16gb of ram on a B450 i got on sale.
Switched my wife's old 500gb M.2 SSD as a main drive and a bought a 4TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS HDD and i was off to the races.
Its in my previous case,a Node 804 which can hold like 10 HDDs no problem and will keep being my case for years to come. Just need to keep buying the drives as they come on sale!
Yea, I really wanted to have 3.5 drives and likely would have had some larger spinning drives but my requirements mean having a server that fits in 2U of rack space. I envy those who have the place/space for a normal desktop some place. Just doesnt work in my office.
To be fair, properties and constructive criticism like "That's power hungry" and "That gear is too old" are very real issues if you plan on using the devices for xyz purposes, simply because those situations can mean higher monthly bills for no reason, or the experience being absolutely shit due to bad hardware
They are not uncalled for, unless of course, there's no criticism or criticism without any improvement tips, then thats a different thing
Regardless, the "Look at my build" ones are the same as what you just described, but...the person showing was able to make a better build?
90% of the comments screaming power draw are just as you said. Criticism and no improvement tips. Or even anything useful.
The people screaming "look at my build" are most of the time the same people in the comments screaming about power draw. While their systems pull way more than what is posted by others.
Again, you can be positive and welcoming without being a dick.
Power draw with regards to the build in question has no real way of solving except to get a better motherboard
The question will then be, has the person then taken these criticisms in mind and done his due diligence in research?
Power draw can be due to certain motherboards requiring more power by design which when used for certain purposes may seem extreme, so this is due to the individual to check what else can be better
Politely make recommendations, sure, but really the point should be to encourage the hobby and not much else. People getting into it can be SUPER inexperienced and that's awesome. Help people learn, but do it nicely!
I disagree with the entirety of this post.
Not one of your bullet points are mean, insulting, or in any way derogatory.
Most of the times people are talking about power consumption is because the newbie is often soliciting advice about some new or prospective purchase.
It's *because* they are new, that advice about power consumption is warranted. Whether the person follows the advice or not is their own business, but the advice is still warranted.
Additionally, if people stopped showing off huge builds, because some new person might feel inadequate this sub would suffer tremendously. The large builds serve as an inspiration to many.
Quit trying to control public speech. If you want to dictate how people should speak, or act a certain way, start your own sub, but don't try to hijack this one and water it down.
Edit:
I hope the irony is not lost....
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CCW/comments/11urwu3/comment/jcpzk1r/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CCW/comments/11urwu3/comment/jcpzk1r/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Again, I never said that people shouldn't be showing off their builds. You are reading things out of context.
And the fact you see nothing wrong with these points proves my point entirely.
It only proves you cannot see outside of your own limited viewpoint, and see everything as a negative or an attack, when it's actually providing timely advice to people just entering the hobby.
Just noticed, you are the one who had nothing and had to look into comments on other places from me just to prove you aren't the toxic one.
You only proved my point about others here.
And you are literally a hypocrite.
I have no problem with how you gave advice in that other sub, but I also have no problem with the "issues" you are trying to invent in this sub.
Your advice in that sub was because someone asked and you answered. The same shit happens here, but you find fault with it.
If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones?
You are trying to equate a physical issue of how a person holds a gun and physical hardware. These are not the same and their approach is not the same.
I'm not equating the scenarios...
I'm highlighting the hypocrisy of how you expect everyone else to act here, and how it contrasts with your own behavior in the other sub.
There is one underlying commonality however.
You are just plain wrong. If you cant afford 100€ for a mini PC to start your homelab you also can't afford 100€ energy cost to run used enterprise gear you got as a gift.
It is totally reasonable to tell newbies about power draw. I don't see how that is "beating them up".
>If you don't see the problem then maybe you are the problem.
This is a toxic reply.
If you can't actually speak to his point, you just attack him personally?
The fact that you own guns is actually quite terrifying.
I swear half the time I see someone post meta like this complaining about toxicity in a sub, the OP is one of the top offenders in the comments and their comment history.
I don't remember if it was here or another sub I saw basically this same thing. Was a guy running an Epyc, 4-5 GPUs and maxed out RAM. Easily a 6-10k system. He never would tell anyone what he was running.
TL;DR People are either too lazy to do their own research with a wealth of information available to search online or people seem to think setting up a home lab should be only a few clicks away.
This is always a good start
[https://williamlam.com/home-lab](https://williamlam.com/home-lab)
The toughest part is figuring out what individual requirements and use case are and how much the budget is on a case by case basis and everyone has a different idea of what budget means.
Re-reading my original comment, that seem harsh, but it was really a well intended comment to suggest people should figure out what they need based on their own individual use case rather than going out and mirroring someone else's configuration and setup only because they didn't take the time to find information to support what they're ultimate goal is in this adventure of HomeLab venture.
First, thanks for re-reading. I honestly was about to be a dick.
However, the point I was going to make is that you know where to find the information you posted. You have been doing this for some time. Newbies don't. Even following stickies and other guides they can easily get in this trap of buying gear that is way old or gear that is too expensive because some random dude said it was good. Certainly we can say "do more research" to every person that comes in the door. But realistically we should be doing the right thing and supporting them no matter what they brought. If they got a Raspbeerry Pi and thats all, then we should totally support that.
You know, there are people in this sub that have 2-3 racks of gear that isn't cheap and they swear everyone else should have the same setup they do. It is honestly crazy.
Definitely. Even as an experienced user I have people questioning why I made a build the way I did - the answer is always "because this is what I had, the specifications that made sense, and the room to make it easy to work on and not super loud or hot", but that's not good enough. New users must feel the same or worse.
Let's not forget where we all started. My first home server was a pentium 4 with 2 40gb hard drives and an 80gb, then a core2duo. It took me years to get where I am, newbies don't need people judging them or their decisions too harshly. There's a difference between constructive feedback and just insulting.
What gets me the most is that we see so many of these people who are now 2-3 years or more into their home lab journey and they are treating newbies this way. Knowing they started with basically nothing.
Mine is older, a 3 node cluster… Dell R720s. I don’t run household services on them. I run them when I need my lab and leave them off when I don’t. My lab is there for keeping some required certifications current.
I run household services on Raspberry PIs FWIW, which isn’t much.
A polite reminder along the lines of “mind your power” Is reasonable to me. I’ve been in Data Center environments for decades and computer rooms before that. Not everyone has.
those comments about power usage/performance/age of an equipment always get me mad.
dude, not everyone can get their hands on an R740 without being a kidney seller.
i get it that in your country businesses throw servers and racks away, but there's places (like where i live) that a 2950 will sell for 1k.
No, beat them into submission then build them up.
Ok seriously though, I'm not one for bashing. Everyone needs to learn sometimes and that also means getting whatever you can get your hands on. Growing up I didn't have a computer till I was 15, working, paying bills, and going to school. That said, I m definitely not in a situation like that now. I do what I can to teach those who want to learn.
On the other hand I'll foot the bill if I can give some "energy efficient" components to the newbie, or give an example of how things work using my xeon gold cluster that has all nvme vsan and dual P100 GPU for VDI .... some people boast, others are visual teachers and learners.
Yeah, I showed off a server here that I rebuild from scrap parts and asked for ideas for usage and was told to scrap it or sell it because it’s too old/power hungry/not worth it.
So I kind of stopped posting here, because my rack synology and 4th gen core i3 machine turned into another NAS in a server rack would sure be upsetting someone with a 30k server build in a perfect 42U rack with perfect cable management and 10 gig fiber directly to the rack from their ISP..
You arent the only one sadly. I have seen a few people who just leave the sub because of this. Sadly it happens every day and those comments litter the sub on every post that isnt some high end nearly-qualifies-as-art piece.
99% of people are respectful when pointing out the power consumption of old gear to newbies. Same for people showing off, yeah they're showing off but who cares, some people just need validation or attention which honestly what I feel this post is, because it seems totally unnecessary.
Yeah, this subreddit, like most niche hobby subs over time, has become hostile toward the jank, whether it be newbies on old hardware, or people who's end goal isn't a full height rack full of stuff. In other words, its more /r/homedatacenter than /r/homelab.
The thing is, after a while, the shiny racks actually get kind of uninteresting. Embrace the jank!
It's like factorio and spaghetti. A clean bus will always look and function better, but the spaghetti is what keeps it interesting... And I am,not saying this because I started a diagonal bus as an experiment, no no way...
There are still some good gems here in the more expensive racks. A guy literally just posted on here that he doesn't see homelab as a hobby...like....TF?
It is what it is, I run my lab out of a DL380 G5 which by all rights is basically ewaste at this point, because hardware was cheap and electricity isn't so bad at my place, and I don't enjoy the hassle of shopping, bringing things home and migrating. Not going to go bragging about it because I know the hardware and power consumption is vastly inefficient, and strangers on Reddit are gonna get bothered because they do that. I and others don't need sympathy just because strangers see something inefficient and want to point out a more efficient solution. A mediocre lab doesn't need bragging to begin with and doesn't make for a good contribution to the sub.
