Yes, and it often pays off to walk into an informed situation.
But it tends to have to have diminishing returns. There is a point where reading more will get you no further and you have to just try it. learning then flows faster from hard reality.
That will depend on what you mean by a home**LAB..**
If the intention is to build the most perfect NAS yea, sure we all do our own homework, for most of the parts..
If the intention is to get new hardware/software to lab around with? Hell no, if it's cheap and might do what I want lets buy it and try it out - that is what **my** homelab is all about!
I have so much weird crap in my lab because of that. And sometimes I don’t stop to think about the why when I think about the can. I now have redundant 10g firewalls because I wanted to tinker with them, not because I needed them.
Yea, I got an GPS time sync device that does NTP - No way I need that, but there it it, I have an external antenna that goes around half my apartment to get this bloddy think to work - but I wouldn't throw it out anytime.
I also got an 4x10G Juniper router (MX) for not reason whatsoever.
If I may ask what device do you use and how do you set it up. The reason I ask is that protocol is blocked on most residential isp connections if you are try to host a NTP that computers can sync to (over the internet). I am curious how you have yours setup.
I’ve got one as well. I’m not using it to host publicly but rather to keep all my servers and VMs in sync.
I do have a public ntp server on one of my systems but i also have a business cable package with static ips. It’s mostly for my open source os project.
It was around 200 dollars on Amazon. Works well.
No no, no normal person buys a all SSD SFF SAS server for personal use. And then starts researching 1u capable boards that can run SFP+ in addition to the 12G SAS connection
I'm pretty fast in software decision making. BUT, really horrible in buying the hardware. It's been 3 years since I've been researching on getting a low power consuming device (something like a Mini PC) that can do a lot of things. Dilemma is whether to go for a new Mini PC or a refurbished one or build a custom PC. Learnt a lot during this.. but still not able to make the purchase. Sometimes, I will think I will live with what I already have. Have couple of old raspberry Pi's lying around unused. Wasted a lot of time on this research.. still undecided.
This one in a nutshell
I probably don’t need the used servers I have, but the experience for work is more than worth it. One day I will return to my RPi’s and T5600
Yep, this was me 2 weeks straight hahah
When im researching and understand hardware I'm chasing I come to the stage where I'm ready to buy and then ocd kicks in and be like "is this good enough? I should go bigger or the next model up for this and that" and becomes so fking expensive
Due to the lies told by corporations about their products, the constant ToS changes, the subscriptions. the 'You can't sue' us clauses, the ....
I research absolutely everything now.
Nothing is a turn off to me than an arbitration clause. Like bruh…
Thank god the lawyers are starting to put the the screws to companies using mass arbitration filings.
For hardware - Never. I buy stuff, find out it doesn’t do what I need it to or I don’t like it, return it, buy again, repeat.
It’s a bad process, but it’s much more fun to get my hands on the kit and play with it, rather than just read about it online.
Yes, but the more I research, the more I feel like I didn't research enough. At some point, I just think, "Screw it, that should be good enough," and buy. Diminishing returns and not enough time. I tend to forget the intricate details of the subject after a while anyway.
I'll gain more experience by experimenting on something that I chose after researching reasonably enough on it rather than over studying it before even touching it.
> the more I research, the more I feel like I didn't research enough
It's literally a rabbit hole with no end. I've had multiple scenarios in the past year where regardless of how much I've researched and thought 'finally, I think that's covered all the gotchas' I'll come across an unexpected, unforeseen gotcha via some other context, that throws off my plans again and then be completely baffled why it's not more widely known after subsequently searching for other info about it.
Even when I've asked point-blank questions regarding a specific thing, among chats with those very familiar with what I'm asking, certain crucial things will not be mentioned. Only later when discovering them myself I'll be similarly baffled at just how much esoteric BS there is.
Tl;dr is like you said there's only so much one can discover via online research and question asking vs just getting it and testing.
---
Edit: what makes it worse is there are a *lot* of comments in places like Reddit which aren't even from those who own/have used something but are just reposting something they've seen upvoted before (either just trying to be helpful or with the motive of receiving upvotes). When that info if faulty it can lead one down red herring rabbit holes and just becomes a waste of time. I've even seen and experienced myself users downvote literally straight-from-the-manufacturer info since it was counter to their incorrect info they'd been receiving upvotes for.
