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On Jul 19, 2021, at 04:51, Andrew Elwell via lustre-discuss <<a href="mailto:lustre-discuss@lists.lustre.org" class="">lustre-discuss@lists.lustre.org</a>> wrote:<br class="">
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<div class="">Hi folks,<br class="">
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Given my homelab testing for Lustre tends to be contained within<br class="">
VirtualBox on laptop ($work has a physical hardware test bed once<br class="">
mucking around gets serious), I'm considering expanding to some real<br class="">
hardware at home for testing. My MythTV days are over, but I'd ideally<br class="">
like an aarch64 client that can run on a Raspberry Pi, incase I ever<br class="">
poke at Kodi.<br class="">
<br class="">
What server hardware would people advise that fulfils:<br class="">
<br class="">
* low running cost (it's my electricity bill!)<br class="">
* fairly cheap to buy (own budget)<br class="">
* if I'm buying a cased 'nuc' type thing, it must be able to fit in a<br class="">
3.5" SATA drive (as I have some old ones that fell off the back of a<br class="">
rack)<br class="">
* not full of screaming fans<br class="">
<br class="">
Given it's not planned for production use 24/7 I don't care about HA<br class="">
with multi-tailed drives, but would quite like the ability to add more<br class="">
OSSs as required.<br class="">
Cable sprawl / mounting isn't that much of an issue, providing it can<br class="">
live in the shed<br class="">
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Any suggestions?<br class="">
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<div>Really, the hardware you buy depends only on your performance requirements.</div>
<div>I have run my home Lustre server in a single "whitebox PC" for many years</div>
<div>(filesystem originally formatted with Lustre 1.4 in 2006 and has been upgraded</div>
<div>in-place ever since then). </div>
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<div>I have 1 MDT + 5 OSTs (one OST per drive), using LVM below the filesystems</div>
<div>to facilitate snapshots for MDT backup, and to allow LV migration to new drives</div>
<div>as they become full/old. I started with maybe 2 or 3 200/300GB drives, and now</div>
<div>have 3x 4TB drives and 2x 6TB drives + 512 GB SSD for the mDT. The server</div>
<div>itself was a Pentium-D + 2GB RAM for many years until that hardware failed last</div>
<div>yeaar, and is now a 3.3GHz Core2-Duo + 4GB RAM (old Dell deskside computer).</div>
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<div>Basically, any computer you can buy today is going to be enough for functional</div>
<div>testing, if you aren't looking for peak performance.</div>
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<div>Client performance is limited by the 1Gbit Ethernet I'm using, but that is enough</div>
<div>for my use (video is under 1MB/s, and backup of family laptops). I have a beefier</div>
<div>x86 client (i5-6600 + 48GB RAM), formerly an Intel Atom, but that couldn't handle</div>
<div>HD video decoding. I was also running a 32-bit Raspberry Pi 3 for a while, but</div>
<div>it was very marginal for HD video and died after a year of uptime.</div>
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<div>Cheers, Andreas</div>
<div>--</div>
<div>Andreas Dilger</div>
<div>Lustre Principal Architect</div>
<div>Whamcloud</div>
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