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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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[–] 1 point 4 months ago (6 children)

I'm aware of databases that support HA, but the vast majority of self-hosted apps I've encountered use file storage, even if they have a database as well. It sounds like you're proposing shared storage like an NFS share. But if you're upgrading nodes, at some point you have to upgrade the node hosting the shared storage right? Wouldn't that take down all services? Unless you use a distributed storage system, but I've heard those can get very complicated...

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (5 children)

    Kubernetes makes distributed storage easy.

    Basically, all the components get deployed for you, since that's part of what kubernetes is good at.

    And then, services/containers can provision storage by requesting storage via making a "claim" and whatever distributed storage providee you have gives it to you.

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

    Have you tried using Ceph or other distributed storage systems in your kubernetes cluster?

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

    Well, I run a one node cluster...

    But yes, I did use ceph via rook-ceph, because Openstack (a locally hosted AWS alternative), at least the Kubernetes version, wanted a ceph "cluster" to store stuff on.

    Longhorn is much easier. Although again, my "cluster" was one node. I deployed it because I wanted snapshots.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    Wow cool! I believe you're the first person I've met that actually used a cluster FS (in their homelab at least). I looked into it myself but it felt like nobody was really using it so I didn't bother.

    Does it involve much more work or is it a fairly transparent replacement to traditional storage options? Assuming one is already using Kubernetes. I'm wondering if it's worth it to switch to a cluster FS for everything, like Radicale or Tiddlywiki.

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

    On kubernetes it's pretty much the same amount of work. Every possible storage option exposes a generalized, abstracted "storageclass", from which storage can be provisioned and mounted into containers.

    https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/storage/storage-classes/

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