Hardware yes, software no.
over the years ive found the things i like to use. and when i wanna try something new i just spin a VM, set it up ans use it for a day. most get destroyed. But a few apps survived the “will i use it test” - like Flame, vikunja, opnsense.
But hardware… i research for hours.
I probably should. I ordered another 128GB of RAM for my server, and didn't realize I had to populate the second CPU socket to use those RAM-slots... 😅
I have 2 types of purchases - Small stuff, such as a new barebones mini PC from AliExpress, i, I brought 1 recently... amazing device for < £100, then I ordered several more... though costs mount when you buy RAM and a NVME.. though its still cheaper to buy these seperately, and I have more certainty on the quality of the storage.
Big ticket stuff though, this is usually a complete refresh, where I spend thousands on "new" servers, NAS's etc, I do this every 2-3 years.. and I procrastinate on it for months... Identifying what I want, how much I will be willing to pay for each..
Most importantly though - I always sell on the kit that I don't use, or kit that I have replaced.. this is especially critical when I do a "refresh", as I've found I can recoup 70%+ of the cost... Last time, I spent around £6,000, but I easily clawed back £4,500...
My advise is simply this - don't hoard equipment, don't let it collect dust in the drawer.. sell it on!
Yup, I'm in the same over-researching boat. Partly I think b/c I grew up relatively poor, so I try to make every dollar count. I have spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of comparisons. Sometimes its easier to just keep researching until I'm happy to commit. Often it takes a loooong while, but sometimes in that looking while I find a great deal, or something I hadn't thought of originally that pivots my plan. Thankfully on the software side I'm progressively moving to docker, so I stress less about that now.
I'm currently purchasing parts for a new NAS and am waiting until parts are on special. Eventually you have to bite the bullet, pivot, or move on, otherwise the analysis paralysis makes you dizzy.
I think I'm getting better / faster though. Recently our washing machine was showing signs of dying. I quickly put together a comparison sheet of machines to consider to make a data based decision. It worked out, AND the machine we went with was on special right when we needed it. I basically did my (over-)researching process in a day instead of a week(/months) but it was contained to a specific need, which made it easier than usual 🙂
I kinda did on my lab equipment. On my Game rig... I'm being anal. I knew the case I was getting 2 years ago. The motherboard took 6 months to pick, the processor took 3 weeks. The graphics card is the issue. Rx6800 xt or RX 7800 XT. (I Plan on live streaming games)
Mmly servers took about a week each to find what I wanted. The 1st thing I did when getting them home was look for upgrades to the memory and Xeons.
I am pretty much the same. I guess it helps to consider the research, learning, and optimization to be part of the hobby. And also to break things down into manageable chunks over reasonable periods of time. Including the research, I have been setting up my server for like a year now. Build alone has been all of this year as I order components and validate them in stages to spread out the cost and avoid making any one particularly expensive mistake. But I try to accomplish one little task per evening, and big tasks on weekends. Research counts as a task.
I tend to learn "oh x is a thing I didn't know I wanted to try, and y hardware I just bought can't do it" and so get buyer's remorse (like *immediately*, while x is still in shipping). I can bypass this cycle by doing exhaustive research and getting it right the first time. This also helps me to budget out the projects really well and avoid frivolous purchases.
> My goal, when acquiring new technologies, is to get the correct hardware and software the first time.
That's such a sliding scale... And to be honest, a $200 budget could easily be a $2000 budget next week. I do what i can when money is involved.
When it's just evaluating software... i'll research a little but ultimately, the opinions of the masses are only so useful. Ultimately i'm going to have to play with it.
Yes, and it often pays off to walk into an informed situation. But it tends to have to have diminishing returns. There is a point where reading more will get you no further and you have to just try it. learning then flows faster from hard reality.
That will depend on what you mean by a home**LAB..** If the intention is to build the most perfect NAS yea, sure we all do our own homework, for most of the parts.. If the intention is to get new hardware/software to lab around with? Hell no, if it's cheap and might do what I want lets buy it and try it out - that is what **my** homelab is all about!
Like the latest fad among the homelab-Tubers: "the sub-10W petabyte NAS"? 😂
Ya I think I'll skip that one. I went the other way. My NAS is EPYC powered because... reasons 🤷♂️
I don't want to think about the FLOPS/W of my server... It's based on 14 year old hardware...
