Good day everyone. I have a Dell PowerEdge T610 as follows:
2 * Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5530 @ 2.40GHz
48 GB ECC RAM
SAS controller
4 * 1TB Seagate SAS drives
4 * 1TB Western Digital SATA drives
1 * Toshiba 500GB SATA drive
And all the other refinements.
What I am wanting to know. What can I install on the server to start experimenting with to eventually deploy as a working homelab device?
Thanks for the help.
fugglefeet
What do you want to experiment ? , What do you want to install on your homelab ?
You could start installing virtualization software that allows you to install other systems
Main ones are XCP-XP with Xen Orchestra and Proxmox
Search yourtube on how to set these up , Tom has videos for XCP-XP and Xen Orchesatr
with that setup I would install Proxmox, specifically on the Toshiba 500gb SATA drive, I would use the 4 WD 1TB drives in a a raid z1 for the VM storage, and once Proxmox is up and running I would install some NAS software of your choosing (TrueNAS scale, OpenMediaVault, Unraid?) and pass through the SAS controller and SAS drives to the NAS software.
You are likely going to need to install a bit more RAM since you have 16 threads to work with. But cross that bridge when you come to it.
I would experiment with some VMs to run things like docker or podman and get familiar with containers. I would also spin up a few VMs just to get used to working with VMs. As you progress you could spin up a few VMs to create a kubernetes cluster.
Depending on your network situation you could also spin up opensense or pfsense in a VM, and mess with firewalls and the like.
I use Proxmox, but you could always go with another type one hypervisor instead.
Hi all,
Sorry for the late reply. I have tested Proxmox, XCP-NG, XenServer 8 and Danube Cloud. Only snag with Proxmox is the no valid license reminder (unless I missed getting a for home use license that is no cost). I would prefer Proxmox for the VM’s and containers. XCP-NG, XenServer and Danube Cloud only run VM’s to my knowledge. I may be wrong about the latter and am willing to reconsider them for deployment.
I forgot to add that aside from the 2 standard NICs in the device, I added 4 TP-Link PCIe 1GB/s NICs (AKA Realtek chipsets).
Thanks for the ideas. I will have a look at Proxmox again over the weekend, since I don’t have time in the week due to something called a JOB that keeps me Just Over Broke.
fugglefeet
You can disable the nag about not having a valid license. I would highly recommend checking out Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts | Scripts for Streamlining Your Homelab with Proxmox VE, specifically the top item on the list of the Proxmox VE Post Install. It will take care of the license nag, disable the enterprise repo, enable the no-subscription repo, etc.
That’s the first thing I run on any new Proxmox installation.