Chick-fil-A published an article years ago how they used NUCs to put a Kubernetes cluster at each location, one reason is the hardware can easily be bought anywhere as replacement.
I use Intel NUCs all the time, one as my media PC, one as an offsite 'cloud' backup (at my parents home), and two for my kids to use. They are extremely well built and such a great form factor.
Was just about to write that it used to much power, compared to my cheapo 14c server build, but then i remember my "lowest consumption" was with just 1 2.5" SSD and i still pulled about +20W (headless, total from wall 53W, after extensive BIOS tampering). 9w each even with both a high speed and a regular SSD. Impressive!
Hey Tim, If you have the vPro nuc models, you can use a meshcentral/commander server to control them without the pikvm. Ctrl+P during startup to get to the settings iirc.
NEVER underestimate how much you can get from a mini PC these days. I love BeeLink PC's. I have a SER7 and it's a tiny beast. Plays all my factory games that I play on PC.
ok but what do you use it for? every time i see these cluster videos the answer is always "oh for so much" or "i couldn't live without it now i just do all kinds of things with this" and no one ever explains what the fuck you'd use this for
The reason you would build a cluster is generally high availability or HA. If you host a personal website, an HA cluster would ensure a system is always running the website or application even if you experience hardware failures in one or more of the other nodes of the cluster. There's not a lot of reason to build one for personal use if you don't host a publicly available website or application... other than for fun, education, and experience with how these things operate.
@@resonon3556that doesn’t explain anything, this RUclipsr has a ton of random shit in his server track claims that it’s near silent while there’s like 3 normal 1U servers in there with normal loud ass server fans. Also you don’t host websites locally that’s generally not smart. Hosting for other people has huge legal implications and should also be done externally. And what the hell is a nuc supposed to host? A nuc costs more than a used standard server which will have way more HA features such as redundant power supplies.
@@marlo8850 what's your problem? The question was why would someone build a mini-cluster. The only reason to build a cluster is HA - high availability. If one node goes down for maintenance, other nodes can take it's place. This is not about the viability of self-hosting or hosting from home, nobody would use this in production for a job. This is a homelab and you could host a small personal website as well as DNS or various other services you run on your network that you want running all the time. You're mad that I don't have a clear explanation of every server in his rack? Get a grip, my dude.
“Beast of a machine”… they are 4 cores and cost as much as a used DL360 with 24-32 cores with over 128GB DDR4 RAM. Idk if I’d classify them as beasts by any stretch of the imagination
I built my home lab from used Xeons I got off eBay. My electric bill was like $400 a month lol. Obviously I had to shut it down. Maybe I'll resurrect it but with NUCs...
the word but usually means all the previous stuff isn't applicable FWI... I tried to get a NUC going for a server but ended up going full sized ATX for the hard drive support
Sorry about that, fixed the links 🤦. That's what I get for scheduling this video while on vacation!
Год назад+3
nuc 12 pro kit have 2.5G i225-V nic, and nuc and 13 pro kit have i226-V nic. For tall chassis nuc's 12/13 you also can add a secondary Intel I225 expansion module that's around 50$.
How do you feel about the lack of ECC memory on devices like these? I know the Asrock NUC BOX 1360p and the Morefine s500+ is ecc enabled but for anything outside of that when do you personally use ecc and not? In your experience is it ok to use nonecc to spin up VMs, Jellyfin, any non-storage type services etc as long as you have a main file server/NAS that is ecc enabled?
How much do they cost base? And can u price added items? (List them?). I need 5 of them. But limited on income. Where did you buy it all? Most humble appreciation for your help!
2967 for the 3 nucs. With 2 tb of storage each. You still need to spec out the cost for the rack mount which is like 200 and the pikvm. So total it would be something like 3300 - 3500.
I have a homelab and administrate and use multiple k8s clusters at work. But I still don’t get why you would need that in your homelab. Is there anything in a homelab that needs the scalability features of a cluster without the possibility to dynamicly order/buy nodes and cancel them accordingly?
