Finding The Perfect Small Homelab Virtualization Node

Hello hello! Welcome to my question/discussion/brain dump on looking for a perfect homelab-able virtualization node.

My Use-case

For my specific hunt, I’m looking for 1-3 nodes to run in my office for development of KVM hypervisors - think building custom schedulers, playing with rust-vmm, firecracker, and of course Kubernetes.

My requirements in order of importance:

  • OOB Management
  • Medium-high memory density
  • Relatively small form factor
  • Low power
  • Multiple NICs

With those requirements in mind, my perfect machine would be, spec wise:

  • 16 core EPYC - older/embedded generations for $$$
  • 64-128GB memory - prescribing around 2-4GB per VM
  • Quad gigabit Intel NICs

Options

I did some digging, and have some options, but none of them are perfect, or if they are perfect - they are just not available. As I continue my search, I will aim to update this thread with options I find - and hopefully there will be even more options in the threads below.

Prices are relevant to Germany, given at the time of posting (4th April 2021.)

Note: all prices are for the barebones unit, and do not consider the price of memory, storage, or additional components.

Intel NUC 11NUC11TNKv5


Image courtesy of ServeTheHome

CPU: Intel i5-1145G7, 4C8T, 28w TDP (!!!)
Memory: 2 SO-DIMM up to 64GB
NICs: 1x 2.5GbE
Base Price: €843.51

This unit looks to be a very neat package with a great TDP, a good 2.5GbE NIC which is nice to see, and an okay offering from the CPU and Memory front. It definitely suffers from the NUC Tax however. Due to the form factor, this machine could be a very good choice - but when looking at this kind of performance, would it be better to purchase and older generation NUC, when all this new generation offers is 2.5GbE?

Supermicro SuperServer E300-9D-4CN8TP


Image courtesy of ServeTheHome

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/system/Mini-ITX/SYS-E300-9D-4CN8TP.cfm

CPU: Intel Xeon D-2123IT, 4C8T, 60w TDP
Memory: 4 DIMM up to 512GB
NICs: 4x 1GbE, 2x 10GbE, 2x SFP+, 1x IPMI
Base Price: €835.83

This is a great form factor, great energy consumption machine, however. The low core count is quite a kick in the side here, I’m not sure how much vCPU performance I’m going be able to squeeze from those 8 threads.

However the saving grace here is just LOOK AT THOSE NICs! If all else fails, this machine would make a killer pfsense, opnsense, or vyos router.

Asrock Rack EPYC3451D4U-2L2T2O8R


Image courtesy of ServeTheHome

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPYC3451D4U-2L2T2O8R

CPU: AMD EPYC Embeddedx 3451, 16C, 100w TDP
**Memory:**4 DIMM up to 512GB
NICs: 2x 1GbE, 2x 10GbE, 2x SFP+, 1x IPMI
Base Price: ???

This motherboard is a dream, I want this. I want three of these in some medium grade 2U short depth chassis. But unfortunately, they are not available, I cannot find them ANYWHERE for retail - so this takes it out of the running for now.

Suggestions

I urge, even beg, you to suggest some units that would be great little clustered nodes. As you may have already seen, There’s a lot of ServeTheHome images used here, and they run a great TinyMiniMicro series looking at older often enterprise thin-client level boxes that can make good clustered homelabs. Often these boxes do not pack a heavy punch - so this thread aims to look for beefier, more modern, hardware.

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