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?
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.
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.
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.
For those who have been wondering. I have been experimenting with hypervisors. But I have also in the interim been busy trying to get the firmware updated to the newest (with a battle albeit). I have also since then been able to lay my hands on 4 x 4TB SAS drives that I want to get setup (drives cost me ZAR350 a piece which is a bargain). Will keep you posted the route I have decided to use the device for.
For those who have been wondering. I have managed to get the Dell T610 up and running with PVE. I have created a TrueNAS VM and managed to pass through the disks from the machine to the VM and these are configured as RAID1 in the VM. Last night and this morning I got a pfSense VM running using 3 Linux bridges for the WAN, LAN1 and LAN2. Now containers are the next stop.
If you rely on pfSense for your firewall/router, what do you plan on using for a switch? Will you go with a physical switch, or just virtual switching? I think a physical switch will be easier to start with.
I currently have two NetGear switches (managed and unmanaged). The managed switch is what I use for LAN1 and the unmanaged switch is what I use for LAN2. Virtual switching at the moment is a bit limited as I have used up all the PCIe slots in the server for NICs (4 RealTek chipset 1Gbps cards). My two networks run at full duplex 1Gbps. I am still googling how to access one LAN from the other, but I’ll get there.
Good for you. Congrats on the progress. I would only run WAN and LAN1 in pfSense. That’s the way I do it on bare metal, even though my device has 4 ports. I then created VLANs on top of LAN1, and I control inter VLAN access through firewall rules in pfSense. Tom has a great video on this subject.
For those who have been browsing past here on the odd occasion, I have since acquired some interesting kit. They are:-
Quantum DXi 4700 (OEMR R720xd) 96GB RAM 12 x 4TB SAS drives (Two of the drives failed and replaced these with 2 x 1TB SATA drives mirrored for OS purposes). Running OpenMediaVault and configured the 10 4TB drives in Stripe Array, giving a total storage capacity of ~29TB (yes I know the Stripe goes wonk if a disk fails).
Dell R510 64GB RAM 8 x 1TB SAS drives (One drive failed and replaced this with 2 x 1TB SATA drives mirrored for OS purposes). Just finished installing Proxmox on it and waiting for it to complete the Proxmox VE Post Install script.
Also got hold of a Cisco Catalyst 3750-X. Running 10Gb fibre optic from the DXi 4700 to the Cisco. Also running 10Gb fibre optic from the PE T630 to the Cisco.
Did a quick one minute tally of only the 4 Dell servers. 1137 watts. That doesn’t include the firewall right on top or the 2 tiny Vostro PCs used for crypto mining or the switches and 5G router.