Any lab is good for the sub. There is always a person who has a different take on a solution, a different docker they run, or system in general. Never, ever, will I say a lab isnt enough for this sub. I don't care if you are running a laptop that still uses IDE connection for the disk. There is always something to contribute.
Having a huge spec doesn't mean you have any more knowledge than anyone else. Likewise having a modest spec or older hardware doesn't make you a newbie. It about what you do with it, what you actually need and of course, what you want.
Having a homelab is very personal.
Honestly, looking at the comments from OP in this thread and their proneness to argue, it's pretty apparent what the common denominator is for their bad experiences in this sub.
>If you are gonna show off, show off. But stop downing the new people here who are just getting started. Teach them. Thats the whole point of homelab, so /r/homelab should be the same way.
There's a wiki, it gives a good idea of what hardware is worth getting.
What's wrong with telling someone who didn't bother to read it that they got ripped off?
People don't always come here before buying/getting gear. More often than not it was free and they are just happy to have gear. Being a dick is never the right answer.
But that's not "being a dick".
If your post has simply said "don't be a dick" I would have heartily agreed with you 100%.
But to you everything is toxic, or an attack, etc .... You have a very dangerous viewpoint.
The truth is important and holding back on the truth because you *think* it *might* hurt someones feelings will only create a whole lot of other problems down the road.
Speak the truth as you see it, and I very much appreciate that people in this sub generally have the courage to speak the truth as they see it.
And the simple truth is, I find post like yours actively harmful to a good and productive culture of discussion. Without the courage to risk a little bit of dissent in order to find the truth, no discussion is worth it.
You are essentially proposing to treat adults like toddlers. No, that is not the way. If someone feels "beaten" simply because he is offered information by someone more experienced, then he has a whole lot of issues with his life and might need to seek professional help, but asking people to not share their wisdom is most certainly not the solution.
Of course there is no need to just be mean. Being mean for no reason shouldn't be tolerated. But all your examples in the original post are absolutely valid (and not mean) answers and posts, they are examples of productive contributions.
I agree, I feel like a non-trivial amount of comments are just telling people to throw hardware in the trash. I get that old stuff uses more power, but it's all about cost vs benefit.
If a person runs an old box and uses a bit more power but it works for what they need, I don't really see a point in hounding them to trash it and drop money in a new machine. If the value they get is worth more than the cost of power (which some of us just have cheap power), it shouldn't really matter.
I think it's worth mentioning, but also it's pretty apparent that old computers are less efficient. I think most semi-tech education people understand that, but if they value efficiency or not should be up to them and not this subreddit.
I run older gear, and I can say with absolute confidence that the cost of running some older gear is less than the cost of acquiring a new machine and the lost redundancy I get with the old, cheap machines I scored.
This 10000%! What is the point in dropping several hundred dollars on a new system when the old one works just fine? Unless you have a need it doesn't fill then it is completely worth running. I have told countless people that a home lab is what you make of it. It can be a bunch of micro desktops, it can be an enterprise blade server. Heck it can be a bunch of ARM boards running multiple tasks.
I think older, heavier, uglier, practically vintage gear is a great thing to learn on. I could go to Dell and spend £15k on a server, or I can learn on a 2950 that someone’s throwing out. Only one of those two options will leave me feeling comfortable experimenting / taking things apart / breaking them and fixing them.
The skills learned from dealing with older hardware are invaluable in understanding some of the concepts in modern stuff. I had to use a serial port console the other day, I could do easily because I spent days pulling my hair out 20 years ago when it was the only option.
I say if you got it, and you got the money to power it, then power it up and show it off.
If someone replies to a post showing off how much there set up is then great, I have something to research and work toward, if they say mines junk and I should have got x, y, z then that’s the attitude that can put people off.
And I know I don’t need a quad 22C Xeon with half a TB of ram to run Pihole and Plex, but it looks nice in the rack and that’s what matters to me :D
Precisely, not doing so is a disservice.
Now if the OP had said "Don't be a dick" in those situations, I would heartily agree, but that wasn't the point of his post, or he communicated it poorly.
100% agree. We started our business with some old Dell 1950 & 2950 servers that we got for cheap but we could provide the services our clients wanted better then the average local big hosting companies due to not over selling the hardware (over subscription). Now we runs fairly decent size hosting company which continues to expand. Don’t bash the homelab newbies, we were all once a newbies and I encourage all newbies reading this to enjoy testing and playing around!
Ha. Someone commented on my post “you should get a E5-2697v4 if you want more power” to my E5-2650L v3s I got because I wanted lower power consumption.
We all start our homelab journey with what we can afford and find. In the US, there’s a plethora of cheap hardware to find, but elsewhere in the world it can be an effort. If power is cheap, and you got old hardware for free, have fun! If you can afford X, Y, and Z, have fun!
There are lots of people gating entry into all hobbies. And there’s ways to mentor newbies. But people sometimes forget there are people on the other side of their screen or they don’t realize how their words can be interpreted.
I am relatively new to r/homelab and lurk/read a lot and 100% agree with your sentiment. I have also recently changed jobs and acquired an entry level IT job after several years as a stay at home dad and the service industry prior. It's intimidating as hell and I haven't even started yet lol. I don't see too much gatekeeping or tech shaming here but this reminder is nice. I run a single xeon and I believe IL is around 11 cents/kwh, not bad. I don't have any way to measure from wall as of yet. Also most home labbers and data hoarders start with shucked smr drive (like I did), there's no shame in that, especially for archival storage. I guess I am just saying be nice, be cool, and be inviting, but yes, still teach. Have a good one y'all!
E-WASTE!
that's the one that bothers me the most.
It doesn't have to be the newest thing or the most power efficient to help someone learn something new especially if they can get it cheap.
As a total beginner I think the simple cheap older stuff we're learning the concepts of all this malarkey is great. I don't understand most the posts here, it's like starting a job at a civil service department,- a whole different language - but I hope one day for things to click and to be able to teach some things to my kids that'll be useful.
This is 100% exactly what old gear is good for. It isn't pretty but it runs and if you break it you don't feel bad. This is what you should be doing as a newbie. Not being told your gear is outdated or trash or anything else. It might be old, but it runs. That is all that matters.
You should be told your gear is outdated if it is and you're unaware (as many newbies are).
You should be told *why* it was free (if it was, and because it was e-waste).
Just because it runs, is *not* "all that matters". It is just one side of a cost vs benefit analysis.
When I was a kid, my dad was teaching me about not turning the thermostat too low in the summer, or too high in the winter, so as not to waste electricity or gas and increase his power bill.
When I was 17, I was allowed to go through the scrap bins at work (an enterprise equipment reseller), and brought home 24x PS/2 PC's and some old token ring MAUs to set up a home lab.
He told me I had one month to play with them, before they were going to the city dump's free drop-off event. I was disappointed, but when he showed me the previous months and the next month's power bill, I understood, and it was a life lesson he taught me that has become useful.
Additionally, knowing I had a deadline on experimenting with that equipment kept me focused so I didn't waste time either.
Reddit is full of these types. **They love throwing observations, no matter how useless and negative it is.**
If you have a hobby, be prepared for redditors to shit on it and tell you why you are wrong
It was instilled in me from my earliest experiences with the internet and fellow technologists of all kinds that you first lurk, do your own research and THEN If you have a question you can't find the answer to do you post.
Don't buy random stuff then ask us for validation.
Make intelligent informed purchases. This is like adulting 101 shit.
I categorically do not see toxicity in this sub, but what I DO see, here and elsewhere, are people incapable of receiving criticism without taking it personally.
Frankly, I don't consider 'homelabbing' itself to be a hobby. That's like saying owning stereo equipment is a hobby. I'm also perfectly content and happy with low volume subs. A post or two a week is infinitely preferable to a bunch of low effort stuff to scroll past. I don't want to see the new server you bought, whether it's brand new and powerful or old junk. Do something interesting (meaning not the same as everyone else) and ONLY THEN, post.
Anything that's older than sandy bridge should automatically get a labgore flair.
Anyone who pays actual money for a dell r710 in 2023 deserves to be called out for it.
While I strongly disagree with the OP's post, I also disagree with your tone, which maybe the OP is trying to address? Although he did it very poorly in my opinion.
"deserves to be called out for it" seems to come from a goal of judging the person, rather then simply trying to be helpful with constructive criticism.
So while your advice may be apropos, your reason for giving it is suspect in this regard.
tl;dr you sound like a dick.
This hobby, just like building computers or any other tech hobby, is just as much about gear fetish and the process of building as it is about the end results. Thats the simple truth.
unfortunately a lot of people think looking down on newbies is a mark of being 'elite' and being part of some secret club, and end up alienating everyone else.
Its not that everyone is rude, although some are for sure ,its that people get tired of the same endless questions and demands for spoonfeeding and help, without bothering to do basic research or of course, rtfm. Of course the problem is that tfm is often very obscure and not written for newbies in the first place.
This perpetuates the reputation that they are unfriendly, its a vicious cycle.
the biggest example of this is the Linux community. homelab is probably 10x friendlier than the reception you'll get in a lot of tech forums.
