edencloud v1 [#]

my first experience tinkering with file shares, docker and stuff was made with zero budget, it was my old laptop with an AMD A9-9420 cpu and 4gb of memory. it had a bunch of hard disks added with usb dongles. it ran openmediavault, which, since it's based off debian, can run docker containers natively. unfortunately, it can't run ZFS.

there was also a raspberry pi 3b being used to seed torrents. in fact, the same raspberry pi is being used for the same purpose to this day.

running an old laptop as a server might seem like a bad idea, but has some unique advantages:

• built in UPS for power outages (was useful on many occasions)
• low TDP CPU so it's cheap to run
• cheap (free since i wasnt using this for anything else)

the disadvantages are:

• a crazy loud fan (stopped me from sleeping)
• only room for one 2.5" attached through sata, usb is needed for everything else, which doesnt allow for RAID

edencloud v2 [#]

the second server imo is the most interesting. i got a random 2u case of ebay and put a pentium silver j5040 cpu/motherboard into it. this is cheap to run, silent, and has plently of sata ports for disks. learn more about it here - imo its the best thing to make a nice little TrueNAS NAS out of.

its disadvantages (why i sold it eventually) are that despite being rather powerful for such a low power chip it isn't quite powerful enough for VMs and can only use 8Gb of memory.

i just the server on top of some draws, you can see it in the background here.

edencloud v3 [#]

the third iteration used a lackrack, and upgraded the NAS to a i5-9400t 6 core cpu and 32Gb of memory.

0. on top there is a thinkpad t30 being used as a CUPS print server. it is connected to a Star LC-10 dot matrix printer. i use the old t30 for this since its the only computer i have with a parallel port. here's a video of the really old printer running. also there is a dock for the x200. finally a keyboard for the top kvm switch and a couple game controllers.
1. a shitty old vga/PS2 kvm switch. connected to it are the raspberry pis, the nas, and the print server (stuff i dont need to access often)
2. a startech 4 port dual monitor kvm switch (SV431DD2DUA). connected to it are the dell optiplex, the x260 dock, the x200 dock, and the fedora 1u.
3. the first shelf has a Netgear GS108PE POE switch which powers 3x raspberry pis and the other switch. there's also a hard drive behind for backups and the dell optiplex 3060 windows pc.
4. a brush cable management thingy
5. Mikrotik CSS610-8G-2S+in 10gig switch, 3x raspberry pi 3bs, and a dvd drive connected to the server below. one of the raspberry pis is a torrent client and the other is my DNS server, using unbound and pihole. it also does database backups, and is also my git server. the third one is still being setup.
6. a 1u server. its gonna be a pfsense router later, but for now it runs fedora workstation. it has an AMD A4-5000 15W quad core CPU with hardware AES. It has 8Gb of memory and a powerful intel i350 dual port nic.
7. below is my main server/nas. it has an i5-9400t 6 core cpu. i went with the t version since it has a lower tdp and therefore it is cheaper to run. it runs truenas (formerly called freenas). it also runs all of my docker containers on a ubuntu server VM. it has 32gb of memory for a nice big zfs cache and is potentially upgradeable to 64gb. it has a passive cooler for quietness. click here to see what's running on the server.

unfortunately i found that they cant take much weight so most of the servers were held on the floor.

edencloud v4 [#]

the current iteration! learn about it here.