oVirt home lab hardware
Hello, I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt. Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before? Thanks, Ab
For rackmount Dell R710's are fairly popular for home labs, they have good specs and can be found at reasonable prices on ebay. On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 4:52 PM, Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim < a.rahman.attia@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt.
Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before?
Thanks, Ab
_______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
I'm a bit out of date on the topic, but unless they have changed, avoid the NUCs. I bought a couple but gave up on them because of a firmware bug (? limitation, at least) that Intel said it won't fix. It causes a lockup on boot if a monitor is not connected. I've been told that different models don't have that problem, but have also heard of other weird problems. The impression I got is that they were meant for being media servers stuck to the back of TVs, and other use cases tend to be precluded by unexpected limitations, bugs and general strange behavior. Perhaps this was fixed, but I ended up with a bad taste in my mouth. You can pick up dirt-cheap rackmount kit on Ebay. A few R710s or similar can be had for a few $hundred and would be absolutely lovely overkill for a home network. The downside of this approach at home is going to be power consumption and noise, depending on local energy costs and the nature of your dwelling. Also, some people may not be that fond of the datacenter look for home decor. Unless you live in a cheap energy locale/don't pay for your power/enjoy malformed space heaters, don't underestimate the cost of running server kit. Getting rid of rack mount machines and switches and moving everything to a couple machines built with energy consumption in mind cut my electricity costs by over half. -j
On Jan 18, 2018, at 12:52 PM, Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim <a.rahman.attia@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt.
Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before?
On 19 Jan 2018 12:33 am, "Jamie Lawrence" <jlawrence@squaretrade.com> wrote: I'm a bit out of date on the topic, but unless they have changed, avoid the NUCs. I bought a couple but gave up on them because of a firmware bug (? limitation, at least) that Intel said it won't fix. It causes a lockup on boot if a monitor is not connected. I've been told that different models don't have that problem, but have also heard of other weird problems. The impression I got is that they were meant for being media servers stuck to the back of TVs, and other use cases tend to be precluded by unexpected limitations, bugs and general strange behavior. Perhaps this was fixed, but I ended up with a bad taste in my mouth. You can pick up dirt-cheap rackmount kit on Ebay. A few R710s or similar can be had for a few $hundred and would be absolutely lovely overkill for a home network. The downside of this approach at home is going to be power consumption and noise, depending on local energy costs and the nature of your dwelling. Also, some people may not be that fond of the datacenter look for home decor. Unless you live in a cheap energy locale/don't pay for your power/enjoy malformed space heaters, don't underestimate the cost of running server kit. Getting rid of rack mount machines and switches and moving everything to a couple machines built with energy consumption in mind cut my electricity costs by over half. -j
On Jan 18, 2018, at 12:52 PM, Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim < a.rahman.attia@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt.
Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before?
On 18-1-2018 21:52, Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim wrote:
Hello,
I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt.
Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before?
My shuttle XH110 are doing double duty as oVirt cluster and workstation. They have dual NICs and upto 32G RAM. If you need something bigger than a cube version has lots more storage and more memory (SZ17R8V2). If you want servers than have a look at https://tinkertry.com/ which as a couple of projects which are nice but probably a bit more noisier than the shuttles which are quite silent most of the time. Regards, Joop
On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 9:52 PM, Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim < a.rahman.attia@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt.
Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before?
Thanks, Ab
I'm currently using: NUC6i5SYH since 2015 without any problem it's rock solid with 2xssd disks and 16Gb of ram oVirt as single host with hosted engine and connected through a 24" monitor via hdmi I use it as my home/work station, normally working on a VM (currently Fedora 27) inside this oVirt infra (currently 4.2.0) + other VMs In the host (plain CentOS 7.4) I installed firefox browser and from there I connect to the engine VM (running on itself) and from there to the F27 VM through Spice I use this F27 VM in full screen so it is like it is my pc itself.... Probably over-complicated, but I use it to have a constant feeling with oVirt and its functionalities... No problem at all from the usability point of view (I don't use heavy graphic, so the setup is ok for me, it could not be for you) The only problem is when you indeed have to power off the NUC, because if you simply restart, it has problems (apparently) syncing with the monitor (as Jamie noted). My simple workaround when I have to reboot the NUC (I think 4-5 times in 3 years basically to update oVirt and together the bios) has been: - shutdown the infra - the NUC tends to restart and not poweroff - keep power button pressed so the NUC powers off - power off monitor - detach and reconnect the hdmi cable - power on monitor - power on NUC If you have to daily restart the pc this can be annoying for sure. I didn't now about a general NUC problem, so I thought it was my particular combination NUC/Monitor (Dell U2515H) and CentOS drivers for the graphic adapter. I have to say that in 2015 when I bought it I both tried to install CentOS 7.x at that time and Fedaora 24 at that time and the display problems were present only in CentOS. And after various CentOS updates (now on 7.4 updates) it seems to me it is quite better, so I think the problems discussed by Jamie could have been resolved in CentOS too. I have also another NUC in another site. This is NUC6i3SYH again with 2xssd and 16Gb of ram It has ESXi free 6.0.2 with some VMs and a nested HCI oVirt environment (now at 4.2.1 rc1) It is not connected through a monitor and it works ok. I connected the monitor only when I had to install and/or reboot (probably 2-3 times in 2,5 years). Now it is powered on since 8 months... Both the NUCs are connected to an APC UPS No experience on other similar hw, because I felt good with the NUCs for my needs. HIH for your choice, Gianluca
2018-01-18 21:52 GMT+01:00 Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim <a.rahman.attia@gmail.com> :
Hello,
I am planning to buy home lab hardware to be used by oVirt.
Any recommendations for used hardware i can buy from eBay for example? Also, have you tried oVirt on Intel NUC or any other SMB servers before?
Not sure they're selling it anymore, but I'll mention as a curiosity: "oVirt in a box": https://twitter.com/ManfredOsterman/status/844777942617997312
Thanks, Ab
_______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
-- SANDRO BONAZZOLA ASSOCIATE MANAGER, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, EMEA ENG VIRTUALIZATION R&D Red Hat EMEA <https://www.redhat.com/> <https://red.ht/sig> TRIED. TESTED. TRUSTED. <https://redhat.com/trusted>
participants (6)
-
Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim -
Gianluca Cecchi -
Jamie Lawrence -
Jayme -
Joop -
Sandro Bonazzola