A few people have inquired about the components of my lab server, which I call, in memory of the movie Tron, MCP. So as a quick overview from Proxmox GUI screenshots, here is what it runs.
Here is a look at the ZFS pool
The ZFS pool is, of course, split into two mirrors. Each mirror has 2 Seagate Ironwolf spinning drives which give a total usable space of 26TB fully backed up by the mirrors. The ARC cache, which makes the spinning drives bearable, generally uses about 128GB of ram but will release it of the VM’s need it.
Below is the smidecode output showing the motherboard used.
The memory configuration is 8 of these:
Note, this is not ECC Ram. This is consumer-grade GSkill ram. There are 8 32GB modules, filling all slots, that make up the total 256GB.
A bit deeper loop at the CPU, also from smidecode:
This system also has an Intel 4 port 1GB nic that I use instead of the onboard Realtek controllers:
And finally, the video card, that I generally use for GPU processing as this system is headless unless we need to fix something at the hardware level:
Here is what it looked like all boxed up the day the parts were delivered:
Proxmox actually boots off of that Samsung 970 EVO, and we will use it when we need to test high-performance things, but most of the VM’s live on the ZFS pool.
The moment when we slotted the processor:
The case is a monster Thermaltake Level 20 XT with a Thermaltake liquid cooler. Here it is all put together after the last cleaning cycle. We live in a dusty environment surrounded by farms, so we have to take it down and clean it about every three months, even while running 2 HEPA filters in this room:
And this ends the quick rundown of my beloved ThreadRipper lab server. If you have any questions just drop them on whatever social media I have shared this on.
–Bryan