Debating Local Compute Options

Thinking about my plans for local hardware

As I’ve talked about previously, I run almost all my services on a bare metal server in OVHcloud. It’s been working great, even for a system with spinning rust for its drives. But, after several months I realised a few things. Namely, access to remote services can be easily solved via something like Tailscale. Also, that the running costs of a local machine in the form of power, would be far cheaper than the month to month costs of the bare metal server. Of course, the bare metal server fees include multiple other bits like the staff to deploy and maintain the physical hosts, power, etc etc. But, I feel as if I build something local, not only do I gain more control but I reduce my month to month cost.

For example, I currently pay around 140 EUR per month for a system with Intel Xeon D-2141I an eight core, 16 thread CPU with a boost of 3Ghz, 64 GB of ECC memory and 2x 4TB drives in a RAID 1 for 4 TB usable space. I’ve a 650 watt power supply in my inventory which would go into a new local machine. If we do some napkin math and assume that PSU would be going full tilt every day for a month, we’re at 120 EUR in power. Okay - Not massive savings, but we’d never be doing full tilt every day for a month. Especially as the current planned configuration of the system, won’t even reach that power budget. Right now, it’s estimated at 294 watts max use. So when we do our napkin math again, we’re at 53 EUR per month in power. Saving almost ~90 EUR per month is no mean feat and we would definitely be using less than that amount of watts on average for the month.

So alright then, lets build!! Not so fast… there is another to be aware of, the formidable Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC). These guys have had my interest for a long while, even back before I acquired my bare metal server. They can come with all the hardware preinstalled including operating system, but you can get barebone kits, where you just add memory and storage. It’s typically a laptop grade CPU in there, which is not a knock, because then you can get far smaller internal power supplies. I’ve seen models where it’s around a 90 watt power budget for the system, more math, just 16 euro per month in power. Their rather small form factor also makes them attractive.

The latest 11th generation machines are the most appealing so far I feel since they now ship with 2.5Gb ethernet. While my network is currently only 1Gb, it’s a future proofing option that really is the main downside of the NUC for me, it’s not easy to upgrade CPU, I/O or power supply. If I were to do a full self build, I could spend a lot more on the latest motherboard with a new socket that could hopefully support two, maybe even three generations of CPU. If I ever want more horsepower, it’s just a CPU swap. Oh I want to go to the next stage and go 10Gb? That’s just an add in card. Maybe ditch Synology and build my own NAS? Can get six to eight SATA ports on a motherboard and if you want more, just track down a Host Bus Adapter and away you go!

It’s this battle that’s been raging in my head for a while now. My server lease ends in around May, I’d like to have all services off that machine by April. I’d be happy to shift to just more VMs somewhere else as an interim option so I don’t need to renew. But, I want to be able to confidently make a decision on this since I want to make an investment in hardware that would be long term. Watch this space to see what decision I end up making, I’m sure I’ll have my reasons for it.