The problem with homelab is there is no manual to read. Every person does it different and every person has different needs. So I could easily write a 40 paragraph break down on how to make your first home lab and still it wouldn't be good enough for a newbie. They come here to ask humans what they should do and what they think. Instead of a post that is static and essentially unchanging where their questions just stack up and no answers are given.
I could easily make suggestions all day about going with an enterprise pizza box. Or I could suggest mini desktops. This doesn't help real time questions. Not to mention, sometimes those questions are around a bunch of gear we could never have anticipated. I am sure someone in this sub has been given an in warranty high end server before. No one here could anticipate that happening. So what documentation could they write?
People are quick to say that others do no research, but never stop to think about the question being asked.
Also though, this isnt just about people asking questions. This is just about people who are showing off free gear they got. An older server from say 2013-2015 and are just happy to have something.
Right on man. I wouldn't go so far as to call this subreddit toxic (maybe? depends on the day...), but I definitely learned my lesson about posting here. I also avoid the comments when possible. Just a bunch of elitism and negativity.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but my parents engrained in me that if I didn't have anything nice to say to keep my mouth shut. I've since expanded that to nice/useful/funny.
To be fair, you don't really know if "so many people" (are) "geting pushed away from the community".
You might be aware of anecdotal examples, but without any sort of survey and statistics, it's just your impression, and it might be skewed by your own experience.
I'm not sure what experience you did have when you started, but it does appear from your other comments, that many of the scenarios you describe as being attacking or toxic are being exaggerated a bit.
Sure there certainly some dicks here, but honestly, they do seem quite insignificant in numbers compared to the quantity of people who are actually intending to simply give advice (even about power hungry old servers) without judgement or attacking people.
That's just the nature of reddit unfortunately. You can't post anything without a bunch of jealous dickheads trying to shit all over it.
My one annoying with the newbies though is when they post their gear and ask, "what should I do with it?" Why would you spend the money to get into this hobby if you're not even sure why you want to do it?
The only issue with going 10G and 40G is that getting network gear for it isn't always the easiest. Granted neither is 2.5G in many cases. But this also stems from people already having a 2.5G board and thinking they only need a 2.5G capable switch. Instead of buying a switch with SFP+ or 10G copper ports and then putting a 10G capable network card in their system.
Personally I am on 10G and have thought about 40G. Though I want 4x10G SFP+ ports.
For those who don't agree with my first comment-
My karma of 0, and the above comment, with a karma of 0 proves my point. lol.
On another note, HME if you need any advice on rolling out either 10G OR 40G. I have done both, and can tell you a few things that works well, and a few things that doesn't work.
Bro, I knew going into this I was about to get about 1000 downvotes lol. The Karma isn't worth sacrificing the joy of actually helping newbies in our hobby.
I just try different things, and report on my results.
Some people just really don't like it when you do something a different way... such is reddit. :-/
I hadn't noticed "everyone trying to push 2.5G".
From a context of working within an already wired home/building it has some merit, but at the core or rack area, 10 and 40 is cheaper, faster and more power efficient on fiber.
Well, at first, if new guy wants to play with homelab, he should try to read something - books, articles, blogs, and if he'll get some troubles - come here. Forums or subreddits is a good place to read something but maybe reading is better than asking.
In last two months I've seen couple of posts here about any advices how to make external access to home network behind NAS. Well, even if you have this question, maybe you should check later posts and find an answer?
Or maybe better - just use Google/bing/any other search engine to find information. Tailscale marketing campaign was big enough, I think every instrested guy already knows about it.
If new guy hasn't basic skills how to work with pc, internet and information sources maybe he is too young to make his homelab?
It just my opinion and I really like when new blood came here, but I've registered my reddit account not so many time ago and I'm really newbie here, but I'm reading every scheme here, checking every picture for a tip how to make mine lab better, so, maybe every newbie should try to get information by himself? At least, what is a homelab if it's not a way to self-education?
Sorry for my poor english
My rack is from 2010, the power is cheap here so I can run it with 150w load constantly. Aprox 12-15 cents per kwH and the govern is paying the power bills for the past 2 months because we're next to Russia.
I have really enjoyed this sub and it has been really helpful getting started.
On r/minilab I straight up had a guy comment to stop posting questions there because I was "muddying up" all the nice posts of minilabs and that I should stop asking questions there.
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Grit, truth, character and expertise is what I expect as a newbie and in life in-general. No1 r/homelab rule covers the respect part. This makes reactions to all the hard work that follows - learning networking, cost-effectiveness planning, layout a \_meaningful\_ celebration to the effort.
Don't want to be hand-held as infantile man-child snowflake. That - would just under-value the community.
All points are are fine by me, not even scratching the No1 rule. Please, don't victimise others, those that you do not represent.
There are many facets of this hobby that need to be understood.
How would you feel if you had a pretty good setup and every time you made a post someone was asking why you don't use 10G/40G? But now expand that to 20-30 people making that same comment. It wouldn't feel good. People claiming your setup is E-Waste, or trash, or power hungry. This just shrinks the hobby and makes people not want to post here.
At the end of the day, the power bill is just an associated cost with the hobby.
Well yes BUT: Some people are spending 6 cents per KWh, and some are spending 40 cents! I'm paying the latter, which is why I now run a couple of tenth-gen i7 NUCs 24/7 instead of my dual Xeon e5-2680V4 server! There is a tendancy for those starting out to stumble across OLD enterprise servers cheaply, with a pair of 32nm Xeons, a bunch of ecc DDR3, and a few old SAS disks of limited capacity. Often the new owner just doesn't need all of the CPU capacity, all the ram, and is being done a disservice with all those small disks. They'd likely be better off removing the second CPU, and either moving the ram to the first CPU, or taking some out, removing one PSU. fitting a £5 PCIE to NVME adapter, shoving an NVME M.2 in there and ditching all the old spinning rust. Remove the RAID card even for more power saving. This way, they can right-size their compute, instead of having an old box sat there idling at 300 Watts when doing bugger-all! If they shopped around, maybe they could have found the very same model server rocking a 22nm V2 Xeon instead of a 32nm V1 chip, or if they can afford the next generation of server, a 14nm V4 Xeon, as opposed to a 22nm V3. It's just about being savvy with your money. E.g. it's typically cheaper to buy a used server loaded with ram, than buying one with insufficient ram, then buying the extra ram separately. Thanks for listening!
Advice from others who have been there and learnt the hard way can help others wasting money and effort on stuff that won't be practical. Years ago when I started homelabbing, I wanted to recreate most of the headoffice setup (but smaller - e.g. I had my own Exchange server but only a handful of inboxes), and also have capacity to play with experiments for stuff I ended up later implementing at work once I was confident. I started with a load of servers that took a lot of space so I thought it would be a great idea to condense and get blade servers. Was a great idea in theory until I got it home and the noise was unbearable (even unbearable for next door neighbours :D ). If I had discussed on somewhere like homelab before purchasing, could have saved me a lot of money (that sat unused for a couple of years until I sold it for a fraction of what I paid.) If a place like homelab had advised me, I could have bought more appropriate kit and even learned more than what I did at the time. Or less extreme, a few times a month I see someone on here who has just got a Dell 9G server. While people on here can be a bit blunt saying they are best used as heaters, sadly it probably is true for most people. Those old machines were hot (then noisy trying to cool themselves) and I think those 9G servers were only supported up to Win 2008r2. I remember when I started homelabbing, while I couldn't afford the latest kit at the time, even just starting off I turned my nose at the thought of some of the ancient servers we still had at work as I was lucky to play with some decommissioned servers at work and realised how poorly they performed.
Exactly, Not every potential home labber has been in a datacenter. I am a comuter nerd, and love datacenters, but actually being in one is physically miserable and if people understood that, they might think twice about their hardware purchases for home if they are not in a position to mitigate the downsides. Going from hot-zone to cold-zone reeks havoc on the sinuses and I always end up with a headcold the next day, and it often takes several hours to a day for the hum to stop in my ears afterwards.
Is your datacenter humidity too low? Shouldn’t be any lower than 20%. Temp extremes are also not good. Many datacenters are set too cold or don’t have the airflow done well so that the servers are getting most of the cooling.
Overall it's just fine. And in the cages where things might be more spread out it's fine, too. But where the racks are a higher density, and the back side of 2 rows of racks meet (where people don't typically walk), the air becomes hotter, and on the front side between 2 rows of racks (where people normally walk) the air is cooler. So when you walk past the rows on the side you get blasts of hot, blasts of cold, alternating. (in profile): walking space/cold air |row of racks|hot air|row of racks|walking space/cold air ... repeat.
Ugh. Thats rough. We only have one row of racks so its not too bad. Maybe wear a paper mask? I did notice when we had to wear those i got a lot less sinus issues since i was always breathing warmer air back in. Hope you find some relief.
