I configured my own for under $200
It’s because there are all these cast-off servers being scrapped, I picked up 3x DL380P G8s and another 3x X3550 M4s. Every chassis is rigged with AT LEAST! 128GB ram per socket, and that’s 12 sockets. 8x 2.5” drives per chassis, the same recycler blew out a whole box of 256-to-512 GB SSDs, also practically give-away. I also got 3x Tesla P4s off eBay and did the virtualization trick (nVidia hounds me ever since to start paying them licensing fees, but I’m sorry guys, the virtualization trick worked!)
I genuinely have no idea what I can do with this cluster. I stacked it all up in the spare bedroom in the basement, but just one of the DL380Ps howls more than I can tolerate. I also need at least 1 breaker for each pair of servers, but let’s see, all the basement bedrooms run off 1 breaker?
So I blew another $30 and picked up an old Datto Alto 3 L3A2 (with single 3TB drive) which I configured as a single Proxmox node, running a single copy of Ubuntu Server. I set up iGPU forwarding of the 4205U Celeron for iSpy Agent, it monitors four IP security cameras with HEVC and about 35% CPU utilization. But also my NGINX web servers, a bulletin board, and a couple other things I forgot about. Oh right, that nVidia virtualization server, for one, plus NFS + Samba, etc.
Well anyway, I think this crusty old Datto runs well under 15 Watts.
I’m surprised anybody needs to pay anything to put together a Proxmox cluster, well, meanwhile the local recycler warehouse is positively bursting with castoff servers.
(My local guys are at era.ca but e-waste repurposing is blowing up all over the world.)