Homelab for clustering, ceph and kubernetes - will Xeon 12c/24t be enough ?

[dominikp]

I want to dive more into proxmox clustering - 3 nodes in VMs, test some HA stuff because ive never did it. Also i want to test out some ceph storaging (with VMs). Which i would place on those virtualised proxmoxes (or next to them?). And use this storage for VMs. So ceph nodes will have virtualized storage. Finally, some time later i definetly will want to learn at least basics of kubernetes (i already know docker). So i would place pods on those virtualised proxmoxes.

For that purpose i want to buy dell r720. Will all these be possible on 2x6c/12t Xeon e5-2620 2.0GHz, 64gb ram, + 2 SSDs (for main proxmox and for VMs)?Or will i have to do all one by one, with deleting previous setup? Im considering switching to 8/16 xeonx (total 16c/32t) if needed.

 

[ness1602]

I would test everything in virtualbox, that is the easiest way.

 

[dominikp]

I dont think i7-6820hq would handle all those things i mentioned ( pxx cluster + ceph cluster + k8s kluster + buch of other things). I already have some small pc (i7 2600 + 12gb ram) with pxx on which i test some things (jenkins, artifactory, gitlab, docker, few apps instances) but its encrypted and i leave it only for company-related things. But its not enough, i need to test more things.

 

[Dominic]

As reference, I sometimes run a 3-node Proxmox VE cluster with Ceph and VMs running on top of that Ceph storage inside a Proxmox VE host with Xeon E3-1231 v3 & a single NVME and while it takes some time to install VMs on that Ceph storage it's enough for testing.

 

[dominikp]

@Dominic thanks! How many monitors/osds you have on your ceph? I dont know it at all but RH documentation says about 3 monitors and 3 osds as minimum.

 

[Dominic]

I did 4 OSDs and 1 monitor per virtual PVE last time. My "testing" however was to run touch and cat. With such low requirements it does not really matter if you have 1 OSD or 4. But you also cannot complain when installing a VM takes 10 minutes instead of 1.

I dont think i7-6820hq would handle

So that computer would still be available? You could just give it a try and purchase new hardware when things become unbearably slow.

 

[dominikp]

i7-6820hq is my work laptop with Kubuntu. I already have some small testing env in docker and some windows sysprep images in vbox.