The Rules of Building Homelab Servers, and How To Break Them - ZimaBlade 7700 Overview

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  • čas přidán 29. 09. 2023
  • The ZimaBoard was a homelab and tinkerer's dream machine. Cheap, lightweight, and feature-packed. And they sold at a time when Raspberry Pis were basically unobtainable.
    The ZimaBlade is an entirely different response to Single-Board ARM PCs, featuring full x86 CPUs, but priced to compete with even the most affordable hobbyist SBCs. But should you buy one?
    But first... What am I drinking???
    Elysian Brewing (Seattle, WA) Full Contact Imperial Hazy IPA. It's not hazy AT ALL, but it packs just as much citrus and hop flavor you'd swear it was.
    Links to items below may be affiliate links for which I may be compensated
    Check out the ZimaBlade 3760 or ZimaBlade 7700 here: bit.ly/3ZARVW2
    Grab yourself a Pint Glass at craftcomputing.store
    Follow me on Mastodon @Craftcomputing@hostux.social
    Support me on Patreon and get access to my exclusive Discord server. Chat with myself and the other hosts on Talking Heads all week long.
    / craftcomputing
  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 323

  • @DavidAshwell
    @DavidAshwell Před 8 měsíci +112

    If there were an introduction video for the "So you wanna homelab" community, this would be in the running. Well said, well phrased.

  • @floriskooijman6448
    @floriskooijman6448 Před 8 měsíci +42

    Great intro 😊

  • @unlucky1307
    @unlucky1307 Před 8 měsíci +97

    My one bit of advice for anyone really wanting to get into servers, start with an old thinkpad. Built in battery backup, reliable hardware, no need to hook up an additional monitor or keyboard if you have issues remoting in because you're learning and wrecked your SSH config. I had an old 2016 thinkpad running Proxmox for almost a year straight with no downtime that I didn't plan.

    • @user-fs9mv8px1y
      @user-fs9mv8px1y Před 8 měsíci +8

      Its a underrated path to go, for most server stuff you really don't need *that* much CPU. I had a T420 doing some proxmox containers for a while

    • @unlucky1307
      @unlucky1307 Před 8 měsíci +4

      @@SnakebitSTI True, I just said that in particular because I've had spare thinkpads or other laptops laying around for years. But yes, any spare hardware will work to learn, junker laptops are my personal favorite though.

    • @OtherTheDave
      @OtherTheDave Před 8 měsíci +1

      That or a raspberry pi. It really doesn’t take much if you aren’t trying to deal with enterprise loads.

    • @sergarrick
      @sergarrick Před 8 měsíci

      I got started as a teen when my parents broke the screen on their cheap laptop. Great beginner equipment!

    • @dustojnikhummer
      @dustojnikhummer Před 8 měsíci +2

      ​@@SnakebitSTIa 10 year old ThinkPad is much, much more powerful than an RPi

  • @LeminskiTankscor
    @LeminskiTankscor Před 8 měsíci +45

    I had a friend suddenly get into this area of computing.
    I showed him a PiZero W2 taped a wall running Pihole.
    *Behold a server! *

    • @haydenc2742
      @haydenc2742 Před 8 měsíci +1

      My first "server" was an old AMD K6-2, no case...all screwed to a piece of plywood, drives, powersupply, everything...
      I called it my "puter on a stick"
      Noone lets me live it down...LOL
      Heck...my redundant Pi-Hole is a RPIZero2W w/ a POE hat, 2 extra USB drives, I have the Micro SD that has the boot partition (so it retains is boot from SD), a 32gig Sandisk micro fit USB mounted as /, a 64 Sandisk micro fit USB drive mounted as /home, in a 3D printed case, plugged into a cheapo 4 port POE switch I use to feed power to my home camera, stuck in my server closet...and blamo...it's up and running like a boss!

    • @wereoctopus
      @wereoctopus Před 8 měsíci +1

      Diogenes is the best role model.

  • @RubyRoks
    @RubyRoks Před 8 měsíci +27

    Thanks for the reminder to rewatch The Matrix.
    Its always nice to see someone with a professional background in server installations and IT talk about the differences in the needs and best practices of business as opposed to the needs and recommendations for those setting up their first 100% totally legal content distribution and acquisition box.