I self host things here in the home, I want to ensure they are up and scalable (if they can scale). k8s help with that when I need to patch systems, reboot systems, or even when I need to scale compute. Rather than scale vertically, I just buy another low power node to expand my compute, disk space, and ram.
But isn’t building a good server better suited? Get a energy efficient cpu and use virtualization like proxmox or even TrueNAS scale on it. Deploy using docker. Administrate using ansible. Upgrade RAM if needed. My Ryzen 3600 Home Server idles at around 10-15W (slightly underclocked and -volted, but still…), has way more power than these nucs or thinclients and offers way better possibilities to upgrade (HBA, 10G Cards, better cooling). If it maxes out I build another one (then a cluster might be handy, but even in this scenario I don’t see a reason to scale applications between different nodes, I would just move some services to the new server). So is it mainly because inexpensive NUCs and ThinClients are a good entry into the hobby?
Doesn't the smaller form factor cause the CPUs to throttle a lot? I've got a mini PC with an i9 in it and I feel like I wasted my money because the CPU is throttling due to heat almost constantly. I'm not even gaming on it. I use it to push movies and music to different rooms in the apartment, and it also functions as a mail server. I think I would have been better served to save the money on the i9, and got something with an i5 instead.
@@TechnoTim I dig around your videos and found the company MK1, but like I wish they make more generic plates that is cheaper and mount other mini pcs that is slightly larger than nuc like deskmini X300
I'm happy that I finally listen to someone normal like @ZachsTechTurf to follow you and your channel is fu**ing amazing place to learn new stuff. Love it! 😊❤
You don’t need ECC for a home server that’s less than 12TB. If you’re storing so little data the chance of a corrupt bit is lower than the chance of an entire disk failing. Don’t spend 30% more for functionality you’ll never utilise
9Watts times 3 is 27. So roughly 30W, that isn't little, on year time that will rise substantially.. And they ain't cheap at first... Not a good idea Tim 😊
No one needs a server cluster in their house, unless they are supporting a small business or running their own game (for instance), this is not that energy efficient given the use of mobile device chips.
If you cant afford the Intel NUCs, you can always just get a mini-PC which is just a third party manufactured one. Those can be as cheap as $100 for celeron units, and obviously there are more powerful/expensive offerings if you need more.
I blame you for the fact that I have three Intel NUC 12s sitting in front of me right now 😂
Seriously, your channel is awesome. Thank you for the great content. Can’t wait to get this new cluster up and running
so, what is a cluster and what it is used for ??? Can one make a home server rather ( out of it ???)
home server, web server, @@ovi_4
@@ovi_4 clusters are set of servers which used for redundancy and kind of too much for home sever
Chick-fil-A published an article years ago how they used NUCs to put a Kubernetes cluster at each location, one reason is the hardware can easily be bought anywhere as replacement.
I'll appreciate if you can share the link of that. Interesting
Same here
@@ShinyTechThingsposted
This guy is gonna have the most solid minecraft server
Not really without multipaper
@@Demopans5990 Why? I'm searching the internet for a home Minecraft server and this one seemed nice
@@julienylieff9188
Multipaper scales better across threads
@@Demopans5990 If you have reasonable single core performance, it's not going to matter under 20 players, which most private servers rarely exceed.
@@_xX_me_Xx_
You'll be surprised at the amount of lag even a few players running mob farms can cause
I use Intel NUCs all the time, one as my media PC, one as an offsite 'cloud' backup (at my parents home), and two for my kids to use. They are extremely well built and such a great form factor.
Was just about to write that it used to much power, compared to my cheapo 14c server build, but then i remember my "lowest consumption" was with just 1 2.5" SSD and i still pulled about +20W (headless, total from wall 53W, after extensive BIOS tampering). 9w each even with both a high speed and a regular SSD. Impressive!
Finally, a setup strong enough to handle the work Excel spreadsheets my company insists on using as massive databases.
The world's most popular database!
