I am currently serving a photoprism instance for my self and the wife. I want to expand to have everyone’s home folder on the server. So we would have 5 home folders, all lunuxes. Anyway so I’m looking at some old servers that actually look pretty good.
HPE Proliant DL360 Gen9
I’ve been comparing it with other servers and it seems to be the easiest to use for the semi intrepid admin wannabe that I am. Is there anything better in the sub $300 range?
Unless you’re hardcore I’d highly suggest not getting an actual server, especially a 1U server like that. Servers are loud, use a lot of power, and especially in 1U form not that expandable. CPU and RAM upgrades are cheap, but say you want more drives, or to install some weird expansion card it might not have the space.
If photoprism is actually “AI” you’ll want a GPU to do the processing, and 1U servers limit you to oddly sized 1U GPUs. But considering they say it will run on a raspberry pi I’d assume any desktop with a core i7 would do the job. If you can find a desktop with 4 ram slots of DDR5 that would get you plenty of expandability. The DDR5 spec is rated for up to 512gb per stick, so assuming the memory controller (and bios) supports it you’d be PLENTY future proof. But even DDR4 with 32gb sticks should be plenty, and those machines are CHEAP.
I am WAY ootl on shopping for PCs and hardware, all the sites I used last time i did anything (god, around like 2008?) are quite defunct. Anywhere you’d recommend looking for a desktop like you’re talking about? I’d love to get my home on a selfhosted network.
Facebook Marketplace is my go to here in the US. Pre built computers don’t hold their value for shit, so you can pick one up with a nice i5 or a medicore i7 office computer for almost nothing. Just look for Dell optiplexs or the HP/Lenovo equivalents. If you don’t need a lot of drive space (or are fine with external storage) those mini PCs litter marketplace and can go for stupid cheap.
I’d target 8th gen or newer, ideally 10th gen, but one that comes with an i7 might cost a bit more than $300. You can always go with an i3 for now, then if you need more power then the non k i7s tank in value after a few years of being out.
Amazon typically has a few vendors that specialize in refurbished Optiplexes and/or HP Elites in small or ultra small form factor sizes.
A word of caution about these refurbs though…the memory and storage they include are often dollar store brands (Kingfast) that I wouldn’t even trust for a child’s PC. It’s worth purchasing your own after the fact.
A lot of manufacturers either have their own refurbished sites they sell from (warrantee and all), or some will liquidate on other places like eBay or Newegg.
If you’re looking to build, pcpartspicker is probably the most popular component configuration app these days.
Your options will depend on many things…
- How much storage is needed?
- Is RAID important to you?
- Is power usage a concern?
- Noise level?
I don’t know how demanding photoprism is, but you could probably do fine with a refurbished i5/i7 Dell Optiplex or similar, with one or more SSDs added to it. If money is really tight and storage needs are high, you could go with mechanical drives instead.
The problem with enterprise servers is that are generally very loud and use a lot of power…not unlike adding a second refrigerator to your environment. In my opinion, they’re not worth it unless you have a specific use case (training for a career, etc.).
Dell optiplex desktop or workstation would def be a gpod idea. Both are much quieter than servers - you can get the workstation if you want a xeon chip and ecc memory - otherwise the desktop will likely do what you need.
As someone who has owned enterprise servers for self-hosting, I agree with the previous comment that you should avoid owning one if you can. They might be cheap, but your longterm ownership costs are going to be higher. That’s because as the server breaks down, you’ll be competing with other people for a dwindling supply of compatible parts. Unlike consumer PCs, server hardware is incredibly vendor locked. Hell, my last Proliant would keep the fans ramped at 100% because I installed a HDD that the BIOS didn’t like. This was after I spent weeks tracking down a disk that would at least be recognized, and the only drives I could find were already heavily used.
My latest server is built with consumer parts fit into a 2U rack case, and I sleep so much easier knowing I can replace any of the parts myself with brand new alternatives.
Plus as others have said, a 1U can be really loud. I don’t care about the sound of my gaming computer, but that poweredge was so obnoxious that despite being in the basement, I had to smother it with blankets just so the fans didn’t annoy me when I was watching TV upstairs. I still have a 1U Dell Poweredge, but I specifically sought out the generation that still let you hack the fan speeds in IPMI. From all my research, no such hack exists for the Proliant line.
I’m assuming power efficiency and low noise are not a requirement?
Yeah not required. It will basically act as a heater and then my central heater will just work less.
Cool; a lot of people are very concerned about power usage and thus it’s probably the most important thing to know making a recommendation.
If you don’t care, then you’re on a reasonable path. I ditched all my server-grade stuff a while ago for a single desktop build becase, well, I got tired of screaming computers, but your choice in server is decent at the price.
I would say, though, if you have NO experience in server hardware, expect to run into a bunch of oddities inherent in server platforms - they’re simliar but not exactly the same as what you’d find in consumer hardware in terms of hardware support but if all you want is computer + lots of drives + network access, then it’s probably not going to end up with any stupid things that break what you’re trying to do.
Yeah, currently I am running a few dockers. Photoprism, cloud key for my network, house inventory app, house scan app and a couple of other things. I’m using some tiny think centres and a larger one for the photoprism. The most demanding part of photoprism is the indexing stuff. That’s really where I think I could use dual processors.
In addition to that, I do blender rendering for optical systems and FEA using PrePoMax which uses calcilulix. I think I could do modeling work on my desktop and then set up the loud machine in the garage to run refer jobs or FEA solving jobs. My desktop is an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 I think, it’s not top of the line. It looks like the server I picked might have about the same amount of computing power?? Plus some extra. As is, the servers chug along but photoprism seems to reboot the computer every month or so, and I think it’s either crashing from peak use or maybe Ubuntu is auto updating and the computer is not set up to restart after power cycling.
I noticed the server hardware has really good networking and I want to take advantage of that running all my little services around.
Remember, if your photoprism lasts more than 4 hours, consult a medical professional