    • @jttech44
      @jttech44 Před 8 měsíci

      I rewatched all three back to back to back recently, and man do they hold up well.
      Also don't think that some setups that appear jank on the surface actually function extremely well in the enterprise environment. Really most of what you're getting with server-grade gear is redundancy and slightly nicer components. Like you're going to have slightly nicer power supplies, slightly longer-life capacitors, more cooling than is needed, more network than normal, SOC's for management, that kind of thing. None of that is a requirement really, and alot of the time you can get away with non-enterprise gear and just buying three instead of one.
      ECC tends to be an oft-quoted sticking point for alot of people, but, nowadays, nothing sits in memory very long, and all ECC really does is give you one additional chance to fix an error before it becomes a problem. In reality, if memory is throwing errors, it's not going to save you and the system is going to crash regardless. You can improve your reliability by running at jdec instead of xmp way, way more than ECC ever would.
      And in the case where cosmic rays hate you specifically... well, this is why you have RAID and backups. Hard to flip a bit once it's committed to disk ;)

  • @gabrielshansen
    @gabrielshansen Před 8 měsíci +43

    DUDE, that was SO refreshing! I don't think there are very many 'home'-server jockeys, that hasn't been - or still is - very much affected by the tacit rules of server'ism! Thank You for shooting that mental construction down!
    I JUST had my first real brandspanking relatively highspec'ed new PC, and finally - after 12 years, relegate my server-purpose-bought i3-3220 to server-duties. Yes, when i bought it, it was far more powerful than my intel dualcore cpu, so it ended up as my dailydriver/gaming PC. Such is PC-life! Yes, literally, Personal Computing life! now i can play with so much more, using proxmox, i'm having a lot of fun exploring server-functionalities
    Also, my RPi 4 with a REALTEK-based (gosh!) USB3-to-Ethernet dongle works PERFECTLY as a gigabit router! its cheap, its fun, and i made it fit the bill! FUN TIMES!

    • @CraftComputing
      @CraftComputing  Před 8 měsíci +4

      If you're relegating your i3-3220 to server duties, an i7-3770 with 4C/8T can be had for under $30 on eBay 😉

    • @gabrielshansen
      @gabrielshansen Před 8 měsíci

      @@CraftComputing Oh yes, if only i wasnt banned from ebay! dont ask why, i stil dont know! And, coming from Denmark, the choice of decently priced used hardware is... lacking! But You are sooo right, and thank you for the suggestion!

    • @Agnemons
      @Agnemons Před 8 měsíci +1

      Yeah, but that doesn't give you any bragging rights. This from the guy that runs an R710 and an R730 in a 22U rack as a glorified heater to keep the room warm and makes cool noises with.

    • @rstat1
      @rstat1 Před 8 měsíci +1

      I've been running similar HW (an i3-2120T) as server for at least a decade. I think I'm finally starting to out grow it. Also has a Realtek NIC. Worked perfectly for my use case.

    • @gabrielshansen
      @gabrielshansen Před 8 měsíci

      @@Agnemons Bah, prolly not even RGB on there.... pffft!

  • @jonathanzj620
    @jonathanzj620 Před 8 měsíci +4

    I love the format and opinion basis of this. One of your best videos in recent times and even though you didn't directly talk about the Zima blade much......I have far better context about it than any other review. Cheers, JZJ with a xul hazy ipa

  • @HackxBox
    @HackxBox Před 8 měsíci +3

    Watching this while updating to the latest TrueNAS Scale stable on my media server I built in an Antec Fusion case I bought from a colleague in my university in Denmark 12 years ago for 100 DKK, rocking an Asus CS-B H87 board, an i7-4790, 16GB Corsair XMS DDR3, a hack-and-saw 4 bay HDD caddy that fits perfectly in the 5.25 inch bay, with 4 2TB HDDs, all parts picked up from ebay/marketplace and working non-stop for the past 10 years, makes me say cheers to you, my good sir! 🍻

  • @DavidVincentSSM
    @DavidVincentSSM Před 8 měsíci +2

    this is the best explanation of the homelab experience I've ever seen!! Well done!!

  • @MrLeonitus993
    @MrLeonitus993 Před 8 měsíci +1

    Dude, this was the best intro you have ever done. Solid job, love what you do.

  • @jason-budney7624
    @jason-budney7624 Před 8 měsíci +2

    Great intro Jeff! I for one love breaking rules in my home-lab, pretty much all consumer grade parts, no ECC memory ever used, used spinning rust for my backup server, and cheap Silicon Power SSDs for my file/media server.

