Yesterday I bought my first micro PC for the start of my homelab. I got it from a PC repair shop, for $95 with the following specs:
Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro:
- Processor: Intel Core i5 – 7500T
- Memory (RAM): 8Gb
- Video: Intel HD 630
- Storage: SSD 256Gb
The Idea
I want a homelab to practice Infrastructure as Code. I want to practice containerization and CI/CD. Build servers from scratch, take them down, and automate all of it. Monitoring too.
The Problem
Everything is expensive right now. The monthly cost of a VPS with 16GB of RAM is $96. And that RAM is shared. This little blog I’m writing on now is only a 1GB server, and after WordPress and MySQL, there’s not enough resources for anything else.
The Solution
Micro PCs. The Dell Optiplex Micro series sips 10-15 watts idle. That means I can have a fleet of them and leave them on all day. For the price of one month of a VPS, I can easily get these little PCs with expandable RAM.
What’s Next
This first machine will be used for storage. My main desktop currently uses a 2TB spinning platter HDD. And a few times a year, when I remember, I back up my files to a USB external HDD. But it would be more fun to set up more like a simple NAS. I will use cron and rsync.
The Next Problem
Along with everything else, SSD drives are expensive right now too. In 2022 I bought a 1TB external SSD for just $109. Four years later it’s $230. I’m used to storage costs going down while getting bigger at the same time. This is nutty.
The Next Solution
I don’t know yet, but I know I’m going to need to get clever. And though it sucks the prices are so bad, I love being frugal and solving problems at the same time…