I’m currently running homebridge and pihole from an older Lenovo (i5, 256 SSD, 8GB ram) laptop (tweaked power settings to allow idle when closed) hardwired into a switch. I am currently running Ubuntu Server LTS, and have uptime ~2 weeks. I’m a little worried about reliability, I was originally using Ubuntu Desktop LTS, and I had an issue with the OS crashing after a 4 days of basically idle…
So my question is, is this a feasible solution? Should I pursue something like a SBC or migrate the machine to an old desktop instead? I don’t mind working on the machine occasionally, performing maintenance etc but I don’t want to have to troubleshoot the machine on a weekly basis.
I also would like to get into more self hosting, I find it to be super interesting and fun, does anyone have any projects they wouldn’t mind recommending or sharing?
Thanks guys!
Sure. It’s plenty feasible. I’ve used old laptops, desktops, a server board running naked under my desk with parts strewn about… anything can run your homelab.
The only thing you may have issues with long term in a laptop like that is the battery turning into a spicy balloon. Regardless of whether its healthy, or totally “dead” and wont charge, it can and will still start to offgas and can catch on fire. If it has a removable battery, take it out and run the laptop on a normal UPS that is designed to sit fully charged and plugged in 24/7.
Oof the spicy pillow…didn’t think about that one. I will def take a look into running it independent from the battery thank you
Lenovo laptops often have a setting to limit battery charge to 80% which would solve that issue, but I think usually you have to do it from their windows utility software.
There’s a way to do it on Linux. It requires the acpi_call kernel module and a couple of shell commands. Here’s a write up: https://tildehacker.com/lenovo-ideapad-battery-conservation-mode-gnu-linux
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It really kind of depends on your luck with the hardware. I’ve used laptops as servers for durations of several months at various points in the past and had no particular problems, just make sure cooling is adequate.
You might consider setting up a Proxmox node if you’re interested in virtualization at the machine level (i.e. having several virtual machines running on one physical machine, which can reduce maintenance headaches and make experimentation easier as VMs can be snapshotted, cloned, and easily replaced)
Oh wow Proxmox looks interesting, I like that it has a web interface. I am a little interested, mostly because pfsense needs to run within a VM, but I’ve never really done any virtualization on Ubuntu.
Is Proxmox like an open-source version of Hyper-V?
More or less. I don’t think many people use Hyper-V as a type 1 hyper visor in their home labs (unless that’s what they’re using at work and trying to learn for there), but I could be wrong. I think the more common comparison would be ESXi.
If you have stability issues, check the RAM. Sometimes they are slightly faulty but you never notice when rebooting regularly.
But yes hosting stuff on an old laptop is perfectly feasible and IMHO recommended for beginners.
The main problem is usually that you outgrow the limited number of SATA and/or NVMe ports for adding additional storage and USB3 to SATA adapters can be a bit too flaky for building a raid or similar.
I have an ancient Dell desktop (Intel Core 2, 1TB HDD, 2.5GB RAM, one partially corrupted RAM stick) running as server, current uptime is 318 days. I reckon you should be fine, as long as the cooling keeps up.
I ran my homelab on a very similar setup for years, with storage provided by USB enclosures. It works great. I eventually moved to a cheap-as-hell used optiplex desktop because my old laptop was maxed out on ram and I wanted to run some additional heavy containers and a used office desktop is about as cheap as anything in terms of cost per GB of ram.