  • @yakk0dotorg
    @yakk0dotorg Před 8 měsíci +15

    My current vm server is an older Dell optiplex system. Works great. I used an ancient PC as my router for years too.

    • @Noobish588
      @Noobish588 Před 8 měsíci

      Same! I got a 5050 at the moment with a little i3 6100 and 64GB ram and I have a R730 which is a WIP ( i need Ram and Disks but got low wattage CPU's )

    • @haydenc2742
      @haydenc2742 Před 8 měsíci

      Ditto!

  • @derekstone9715
    @derekstone9715 Před 8 měsíci +1

    Fantastic premise for a video! Also that was an awesome intro!

  • @4megii
    @4megii Před 8 měsíci +1

    These honestly look amazing, I might get myself a couple. For travel.
    This company is mental. Love em. I've seen so many cool builds with their stuff.

  • @micb3rd
    @micb3rd Před 8 měsíci

    That intro!....So good, thanks for making me smile.

  • @pctechjustin
    @pctechjustin Před 8 měsíci

    I love the message at the end! Excellent video!

  • @I4get42
    @I4get42 Před 8 měsíci

    Hi Jeff! Delightful as always :-). I like to explain it as "A server is something that provides a service." I love that you called out that something can be a client and a server at the same time.

  • @greenprotag
    @greenprotag Před 8 měsíci +1

    This was excellent content.
    I think you are at your best making hardware do what it was never meant to OR to stretch the limits of what we think of when we say "gaming" "server" "client" etc. Making a server part into a workstation, a workstation into a desktop, a desktop into a mobile/sff platform, and a mobile platform into a server... and many more combinations.

  • @TrollingAround
    @TrollingAround Před 8 měsíci

    Good job Jeff, another great and refreshing video.

  • @i_Kruti
    @i_Kruti Před 7 měsíci +1

    One of the good explanations about server.....!!!

  • @smalle
    @smalle Před 8 měsíci +1

    This video needs to be pinned on your homepage for people new to the channel. Fantastic overview!

  • @1leggeddog
    @1leggeddog Před 8 měsíci

    Great video (and intro) Jeff!💓

  • @aaronperl
    @aaronperl Před 8 měsíci

    This was nice to see. After watching your videos for a while (plus a few other "home lab" channels), I got the idea that I wanted to get a server to play with. But then I'd need somewhere to put it (I don't have a garage, and it gets pretty cold and wet in the winter here in Canada) where the noise won't drive everyone nuts. Plus the money to buy the server, the rack, the network switch, the....
    It took me far too long to remember that I had an old Sandybridge i3 desktop that still works but wasn't being used. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands (shipping to Canada can be terrible) to pick up a server, only to discover that I actually have no need or interest in it.... I spent about $100 to upgrade the RAM to 32 GB (the max the board/CPU supports), and installed Proxmox. After a few days of having fun, I spent another $75 to upgrade the spinning boot drive to an SSD. The server isn't very busy, so the i3 is serving its purpose. My dedicated NAS device started failing (one of its SATA ports isn't recognized anymore, so it's always running in degraded mode), so I picked up four new, larger, drives and put them in the server and installed TrueNAS.
    Now I know it's fun, but I don't have a lot of free time to play with it. So I'd love to get or build a second, faster, server ... but what I have is filling my needs for now, so I can put it off....

  • @TheTrulyInsane
    @TheTrulyInsane Před 8 měsíci

    Best intro ever.
    But now I have to watch the series again

  • @ThatNerdNoah
    @ThatNerdNoah Před 8 měsíci

    i run a dell optiplex 7060 at work as an imaging server for labs and classrooms. this video was very refreshing to hear!

  • @Monarchias
    @Monarchias Před 8 měsíci +1

    Hi Jeff! It's always good to remind the people that there are doors to open! And these days it's so easy. Even if you have a few years or bit more older pc, with that and the help of a virtualization software (virtual box, hyper-v the easy to install ones), you can start that journey already. Another pc and 2 hard drives are a blessing. Buying a 2 port network card? Already on the road to become someone on the IT field. An extra switch and you already doing some interesting home lab work, which is usable in the real world.
    So, the one with many network ports is capable to achieve the best part of all these, the communication of those devices and services.
    Heck, maybe even mimic the whole internet in a small size. Can I?
    What a challenge. I might even want to see a video about it. How to create a mini internet at home? A guide for 2 or 4 port network card homelabbers. Haha. Or how many I would need?
    Hence, your video was spot on.

