this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024

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I just won an auction for 25 computers. What should I setup on them? (reddthat.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted

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I placed a low bid on an auction for 25 Elitedesk 800 G1s on a government auction and unexpectedly won (ultimately paying less than $20 per computer)

In the long run I plan on selling 15 or so of them to friends and family for cheap, and I'll probably have 4 with Proxmox, 3 for a lab cluster and 1 for the always-on home server and keep a few for spares and random desktops around the house where I could use one.

But while I have all 25 of them what crazy clustering software/configurations should I run? Any fun benchmarks I should know about that I could run for the lolz?

Edit to add:

Specs based on the auction listing and looking computer models:

4th gen i5s (probably i5-4560s or similar)
8GB of DDR3 RAM
256GB SSDs
Windows 10 Pro (no mention of licenses, so that remains to be seen)
Looks like 3 PCIe Slots (2 1x and 2 16x physically, presumably half-height)

Possible projects I plan on doing:

Proxmox cluster
Baremetal Kubernetes cluster
Harvester HCI cluster (which has the benefit of also being a Rancher cluster)
Automated Windows Image creation, deployment and testing
Pentesting lab
Multi-site enterprise network setup and maintenance
Linpack benchmark then compare to previous TOP500 lists

(page 2) 45 comments

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

So on one I would suggest frigate. Those support (I think) and pci-e coral ai chip.

Home assistant would be great bare metal

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

@Trainguyrom

#Gentoo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

distcc cluster?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

25 screens, 25 dancing gandalfs

[–] Linkerbaan -1 points 2 months ago (7 children)

I don't understand why people want to use so many PC's rather than just run multiple VM's on a single server that has more cores.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Learning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Having multiple machines can protect against hardware failures.
If hardware fails, you have dono machines.
It's good learning, both for provisioning and for the physical (cleaning, customising, wiring, networking with multiple nics), and for multi-node clusters.

Virt is convenient, but doesn't teach you everything

[–] Linkerbaan 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I'm not sure if running multiple single SSD machines would provide much redundancy over a server with multiple PSU's and drives. Sure the CPU or mobo could fail but the downtime would be less hassle than 25 old PC's.

Of course there is a learning experience in more hardware but 25 PC's does seem slightly overkill. I can imagine 3-5 max.

I'm probably looking at this from a homelab point of view who just wants to run stuff though, not really as the hobby being "setting up the PC's themselves".

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