Remote Desktop/Thin Client/10G Network

Ok, I think I am finally in a position where I feel like rack mounting everything is a valid option. My workflow is to the point where I can do almost everything from my laptop and my nextcloud sync. I would like to rack mount my desktop and then just remote into it using my Framework laptop with a thunderbolt dock as a thin client when I want to play games or need the horsepower for other projects. This will involve getting 10GB networking set up as well for my rack as I currently am paying for 1.2GB Comcast service that I canā€™t fully utilize and I see myself getting fiber in the near future. Regardless I would like for my NAS and Desktop to be 10GB at the very least. I donā€™t mind fiber and in fact would prefer for the power savings.

I am also looking to reduce my power consumption as my Dell T320 is using a bit more than I would like. Especially after my power company forced me into a ā€œPeak Usageā€ power plan where I get charged significantly more than I used to.

Router. What is a good low power router setup that I can rack mount? Ideally less than $500. I was looking into a Dell R210 ii and then putting a 10GB SFP+ card in it. I am just afraid that I would be shooting myself in the foot with the power consumption. I really like the looks of a Mikrotik RB5009 but they are unobtanium and I am not going to pay 2x the price on ebay for one. I currently use a PFsense firewall appliance based on a celeron I think but I want something easily rackmounted and capable of 2.5G or better speeds.

NAS. I am considering biting the bullet and going Synology RS series. Power consumption again being a factor. Maybe a i3 based solution if anyone has any suggestions on a good build that I can rackmount?

Remote Desktop. Current Desktop is a AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, RX 5700, 32GB RAM, and 2TB Corsair SSD. It is more computer than I really require on the day to day. I am a linux user on the daily. If I rackmount my desktop and just commit fully to my laptop then I think I would like to convert my desktop to a ā€œ2 gamer 1 computerā€ setup so that my wife and I can just share it as needed. She uses adobe products among other things and her several year old Surface Pro is starting to show itā€™s age. It would be nice to stick a Tesla in there and use parsec or something to let her access it from work or when we are traveling. Would also like to remove all storage and just netboot it from the NAS or a RPi or something.

So, anyone running a setup similar to this right now? Any lessons that were learned that I can implement? What is the path forward?

My 2c
If you want to reduce your power footprint you need to consolidate
E.G, deploy your router in a VM in your NAS
NAS: low power consumption/small form factors are easily achievable if you are willing to let go reliability and resources available

Also 10GB is not there yet with regards to low power consumption ā€¦ any 10Gbit port will use at least 3 watts in your network if you go fiber and use transceivers, more if you go copper ā€¦

I am currently running a X9SRi-F Motherboard, with 4 SAS/SATA , 4SATA and two SATA/SATADOM ports, with a 6 core E5-1650, an inel X520 10Gbit card, 32GB of ram, three WD red 6TB drives and 4 1TB NVme SSDs ā€¦ the system idles ad ~50watts when running

  • truenas as a host
  • vyos as my main router (can pull up to 18Gbps routing, about 12Gbps filtering)
  • A docker VM running 20-30 containers (home automation, sensor monitoring, unifi controller, plex, prometheus, grafana ā€¦ whatever)
    The only time when power consumption goes up to ~100W is when plex transcoding using the CPU (no GPU in the system, from a power saving point of view a GPU is never a good idea IMHO)

Storage aside, I spent about 600EUR for the system ā€¦
Remote desktop, if your system has enough pci lanes for 2 GPUs and maybe two USB controllers then it is perfectly doable. The hardest part is currently routing video/USB to the two control desks, or setting up looking glass/parsec if you want to go over the network and still have good latency and/or use only one monitor for the two virtual systems

I recently moved my dual GPU/one user system in the attic, and use two HDMI+USB extenders over cat6 to send video and USB across ~15m of conduit ā€¦ all very good except for cost, and OSX not palying well with HDMI EDIDs and such ā€¦

Yeah, I am considering that. I need to look into the feasibility of just running everything on my x-570 Ryzen or perhaps selling it and then getting into a newer Epyc/Threadripper system. I am not a huge fan of virtualizing my router but if I really do want to save power then that might be the direction I have to go. I donā€™t really use my Ryzen desktop that much anymore hence my desire to just dock my laptop and use the video card from my Ryzen on a as-needed basis.

I am not a huge fan of virtual routers either, but it was either having 10Gbit capabilities and going bare metal with ā€˜anotherā€™ 30-40W 24x7 piece of hardware (and spending 400EUR minimum), or settling for gigabit max speeds (if that) and spending 3-400EUR anyway, or internalizing that yes, from a security point of view itā€™s not the best thing I could have done, but it doesnā€™t really bother me that much for my home setup ā€¦

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Funny that we are talking about this. @wendell just posted a video on floatplane about this subject.

Ok, so I am going to go down the virtualization path I think. Dell R210 ii with a Intel x520-da2 as the host. Virtualize all of the network services on it (opnsense, pi-hole, PXE server, etc.) this gets me to gig+ routing without feeling like I am wasting a bunch of power. Iā€™ll pass through the Intel NIC to opnsense and then use the built in gig ethernet ports for the smaller services.

Convert my desktop to a virtualized NAS/Remote Desktop. This gets rid of my Dell T320 which is the real power hog here.

What is the best way to go about getting SAS drives hooked up to a X570 mobo?

HBAs. LSI/Broadcom dominating the market. People pay lots of money for them or buy flashed OEM versions of them on ebay for ~100$/ā‚¬. Can supply internal or external SATA/SAS up to 24 ports/lanes. Really gets you all connectivity you ever need. Newest HBAs also can address PCIe NVMe storage. You better have an x8 slot available for these kind of cards. And passthrough of the entire controller to the NAS VM results in native performance and behavior.

edit: LSI 9300 series is probably what you are looking for

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Neither was I some time ago but now there are a couple of factors:

  • you canā€™t treat your internal network as trusted these days anyway
  • if you have a hypervisor escape you have far bigger problems
  • a virtual router makes it much more cost effective to have both snapshots and a ha pair that makes it much less risky to keep up to date with patches.

2c. Go for it with virtual infrastructure

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