  • @lexluthermiester
    @lexluthermiester Před 8 měsíci

    @CraftComputing
    Jeff, the Matrix themed intro was excellent! Well done! EDIT: This video is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to your channel. This was very well thought out, cuts right to the bone of the subject and spells things out for everyone to understand. Again, very well done!!

  • @matthewgladwell1026
    @matthewgladwell1026 Před 8 měsíci +1

    Spot on Jeff, I had my server rig in a pc tower case for the last 8 years and it was just a desktop pc hardware, running Windows server, now Linux. I've just moved it to a 5u rack unit, only to better hold all the disks. It all comes down to what you can afford, willing to spend.

  • @Makumbi
    @Makumbi Před 6 měsíci

    Duuuude
    Awesome video.
    Content and presentation are great.

  • @AdHdEntertainmentLLC
    @AdHdEntertainmentLLC Před 8 měsíci

    Pre-ordered mine two weeks ago and can't wait. Probably going to use is as a host for my business but we will see.

  • @kirksteinklauber260
    @kirksteinklauber260 Před 8 měsíci

    Love the Intro!!! Nice content!

  • @JimmytheCow2000
    @JimmytheCow2000 Před 8 měsíci

    you have great videos, love the intro. props to the editor! I too am a huge proponent of "it could be a server"

  • @johannesyoung6071
    @johannesyoung6071 Před 8 měsíci

    A+ content. I agree with some of the other comments. Well organized.

  • @BigRyanGamesMinecraft
    @BigRyanGamesMinecraft Před 8 měsíci

    Great explanation, great video

  • @l0gic23
    @l0gic23 Před 8 měsíci

    Appreciate the honest review

  • @ewenchan1239
    @ewenchan1239 Před 8 měsíci +1

    Three things:
    1) "What makes a server? You do. Well, technically, the software that you choose to run."
    Absolutely spot on.
    I used to run Solaris 9 on a Pentium MMX 166.
    It was so slow that my roommate and I nicknamed it "the shitbox".
    But it ran. It wasn't fast by any stretch of the imagination, even in 2000, but it ran.
    2) re: (paraphrased) do you need server-grade hardware to run a server?
    That REALLY depends on what you're doing. My dual Xeon 36-bay server right now has 7 or 8 containers, and about 10 VMs running on it, simultaneously, and manages a native total storage capacity of somewhere around 220 TB, with 256 GB of RAM.
    Even then, there are days and times when the system still struggles a little bit, despite the load average being in the ~20s usually.
    Thus, when you have enough stuff going on/that you're trying to fun, especially simultaneously, the more powerful your server starts needing to be (if you want to consolidate it all down to run system) vs. having a whole PILE of systems, each running their own portion of the sum total of everything you want to run.|
    (There are three VMs that I had to split off from the server because it was running into thread contention issues with everything else that's running on the server.)
    3) My homelab went from 5 servers down to 1, then back up to 2 (because of thread contention/performance issues), and then now my mini PC has also assumed the responsibility of one of the VMs that was on the consolidated server, and then my other mini PC, now also runs Proxmox inside VirtualBox, so that it can run game servers.
    A lot of people will just keep expanding, expanding, expanding. I went the opposite route via a massive consolidation project at the beginning of this year.

  • @TefenCa
    @TefenCa Před 8 měsíci

    Great video! I loved how you made the Matrix style intro!

  • @darthkielbasa
    @darthkielbasa Před 8 měsíci

    Much respect for your contents, sir

  • @okoeroo
    @okoeroo Před 8 měsíci

    Best advice to start out and geek out

  • @swyftty2
    @swyftty2 Před 8 měsíci

    I love the matrix theme. Really pushing my want to make a server here. Cheers to a video of breaking rules to thinking about networking.

  • @YugimanTeam
    @YugimanTeam Před 8 měsíci

    FANTASTIC VIDEO!!!!

  • @slim5782
    @slim5782 Před 8 měsíci

    Well done with the intro!

  • @sparksnmagic8695
    @sparksnmagic8695 Před 8 měsíci +1

    AWESOME INTRO!!!!!

  • @illstateofmind
    @illstateofmind Před 8 měsíci

    This video is kicking wisdom and knowledge!

