Blocked by my ISP. So I have it all blocked.

So I have both Rackmount Server and Mini PC’s running in my lab, and it really comes down to what do you want/need.

Mini PC PRO:

• small size
• quiet operation
• low power, low heat
• limited remote management option with vPro

Mini PC CON:

• limited storage options
• limited ram
• lower thread/core counts at lower TDP (often 35w)
• limited expansion or no expansion

Rackmount Server PRO:

• offer expansion
• offer redundant power
• lots of RAM
• lots of cores/threads
• lots of PCIe
• lots of networking
• IPMI (remote management)

Rackmount Server CON:

• lots of noise
• lots of heat
• lots of power use
• takes up way more space

https://www.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-a2

I think the little Minisforum MS series offer the perfect balance of mini PC with server like options. They give you 4 built in network ports 2x 10g and 2x 2.5g which is perfect for most applications IMO, they are available in both AMD and Intel flavors. With the one open PCIe slot you can add an external SAS card and then just use a SAS enclosure for disks. I currently have USB HD’s plugged into my mini PCs and its not great, they dont get enough cooling, and I live in fear because they are on cheap wallwart power supplies. It is working and for the most part has been.

My Rack configuration has been stripped down massively and now its just a single 2RU and Dell 1RU that is a low spec storage server only. The 2RU has an AMD 3900x w/ 64gb and 16gb MI25 card so I can tinker with AI, the Dell is just an i3-8gen with 32g and 4x 12tb drives.

The Lenovo’s are both i5-8gen with 32gb, same with the Dell mini PC, the Minisforum is an MS-A1 before they had the MS-A2 with better networking and PCIe. The Lenovo’s do have upgraded networking so I can have 4 network ports per box, 2x 10gb, 1x 2.5, 1x1g.

These look awesome! I look forward to a test drive.

I use systemd it’s fine and requires very little extra thought.

https://www.printables.com/model/413074-m720qm920p-baffle-for-cx312b-pro-connect-x-3-card

The wall mount rack is a used ACP Netshelter. I was able to find it on Craigslist a few years ago. The rackmount face plates are custom 3d printed but unfinished as I abandoned the project due to life.

I may, it was a massive work in progress that I never finished because life decided to beat the crap out of me for the last 3 years. I was trying to build a modular system that was 19" and 10" rack compatible and would have storage options as well. In this case its 2x Seagate external drives, and a WD external drive plugged in via USB3 and setup in a CEPH cluster.

Yes thats the MS-A1 which is a great little box but not as flexible as the MS-01. It lacks the PCIe slot, and only has 2x 2.5g Ethernet ports.

You probably wont find the MS-01 used since its not like the Lenovo’s with their mass market deployment as office PCs.

As for price, https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256810143174659.html? I was looking at the barebones since the prices on DDR5 and NVME’s are nuts right now. I have spare NVME drives so all I would need is RAM and I can find it cheaper than the resellers who mark it up when they install it for you.

I have 2 of them with older 6 core CPUs and 32gb each. I also added a 10g SFP card in the PCIe slot so they would have a bit more umph.

For 380 each I would not bother, and I would look at the Minisforum MS-01 as it has built in dual 10g SFPs and dual 2.5g RJ45’s plus a PCIe slot.

https://minisforumpc.eu/products/ms-01?_pos=1&_psq=MS&_ss=e&_v=1.0

at ~80 euro’s more you get more CPU, faster ram if you can find it, more storage, and more networking.

eh, I used to use slackware, then moved to gentoo, and then to manjaro, arch based but low maint = less tweaking time more game time.

I run teams and Outlook using versions in electron wrappers. For one drive I have to use the web interface to get to the shared storage because our folks don’t know how to set it up and I don’t care enough to figure it out for them.

I have one application that I really need to use that I still can’t get working in Linux but I’m still trying.

Highly doubtful since it’s AMD to AMD.

dude… I have an interaction that would make heads spin. I could not for the life of me figure out why this person was being hostile, and they would not tell me, finally I just gave up and moved on. When my socio/emotional tools are broken I have no fucking clue what I am doing and the results can be spectacular from a distance.

Yes its a joke, Yes I have kids and friends on the spectrum, and yes I am AuADHD :)

Dont feel bad you missed it, my response was also meant to be a soft joke, because I totally understand that not every social cue makes it past input to processing.

No.

Sounds like something an AI would say! A human would recognize humor and not read a response to a joke as a factual statement.

No better proof of AI sentience than when it lies and pretends to be doing work.

Honestly moving to a KDE desktop environment along with any well maintained Linux distro will feel like going back to Windows 7 but now with modern powershell

There will always be a few things different like not needing to download apps from websites. But most of the rest will feel normal.

Nearly everything you are talking about is easy and built into the vast majority of desktop linux distributions, and more than a few server ones too!

RDP: Remmina, KDE (windows like Desktop Environment)

Hyper-V: KVM+QEMU, but im going to ask why? There are very few reasons to do full virtual machines these days when you can just run everything as containers.

Plex: Plex

RAID5: use ZFS Z5 or linux mdadm r5. The advantages of ZFS is that you get lots of tools like snapshots, and reslivering which helps prevent bit rot.

Depending on your hardware I would honestly suggest your host OS be Proxmox, and then just run your gaming/personal system as a VM with GPU pass through. Proxmox has all the KVM+QEMU tools and ZFS tools baked in with a good web UI that makes managing these things easier.

zimablade or zimaboard easy setup and casaos or zimaos make selfhosting easy with preconfigured apps/containers mine is an intel quad core with 8gb and pcie 4x slot.