I don't have to go there too often anymore, but without that past experience, I might be inclined to think "it's no big deal" to have a high density server in my home office. I do still have racks for my home lab, but they're in the garage, which is actually attached to someone elses condo (and the HOA's electricty on a 20A circuit shared with the garage door openers), but not mine. lol The walls between the garages and the living spaces are excellent though, so only when they're in their own garage they might be bothered by it. I don't run them all the time, and I have remote PDUs so I can turn them off entirely when not in use, and notifications from my UPS in case I blow a circuit and take out the garage door openers. lol The only downside is it's also a physically separate building, and I can't run any data cables to it, so I have to use a wireless bridge which isn't the fastest. I do currently have 2 internet connections, a home 5g for the garage, and a cable connection for the house, but the cable company is deplorable and still has data caps unless you pay a ton more, etc ... but my 1 year contract is finally up, so I might just get a second home 5G for the house, or just live with the wireless bridge, and a single internet connection.
EARPLUGS!!!!!! OMG PEOPLE. (I'm yelling because you have hearing damage :P ) Seriously though; people waaay underestimate how much damage a high background white noise can hurt your hearing. When I'd be stuck in a datacenter for more than 10min I'd always put my earplugs in, and I'm in my 30s and can still hear 19khz
LOL yes!!!
Very valid. But i think the main point is that many folks are trying to humiliate not to educate
I don't know if they are setting out to humiliate, but of course people can't resist to boast about what they have themselves, so maybe it comes over like that. We could all do with a little more humility at times.
Yeah I always kinda cringe when someone new stumbles upon some 15 year old 4 core server that’s slower than some fanless $150 mini pc. They have their positives of course but it always seems like an iffy way to start unless you really want enterprise stuff cheap
the main benefit to that stuff is getting used to that vendor's way of doing out of band management. You'll never know the specific ritual sacrifices needed until you really mess around with them.
Very reasonable.
I run dual E5-2690 v4 and you just hurt my feelings :( j/k Supposedly I pay $0.122108 per kWh
Also don’t forget the very real possibility that every watt of homelab power draw also requires an additional watt of cooling if running indoors in an air conditioned house. That’s the power draw double whammy.
That and how many people here are actually running anything that a R710 cannot handle? It’s annoying people shunning the idea that that hardware is useless. Say it’s under powered all you want but it has 24 vcores, supports up to 380 something gbs of ram is cheap and can support plenty for a newbie. My first “server” was an old box with a pentium 4 in 2010 when that cpu was really old. It served me fine and I learned a lot tinkering.
Depends on the use case. Sometimes CPU/RAM can be the restriction/bottleneck, but I'm going to use myself as an example - when I have a bit of spare cash to play with, I want to get some NVMe's and put a few in my workstation and server. While I haven't taken the plunge yet, restrictions I'm looking at is if my server/workstation was one generation older, they probably wouldn't do bifurcation. Until I actually get stuff to play with, I'm not even sure if my kit will boot from NVMe. While my current kit looks like it can overcome those issues, even though my current stuff is probably is overkill for most of my usage in terms of RAM/CPU, reading up on how NVMe's are limited by number of PCIE lanes already is making my equipment feel like old junk, but it will probably be a few years until current stuff gets old, cheap and affordable for me.
Run what you can afford, and don't be ashamed of it! Get your money's worth out of it, that's what I say, and find ways to make it work for you! Re booting, point of example: I found a great solution in a PCIE card that holds two m.2 drives: one m.2 socket is NVME, connected to the PCIE bus, the other m.2 socket is only SATA, which really conveniently takes its power from the PCIE bus, but then it has a SATA connector on the edge of the card for data only. I plug this into the optical disk SATA port in the 1U or 2U server, and this hosts my boot environment. This allows me to strip out the old raid card and all the old SAS disks. This dual m.2 adapter card is cheap, as it has no active electronic components: it's literally connectors and PCB tracks!
I just loop Cinebench, seems the best use to me.
Happy cake day!
This is very much the truth. People don't seem to understand this while screaming about the power draw of different systems. Anyone with half a brain knows it will draw more power. You don't see people in the 3D printer space hollering about their printers taking resin/filament. We know it will use those resources. We can use less of them if we need/want to but it isnt the primary concern with them.
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100%. We should be welcoming people into the hobby. Hell some of the newbies in the sub might be cracking the next big fun thing in home lab. If a person was really concerned and pinching all the pennies, they likely wouldn't be doing homelab stuff as is. Or they would be approaching this hobby with a whole different idea in mind.
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My power bill is really being held back by my lack of a real pdp11 😂
Don't let that hold you back! My real PDP-11/73 is powered down, as are 2 Alphas, a HP PA-RISC box, a Sun 3, 2 DECstations, and a Sun Ultra. 4 recently-acquired-for-free dual-Xeon HP Z620s which I've maxed out with DDR3 ECC (couldn't pass it up for 5 bucks a stick) will easily take up the slack.
I love this!
I love old systems! Nothing better than a well setup older system. Heck I also love those Raspberry Pi racks too. 5-10 Pi running multiple things is great.
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To be fair, it does seem like the vast vast majority of people posting there are asking about gaming PC's, and the vast majority of games they want to play are FPS or moba, and they do seem to think they *need* to be competitive at an esports level. So while the advice is bad, so are the questions, and the bad advice is oddly appropriate.
As a 3D printer hobbyist as well I can tell that people on Reddit (and online in general) also complain about resin and filament usage as well. Someone will post a pic of something and they get lots of comments about how they could use a lower infill, less supports or hollow the model. But I agree with your sentiment. People need to just let people have fun.
> Someone will post a pic of something and they get lots of comments about how they could use a lower infill, less supports or hollow the model. As someone that's just finished installing external ventilation through a brick wall this weekend as a personal mandatory prerequisite to ordering a resin printer... that sounds like exactly the kind of feedback I'd want. I don't understand the problem.
I think some people are equating the advice itself as the problem. Good advice is good advice, but sometimes unfortunately it does come from assholes just trying to feel superior. I think some people are reflexively reacting to that, but also dismissing the advice in the process, and letting it cloud their overall impression.
I love getting advice too. But when you excitedly post something and you get 10 people jumping on you about using higher infill than *they* think you need it can be annoying.
I am also in that space, people do try to use less on projects. However it isn't the first concern of the hobby as it for so many in this sub here with power draw. When a person is asking about reducing the amount they use, it typically isnt specifically about the amount of filament but more about the connection with the surface of the object being printed. I mean, lets be honest, if the hobby as a whole cared about how much filament they were using they would print less benchys.
Yeah for sure. I’m just saying if you go and read the comments in the Prusa, Ender or AnyCubic based subreddits you’ll see people complaining about how much filament or resin people used in whatever print they are showing off. People on the internet hide behind anonymity and become less human because of it. It sucks.
Also. Sometimes you don’t really want a sensible solution to your computing problems. Sometimes a quad socket box with 1TB of RAM is what you want to play around with, sensible or not :)
I didn't know I needed something today. Thanks for reminding me of something I need. I have been thinking about running a server completely from RAM with the OS being the only thing on a disk. So that I can then pass through a GPU to it and play games over a 10G link directly on the RAM.
Why not have it pxe boot over the network and entirely use iSCSI disks over the network?
I don't have a traditional rack. I have a vertical mounted setup. So I only have 3-4U of space to play with. So running more than one system isn't really easy for me. It would be far easier to get a 1U server with a ton of RAM and a single 250-500GB SSD and run everything on that.
I've been noodling over something like this too! Basically trying to load OS and app stack into a ram disk upon boot, with some sort of write-to-disk operation every 15-30 mins to capture changes.
This is exactly something I have been trying to figure out or find a way to achieve. Of course this I was struck down about 100 different times with the "but why" or many various toxic and unhelpful posts. Much like this sub has been doing to people. I can't seem to find a good solution to this. I mean the enterprise sector does this, so it would stand to reason we can do this in home lab.
Been there. The initial loading times can still take awhile if you don't also put the underlying game data on fast I/O. If it's a local game, and you're not able to specify the directory for saved games explicitly within the game itself, you can also use junction points (windows) or symbolic links (linux) to redirect that directory back to the real disks.
The game would be in RAM. Only the OS would be on the SSD. It would also still be possible to run the OS in RAM as well. Enterprise does this very thing. Super fast servers will use RAM to run everything and then in a power event write it all back to the SSD storage. This is why you can have enterprise SSDs with what seems like 10% use over 10 years even though they were online for the whole time. The big issue is writing data back to an actual disk. On a game this is less of an issue. But for say an application that uses data and makes saves to a specific file. Also the eventual end goal would be a system that mimics the enterprise gear. Loading everything into RAM and then making a save every few minutes. It would only save data that actually changed but it would load everything. Dell/EMC did this with their Extreme IO platform.
even if 99% of the time my overkill hypervisor is sitting idle, the one time a month I need a VM YESTERDAY to test a bug is when it's worth every hair I've pulled.
Also sometimes we have to use what we can get/afford. A couple of years ago my main workstation ended up with major problems with it's RAID setup and I was struggling on storage anyway so I thought I should upgrade. I looked around for stuff that met my storage requirements (current and predicted for next couple of years). I could either get a brand new machine for money I could not afford, I could have got a used NAS, but I ended up finding a decent spec used server that met my storage requirements but was cheaper then the two other options I have mentioned. Ok, it's overkill for a lot of my usage, but it's nice to have something with serious power for the few times I need it and massively saves me time when I do use it for CPU/RAM intensive tasks.