  • @jttech44
    @jttech44 Před 8 měsíci +2

    YES. Absolutely Jeff, very well said, and a very tight video. This may, in fact, be the best concept->execution you've ever done.
    I am wondering if you know what CPU's are actually on these zima blades. The celeron ARC page is.... a cluster, and I'd really like to see if one of these would happily replace the compaq laptop that's currently running my homelab's test docker instance, which I can't do until I can see what CPU power is actually available, because these look to fit the bill.
    Oh, also, I'd love to see your take on a proxmox cluster built out of used thin clients, but, wait a few months until I'm done building mine so prices don't go up on ebay lol

  • @phils744
    @phils744 Před 8 měsíci

    Cool, and good explanation. Rock on

  • @Tedpikel
    @Tedpikel Před 5 měsíci

    That was an epic speech I didn't know I needed to hear.

  • @DeFi-Macrodosing
    @DeFi-Macrodosing Před 7 měsíci

    That opening statement gets me every time.

  • @Thewickedjon
    @Thewickedjon Před 8 měsíci

    great video! great msg at the end

  • @jacqueshilo250
    @jacqueshilo250 Před 8 měsíci

    11/10 intro. Love it

  • @ciaduck
    @ciaduck Před 8 měsíci

    Amen brother! I've been running my lab on old gaming desktops that I replaced with newer ones over the years. Chuck in an SSD, load up Debian, and away we go!

  • @max_uaminecraft1827
    @max_uaminecraft1827 Před 8 měsíci +1

    My first server was a truenas core fileservwr, built in an ancient, flimsy case, with a propriotary hp board off ebay to fit my i5 4440. With 2 mismatched 2tb hdds, used 128gb ssd as slog, and 2 flash drives for the os, it ran for nearly a year straight before i did a case swap. Nearly 3 years later, those same drives and motherboard are going strong! Any hunk of junk can be a server!

  • @wesleypotter7969
    @wesleypotter7969 Před 8 měsíci +3

    Yes, my home network doesn't generate enough traffic to overwhelm a Realtek NIC, but that didn't stop opnsense randomly disconnecting the internet, requiring a reboot. Swapping it out for a dual port intel NIC completely cured the problem in my case.

  • @nddulac
    @nddulac Před 8 měsíci

    I tossed together a server running Debian and Docker to host Plex, Web services, PiHole, and a few other things on an Odroid H3+ with two 6TB hard drives to hold content. The H3+ uses an N6005 Pentium process. This thing has been humming along serving my home needs just fine for almost a year now.
    I totally agree that it just have to be high-end if it serves your needs!

  • @LtdJorge
    @LtdJorge Před 8 měsíci

    That Morpheus intro, so good!

  • @azmotorhead3614
    @azmotorhead3614 Před 8 měsíci

    My first home server was literally a Pi with a USB hard drive. Loved it.

  • @marksterling8286
    @marksterling8286 Před 8 měsíci

    Back when I started in computing the average server I worked on was an ibm 5170 (Xenix or network 286)and the average client was a IBM 5160 (dos) the software made the difference. Great intro btw

  • @katierscott8771
    @katierscott8771 Před 8 měsíci

    Brilliant video and just to show exactly what you are saying is so true, my current server I bought as a 'was working when stored but unknown now, barebones'. I got it for around £60... and it's a bargain, but also not the spec of a traditional server.
    It's a Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.3ghz running on a Gigabyte Z87X-OC, GeForce GTX 650 Graphics (which didn't come with it) and 32gb Ram with a AIO cooler and a quality (Corsair I think off hand) gaming case with 5 drives. i.e. largely what was when new a high end gaming rig. I run Linux Mint with mergerfs to combine the partitions into one, snapraid for an element of redundancy and owncloud as I prefer hosting my own 'cloud' service due to the amount of data I store.
    Overall works really nicely, I like snapraid because the only stipulation drive wise is that the parity partitions(s) are at least the same size as the largest partition. It doesn't work automatically though so you need to manually sync or use a scheduler, but for a home server that's a non-issue. Mergerfs is simple and very useful, and owncloud while not perfect does the job fine.

  • @patrickprafke4894
    @patrickprafke4894 Před 8 měsíci

    Just about to turn the X58 system I just upgraded from into another home server. It's been a good gaming system for 15 years. It'll work well for a file server for many to come.

  • @TheMongolPrime
    @TheMongolPrime Před 8 měsíci

    Thanks more making this! I'm a DC Admin and have a homelab with noctua fans. Reddit loves to complain about it not having enough cooling/pressure. They're very wrong.

    • @CraftComputing
      @CraftComputing  Před 8 měsíci

      I've got Noctuas in my 45Drives AV15 chassis. They're perfect.