@@TechnoTim in all fairness, Access is far from user friendly for the average user so I get why Excel gets stuck with so much heavy lifting 😂
Companies do be addicted to Excel.
Hey Tim, If you have the vPro nuc models, you can use a meshcentral/commander server to control them without the pikvm. Ctrl+P during startup to get to the settings iirc.
Thanks! Unfortunately I bought the model without vpro!
NEVER underestimate how much you can get from a mini PC these days.
I love BeeLink PC's. I have a SER7 and it's a tiny beast. Plays all my factory games that I play on PC.
Been doing my homeland with three 6th gen NUCs for a while. Works great!
Wow thats a dope set up
I have a Nuc with an i5 and that puppy is a beast
ok but what do you use it for? every time i see these cluster videos the answer is always "oh for so much" or "i couldn't live without it now i just do all kinds of things with this" and no one ever explains what the fuck you'd use this for
btw i forgot but you could also make money out of it and host stuff for people (websites ? apps ?...)
The reason you would build a cluster is generally high availability or HA. If you host a personal website, an HA cluster would ensure a system is always running the website or application even if you experience hardware failures in one or more of the other nodes of the cluster. There's not a lot of reason to build one for personal use if you don't host a publicly available website or application... other than for fun, education, and experience with how these things operate.
@@resonon3556 finally, a very clear explanation. thank you
@@resonon3556that doesn’t explain anything, this RUclipsr has a ton of random shit in his server track claims that it’s near silent while there’s like 3 normal 1U servers in there with normal loud ass server fans. Also you don’t host websites locally that’s generally not smart. Hosting for other people has huge legal implications and should also be done externally. And what the hell is a nuc supposed to host? A nuc costs more than a used standard server which will have way more HA features such as redundant power supplies.
@@marlo8850 what's your problem? The question was why would someone build a mini-cluster.
The only reason to build a cluster is HA - high availability. If one node goes down for maintenance, other nodes can take it's place. This is not about the viability of self-hosting or hosting from home, nobody would use this in production for a job. This is a homelab and you could host a small personal website as well as DNS or various other services you run on your network that you want running all the time.
You're mad that I don't have a clear explanation of every server in his rack? Get a grip, my dude.
*Xeons:* _"Aww, that's cute."_
"Look what they have to do to mimic a fraction of our power"
@@bot2k6 And they do, very well surprisingly enough.
Use Intel AMT for OOBM instead of dedicated KVM, much easier.
“Beast of a machine”… they are 4 cores and cost as much as a used DL360 with 24-32 cores with over 128GB DDR4 RAM. Idk if I’d classify them as beasts by any stretch of the imagination
And that also uses 600w in comparison to 9w.
VMware vSAN would be good on this cluster. 64GB per node is essential.
there is no way I’m paying for 3 esxi subscriptions!
AMAZING COMPUTING!
I built my home lab from used Xeons I got off eBay. My electric bill was like $400 a month lol. Obviously I had to shut it down. Maybe I'll resurrect it but with NUCs...
the other advantage of using intel over arm is you can heat your home with your server.
the word but usually means all the previous stuff isn't applicable FWI... I tried to get a NUC going for a server but ended up going full sized ATX for the hard drive support
The question becomes: what do you do with the kubernetes cluster?
I have an old nuc that does okay. I should really put it in place as the main server and use my one and only raspberry pi for something else.
what is the rackmount used 👀?
clean setup
Wow! That's awesome!
What do you use to track your power consumption?
I’m new to this and don’t recognize that GUI.
Thanks.
Intel vPro can remote install any OS as you want.
yeah, unfortunately I bought one without vpro 😥
How much did it cost though?
2.990 canadian dollars...
Genius!
This is awesome
Why would you need 64ram for a nuc? And that's so cool to have them in a rac, I wish I got a rackmount with a bunch of stuff lol
Do you have a link for the NUCs you used? I see the protectli's links above. Just curious if any NUCs have 2.5g network interfaces
Sorry about that, fixed the links 🤦. That's what I get for scheduling this video while on vacation!
nuc 12 pro kit have 2.5G i225-V nic, and nuc and 13 pro kit have i226-V nic. For tall chassis nuc's 12/13 you also can add a secondary Intel I225 expansion module that's around 50$.
