As I’m sure for so many people, 2021 didn’t quite go according to plan but then neither did 2020!
Although not published here, I did manage to write one article for the SUSE Community site on how to manage SUSE Harvester 0.3.0 with Rancher 2.6.1 running in a VM within Harvester which kind of links back to the subject of this post.
As of today I’m now all in on using Intel NUCs for my home lab servers having sold my last tower server to someone who will hopefully get more use out of it than me. Despite working from home for most of the past 21 months (time flies!) I found that I was not using my servers (two HP ProLiant ML110 G6, each with an Intel Xeon X3430 quad core CPU, one with 16GB RAM and another with 32GB, plus an Intel S5520HC/SC5650BRP “beast” with two Intel Xeon E5645 hex core CPUs and 96GB RAM!) as much as I expected to due to the noise they made and heat generated. I also discovered how much floor space they took up.
Having known of the popularity of Intel NUCs for use in home labs, particularly by those running VMware vSphere/ESXi, these were my first thought when I started thinking about replacing my servers. However it was only when I bought my first NUC, a NUC7i7DNHE, in August that I realised how small they were! Thanks to William Lam and the VMware community I already knew it should take 64GB RAM but it’s always good when it works!
Before buying this NUC I looked at the various models and specifications available and wanting at least a quad core CPU I knew it had to have an 8th generation i5 or i7 (or i9!) CPU. The advantage of this particular model is that it has Intel AMT so I can remotely manage it.
A driver for updating my home lab was the development of a SUSE project called Harvester which I’ve been playing with since version 0.2.0. Essentially this allows you to host VMs and containers on the same server and manage them all through a single interface. SUSE have a great video on YouTube which explains Harvester far better than I can!
I’ve since bought another two NUCs, a NUC7i7DNKE (same as NUC7i7DNHE but M.2 SSD only) and a NUC8i5BEH. The second NUC has joined the first to run Harvester 1.0.0 in a cluster and the third will become a management machine hosting Rancher (amongst other things).
You’ve probably heard of Elf on a Shelf, well here are my NUCs (plus a SUSE cowmeleon) on a shelf!
This was definitely not possible with any of my tower servers (although I did have one HP server on top of a bookcase before I acquired the other two servers)!
Here’s to a happier, healthier, and safer new year for everyone!