  • @xxbuschxx9647
    @xxbuschxx9647 Před 8 měsíci

    Great Video I just ordered a orange pi 5 for playing around with different software and emulation.💯😊

  • @prince3121
    @prince3121 Před 8 měsíci

    Great informative video. The application in most cases, will give direction to what you want to build. I like the idea of using what you have. I was looking at a mini-pc to host proxmox, as my objective was to become energy efficient, but the cost to do that was unnecessary. So I simply collapsed the 2 old PCs I had into one. I used the old i5 core Intel I had, bought some SSDs and boom, promox sorted by hosting my 2 VM's. Only minimal money spent on some SSD's, which is way cheaper than speccing out a mini-pc.

  • @harrythehandyman
    @harrythehandyman Před 8 měsíci +2

    HS, this is a cool intro.

  • @g2229301
    @g2229301 Před 8 měsíci

    👍 thumbs up for the play boy cup!

  • @themistoclesnelson2163
    @themistoclesnelson2163 Před 8 měsíci

    I liked this video. Thanks!

  • @JaimeFelipeMunera
    @JaimeFelipeMunera Před 8 měsíci

    I love you, man! That intro made me laugh my ghost in the shell

  • @Todd1561
    @Todd1561 Před 8 měsíci

    I agree with everything you said. Nice job.

  • @knomad666
    @knomad666 Před 7 měsíci

    ...also, "LOL, this fan is dead" had me in stitches... :-)

  • @johnsmith9205
    @johnsmith9205 Před 8 měsíci

    Back in the day, more than a decade ago, I got a Lenovo laptop which was later recalled for a faulty motherboard replacement, but I completely missed the recall. As a result of that, the laptop has been self-rebooting at random, sometimes multiple times per day, sometimes once every couple of days. I used it as it was for a few years, and although it was very annoying, it got the job done anyway. I finally retired it recently into being a tiny TrueNas with 3 external 1 TB USB hard drives, also from about 12 years ago, in 2+1 RAID configuration. I am now using it for downloading Linux ISOs and it's working fine, so far. It still sometimes reboots itself multiple times per day, but since it's not my main TrueNas, it's not a big deal.

  • @bigdude101ohyeah
    @bigdude101ohyeah Před 8 měsíci

    My homelab started off with a strange Sandy Bridge PC I got in a bulk lot. It is very much the ship of Theseus now, but it's still serving its purpose (Plex/NAS).
    I want to experiment with more server-grade equipment, but it's something that can wait until I buy a house.

  • @xonemasters
    @xonemasters Před 8 měsíci

    Looooove the intro!

  • @mileswilson6204
    @mileswilson6204 Před 8 měsíci

    This is great. Running TrueNAS on my old ITX i7 desktop. Great little kit, but keen to swap in my current AMD ITX system when its time is up so I can play around with VMs!

  • @dingokidneys
    @dingokidneys Před 8 měsíci

    My first dedicated server machine was an old 386DX ex-desktop machine that work was disposing of. Add Linux and - presto! - file server. Add a cheap modem and some software tweaks and it's also a dial-up router. Add a tiny 8 port switch and I have a full network with internet access from bits in the late 1990's. Much fun was had.

  • @tack-support
    @tack-support Před 8 měsíci

    I'm currently running two used R720xd servers and an 8GB RPI4, but before that it was a single old gaming rig and the same RPI and they did just fine. I knew I could expand my stack with more random equipment, but I wanted to try out the "proper" stuff. But for the NAS I'm planning on building, I'm just gonna get a Rosewill rackmount case and throw in used components. Consumer or server grade, depending on what's available and cheap. I just go with what I feel like, knowing I can make any of it work.

  • @mcsoo5291
    @mcsoo5291 Před 8 měsíci

    This is really a great video. I am very surprised your whole rack is only 400W. I need to rethink my server.

  • @mortengreenhermansen4489
    @mortengreenhermansen4489 Před 8 měsíci

    I SO love this video! Some of us old guys made really nice servers on 50Mhz (SPARCclassic). I so aggree with your 'ignore the rules' statement. Today people are selling all their 5 year old Mac's because they cannot be upgraded to Sonoma (macOS 14). And one with broken screen, missing 3 keycaps and almost dead battery is a really cheap and good server for many things - and it saves the environment for all this electronic waste.
    One important thing - we must all stand together and make ECC ram 100% standard everywhere! Without ECC things most often works just fine... but you cannot be sure. Often you will not get errors, just crashes or corrupted files.
    After mainframes started to use ECC everything changed! Like ethernet we can use the worst cables - on data corruption we just send again. But integrety checks makes you KNOW it is wrong. Without ECC you do not know if it is good or bad. It makes data rod.
    We so need SBC's with ECC.
    Thanks again Jeff - SUPER statement! Cheers!

