Question: I have a variety of older e-waste machine that I've rescued and held on to. I'm interesting in running some kind of homelab (probably a nextcloud instance, or some kind of shared drive for all the devices in the half_elf_monastery. What should I be looking for in hardware? Should I prioritize the best processor? Or the most capacity for storage expansion? Lowest power consumption? Is form factor a consideration at all (i.e., laptop vs. desktop vs. server-rack? Those with experience self-hosting, what should I be thinking about for this?
Oct 09 · 5 days ago
4 Comments ↓
👻 darkghost · Oct 09 at 15:07:
Very open ended question. For a nextcloud instance is it on docker, a VM, bare metal? I think low power and higher storage makes sense for a low user count NextCloud. Form factor doesn't matter so much again for low numbers of users. I like the laptop form factor because it is power efficient, has a mouse, keyboard, screen, and UPS built in to a small package. But you wouldn't run a major service on it and storage can be more challenging there. A rack mount is likely overkill unless you're planning something serious. I wouldn't start there.
Just remember that a home lab can be anything from these amazing rack servers the influencers have or a hodge podge of hardware you've dug out of the trash.
🌲 Half_Elf_Monk [OP] · Oct 09 at 15:37:
@darkghost - haha yes, I am at a pretty open-ended stage of planning a homelab. Thanks for the thoughts. I'm going to run on bare metal because I've got it lying around. Laptop makes sense. What counts as "a major service"? Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.
👻 darkghost · Oct 09 at 15:47:
Like 30+ users scaling for increasing levels of seriousness. Or something low latency like a remote gaming set up. Or the computer that keeps your heart beating.
Shameless plug here, but though it could interest you: before trying Nextcloud, I recommend you to have a look at slcl (I am the author):
— https://codeberg.org/xavidcr/slcl
slcl is a convenient cloud storage web application, similarly to Nextcloud, but without the bloat and no JavaScript. btw, I am about to release v0.4.0, which provides new cool features.
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