Sysadmin

I have the CPU and RAM of two PowerVault NX3200s that were destined for the skip jammed into one chassis. It powers one hell of a nice Plex server running on UnRaid.

I run a few older things.

In my rack, I have:

• 1x 48-port POE Juniper EX220 used as a core switch with a fiber backbone to my upstairs switch; wish it was 10gig, but it was cheap and I needed ports.
• 1x Dell R720 with 2x Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 @ 2.70GHz, 256GB RAM, and 80TB of raw storage in a RAID-5 array (64TB usable).
  • Runs ESXi with VMs for everything from vSphere to Plex to some websites I host myself.
• 1x Dell R710 with 2x Intel X5650 @ 2.67GHz, 40GB RAM, and 24 TB of raw storage.
  • Currently unconfigured since I recently migrated off of this server to the R720.
• 1x Dell R610 with 2x Intel 5550s, 96GB RAM, and no drives.
  • Got this on a whim, planned to use it for a project, never got to it, now it sits on the bottom of my rack and reminds me of my folly.

Upstairs I have another 48-port Juniper EX220, and I plan to fill most of the ports with 4+ Ethernet drops to every room in my house, plus extras for WAPs, cameras, and remote sensors.
I also use Ruckus R710s for wireless connectivity; I have two right now, and plan to eventually get one of the outdoor-rated Ruckus WAPs to mount on my chimney since WiFi coverage gets a little sparse when you get halfway across my yard.

I was remarking to a friend the other day that I've managed to build myself a pretty stellar setup for the early 2010s, at a fraction of the cost it would have taken back then. Though it definitely eats lots of power!

Gave up running old server hardware. Way too loud and way too much power draw.

Now running a Synology DS918+ for most things and an old Dell Optiplex 3020 for blue iris. It no longer sounds like somebody is vacuuming in the basement all of the time and my power draw went from over 200W down to about 40W.

Old Dell optiplexes of an 5th gen or higher currently. Some Mac minis i7 2014+, dual core not worth the performance per watt.

old Asus A320 with a Ryzen 2600G and 16 GB of ram. Both memory and CPU were on my previous gaming desktop, I gave them to a friend that needed it. When he said he didn't need it any more, I took both back plus I bought his mobo.

I'm running Proxmox with one full VM for OPNSense and some containers for Pihole, HomeAssistant, Jellyfin, Gitlab, and file server.

I figured that repurposing old desktop parts as I upgrade is better and cheaper than buying old server gear. I get better performance with less power draw and less noise.

I really like the portable rack config! That would be ideal!!

Very similar set up:

• Dell R440 (local storage, sadly)
• Ubiquiti USW-24
• Low-end Antsle D for random container & VM shenanigans.

I'd like to mess around more with a Pi cluster (or some other low power/RISC setup) or an Intel NUC to keep the noise and power consumption down.

VMware esxi 7, win10 sandbox. Debian hosts for docker. I also run some a couple of i7 Mac mini's. I try to host on a balance of cheap, power efficient devices that I have spares of in case they blow up because I hate dealing with hardware compatibility issues. Since I decided this and shelved spares I haven't had any failure's.

I don't have any retired hardware from my current job, since I'm 100% cloud (and I don't miss hardware one bit (well, except for the one time I found that I didn't have any spare power cables for the homebrew PC)).

I have, however, converted my old QNAP NAS to TrueNAS, and it's much better now.