  • @johngordon6689
    @johngordon6689 Před 8 měsíci

    LOL Loved the "so you can start drinking like a pro"

  • @TheNetGuy
    @TheNetGuy Před 8 měsíci +1

    Full Contact is one of my favorites right now. If a bar had Bodhizafa, All Ways Down, and Full Contact it would be about 20 minutes before I could decide what to order - and would probably end up with one of each 😂

  • @TechnoRhino
    @TechnoRhino Před 8 měsíci

    Louder for the people in the back. This is excellent.

  • @JustinGeekNerd
    @JustinGeekNerd Před 8 měsíci

    I have an old Lenovo N43 Chromebook that I use as an OpenVPN server. I flashed the bios and installed Peppermint OS (also had to open it up and remove the Write Protection screw off the motherboard) then installed OpenVPN via Docker. It never crashes and doesn't affect the electric bill much.

  • @ZaPirate
    @ZaPirate Před 8 měsíci

    my first "server" was an ancient core2quad pc. It gets addictive pretty quick. Now I have a rack and multiple servers in a cluster.

  • @paulbrooks4395
    @paulbrooks4395 Před 8 měsíci +1

    I always recommend people ask why something is recommended, then after understanding the principle, they decide if something applies to them. I say collect principles and use cases and the how and when they apply. After deconstructing the logic and gathering nuance, people are more equipped to meet their exact needs.

  • @travisdonotsuscribegototjs9323

    regarding the $10 adapter, if your good with a soldering iron all your really need is one sata connector this board comes with wire a secondary power lead from the first cable and im sure most people who will be picking these up already have a few sata data cables

  • @JohnCarter04
    @JohnCarter04 Před 8 měsíci +1

    I had seen another CZcamsr plug this brand in a sponsor spot. Was very curious how the product works, and not 48 hours later you'll be answering that question for me. Thanks! Maybe it'll be replacing my devil's canyon i5 "server" platform in the name of power savings.

    • @WilReid
      @WilReid Před 8 měsíci +1

      The J3455 is about 40% the CPU "horsepower" of an i5-4690K. If you can get by with that, its max power draw is about 90% less, so it's roughly 5x as efficient. It's still a really old CPU, just not as old as Devil's Canyon. Plus you'll save power and heat on all the other stuff the CPU is connected to. That was always Intel's problem with Atom. Its chipset often drew more power than the CPU did b/c it was old an outdated making the system as a whole really inefficient.

    • @JohnCarter04
      @JohnCarter04 Před 8 měsíci

      @@WilReid After watching the video, that was my main concern. I do appreciate you quantifying the difference though, I wouldn't have known until I got my hands on one myself to really see how it performed. It's probably not worth all the effort to go and change everything, especially when what I have now "just works".

  • @mohammadmekayelanik7408
    @mohammadmekayelanik7408 Před 8 měsíci

    Well..this was enlightening.

  • @zeero4ever
    @zeero4ever Před 8 měsíci +3

    *Technically* a router can also work with only 1 network interface. It could route data between two subnets on the same physical connection, or (as it's the case in my home network) data between 2 vlans. Latter of course needing a vlan capable switch to seperate the nets.
    In my setup I use a virtual instance of opnsense running on proxmox. I don't use seperate ethernet ports for wan and lan, because the vm can migrate between a low power celeron itx machine and a more capable 4th gen i7 box. The celeron is not quite fast enough to give me the full 1gbit downstream my internet connection can offer, but it only uses around 10 watts or so. That's fine over night. The i7 uses 50-80 watts but can give me the full speed (also using a 10gig nic). By not using 2 ports on each host and instead relying on vlans for wan and lan I can significantly reduce cable clutter and don't need a switch for each "side".
    Thanks @CraftComputing for providing the initial knowledge about proxmox and truenas that now shape my home network / lab :-)

