[ovirt-users] oVirt home lab hardware

[Gianluca Cecchi]

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 9:52 PM, Abdurrahman A. Ibrahim <
a.rahman.attia at 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
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