What mini pc do You reccomend?

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bktpl

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Oct 5, 2024
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Hello, i am looking for 3 devices to build proxmox HA lab, it will not be much used anyway. Please let me know where did You buy your equipment and how much did You pay? What network cards should i avoid. Should i know any details about problems on some platforms?
I am from Poland and ill try to buy it locally here.
Anyway, if it is possible ill look for 2xlan devices.
Also i will need some switch (platform must be ultra quiet and small) and or network devices.
Thank You very much for Your help.

UPS i forgot, maybe some OT mini stations from ali will be ok?
 
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LnxBil said:
Then why don't you virtualize your cluster? Costs nothing and you can test everything.

Hardware for a real cluster with built in redundancy is expensive.
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+1 with this piece of advice, completely able to run 6-12 PVE nodes virtually on single i3 mini PC from 5+ years ago. Of course mostly with LXCs. Basically just put in 16G+ RAM. You have your learning environment in no time.

EDIT: My deployment is typically with libvirt, just to not go crazy. And it actually nicely allows you to abstract external router, i.e. VyOS as well.
 
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LnxBil said:
Then why don't you virtualize your cluster? Costs nothing and you can test everything.

Hardware for a real cluster with built in redundancy is expensive.
Click to expand...
what do You exactly mean by "virtualize my cluster"? Do You mean nested virtualization and proxmox as a guest?
To be honest, i prefer phisical but small devices. I want to learn k8s and play with it. Of course ill use 3-4 vms for some not very performance needed apps/tools at the begginig, by writing it will be not much used i wanted to say that it willl be not used to build for example some learning platform for other people to learn something on it.
Anyway, i do not have place right now even for PC-like server even small tower.
 
bktpl said:
what do You exactly mean by "virtualize my cluster"?
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If you are already running Proxmox, just spin up 3-5 VMs to act as nodes in a Kubernetes cluster. Install whatever flavor of Kubernetes you want to experiment with on those VMs. If you want HA, you need three VMs to run the control plane. and two VMs to run the worker nodes. I say three to 5 because honestly you can do Kubernetes using fewer nodes if you don't need HA. I run one control plane node and two worker nodes in my personal set up.

Either way, using VMs to run the kubernetes software will behave almost exactly like having physical machines, and allow you to get experience with Kubernetes
 
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bktpl said:
Do You mean nested virtualization and proxmox as a guest?
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Yes.

bktpl said:
To be honest, i prefer phisical but small devices. I want to learn k8s and play with it.
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And why do you ask in a Proxmox VE forum if you're not planing to use PVE? If it's just k8s, buy used PI 3s. Small, sufficient and don't break the bank.

bktpl said:
Anyway, i do not have place right now even for PC-like server even small tower.
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The rent a server or multiple online, which should be cheaper than buying a couple of mini PCs
 
louie1961 said:
I spun up 5 VMs in my Proxmox host and used them for my K3S cluster using the k3sup script. When I am ready to go with physical hardware I am strongly leaning towards these

https://www.gmktec.com/products/amd...7345ec-b381-4f76-83dc-9cb6156546ee.header_1.1
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@louie1961 I've been looking at these as well after seeing your post. Did you end up going with these and if so what are your opinions? I've been looking at the nucbox m4 and the nucbox k11. Any suggestions much appreciated.
 
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bit late but my suggestion would be a lenovo tiny pc, max ram of 32GB+ (128GB DDR5 on the newer models) and they have 35w cpus you can get as high as a newer AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5750GE or Intel Core i3-13100T and different models you can get either a nvidia gpu version such as a P620 or T1000 or one with a quad port nic , typically they have either 2x NVME slots or !x NMVE + 1x 2.5in slot, with 4-6 USB 3 (usb 3.2 in newer models), often hdmi or similar (4x mini display port for the nvidia models).

between the possibilities of nic support, gpu support, high performance cpu at only 35w, usb3.0-3.2, nvme support, 32-128GB ram, etc, those things are basically the best all around option period, in my opinion at least. they are always my go to recommendation.

even the older ones you can get for 40-80$ arent half bad, i got mine for $40, but its just an i3 2nd gen with 8gb max ram, not good for a whole proxmox server as a main device (although i run proxmox on it with just pfsense and a couple little things), you can get an old ryzen model with 32gb ram support for around 100-150 usually on ebay, thats probably one of the cheapest ones that would make a half decent server, but a lot of the other newer models and models with pcie support are better.
 
Reedler said:
@louie1961 I've been looking at these as well after seeing your post. Did you end up going with these and if so what are your opinions? I've been looking at the nucbox m4 and the nucbox k11. Any suggestions much appreciated.
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I did go with the GMKtek AMD 9 K11. Very impressed with the performance. I will be buying a second one down the road. These things are made well.
 
Reedler said:
I did go with the GMKtek AMD 9 K11. Very impressed with the performance. I will be buying a second one down the road. These things are made well.
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@Reedler

Were you able to passthrough iGPU Radeon 780M from host to any containers or VMs on your GMKtek AMD 9 K11? I have been trying that for the past 3 days and have been unsuccessful. Each time i add the PCIE device to the Windows VM, it hangs or stops responding. I'll have to physically power off the unit and restart it again. You have any lucks passing though the iGPU to LXCs or VMs?
 
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basheerami said:
@XMarcR

What GMKtec devices are you using and how have you configured your 5-node cluster?
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I'm using M5 Plus (Ryzen 7 5825U) and G6 (Ryzen 3 5425U), all with 2*32GB RAM and 2*NVMe. It's my home lab, and I change the cluster from time to time.
At the moment, I have created a Linbit Linstor across three nodes (on each node, a 700 GB partition per NVMe, this as a ZFS mirror and then the DRBD on top of that). Only ZFS is currently running as a mirror on a fourth node, but the ZFS also serves as an NFS server for file storage for ISOs and hook scripts for nodes 1-3. This node 4 is also set up as PBS. The fifth node is to become an offline pull PBS (Miyagi) in the future, which I am currently testing. https://github.com/bashclub/miyagi-pbs-zfs
 
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