    • @ArtiZirk
      @ArtiZirk Před 8 měsíci +1

      This reminds me of a time when I had to configure my cheap aliexpress router similarly. It had 2 ethernet ports, one native connected to the rockchip SoC, other via realtek chip over usb. Few hours after configuring it to work as a router I noticed that the realtek ethernet port started to crash and dissapear from the internal USB bus. So I configured my seprate dlink switch with vlans, one for wan and others into lan vlans, trunk port got connected to the working rockchip native ehternet and split out into seperate interfaces on the Linux side. After that everything as rock solid.
      I would never trust realtek ethernet on a router. Also I never thought that I would actually need to use the smart features on my 34€ Dlink DGS-1100-08V2 switch

  • @mortifyd4805
    @mortifyd4805 Před 8 měsíci +1

    Nice graphics at the beginning

  • @AvisTechno
    @AvisTechno Před 8 měsíci

    Nice vidéo i love that nas ZimaBoard

  • @seanstechworld
    @seanstechworld Před 8 měsíci

    My first ever "server" was a Pentium 3 450mhz dell desktop machine with two 250GB IDE hard drives and freenas. I thought I was on top of the world with that thing. Now I use a DL360p G8 w. 2 Xeon E5-2680V2, 32GB of ECC RAM, and 4 x 2TB HDDs in RAID Z running on TrueNAS core w. 2 VMs for DLNA and HomeAssistant which I'm not really using. I have build countless servers out of consumer hardware. Used desktops and grabbing an old sandy bridge i5 system and throwing it into a case with 6 hdd bays and filling it with WD Red CMR disks. I have a server at a client site on core 2 duo system and it has been running 24/7 for 10 years except for a couple of days when the PSU failed. Ran a new PSU over and replaced it and it is still chugging along.

  • @onejdc
    @onejdc Před 8 měsíci +1

    Small correction to an otherwise awesome video: a router does not need 2 physical ports. It is certainly ideal to have more than one, but a single device (or even VM) can run as a "Router on a stick." Note that there are configuration and performance considerations when sharing a single physical link, but a router sends packets from one network to another, and that *can* be done over a single connection for inter-vlan routing.

    • @dustojnikhummer
      @dustojnikhummer Před 8 měsíci

      Technically yes, but you would need an L2 switch on the other side to separate those vlans. At least if we are talking about Wan to lan routing

  • @wcg66
    @wcg66 Před 8 měsíci

    I was going to buy a Pi 5, since I've bought a 2, 3 and 4. For a bit more, I went for the Zimablade 7700.

  • @sourcilavise3788
    @sourcilavise3788 Před 7 měsíci

    Do you plan one reviewing some topton aliexpress mini pc with 4 2.5GbE ports with n510x celeron CPU ?

  • @SPEDV
    @SPEDV Před 8 měsíci

    I think 1 or 2 more Matrix references where needed in the video...😂. Great video encouraging those just starting out with a home lab by getting them to think outside the box or free their mind.

  • @cvmagic404
    @cvmagic404 Před 8 měsíci

    Love the cyberpunk reference!

  • @pat_e
    @pat_e Před 8 měsíci +3

    There is one exception: For "media server", you should use a tiger-lake - based CPU as it's QuickSync even allows hardware-decoding of AV1 and EVERY other codecs. So you can have an AV1 media hw-decoded and re-encoded to h264 (hw) to stream to your device...

    • @madness1931
      @madness1931 Před 8 měsíci +2

      I wouldn't say that's a rule, but more so... just avoid AMD graphics for a media server. QuickSync is fantastic, so is Nvanc. Most media centres support them, really well.

    • @pat_e
      @pat_e Před 8 měsíci

      @@madness1931Yes, but only 30-series GPU supports hw based AV1 - Decoding. It seems rather high to include in your media server when a single Intel NUC with tiger-lake CPU can handle all the codecs as well. And most Tiger-Lake NUC's have 2,5 GBit/s ethernet, which should be fast enough to attach an "external" NAS to your NUC as media storage for your media server.

  • @mdhurrtn
    @mdhurrtn Před 8 měsíci

    BRAVO!

  • @kurousagi1339
    @kurousagi1339 Před 8 měsíci

    Yeahhh definitely had some issues using a realtek nic with pfsense, but the latest update fixed all those issues I had! 😮

  • @Silmarieni1
    @Silmarieni1 Před 8 měsíci

    I've been using an Up Squared, with 100% passive cooling, 0 noise, for many years.

  • @druxpack8531
    @druxpack8531 Před 8 měsíci +6

    Thank you for this…it’s like enough of the ECC or die crap.

  • @larslessel4501
    @larslessel4501 Před 8 měsíci

    Im going to scroll through all of your video to the first one.