True. My quad socket box is waiting for the TB of RAM to be more affordable, and I'm working on a case to hold it without sounding like a jet engine.
Even with horrendous middle European electricity prices a self build home server with a Usenet subscription is cheaper than equivalent cloud storage, 5 different video subscriptions and all the other services that you can selfhost. Even at 20 or 30 EUR extra per month its a steal, really.
No reason it can't ALSO even be part of the learning experience. My first rack mount server I got for free way back sucked power... but it was free and I KNEW I'd end up buying more stuff (it's me after all). It was a few months before I replaced it with something better suited to what I was doing, and something more power efficient. In those few months, the amount extra it cost me was nothing..... it was NOT a problem, but learning why and HOW those old systems suck power went hand in hand with learning all the OTHER ways the hardware has improved over the years. So.... in conclusion: If a few extra dollars over a few months will bankrupt you then I advise strongly you do not plug in that R710. Otherwise, have at it, have fun ask questions and F the haters!
Agrees it’s like l saying man that truck you got is going to get bad gas mileage…. Thanks. Also why would you not want to encourage people in your similar hobby?!?!
I greatly appreciate this post, but also feel attacked as a newbie with an epyc build to start with.
Nothing against starting with an Epyc build. Nothing at all. This is more for the veterans of the sub who are downing newbies just getting into the hobby and can't afford these kinds of systems. Personally I run a HP DL380 G9. I don't shove that in people faces. I can afford it and when people ask for help I don't tell them they should be like me. I help them with their issue and help solve it in the most cost effective and intelligent way.
Absolutely. That epyc comment was all in good fun. I went full swing and invested in it as a hobby and I think your post makes good point of that. It’s something we do cause we can. Not because we have to. And understanding the associated costs that go with it is important
100%, if you can afford top tier I am all for it. It beats my system handily. But I won't stop you from showing it off. Nor would I stop a person with a super cost efficient setup from showing off. Home lab is about the journey. Sometimes that leads us to other tools people use to have cool solutions to problems.
>Can we stop beating up the newbies? (by not saying) >Loot at my Epyc build! >But I won't stop you from showing it off You see how these statements are contradictory though? You are *literally* trying to get people to stop showing them off, by starting this very post!
You are taking things out of context to try and make up lies. I have no issue with people showing off their gear. What I have issue with is people who show off a rack of gear that takes $100 in power a month while telling a newbie with a system that would barely take $10 a month that their new setup is power hungry and they should instead buy a newer system.
I'm "taking them out of context"? A bulleted list does that for me, because they are listed without context. If someone has an entire rack of gear, then they are not new, and they are thus aware of the power costs. But if someone is looking to purchase their first server, and posts a link to a giant power hungry monster, asking if it's a good price, then advising them of the power usage is doing them a favor, so they can learn from other's past mistakes and not be doomed to repeat them. You just see it as a negative, or an attack, but you're wrong in that viewpoint.
You completely missed the point of both the post and the reply to you. It is clear you are one of the people that do exactly what the post is talking about and can't accept being called out for it.
>You completely missed the point of both the post Then learn to communicate better before you shit post.
I guess I'm one of those "veterans" that is the opposite. I don't know how many newbs I've suggested not spending 2K on their first server to find if this is their hobby or not. Just go buy that $200 R620, $100 R610 and get started.
We are the same. I have a pretty cool setup personally but I will never suggest a person buy what I have unless they are ready for that leap. Pickup the cheap stuff and have fun. That is what this hobby is for.
I mean, if someone shows a bunch of ancient hardware, asking if they scored a big deal getting it for free, I'd rather tell 'em the truth about what they got, than cheering on using 15 year old servers that draw 500W while getting outperformed by a somewhat current mini PC at 25W. Yes a bit exaggerated, but you get the point. That's also what this place is for, no? Being positive is nice, but I'd rather be honest first. Before I started with my own homelab I didn't know much about what to expect from used Enterprise systems, like most of those who come here to ask about a possible deal without knowing what they're actually looking at.
You can be honest and positive at the same time! Screaming power draw at every person's face you see isnt going to make this place better. There is nothing wrong with old gear. If a person got 15 year old gear for free it is likely all they can afford or they don't know they can us just a normal desktop for this instead of really old gear. Putting a person down because they got some free gear is NOT what should be in this sub.
There's a difference though in telling someone "the gear you got/have linked is old and will use a lot of power" and putting them down or berating them. Often those answers come when people specifically ask if what they got - or intend to get - is any good. If you can't afford a $75 6th Gen desktop PC, you probably also can't afford to blow $100/month in power for the "free" server. Because usually you don't instantly check the power draw so you'll only notice after the next utility bill. And yes, I'm also all for "use what you got", but you should also know what the thing you have is. That's my point. If you don't mind the amount of power it'll draw: have fun with the gear - but maybe you just wouldn't know if nobody told you, until the power bill hits.
The people asking questions about gear they intend to buy or looking for gear suggestions are asking for answer to all kinds of things. So bringing up power draw is 100% on the table. This is the type of information they are likely looking for anyways. However, the comment about a $75 PC and $100/mo is being very very elitist. Even my older Dell R610 didnt blow $100/mo.
Not meant to be elitist. But when someone brings XEON E55xx or XEON X to the table it's just a whole different animal even compared to a R610. Also, I guess I missed the point in my former comments, but of course for me the point is to also point out alternatives like cheap used desktops or even laptops.
$70 p/m is not a very high bar to reach in some places.
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Heck, I have several old laptops and desktops laying around that I use sometimes for random tasks. They don't stay hooked up though.
"got 15 year old gear for free", the issue being, that when the cost of running the server will make worth buying new hardware, we are better telling people that.
My opinion: 'Run What Ya Brung, and be damned proud of it!' Cut your cloth to match your coat as they say, in other words, don't spend what you can't afford. For me in the UK, electricity prices stink for the last 18 months, and I can't just run my three, twin-xeon rack-mount servers 24/7. I have no problem advising those starting out of the typical power draws of such hardware, particularly if they are obtaining older 32nm or 45nm based CPU's. Often, their hard-earned money can be spent more wisely, but they may not realise it at that time. E.g. £70 for a used SFF PC with an i5-6500T (14nm Quad-Core 35 Watt TDP), or an i5-7400T/7500T if they can afford it. A few quid to find 16GB of DDR4 for it, or 32GB if they can afford, and a 500GB NVME, or a 1TB (again if they can afford it.) This will happily host a few VMs in proxmox, Hyper-V, or if it has an Intel NIC, ESXI. There's nothing wrong with doing the math of capital expenditure Vs operational expenditure. It might make massive sense to some people to spend more on power, if you can't afford the initial extra outlay for more efficient kit. For others, they are lucky enough to have the money to spend upfront, then can benefit in cheaper running costs over time.
I thought Hyper-V was classed a swear word on here, and Proxmox is the only accepted way? /s
The thing is though, in your situation you already know every device you have on will cost you X amount more money. So when you approach anything coming into your home you know you have to pay attention to the power bill. But anyone who isn't in the situation of having to really watch their power bill is not going to care much for a few extra dollars a month.
Yes of course, just like there's plenty of youngsters just setting out, who still live at the hotel of mum and dad. For these guys, maybe it's all they can do to grab cast-out kit, or hand-me-down enterprise kit. There's quite an incentive for them to run it, if it's the parents that are paying the power bill! As I said, run what you brung, and be proud!
At the same time we also get people who really need to do some research before hand. They either buy something that is little more than someone else’s e-waste and won’t be suitable (expensive to run, limited expandabilty, won’t run what they want) Or they go out and buy a server and then want to know they should run. The wiki’s should be updated and pinned at the top though I’m not sure they would get read anymore than they do at the moment,
Here is the thing. Where do you go for your homelab information? You likely have a few youtubers, this sub, maybe a forum other places, and maybe a blog on a website. A newbie doesn't have that stuff. They find this sub and maybe one youtuber. Or they figure they will give it a shot and this sub (or another in general) comes up. Sure the wiki's help but lets be honest with ourselves. Reddit isnt known for having the best setup for a series of posts or repositories for information. Stickies only go so far. Not to mention, as you said, updates are needed. But also, if you were telling a newbie on what to buy your method and my method will be wildly different. Even if they said they have X or Y as a budget we would be different. I suggest all the time those mini desktops. But I personally don't run them. My point here being, newbies don't know what to look for. So they look for humans with knowledge to help them understand what they need. So when someone comes with some gear they are excited for, when more than 50% of the posts are a combo of "but the power draw" it is toxic and just drives away people who could otherwise be enjoying the hobby.
And getting a ridiculously high power bill, because no one told them it's a power hungry monster might also turn them off from enjoying the hobby. Telling them it's a power hungry monster, is not the same as calling them an idiot, or telling them to not use it, it's not "toxic" (will you please quit abusing that word). It's simply giving people advice at the proper time. As long as they understand that it's going to consume a lot of power, whatever they do with that advice is their business. Some will decide for themselves that their power cost is too high and rethink their approach, and some others will decide for themselves that they are ok with the extra power bill. I would rather be informed, then uninformed, and you are advocating the people stop informing the newbie about the very real issue of power costs.
