1
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
1 points (100.0% liked)
Homelab
371 readers
2 users here now
Rules
- Be Civil.
- Post about your homelab, discussion of your homelab, questions you may have, or general discussion about transition your skill from the homelab to the workplace.
- No memes or potato images.
- We love detailed homelab builds, especially network diagrams!
- Report any posts that you feel should be brought to our attention.
- Please no shitposting or blogspam.
- No Referral Linking.
- Keep piracy discussion off of this community
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Why not VMs? Dell poweredge fx2s with 4 x fc630 or any other multi-node server will not only give you density but also the ability to scale out with the option of just turning off one or more of the nodes. There's also the Hyve Zeus 1u servers that run pretty quiet, and can also scale out depending on how many you have turned on. They're absolutely no-frills, only has room for two 2.5" drives, but it's supermicro-based so there's plenty of documentation.
It is a fair question! The price/performance metric for what I am building far exceeds what you're looking at.
For example, with my setup for $23k, I'll have 700 CPU Cores and 1.6TB of memory, in addition to (not needed) 25TB of NVMe storage, as well as decent amount of clustered GPU compute, albeit not the goal.
700 fast processing cores for $23k is just not possible using server architecture at this time.
I just happen to have a spreadsheet that covers compute density for all models of dell, HPE, and supermicro...
Your cost/density sweet spot is going to be the 2u/4 node platform from Dell or supermicro that use the xeon e5-2600v4 or scalable v2. There's a wide selection on eBay for this stuff, so it's definitely available. At 16 cores/CPU, 128 cores/2u unit, you'll need 6 units.
For the dell fx2s with 4 x fx630 nodes, 256gb memory/node, 32 cores/node, I spec'd one out for $2400 before storage and GPU
From a cost to performance perspective, I don't believe the solution you mentioned would be very attractive. For example, what I am looking to build, would be 700 pretty fast physical CPU cores (4.4ghz) @ $23k (and more cores/speed, for incremental price increase). I haven't found any server solution, used or new, which can compare to that in raw processing power.