Nice!
tutorial plz!!
The probable with using this consumer hardware is no ecc memory support. I don’t run anything without it, and zfs .
Im trying to setup a cloud gaming server too
Nice job
How you setup k8s cluster?
Are you use proxmox cluster and then after it you setup k8s? Or you just install ubuntu to every intel nuc?
I’m so jealous 😢
Wow I would need to try it my self. As I have issue where to store offline footage
I bet you wonder how much power they draw, well at idle just as much as my purple fan lights 😂 (joke)
Do you need a pikvm for each NUC?
No, just one if you use a switch. See my PiKVM video!
How are you powering them up individually with a single PiKVM? assuming not and using PoE or Smart plugs?
now get a bunch of beelink AMD 8 cores
Could you sugest one?
@@przemekwyrzykowski822 Beelink GTR7
@TechnoTim Do you know if those NUCs are Intel vPro capable? With vPro you have integrated “out of band” KVM 😊
How do you feel about the lack of ECC memory on devices like these? I know the Asrock NUC BOX 1360p and the Morefine s500+ is ecc enabled but for anything outside of that when do you personally use ecc and not? In your experience is it ok to use nonecc to spin up VMs, Jellyfin, any non-storage type services etc as long as you have a main file server/NAS that is ecc enabled?
TBH, I never make a decision based on ECC. My desktop, laptop, and many servers over the years do not have ECC and I've yet to have an issue.
CON-neck-tivity
cuh-neck-tivity
if they have 10 gbe capability, then I’m interested!
Is there a full tutorial on that?
it will handle web hosting business and cloud
is there a video about installing?
1 pykvm to manage the 3 minipcs?
NUCs have been end of lifed.
ASUS is picking them up!
Can this be used to replace a normal server machine for commercial use
sorry if I didn't understand
how do you control them when they are powered down ?
The PiKVM can turn on your device. There is an addon that allows you to plug into your pc's front io.
@@qaptin1996 thanks for your fast replay,
if you ever did a setup for such that I would be happy to see it
@AbdelAziz Sharaf sorry no project to show, i just Googled the piKVM since i was curious. The PiKVM also offers a "wake on LAN" option as well.
Can you maybe try with Mac Mini's? Apple likes to talk about how good they are for servers
What use for remote access?
Wish I had ur knowledge 😢
Hopefully your server room is dust free.
Hi! Thanks for sharing. Did you use a special k8s distro? My intel celeron NUC is eating 4 Watts running minimal k3s.
How much do they cost base? And can u price added items? (List them?). I need 5 of them. But limited on income. Where did you buy it all?
Most humble appreciation for your help!
They are all linked in the description! You can also find them in the full video which is also linked!
What was the total cost?
That's the question. Probably about 1k per unit all in
2967 for the 3 nucs. With 2 tb of storage each. You still need to spec out the cost for the rack mount which is like 200 and the pikvm. So total it would be something like 3300 - 3500.
@@denniskluytmans much cheaper than that, see the links!
@@TechnoTim yeah for murica-nees people. We Europe folks don't get the good prices
@@TechnoTim didn't see you had links for prices
Which tool are you using to check power consumption?
Powertop
1TB + another drive is “plenty of room to run Kubernetes” LOL I don’t think it takes all that much…
I wonder if those get hot. I don't see any fans or anything.
I worry what will happen to the NUCs now that Intel isn’t making them anymore and Asus took over.
where can i get the kvm & rackmount panel for the NUCS
Low power HIGH cost
a shame these make terrible servers due to reliability problems lol
no wait intel built this 🥲u assembled
I built a hybrid analog digital cluster decades ago that drew more power than the whole house air conditioner , this idea will help me do better .
What's Pi KVM he mentioned
Why did you do that?
