Dran

if you’re automating the creation and deployment of vms, and the downstream operating systems, and not doing some sort of HA/failover meme setup… proxmox makes things way more complicated than raw libvirt/qemu/kvm.

Maybe for the initial setup, but nothing is more repeatable than automation. The more manual steps you have to build your infra, the harder it is to recover/rebuild/update later

Don’t get me wrong, I use libvrt where it makes sense but why would anyone go to proxmox from a full iac setup?

I do 2 at home, and 3 at work, coming from 4 at both and haven’t looked back.

Any legal precedent for this has to be a win right?

I do this with awesomewm. You define window startup behavior in the main config. Applications can have static behavior to start in certain places or will default to “wherever my cursor currently is”. I suspect i3 has similar functionality

I’ve been following this project for a while; I hope it catches on.

99% of the waiting time in my case is either waiting for file copies or waiting on SAP programs to run.

I wish I had low hanging fruit like that to go after.

I copy the install media locally. Although there is probably a noticable performance hot to running my main VM disk over the network.

Building a fully functional SAP system just takes that long in raw install time when your process also includes a sufficiently large system copy, and your hardware isn’t bleeding-edge.

It’s a massive application stack

I wrote and maintain a zero-to-working SAP HANA/S4 installer in pure bash.

It takes a redhat compatible from base install to a working, production-ready SAP system in about 5 hours.

It’s like ~9,000 lines of bash

I’m with you that he doesn’t strictly need a gpu, but if the price is right (free from old gaming PC, cheap from a friend’s old gaming PC, cheap old workstation card, etc) I stand by that he probably wants one. A lot less fussy, a lot more capable, nad nvenc does better quality encoding at lower bitrates (and probably less power too if you take into account time spent encoding at full tilt.)

Generally power supplies are the most electrically efficient at 20-60% utilization, so there’s no issue with over-provisioning power, other than the (generally minor) upfront extra cost, which might very well pay for itself in the first months/years of usage. I’ll take a look and see what I can find on those sites.

Edit: okay, trying to shop through google translate / currency calculator is actually aids so I’m gonna teach a man to fish instead. This is what I should have done from the start anyway.

Power supply: Anything from a decent brand, at basically anything >450W. a 650W or 850W is totally fine if it’s at a decent price. They only draw the power they need, they don’t just constantly pull 850W if the downstream components aren’t calling for it.

CPU: 12400 is a fine cpu for what you’re doing. You’ll transcode at 720p no problem, 1080p maybe a single stream in real-time. I wouldn’t bank on more than that. Only downsides here are the relatively shallow core counts if you ever expanded into other workloads. Without access to used xeon boards/cpus, it might be a reasonable choice though. What I would say is look for something older but with more cores/threads if you can. For example, a 10900 or even 10700k would probably be a better server cpu than a 12400.

Memory: DDR4 platforms are a great way to save money, as long as you aren’t planning on expanding to inferencing on cpu. Get as much as you can. 32-64gb of ddr4 should be dirt cheap, especially if you find a cheap motherboard with 4 memory sockets.

Motherboard: If you want this thing to be versatile, you want 2x pci-e slots. Old gaming full-sized ATX boards are the way to go here. 1 slot for an HBA, 1 slot for a GPU, and that should be all you need. Bonus for as many open sata sockets as possible. 6-8 is pretty typical on 10th-12th gen gaming ATX boards.

GPU: gpus will be much more efficient at transcoding than an igpu, especially from older intel CPUs. A 1050, 2060, 3050, basically anything from the 10-series onward has a decent nvenc encoder that would work well with plex/jellyfin. My goto is generally old workstation cards, I use a p620 myself and it handles a single 4k encode job no problem. I’m not sure if they’re viably purchasable anywhere in your area, but I’d definitely look out for a P620, P1000, or T400. Great value in those cards.

Drives/HBA: there are inexpensive LSI HBA cards to expand how many drives you can attach to a system if you need them, all you need is a spare pci-e slot and a place to physically mount the drives. The cheapest way to start here is to look for a motherboard with 4-6 sata slots and use those. Hardware raid is functionally dead these days in the real world, just use zfs or mdadm under linux to create an array with your desired level of resiliency/capacity.

Once you’ve priced out what it would cost to buy all of this new, look for prebuilt gaming PCs and office PCs that might be able to be expanded to fit these requirements. Prices look kind of steep on those markets you listed, but I’m sure something exists if you look hard enough.

I wonder how many other AI projects are Actually Indians.

I am also curious

Regular Ubuntu I get; it’s specifically the separation in the list between core and the standard 24.04 distro that I don’t get. I can’t imagine that droves of nerds are installing straight Ubuntu Core unprompted. I’d absolutely buy though that some distro or some handheld is based on one.

Where are all the Ubuntu Core 22 installs coming from? Is there some large device or distro that uses it?

I looked at the examples and I guess I don’t get where this might be useful.

Yes, minisforum makes many bespoke solutions that are nas sized. What requirements are you looking for that they don’t meet?

Something like truenas (or a more user-friendly fork like hexos) on basically any hardware would get you there. If you want something in a 2-4 bay + server form factor, look at the options from minisforum. Level1techs have done some pretty good videos on their various offerings over the years.

That said… once you go full rack you never go back :)

Of course it was published in the penis nexus journal XD