Hi,
I need help with my first homelab hardware. Maybe you experts can help me with that. I looked at this tutorial about building your own Openshift one node cluster using an Intel NUC, though I’m unsure, if I really should buy one of these.
I have set a budget of 1000€ (I’m located in germany). The tutorial suggests the Intel NUC10i7FNK, which I can get for 450€ new here (would buy 64GB RAM and a 2TB M.2 SSD for that). And I would follow the tutorial in getting a dedicated router for my lab environment.
Can I get more for my money (also in terms of upgradability) with some other product? Or should I just get that suggested NUC? I don’t need it to be that small (can be a tower), but I don’t want real server hardware, since the lab will run in my home office.
Thanks in advance for your help. My brain hurts from comparing products, searching for their availability, etc.
EDIT:
I’ve now decided to buy the NUC10i7FNK. It seems to be a sensible choice and the tutorial says, that it has enough beef for my first goal of building my own Openshift cluster for experimenting.
Thanks to all of you! You helped me to get to a good decision in this wide field of home lab equipment.
I don’t have experience with the NUC for my own homelab and kubernetes, but the main things I will say with any kubernetes is the RAM. I have 4 servers on VMware (just to get experience there) and then have Rancher (like Openshift) across them (both a management server and then a 3 VM cluster). Every resource is important, but the RAM is what was eaten up before anything else for me. I have Lenovo Tiny m910q (x 4) with 64GB and that allows me a full on cluster and then some with other VMs too.
Sounds like you made a good choice going with a NUC and 64GB ram. You just may find you want to add another or two depending how much you go beyond just experimenting with k8s and using it to host most of your homelab services.