I have a homelab and administrate and use multiple k8s clusters at work. But I still don’t get why you would need that in your homelab. Is there anything in a homelab that needs the scalability features of a cluster without the possibility to dynamicly order/buy nodes and cancel them accordingly?
I self host things here in the home, I want to ensure they are up and scalable (if they can scale). k8s help with that when I need to patch systems, reboot systems, or even when I need to scale compute. Rather than scale vertically, I just buy another low power node to expand my compute, disk space, and ram.
But isn’t building a good server better suited? Get a energy efficient cpu and use virtualization like proxmox or even TrueNAS scale on it. Deploy using docker. Administrate using ansible. Upgrade RAM if needed. My Ryzen 3600 Home Server idles at around 10-15W (slightly underclocked and -volted, but still…), has way more power than these nucs or thinclients and offers way better possibilities to upgrade (HBA, 10G Cards, better cooling). If it maxes out I build another one (then a cluster might be handy, but even in this scenario I don’t see a reason to scale applications between different nodes, I would just move some services to the new server). So is it mainly because inexpensive NUCs and ThinClients are a good entry into the hobby?
how do you control ALL of thoes PC's with ONE piKVM?
What is a Cluster ?
Doesn't the smaller form factor cause the CPUs to throttle a lot? I've got a mini PC with an i9 in it and I feel like I wasted my money because the CPU is throttling due to heat almost constantly. I'm not even gaming on it. I use it to push movies and music to different rooms in the apartment, and it also functions as a mail server. I think I would have been better served to save the money on the i9, and got something with an i5 instead.
if you have no fan its going to throttle a lot, and if the fan is shit its the same
Where did u get that nuc rack? Ill ask for one for Christmas (Nuc-Racker)
How are you checking the outlet wattages?
With a meter! amzn.to/3qamIvF (affiliate link)
Aah shit, a pi kvm is a thing?
What does this do
May I ask where I can find such a case? Are they just VESA compatible?
This is an intel nuc, and yes it's vesa compatible!
@@TechnoTim I dig around your videos and found the company MK1, but like I wish they make more generic plates that is cheaper and mount other mini pcs that is slightly larger than nuc like deskmini X300
put gpu in it..
are there official drivers for Linux?
I'm happy that I finally listen to someone normal like @ZachsTechTurf
to follow you and your channel is
fu**ing amazing place to learn new stuff.
Love it! 😊❤
Server naming is horrible lol
How many KHs can each one mine Monero? That’s the benchmark we need to know!
9 watts each is pretty high for idle, my lattepanda sigma gets 2 watts at idle and has 12 cores
Thing is I can build a much faster machine for the same price
but then it's not a low power compact device!
I wouldn’t call a HA cluster a cluster with its nodes in the same physical location and internet connection 😂
Your kidding right?
@@aliens1990990 uh ?
@@aliens1990990 uh ?
You know the rule: no ECC => it goes in the trash.
Salty...
You don’t need ECC for a home server that’s less than 12TB. If you’re storing so little data the chance of a corrupt bit is lower than the chance of an entire disk failing. Don’t spend 30% more for functionality you’ll never utilise
Nice, just two things: no redundant power and i7, seriously I have laptops more powerful ... And local storage? Bad idea.
Yeah, you built a server for what again? Seriously, like wtf do you people do with this shit.
9Watts times 3 is 27. So roughly 30W, that isn't little, on year time that will rise substantially..
And they ain't cheap at first...
Not a good idea Tim 😊
No one needs a server cluster in their house, unless they are supporting a small business or running their own game (for instance), this is not that energy efficient given the use of mobile device chips.
IT is far cry from a real server.
But IT is a nice idea
Is mini PC reliable for Programing/ Coding or intensive home works?
But can it run Crysis?
it has backdoors, IME
NUCs are great! Just wish they were slightly more affordable. 🥲
If you cant afford the Intel NUCs, you can always just get a mini-PC which is just a third party manufactured one. Those can be as cheap as $100 for celeron units, and obviously there are more powerful/expensive offerings if you need more.