Selfhosted

62377 readers

974 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

Be civil.
No spam.
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
Submission headline should match the article title.
No trolling.
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus

curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world

Fitting a server with desktop hardware in a 1U rack mount chassis (fedia.io)

submitted 1 week ago by QuantumEraser@fedia.io to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have a server with desktop hardware (microATX motherboard and Core Ultra 7 265K CPU) which I use to run a Minecraft server. Its current physical location isn't ideal, so I'd like to put it in a rack mount chassis and move it to a server room I have access to through my university. However rack space in the room is limited, so it would be best if I can fit it into a 1U space.

From what I've heard the biggest issue with 1U is cooling, especially as the 265K can draw up to 250W. It seems like 1U microATX chassis do exist, like this one, but they don't look like they have good airflow, and I'm not sure where I would get a short enough heatsink. Could I realistically make 1U work, and if so what should I look for in terms of hardware? Or am I going to have to go with 2U?

Edit: I ended up giving up on 1U. Instead I bought a miniITX motherboard and am going with this 2U dual miniITX chassis. Way more vertical space to work with and it gives me the option to add a second server (something I want to do once memory/storage prices calm down) within the same rack space.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe -5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

So you're saying that the current Minecraft servers are all running on desktop hardware and not on standard U-chassis servers in racks in data centers?

If anything I'd expect them to run virtualized on standard rack servers.

Something here doesn't add up. I don't buy that enterprise server hardware that can out-perform desktop hardware by orders of magnitude can't do what you need - especially since that's surely how the existing servers run.

If this single-threading performance is really an issue, run some kind of virtualization on a rack server, build a VM with the exact hardware config you need, and the host hardware will make it happen (which I'd bet is exactly how current servers are run, because then they can be moved/Load balanced dynamically without missing a beat).

I currently have both single-core, single-cpu VM's and multi-core, multi-cpu VM's running on the same host for test purposes. The VM has no idea it's virtual hardware is actually run on a different multi-cpu/core host.

Check out xcp-ng - it's arguably the best open source virtualization platform today. VMware server can definitely do this, if you have a license.

[–] QuantumEraser@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

Yes, hosting providers do run servers on desktop hardware. See for example Bisect's dedicated server options which all have desktop Ryzen processors.

Smaller Minecraft servers can run just fine on standard server hardware, and I'm sure that's what most hosting providers use for their lower tier server plans, since you can cram dozens of Minecraft servers onto one machine. But the main limitation for larger servers is single-threaded performance, which desktop CPUs are just far better at.

Very large servers generally use server software like Folia which multithreads the game (like 2b2t) or split the server into many smaller servers (like Hypixel), which eliminates the single threaded performance issue but has some serious drawbacks.