Looking to build a K8s cluster, what are your strategies for finding affordable hardware? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by Eldaroth@lemmy.world 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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[-] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 32 minutes ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
HA	Home Assistant automation software
~	High Availability
LXC	Linux Containers
VPN	Virtual Private Network
k8s	Kubernetes container management package

4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.

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this post was submitted on 25 May 2026

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