Things have slowed down around the accidental homelab. I have a lot more I would like to do. But all of my major pain points are gone. So, my motivation and focus have dropped…. Rather than actually doing something, I have spent my free time learning about things like UEFI.
A couple quick notes:
- The Intel nuc is a surprisingly good Virtual Machine Server. It is tiny, quiet, and sips power while providing enough performance to meet the needs of a small network like mine. If you are considering getting an RPI 4 to use as a low power compute node. It is worth looking on the used market for a small form factor computer instead.
- My nuc can run with 64GB of memory. All of the online documentation says it is limited to 32G. From my experiments 64GB runs just fine. At the time they were released, no one considered that someone might want to run a nuc with that much memory so they never invested the time and money to certify it.
- The biggest downside, for me, is the lack of PCIE slots. I would like to play with some PCIE devices.
- The saga of converting the Windows 10 portion of my dual boot laptop to a virtual machine continues. I have tried several other methods including the one Jay provided and all of them failed. I think that it is reasonable to assume that the problems are due to cruft leftover due to years of upgrades instead of fresh install.
- Interestingly, I did a fresh windows install in proxmox using the windows product code on the sticker inside the laptop battery compartment and everything activated properly. Everywhere I contacted was good about providing me with new product keys for software that was initially installed 10+ years ago and constantly upgraded since then. The only hang up is an old piece of software for a battery tester I still use which the company went out of business.
- X2GO works great on my NVIDIA jetson boards. It is really to have their GUI viewable as a window on a nice big monitor. WIred networking seems to provide a better experience than wireless
- Once I got things into a stable configuration and stopped moving them around constantly, the 1GB network works well enough to not get in the way.
- Nothing to buy for the homelab this month so I have $50 left on my home lab budget for July
