Are refurbished laptops reliable enough for a small Proxmox VE homelab?

[mohsin045]

I’m setting up a small Proxmox lab mainly for learning, testing a few VMs, containers, backups, and maybe some light home/office use.

I don’t want to buy a proper server right now because this is still a learning setup. I was thinking about using one of the refurbished laptops I found while checking used business devices. I came across Sermobile during the search, but before buying anything I wanted to ask here first because specs on a seller page don’t always tell the full story.

Has anyone here used a laptop for Proxmox VE for a small lab?

I’m mostly worried about heat, SSD life, RAM limits, Ethernet stability, and whether running it for long hours is a bad idea. The built-in battery sounds useful like a mini UPS, but I’m not sure if that is a good reason to choose a laptop over a small desktop or mini PC.

Would you use refurbished laptops for a Proxmox learning setup, or should I avoid laptops completely and look for a used desktop instead?

 

[jdancer]

Since Proxmox is Debian with an Ubuntu LTS kernel, it's reliable enough.

Have it running on a Dell Latitude 5421 with no issues.

 

[Johannes S]

You could also used used mini-pcs which where aimed for usage in office environments. Since they are (more or less, at least with Lenovos ThinkCentres and Dells Optiplex) based on mobile technology (think notebooks without display they are great for usage as low-energy playgrounds for stuff like home-automation vms or 24/7 services (e.g. adguard or pihole). They have (like notebooks ) also some caveats though: You can't put much additional stuff (storage, network cards or gpus) in them, so building a cluster out of them is possible but then you will need something like an usb ethernet adapter for the recommended dedicated cluster network (see: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Cluster_Manager ).
For playing around with Ceph they are mainly unusuable due to the mentioned limits in terms of expandability, see https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Deploy...r#_recommendations_for_a_healthy_ceph_cluster and https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/fabu-can-i-use-ceph-in-a-_very_-small-cluster.159671/ for details

But for playing around and maybe not too many self-hosted services they are great. And if at some point you outgrow them and want to buy a beefier hardware they can still be useful for usage as ProxmoxBackupServers

All of said things also applies to notebooks obviouvlsy.

 

[meyergru]

I would have second thoughts about SSD life, because with ZFS, you might end up having problems with the usual consumer-grade pre-used SSDs that are built into those laptops. Also, RAM tends to be soldered, so you probably cannot extend that, either.

 

[Impact]

Since Proxmox is Debian with an Ubuntu LTS kernel, it's reliable enough.

How is this related to the hardware's reliability?

look for a used desktop instead

I don't really see a good reason to use a laptop here. Seems a whole lot more expensive than a used office PC as well.

 

[J-Rod]

I also would not recommend buying a laptop for PVE. If you had a spare one sitting around and wanted to play, then sure, but spending money in this direction is not ideal due to expandability limitations.

However, for similar reasons I would not go directly to a mini-PC like the Dell Micro because these types are also limited and you frequently have to jump through annoying hoops to get a second ethernet port, multiple drives for mirroring, etc. They also likely have small fans that can get noisy under load and die more frequently, and heatsinks that need regular dust removal.

Desktop units can also have limitations, such only one or two PCIe slots that are half-height, limited space for drives, and limited cooling.

So a mini-tower is a much better option.