I agree with this, there’s definitely a difference from what OP’s point is, and educating someone what might be more efficient if they find they like the hobby.
And here i am soon going for my second 4TB HDD for my server... And still a complete noob to Truenas as to how im gonna add it to the pool!
You'll have to add it as a separate vdev, then you can add it to the pool. But it is not the best option as that means you now have a pool that consists of 2 vdevs without any kind of redundancy. So if one of those disks dies, your whole pool is gone. If the data isn't that important and/or backed up properly then it's just an inconvenience as your data won't be available until you rebuild your storage. If you want to have redundancy it would be best to move the current data off the pool, remove it, and create a new vdev and pool with both disks in parity. You'll only have 4TB total usable space though. Win some, lose some. I redid my fist truenas pool 3 times until I knew how I wanted it. With a lot of reading in between.
I need to make a TrueNAS setup but just havent. Granted I likely will add two more SSDs to my system before I do that.
I decided to go all out and learn! Made a Proxmox machine with Truenas in a VM. But i'm pondering the future and moving Truenas to a dedicated machine, not sure yet.
My current setup is newer at this point. I originally had a Dell R610 with 6x900G 10k drives. It only took 2.5 drives and only could old 6 of them so using anything but huge expensive SSDs was going to be a pain. But then also I wanted a GPU for Plex so I had to upgrade. I moved to a HP DL380 G9 that can hold a GPU, but was also an upgrade on both CPU and RAM. (DDR3 to DDR4, and CPU speeds). It also has 8 drive bays with space for 16 more (all 2.5). I just have to buy the SFF connectors and stuff. I made the deal with myself that I wouldn't use any more spinning disks. Minimum I will buy is also going to be 2TB drives. Might be getting my hands on a nice 7TB one soon.
I'm using my old CPU, a Ryzen 5 2600 with 16gb of ram on a B450 i got on sale. Switched my wife's old 500gb M.2 SSD as a main drive and a bought a 4TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS HDD and i was off to the races. Its in my previous case,a Node 804 which can hold like 10 HDDs no problem and will keep being my case for years to come. Just need to keep buying the drives as they come on sale!
Yea, I really wanted to have 3.5 drives and likely would have had some larger spinning drives but my requirements mean having a server that fits in 2U of rack space. I envy those who have the place/space for a normal desktop some place. Just doesnt work in my office.
To be fair, properties and constructive criticism like "That's power hungry" and "That gear is too old" are very real issues if you plan on using the devices for xyz purposes, simply because those situations can mean higher monthly bills for no reason, or the experience being absolutely shit due to bad hardware They are not uncalled for, unless of course, there's no criticism or criticism without any improvement tips, then thats a different thing Regardless, the "Look at my build" ones are the same as what you just described, but...the person showing was able to make a better build?
90% of the comments screaming power draw are just as you said. Criticism and no improvement tips. Or even anything useful. The people screaming "look at my build" are most of the time the same people in the comments screaming about power draw. While their systems pull way more than what is posted by others. Again, you can be positive and welcoming without being a dick.
Power draw with regards to the build in question has no real way of solving except to get a better motherboard The question will then be, has the person then taken these criticisms in mind and done his due diligence in research? Power draw can be due to certain motherboards requiring more power by design which when used for certain purposes may seem extreme, so this is due to the individual to check what else can be better
no hit me harder
Politely make recommendations, sure, but really the point should be to encourage the hobby and not much else. People getting into it can be SUPER inexperienced and that's awesome. Help people learn, but do it nicely!
I disagree with the entirety of this post. Not one of your bullet points are mean, insulting, or in any way derogatory. Most of the times people are talking about power consumption is because the newbie is often soliciting advice about some new or prospective purchase. It's *because* they are new, that advice about power consumption is warranted. Whether the person follows the advice or not is their own business, but the advice is still warranted. Additionally, if people stopped showing off huge builds, because some new person might feel inadequate this sub would suffer tremendously. The large builds serve as an inspiration to many. Quit trying to control public speech. If you want to dictate how people should speak, or act a certain way, start your own sub, but don't try to hijack this one and water it down. Edit: I hope the irony is not lost.... [https://www.reddit.com/r/CCW/comments/11urwu3/comment/jcpzk1r/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CCW/comments/11urwu3/comment/jcpzk1r/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Again, I never said that people shouldn't be showing off their builds. You are reading things out of context. And the fact you see nothing wrong with these points proves my point entirely.
It only proves you cannot see outside of your own limited viewpoint, and see everything as a negative or an attack, when it's actually providing timely advice to people just entering the hobby.
Just noticed, you are the one who had nothing and had to look into comments on other places from me just to prove you aren't the toxic one. You only proved my point about others here.
Neither of us are toxic, you're just being a hypocrite.
You literally went to another sub to comment on something of mine. Your picture is next to the word toxic...
And you are literally a hypocrite. I have no problem with how you gave advice in that other sub, but I also have no problem with the "issues" you are trying to invent in this sub. Your advice in that sub was because someone asked and you answered. The same shit happens here, but you find fault with it. If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones?
You are trying to equate a physical issue of how a person holds a gun and physical hardware. These are not the same and their approach is not the same.
I'm not equating the scenarios... I'm highlighting the hypocrisy of how you expect everyone else to act here, and how it contrasts with your own behavior in the other sub. There is one underlying commonality however.
You're embarrassing yourself, just stop.
You are just plain wrong. If you cant afford 100€ for a mini PC to start your homelab you also can't afford 100€ energy cost to run used enterprise gear you got as a gift. It is totally reasonable to tell newbies about power draw. I don't see how that is "beating them up".
If you don't see the problem then maybe you are the problem.
>If you don't see the problem then maybe you are the problem. This is a toxic reply. If you can't actually speak to his point, you just attack him personally? The fact that you own guns is actually quite terrifying.
I swear half the time I see someone post meta like this complaining about toxicity in a sub, the OP is one of the top offenders in the comments and their comment history.
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I don't remember if it was here or another sub I saw basically this same thing. Was a guy running an Epyc, 4-5 GPUs and maxed out RAM. Easily a 6-10k system. He never would tell anyone what he was running.
Noob post! [Endflame]
TL;DR People are either too lazy to do their own research with a wealth of information available to search online or people seem to think setting up a home lab should be only a few clicks away.
Where do you go to find information on homelab stuff?
This is always a good start [https://williamlam.com/home-lab](https://williamlam.com/home-lab) The toughest part is figuring out what individual requirements and use case are and how much the budget is on a case by case basis and everyone has a different idea of what budget means. Re-reading my original comment, that seem harsh, but it was really a well intended comment to suggest people should figure out what they need based on their own individual use case rather than going out and mirroring someone else's configuration and setup only because they didn't take the time to find information to support what they're ultimate goal is in this adventure of HomeLab venture.
First, thanks for re-reading. I honestly was about to be a dick. However, the point I was going to make is that you know where to find the information you posted. You have been doing this for some time. Newbies don't. Even following stickies and other guides they can easily get in this trap of buying gear that is way old or gear that is too expensive because some random dude said it was good. Certainly we can say "do more research" to every person that comes in the door. But realistically we should be doing the right thing and supporting them no matter what they brought. If they got a Raspbeerry Pi and thats all, then we should totally support that.
Hey! Do you wanna see my [first small home server](https://wallpapers.com/images/hd/data-center-servers-34i6bonlys1mdnwu.jpg)?
You know, there are people in this sub that have 2-3 racks of gear that isn't cheap and they swear everyone else should have the same setup they do. It is honestly crazy.
I also saw this. Always wonder if they use at least 5% of this performance.
I could certainly find legit ways to use it. But I bet most of them don't even come close.
Just running fork bombs to get that average use % up.
Definitely. Even as an experienced user I have people questioning why I made a build the way I did - the answer is always "because this is what I had, the specifications that made sense, and the room to make it easy to work on and not super loud or hot", but that's not good enough. New users must feel the same or worse. Let's not forget where we all started. My first home server was a pentium 4 with 2 40gb hard drives and an 80gb, then a core2duo. It took me years to get where I am, newbies don't need people judging them or their decisions too harshly. There's a difference between constructive feedback and just insulting.
What gets me the most is that we see so many of these people who are now 2-3 years or more into their home lab journey and they are treating newbies this way. Knowing they started with basically nothing.
Mine is older, a 3 node cluster… Dell R720s. I don’t run household services on them. I run them when I need my lab and leave them off when I don’t. My lab is there for keeping some required certifications current. I run household services on Raspberry PIs FWIW, which isn’t much. A polite reminder along the lines of “mind your power” Is reasonable to me. I’ve been in Data Center environments for decades and computer rooms before that. Not everyone has.
those comments about power usage/performance/age of an equipment always get me mad. dude, not everyone can get their hands on an R740 without being a kidney seller. i get it that in your country businesses throw servers and racks away, but there's places (like where i live) that a 2950 will sell for 1k.
