a1studmuffin

It is, but it’s been branded Linux Subsystem For Copilot 365 Enterprise Service Pack 2.

But they love slop loading

Around 150W for UPS, Mikrotik router, Pi 4, Proxmox/TrueNAS server with 8x SAS drives. Without the SAS drives I’d be closer to 50W, but how else am I going to heat up my cupboard? I got the SAS drives at a bargain price thankfully… I estimate about AUD300/year in electricity.

Strongly recommend looking into Proxmox hypervisor as your base OS. Then install as many Linux VMs/LXCs as you like, with backups/snapshots all taken care for you. I’m on an Intel 8th gen CPU and have 3-4 VMs running, including Jellyfin, Home Assistant OS, an assortment of random docker images and a dedicated headless Debian VM for various AI projects. The CPU is more than enough, your 12th gen target will breeze through it. Get more RAM than you think you need - it will become the bottleneck for what you can do, not your CPU. I’m running 64GB and don’t regret it!

For video encoding/decoding like Jellyfin/Frigate, make sure you stick with Intel CPU for hardware codec support via QuickSync, otherwise you’ll need to add a GPU.

Looking forward to when they ship the S28 with no camera and you just prompt an LLM for what you want a picture of.

Sorry

How was the experience? And worth the pain?

These days they can also chain together tools, keep a working memory etc. Look at Claude Code if you’re curious. It’s come very far very quickly in the last 12 months.

How can you hear the DJ tunes over the server fans?

Thanks for the CrowdSec tip, I’ve already got an nginx reverse proxy set up but wasn’t aware I could integrate this for extra protection.

This seems especially handy for anyone who wants a snapshot of Reddit from pre-enshittification and AI era, where content was more authentic and less driven by bots and commercial manipulation of opinion. Just choose the cutoff date you want and stick with that dataset.

Since it sounds like you’ll be using it for more than just a NAS, I’d go with TrueNAS, Proxmox or Debian headless (in order of easiest to hardest to install and maintain).

If you have the room, why not go full ATX? More compatibility with available parts and room for future upgrades! Drives, GPUs, NICs, HBAs etc.

In my experience it always goes wrong at the least opportune time. Before an important zoom call, as you’re about to leave for the airport etc. My NAS and services (especially Home Assistant) are so mission critical now that I like to have a warm backup ready to go, even if it’s a stop-gap measure.

I DIY’d a PIKVM from an old Raspberry Pi 4 I had lying around for use in a homelab server. It’s been great, no complaints here, very handy if you need BIOS or direct console access from a phone or laptop. I especially like that you can hook up the PC power buttons to allow hard power cycling via the web interface. Though if you’re looking for something portable you’d probably skip that part.

And it’s getting worse. Locking down bootloaders, priority firmware, “safety” checks on devices for banking apps, inability to repair/replace hardware components. The industry is actively hostile to competition, especially open platforms.

If personal computers were invented today, there’s no way we’d end up with open standards like ATX. Every company would have their own lock-in ecosystem that prevented DIY assembly and repairs. And they’d probably throw a subscription on it too.

Wow, thanks so much for the detailed rundown of your setup, I really appreciate it! That’s given me a lot to think about.

One area that took me by surprise a little bit with the HBA/SAS drive approach I’ve taken (and it sounds like you’re considering) is the power draw. I just built my new server PC (i5-8500T, 64GB RAM, Adaptec HBA + 8x 6TB 12GB SAS drives) and initial tests show on its own it idles at ~150W.

I’m fairly sure most of that is the HBA and drives, though I need to do a little more testing. That’s higher than I was expecting, especially since my entire previous setup (Synology 4-bay NAS + 4x SATA drives, external 8TB drive, Raspberry Pi, switch, Mikrotik router, UPS) idles at around 80W!

I’m wondering if it may have been overkill going for the SAS drives, and a proxmox cluster of lower spec machines might have been more efficient.

Food for thought anyway… I can tell this will be a setup I’m constantly tinkering with.

I’m curious why you feel these are easier to run on bare metal? I only ask as I’ve just built my first proxmox PC with the intent to run TrueNAS and Home Assistant OS as VMs, with 8x SAS enterprise drives on an HBA passed through to the TrueNAS VM.

Is it mostly about separation of concerns, or is there some other dragon awaiting me (aside from the power bills after I switch over)?

[Guide] NAS Killer 6.0 - DDR4 is finally cheap - Builds / [LGA1151,LGA1200] NAS Killer 6.0, Plex QSV Builds - serverbuilds.net Forums

https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-nas-killer-6-0-ddr4-is-finally-cheap/13956

Hopefully this resource is handy for you - I’m going through the same process at the moment.

Piggybacking off this, it’s worth noting if you’re adding SAS capability to your PC via one of these cards, you can look into used enterprise SAS HDDs for cheap. They’re often sold in bulk - I just picked up 72TB (12x6TB) of 7200RPM drives for AUD480 total. Availability is very region-specific and of course it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the risk for your needs, but if you’re using RAID6 or equivalent (capable of handling two dead drives at once) the risk is minimal. Be sure to buy from sellers with a warranty (12 months minimum), and check the drives once they arrive. But in general enterprise drives are MUCH more resilient than consumer drives.

I cheated and just used a webscraper to pull the data from a local government website.