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Looking to build a K8s cluster, what are your strategies for finding affordable hardware? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I currently run all my self-hosted apps either on Podman in a VM or in LXCs on Proxmox. For hardware, I'm using a Chinese-made mini computer with an Intel N150 and 16GB of DDR5 RAM that I bought before the whole AI hype started. I also have a Synology NAS that I use mainly for media and photo storage.

I've been thinking about tinkering with Kubernetes in my homelab for a while now (I already use it extensively at work, so I'm quite familiar with it), and I started looking around for used hardware to use as bare metal nodes. Nothing fancy—I'm looking for 1 or 2 mini servers or SFF with at least 16GB of memory and a decent CPU (4–6 cores). But with current prices, even decently priced used hardware (~200–250€) is quite difficult to find in Europe, and most of it is HP stuff with Lenovo being a rare breed around here. I won't even get started on newly bought hardware...

If you've bought hardware in this market recently, how did it go for you? Or are most of you holding out for now, waiting for better times?

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[–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I personally have a handful of pi’s doing things, with plans to get more to do more (I have one in the mail to become my OpenWRT router). I was thinking of getting something simple to be able to do STT and TTS as I want to replace my HomePods as I slowly leave Apple and have have no interest in joining Amazon or Google for home automation, so I looked at my university’s used computers. I am not really a fan of buying some random persons old hardware but maybe a business is selling their old stuff.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    I assume you are using pi 4 and/or 5? I would have some 3b+ laying around which don't see any use nowadays. But can't quite imagine to build a cluster only made up of these, I think they are too underpowered, unless being used as like a small additional worker node.

    And buying new Pi 5 with 16GB of memory would set me back at least 200€ a unit, not including power supply or any case.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I’m also in the PI 4 group. Its worth watching ebay, etc for people selling pi clusters. I picked up my 8 node 4GB pi cluster fairly cheap.

    Also if you’re learning and find yourself struggling with yaml files, I found Claude helped a lot to get running. Create the file, dump it into Claude and let it re-output the file. Give it the error log helps if it gets stuck.

    Also if you explain your cluster setup, I built mine with Talos Linux so setup VIP, etc and it’s pretty good at generating a working setup.

    I’m not a huge fan of AI but I struggled with yaml formatting so it might suck for a lot of stuff but formatting stuff properly is great.. that and scanning logs for errors! 😎

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago

    I liked my Pi 3B+ for tinkering around and run some services like vaultwarden or a VPN node with PiVPN (first OpenVPN, later Wireguard). They are great for stuff like that and don't use much power. Not sure it makes sense to add them as nodes though as 2GB is stretching it, although Talos OS has a minimal requirement for worker nodes of 1GB, so I might still try 😄

    As you can see I plan to use Talos as well, it sounds really promising what I read about it. For a CNI I plan to use Cilium and for distributed storage I might try Longhorn and see how it works. Apart from that I am still on the fence if I should run my nodes bare model or put a virt layer in between with Proxmox.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I have a pi 4 running HAOS, I have an 8 gb pi 5 running a bunch of services, with head room to spare. I have a pi 5 with 4gb ram running Jellyfin with headroom to spare. Both pi 5’s are also running pihole.

    I also have a pi 5 with 2gb that will hopefully handle my personal blog and email, hopefully! I have a pi 5 with 1 gb showing up on Thursday that will run my OpenWRT and LuCI. I had a pi zero 2 that handled wireguard but it could only handle it for DNS, with OpenWRT on a pi 5 I will be able to do more than just DNS over wireguard.

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