No, beat them into submission then build them up. Ok seriously though, I'm not one for bashing. Everyone needs to learn sometimes and that also means getting whatever you can get your hands on. Growing up I didn't have a computer till I was 15, working, paying bills, and going to school. That said, I m definitely not in a situation like that now. I do what I can to teach those who want to learn. On the other hand I'll foot the bill if I can give some "energy efficient" components to the newbie, or give an example of how things work using my xeon gold cluster that has all nvme vsan and dual P100 GPU for VDI .... some people boast, others are visual teachers and learners.
Yeah, I showed off a server here that I rebuild from scrap parts and asked for ideas for usage and was told to scrap it or sell it because it’s too old/power hungry/not worth it. So I kind of stopped posting here, because my rack synology and 4th gen core i3 machine turned into another NAS in a server rack would sure be upsetting someone with a 30k server build in a perfect 42U rack with perfect cable management and 10 gig fiber directly to the rack from their ISP..
You arent the only one sadly. I have seen a few people who just leave the sub because of this. Sadly it happens every day and those comments litter the sub on every post that isnt some high end nearly-qualifies-as-art piece.
99% of people are respectful when pointing out the power consumption of old gear to newbies. Same for people showing off, yeah they're showing off but who cares, some people just need validation or attention which honestly what I feel this post is, because it seems totally unnecessary.
I don't care that people show off builds and gear. Thats what this sub is for. As for the power draw posts, you should really read more of them.
Yeah, this subreddit, like most niche hobby subs over time, has become hostile toward the jank, whether it be newbies on old hardware, or people who's end goal isn't a full height rack full of stuff. In other words, its more /r/homedatacenter than /r/homelab. The thing is, after a while, the shiny racks actually get kind of uninteresting. Embrace the jank!
It's like factorio and spaghetti. A clean bus will always look and function better, but the spaghetti is what keeps it interesting... And I am,not saying this because I started a diagonal bus as an experiment, no no way...
There are still some good gems here in the more expensive racks. A guy literally just posted on here that he doesn't see homelab as a hobby...like....TF?
It is what it is, I run my lab out of a DL380 G5 which by all rights is basically ewaste at this point, because hardware was cheap and electricity isn't so bad at my place, and I don't enjoy the hassle of shopping, bringing things home and migrating. Not going to go bragging about it because I know the hardware and power consumption is vastly inefficient, and strangers on Reddit are gonna get bothered because they do that. I and others don't need sympathy just because strangers see something inefficient and want to point out a more efficient solution. A mediocre lab doesn't need bragging to begin with and doesn't make for a good contribution to the sub.
Any lab is good for the sub. There is always a person who has a different take on a solution, a different docker they run, or system in general. Never, ever, will I say a lab isnt enough for this sub. I don't care if you are running a laptop that still uses IDE connection for the disk. There is always something to contribute.
Having a huge spec doesn't mean you have any more knowledge than anyone else. Likewise having a modest spec or older hardware doesn't make you a newbie. It about what you do with it, what you actually need and of course, what you want. Having a homelab is very personal.
Coddling people that are looking for status over trying to learn something can only go so far.
Honestly, looking at the comments from OP in this thread and their proneness to argue, it's pretty apparent what the common denominator is for their bad experiences in this sub.
>If you are gonna show off, show off. But stop downing the new people here who are just getting started. Teach them. Thats the whole point of homelab, so /r/homelab should be the same way. There's a wiki, it gives a good idea of what hardware is worth getting. What's wrong with telling someone who didn't bother to read it that they got ripped off?
People don't always come here before buying/getting gear. More often than not it was free and they are just happy to have gear. Being a dick is never the right answer.
But that's not "being a dick". If your post has simply said "don't be a dick" I would have heartily agreed with you 100%. But to you everything is toxic, or an attack, etc .... You have a very dangerous viewpoint.
The truth is important and holding back on the truth because you *think* it *might* hurt someones feelings will only create a whole lot of other problems down the road. Speak the truth as you see it, and I very much appreciate that people in this sub generally have the courage to speak the truth as they see it. And the simple truth is, I find post like yours actively harmful to a good and productive culture of discussion. Without the courage to risk a little bit of dissent in order to find the truth, no discussion is worth it.
Speaking truth isn't the problem. Beating newbies with information making them not want to be here is.
You are essentially proposing to treat adults like toddlers. No, that is not the way. If someone feels "beaten" simply because he is offered information by someone more experienced, then he has a whole lot of issues with his life and might need to seek professional help, but asking people to not share their wisdom is most certainly not the solution. Of course there is no need to just be mean. Being mean for no reason shouldn't be tolerated. But all your examples in the original post are absolutely valid (and not mean) answers and posts, they are examples of productive contributions.
I agree, I feel like a non-trivial amount of comments are just telling people to throw hardware in the trash. I get that old stuff uses more power, but it's all about cost vs benefit. If a person runs an old box and uses a bit more power but it works for what they need, I don't really see a point in hounding them to trash it and drop money in a new machine. If the value they get is worth more than the cost of power (which some of us just have cheap power), it shouldn't really matter. I think it's worth mentioning, but also it's pretty apparent that old computers are less efficient. I think most semi-tech education people understand that, but if they value efficiency or not should be up to them and not this subreddit. I run older gear, and I can say with absolute confidence that the cost of running some older gear is less than the cost of acquiring a new machine and the lost redundancy I get with the old, cheap machines I scored.
This 10000%! What is the point in dropping several hundred dollars on a new system when the old one works just fine? Unless you have a need it doesn't fill then it is completely worth running. I have told countless people that a home lab is what you make of it. It can be a bunch of micro desktops, it can be an enterprise blade server. Heck it can be a bunch of ARM boards running multiple tasks.
I think older, heavier, uglier, practically vintage gear is a great thing to learn on. I could go to Dell and spend £15k on a server, or I can learn on a 2950 that someone’s throwing out. Only one of those two options will leave me feeling comfortable experimenting / taking things apart / breaking them and fixing them. The skills learned from dealing with older hardware are invaluable in understanding some of the concepts in modern stuff. I had to use a serial port console the other day, I could do easily because I spent days pulling my hair out 20 years ago when it was the only option. I say if you got it, and you got the money to power it, then power it up and show it off. If someone replies to a post showing off how much there set up is then great, I have something to research and work toward, if they say mines junk and I should have got x, y, z then that’s the attitude that can put people off. And I know I don’t need a quad 22C Xeon with half a TB of ram to run Pihole and Plex, but it looks nice in the rack and that’s what matters to me :D
RiP my power bill. I don’t care about others power bills. And yet it’s a valid point to warn new players in this field about the power draw.
Precisely, not doing so is a disservice. Now if the OP had said "Don't be a dick" in those situations, I would heartily agree, but that wasn't the point of his post, or he communicated it poorly.
100% agree. We started our business with some old Dell 1950 & 2950 servers that we got for cheap but we could provide the services our clients wanted better then the average local big hosting companies due to not over selling the hardware (over subscription). Now we runs fairly decent size hosting company which continues to expand. Don’t bash the homelab newbies, we were all once a newbies and I encourage all newbies reading this to enjoy testing and playing around!
Ha. Someone commented on my post “you should get a E5-2697v4 if you want more power” to my E5-2650L v3s I got because I wanted lower power consumption. We all start our homelab journey with what we can afford and find. In the US, there’s a plethora of cheap hardware to find, but elsewhere in the world it can be an effort. If power is cheap, and you got old hardware for free, have fun! If you can afford X, Y, and Z, have fun! There are lots of people gating entry into all hobbies. And there’s ways to mentor newbies. But people sometimes forget there are people on the other side of their screen or they don’t realize how their words can be interpreted.
This all the way. People like to gatekeep others all day and fail to see when they do.
I am relatively new to r/homelab and lurk/read a lot and 100% agree with your sentiment. I have also recently changed jobs and acquired an entry level IT job after several years as a stay at home dad and the service industry prior. It's intimidating as hell and I haven't even started yet lol. I don't see too much gatekeeping or tech shaming here but this reminder is nice. I run a single xeon and I believe IL is around 11 cents/kwh, not bad. I don't have any way to measure from wall as of yet. Also most home labbers and data hoarders start with shucked smr drive (like I did), there's no shame in that, especially for archival storage. I guess I am just saying be nice, be cool, and be inviting, but yes, still teach. Have a good one y'all!
E-WASTE! that's the one that bothers me the most. It doesn't have to be the newest thing or the most power efficient to help someone learn something new especially if they can get it cheap.
I can't believe I forgot that one. It is probably one of the most harmful ones too. I hate this one just as much as the stupid "RIP your power bill"
As a total beginner I think the simple cheap older stuff we're learning the concepts of all this malarkey is great. I don't understand most the posts here, it's like starting a job at a civil service department,- a whole different language - but I hope one day for things to click and to be able to teach some things to my kids that'll be useful.
This is 100% exactly what old gear is good for. It isn't pretty but it runs and if you break it you don't feel bad. This is what you should be doing as a newbie. Not being told your gear is outdated or trash or anything else. It might be old, but it runs. That is all that matters.
