Software engineer (video games). Likes dogs, DJing + EDM, running, electronics and loud bangs in Reservoir.
I DIY’d a PIKVM from an old Raspberry Pi 4 I had lying around for use in a homelab server. It’s been great, no complaints here, very handy if you need BIOS or direct console access from a phone or laptop. I especially like that you can hook up the PC power buttons to allow hard power cycling via the web interface. Though if you’re looking for something portable you’d probably skip that part.
Wow, thanks so much for the detailed rundown of your setup, I really appreciate it! That’s given me a lot to think about.
One area that took me by surprise a little bit with the HBA/SAS drive approach I’ve taken (and it sounds like you’re considering) is the power draw. I just built my new server PC (i5-8500T, 64GB RAM, Adaptec HBA + 8x 6TB 12GB SAS drives) and initial tests show on its own it idles at ~150W.
I’m fairly sure most of that is the HBA and drives, though I need to do a little more testing. That’s higher than I was expecting, especially since my entire previous setup (Synology 4-bay NAS + 4x SATA drives, external 8TB drive, Raspberry Pi, switch, Mikrotik router, UPS) idles at around 80W!
I’m wondering if it may have been overkill going for the SAS drives, and a proxmox cluster of lower spec machines might have been more efficient.
Food for thought anyway… I can tell this will be a setup I’m constantly tinkering with.
I’m curious why you feel these are easier to run on bare metal? I only ask as I’ve just built my first proxmox PC with the intent to run TrueNAS and Home Assistant OS as VMs, with 8x SAS enterprise drives on an HBA passed through to the TrueNAS VM.
Is it mostly about separation of concerns, or is there some other dragon awaiting me (aside from the power bills after I switch over)?
[Guide] NAS Killer 6.0 - DDR4 is finally cheap - Builds / [LGA1151,LGA1200] NAS Killer 6.0, Plex QSV Builds - serverbuilds.net Forums
https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-is-finally-cheap/13956
Hopefully this resource is handy for you - I’m going through the same process at the moment.
Piggybacking off this, it’s worth noting if you’re adding SAS capability to your PC via one of these cards, you can look into used enterprise SAS HDDs for cheap. They’re often sold in bulk - I just picked up 72TB (12x6TB) of 7200RPM drives for AUD480 total. Availability is very region-specific and of course it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the risk for your needs, but if you’re using RAID6 or equivalent (capable of handling two dead drives at once) the risk is minimal. Be sure to buy from sellers with a warranty (12 months minimum), and check the drives once they arrive. But in general enterprise drives are MUCH more resilient than consumer drives.
I cheated and just used a webscraper to pull the data from a local government website.
Here’s a screenshot of what my diagnostic interface for it looked like. The Python script took all the sensors as inputs and decided on a strategy for upstairs and downstairs, and gave the reason for its decision in a separate sensor for debugging purposes. The script performed all the necessary actions whenever it changed strategy.
I went down this rabbit hole a few years back. I’m in a house with 3 separate HVAC split systems over 2 floors, and we always had large temperature differentials and needed to constantly manage HVAC settings.
My goal was to never need to touch the settings for any of the HVAC units all year round, and I had plans to automate my windows so if it was nice outside, the house would ventilate automatically… but only if the pollen count was low, as I have allergies.
It became clear very early on that using the standard Home Assistant automation logic wasn’t going to be adequate for my needs, so I ended up running a Python script every half hour that reassessed the state of all sensors, using whatever crazy logic I dreamed up, then decided what actions to perform (if anything).
The general approach worked well, though I hit two snags and lost interest:
One was finding a (cheap) solution to physically open and close my roller windows. I came close, but didn’t want to make any permanent changes and had concerns about home insurance, so ultimately chickened out there. Everything still worked without this, but it would have been pretty cool to open windows automatically on a nice day for fresh air.
The other snag was more fundamental - I don’t think it’s possible to have a perfect temperature, even for one person. If I’m sitting still for long periods, I tend to want warmer temps. If I’m cleaning the house, I want cooler temps.
Ultimately my “ruleset” for the perfect solution became more and more complex, with edge cases and bugs popping up as the months rolled on, and it became clear I couldn’t represent this problem with a set of sensor inputs.
It was a fun experiment and I learned a lot, but I ended up going back to simpler automation rules after a while, like just turning on the heater in the morning if it’s cold, or vice versa. Solve the biggest problems first.
I think trying to automate to the extreme is sometimes a trap. Our hacker mindset wants the problem to be perfect and solveable, when in reality us humans are fickle creatures whose wants and whims change on the regular, and that can’t be captured easily in zeros and ones.
I guess as a starting point most of us in this thread don’t really know what university research teams do.
If they had a laptop or phone, what kinds of things would they want to do that requires a server? Will they need email? Instant messaging? File sharing? Document collaboration? Will there be sensitive information? Do they need specific software? Or put another way, without this server, what can’t they do?
If you can give some hints on that kind of stuff, I’m sure people in this thread can help out more with specifics on software/tech recommendations.
Edit: obviously Unreal Tournament is non-negotiable.
I think you really need to talk to the research team to find out what they want to use the server for, and how they want to collaborate. That will inform everything else.
If you’re looking at collaborating in game jams, you’ll find it handy to have some Unity, Unreal Engine and Godot under your belt. Don’t worry about becoming an “expert” at any of them, just do a few intro tutorials and read the starter docs on each.
35 years! It’s almost unheard of to be at a single game company for so long.
Yeah that sounds about right - VST is such an awful standard, and is only made worse by all the copy protection nonsense that companies pile on top of it. I wish there was an open standard that was cross-platform, portable and used PGP encryption for standard licencing, but alas, it’s too late for that.
I’m quite surprised Ableton haven’t released a Linux version yet. They would have had to do some of the legwork to stand up Ableton Push.
Liquid Trees! Slam it down fast!
Holy shit, TIL Mexico has a legally prescribed 6-day work week! That’s brutal.
He’s a sharp one, the ol’ Donny!
If it is, get ready for the subscription plan.
In my experience it always goes wrong at the least opportune time. Before an important zoom call, as you’re about to leave for the airport etc. My NAS and services (especially Home Assistant) are so mission critical now that I like to have a warm backup ready to go, even if it’s a stop-gap measure.