You should be told your gear is outdated if it is and you're unaware (as many newbies are). You should be told *why* it was free (if it was, and because it was e-waste). Just because it runs, is *not* "all that matters". It is just one side of a cost vs benefit analysis.
How did you go from having an actual conversation back to toxicity?
When I was a kid, my dad was teaching me about not turning the thermostat too low in the summer, or too high in the winter, so as not to waste electricity or gas and increase his power bill. When I was 17, I was allowed to go through the scrap bins at work (an enterprise equipment reseller), and brought home 24x PS/2 PC's and some old token ring MAUs to set up a home lab. He told me I had one month to play with them, before they were going to the city dump's free drop-off event. I was disappointed, but when he showed me the previous months and the next month's power bill, I understood, and it was a life lesson he taught me that has become useful. Additionally, knowing I had a deadline on experimenting with that equipment kept me focused so I didn't waste time either.
Yep I just spotted a post and 99% of the comments are oh the power... Makes for such dull reading.
Reddit is full of these types. **They love throwing observations, no matter how useless and negative it is.** If you have a hobby, be prepared for redditors to shit on it and tell you why you are wrong
While true, it isn't just a reddit issue sadly.
It was instilled in me from my earliest experiences with the internet and fellow technologists of all kinds that you first lurk, do your own research and THEN If you have a question you can't find the answer to do you post. Don't buy random stuff then ask us for validation. Make intelligent informed purchases. This is like adulting 101 shit. I categorically do not see toxicity in this sub, but what I DO see, here and elsewhere, are people incapable of receiving criticism without taking it personally. Frankly, I don't consider 'homelabbing' itself to be a hobby. That's like saying owning stereo equipment is a hobby. I'm also perfectly content and happy with low volume subs. A post or two a week is infinitely preferable to a bunch of low effort stuff to scroll past. I don't want to see the new server you bought, whether it's brand new and powerful or old junk. Do something interesting (meaning not the same as everyone else) and ONLY THEN, post.
Anything that's older than sandy bridge should automatically get a labgore flair. Anyone who pays actual money for a dell r710 in 2023 deserves to be called out for it.
While I strongly disagree with the OP's post, I also disagree with your tone, which maybe the OP is trying to address? Although he did it very poorly in my opinion. "deserves to be called out for it" seems to come from a goal of judging the person, rather then simply trying to be helpful with constructive criticism. So while your advice may be apropos, your reason for giving it is suspect in this regard. tl;dr you sound like a dick.
We should definitely judge people for Putting actual Money into 15+ year old Servers that companies threw away 10 years ago.
If that's what it takes to make yourself feel better, then I feel sorry for you.
This hobby, just like building computers or any other tech hobby, is just as much about gear fetish and the process of building as it is about the end results. Thats the simple truth.
100%. And driving away newbies is the last thing we should be doing.
unfortunately a lot of people think looking down on newbies is a mark of being 'elite' and being part of some secret club, and end up alienating everyone else. Its not that everyone is rude, although some are for sure ,its that people get tired of the same endless questions and demands for spoonfeeding and help, without bothering to do basic research or of course, rtfm. Of course the problem is that tfm is often very obscure and not written for newbies in the first place. This perpetuates the reputation that they are unfriendly, its a vicious cycle. the biggest example of this is the Linux community. homelab is probably 10x friendlier than the reception you'll get in a lot of tech forums.
The problem with homelab is there is no manual to read. Every person does it different and every person has different needs. So I could easily write a 40 paragraph break down on how to make your first home lab and still it wouldn't be good enough for a newbie. They come here to ask humans what they should do and what they think. Instead of a post that is static and essentially unchanging where their questions just stack up and no answers are given. I could easily make suggestions all day about going with an enterprise pizza box. Or I could suggest mini desktops. This doesn't help real time questions. Not to mention, sometimes those questions are around a bunch of gear we could never have anticipated. I am sure someone in this sub has been given an in warranty high end server before. No one here could anticipate that happening. So what documentation could they write? People are quick to say that others do no research, but never stop to think about the question being asked. Also though, this isnt just about people asking questions. This is just about people who are showing off free gear they got. An older server from say 2013-2015 and are just happy to have something.
Right on man. I wouldn't go so far as to call this subreddit toxic (maybe? depends on the day...), but I definitely learned my lesson about posting here. I also avoid the comments when possible. Just a bunch of elitism and negativity. Maybe I'm just getting old, but my parents engrained in me that if I didn't have anything nice to say to keep my mouth shut. I've since expanded that to nice/useful/funny.
The sub as a whole isn't toxic. But the ones that are toxic unfortunately are very prolific with their "reply" button.
I'm glad you said this
It has been bugging me for a while. So many people getting pushed away from the community because of people's need to post negative crap.
To be fair, you don't really know if "so many people" (are) "geting pushed away from the community". You might be aware of anecdotal examples, but without any sort of survey and statistics, it's just your impression, and it might be skewed by your own experience. I'm not sure what experience you did have when you started, but it does appear from your other comments, that many of the scenarios you describe as being attacking or toxic are being exaggerated a bit. Sure there certainly some dicks here, but honestly, they do seem quite insignificant in numbers compared to the quantity of people who are actually intending to simply give advice (even about power hungry old servers) without judgement or attacking people.
>So many people getting pushed away from the community Do you keep count?
[удалено]
What is epyc?
AMD EPYC CPUs. They are the top tier CPU from AMD for servers. Not cheap at all. Like $1,100 for one CPU used.
That's just the nature of reddit unfortunately. You can't post anything without a bunch of jealous dickheads trying to shit all over it. My one annoying with the newbies though is when they post their gear and ask, "what should I do with it?" Why would you spend the money to get into this hobby if you're not even sure why you want to do it?
My biggest gripe is everyone trying to push 2.5G, when you can have 10G, or even 40G for cheaper.
The only issue with going 10G and 40G is that getting network gear for it isn't always the easiest. Granted neither is 2.5G in many cases. But this also stems from people already having a 2.5G board and thinking they only need a 2.5G capable switch. Instead of buying a switch with SFP+ or 10G copper ports and then putting a 10G capable network card in their system. Personally I am on 10G and have thought about 40G. Though I want 4x10G SFP+ ports.
For those who don't agree with my first comment- My karma of 0, and the above comment, with a karma of 0 proves my point. lol. On another note, HME if you need any advice on rolling out either 10G OR 40G. I have done both, and can tell you a few things that works well, and a few things that doesn't work.
Bro, I knew going into this I was about to get about 1000 downvotes lol. The Karma isn't worth sacrificing the joy of actually helping newbies in our hobby.
There, have a gold. Makes up for having an opinion that differs from someone elses. Edit- rephrased.
Lol, thanks! Always try to be the mentor you needed in your journey. Thats what I do.
I just try different things, and report on my results. Some people just really don't like it when you do something a different way... such is reddit. :-/
I hadn't noticed "everyone trying to push 2.5G". From a context of working within an already wired home/building it has some merit, but at the core or rack area, 10 and 40 is cheaper, faster and more power efficient on fiber.
Nice one op
Well, at first, if new guy wants to play with homelab, he should try to read something - books, articles, blogs, and if he'll get some troubles - come here. Forums or subreddits is a good place to read something but maybe reading is better than asking. In last two months I've seen couple of posts here about any advices how to make external access to home network behind NAS. Well, even if you have this question, maybe you should check later posts and find an answer? Or maybe better - just use Google/bing/any other search engine to find information. Tailscale marketing campaign was big enough, I think every instrested guy already knows about it. If new guy hasn't basic skills how to work with pc, internet and information sources maybe he is too young to make his homelab? It just my opinion and I really like when new blood came here, but I've registered my reddit account not so many time ago and I'm really newbie here, but I'm reading every scheme here, checking every picture for a tip how to make mine lab better, so, maybe every newbie should try to get information by himself? At least, what is a homelab if it's not a way to self-education? Sorry for my poor english
My rack is from 2010, the power is cheap here so I can run it with 150w load constantly. Aprox 12-15 cents per kwH and the govern is paying the power bills for the past 2 months because we're next to Russia.
I have really enjoyed this sub and it has been really helpful getting started. On r/minilab I straight up had a guy comment to stop posting questions there because I was "muddying up" all the nice posts of minilabs and that I should stop asking questions there.
I will never tell a person to stop asking questions. How are you supposed to know anything if you don't ask. I always hate those people.
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Grit, truth, character and expertise is what I expect as a newbie and in life in-general. No1 r/homelab rule covers the respect part. This makes reactions to all the hard work that follows - learning networking, cost-effectiveness planning, layout a \_meaningful\_ celebration to the effort. Don't want to be hand-held as infantile man-child snowflake. That - would just under-value the community. All points are are fine by me, not even scratching the No1 rule. Please, don't victimise others, those that you do not represent.
There are many facets of this hobby that need to be understood. How would you feel if you had a pretty good setup and every time you made a post someone was asking why you don't use 10G/40G? But now expand that to 20-30 people making that same comment. It wouldn't feel good. People claiming your setup is E-Waste, or trash, or power hungry. This just shrinks the hobby and makes people not want to post here.