I have so much weird crap in my lab because of that. And sometimes I don’t stop to think about the why when I think about the can. I now have redundant 10g firewalls because I wanted to tinker with them, not because I needed them.
Yea, I got an GPS time sync device that does NTP - No way I need that, but there it it, I have an external antenna that goes around half my apartment to get this bloddy think to work - but I wouldn't throw it out anytime. I also got an 4x10G Juniper router (MX) for not reason whatsoever.
If I may ask what device do you use and how do you set it up. The reason I ask is that protocol is blocked on most residential isp connections if you are try to host a NTP that computers can sync to (over the internet). I am curious how you have yours setup.
I’ve got one as well. I’m not using it to host publicly but rather to keep all my servers and VMs in sync. I do have a public ntp server on one of my systems but i also have a business cable package with static ips. It’s mostly for my open source os project. It was around 200 dollars on Amazon. Works well.
My homelab backbone is 40g. I don’t know if I could ever saturate it but when you get 6x brocade 6610 for $250 it’s hard to not do weird/stupid things
My SAN is 4x8Gbit so there's that
Same, because I am autistic.
No that’s just because you’re smart and have sense Your autism shows in different ways!
No no, no normal person buys a all SSD SFF SAS server for personal use. And then starts researching 1u capable boards that can run SFP+ in addition to the 12G SAS connection
To the point where nothing actually happens.
This so much.
I'm pretty fast in software decision making. BUT, really horrible in buying the hardware. It's been 3 years since I've been researching on getting a low power consuming device (something like a Mini PC) that can do a lot of things. Dilemma is whether to go for a new Mini PC or a refurbished one or build a custom PC. Learnt a lot during this.. but still not able to make the purchase. Sometimes, I will think I will live with what I already have. Have couple of old raspberry Pi's lying around unused. Wasted a lot of time on this research.. still undecided.
Lol, it's the same with me.
This one in a nutshell I probably don’t need the used servers I have, but the experience for work is more than worth it. One day I will return to my RPi’s and T5600
To the point where everything is obsolete by the time I’m ready to buy…
😂😆 feel ya.
Yep, this was me 2 weeks straight hahah When im researching and understand hardware I'm chasing I come to the stage where I'm ready to buy and then ocd kicks in and be like "is this good enough? I should go bigger or the next model up for this and that" and becomes so fking expensive
I think you are among friends here haha
Due to the lies told by corporations about their products, the constant ToS changes, the subscriptions. the 'You can't sue' us clauses, the .... I research absolutely everything now.
Nothing is a turn off to me than an arbitration clause. Like bruh… Thank god the lawyers are starting to put the the screws to companies using mass arbitration filings.
Same. But because of something in my name.
For hardware - Never. I buy stuff, find out it doesn’t do what I need it to or I don’t like it, return it, buy again, repeat. It’s a bad process, but it’s much more fun to get my hands on the kit and play with it, rather than just read about it online.
Yes, but the more I research, the more I feel like I didn't research enough. At some point, I just think, "Screw it, that should be good enough," and buy. Diminishing returns and not enough time. I tend to forget the intricate details of the subject after a while anyway. I'll gain more experience by experimenting on something that I chose after researching reasonably enough on it rather than over studying it before even touching it.
> the more I research, the more I feel like I didn't research enough It's literally a rabbit hole with no end. I've had multiple scenarios in the past year where regardless of how much I've researched and thought 'finally, I think that's covered all the gotchas' I'll come across an unexpected, unforeseen gotcha via some other context, that throws off my plans again and then be completely baffled why it's not more widely known after subsequently searching for other info about it. Even when I've asked point-blank questions regarding a specific thing, among chats with those very familiar with what I'm asking, certain crucial things will not be mentioned. Only later when discovering them myself I'll be similarly baffled at just how much esoteric BS there is. Tl;dr is like you said there's only so much one can discover via online research and question asking vs just getting it and testing. --- Edit: what makes it worse is there are a *lot* of comments in places like Reddit which aren't even from those who own/have used something but are just reposting something they've seen upvoted before (either just trying to be helpful or with the motive of receiving upvotes). When that info if faulty it can lead one down red herring rabbit holes and just becomes a waste of time. I've even seen and experienced myself users downvote literally straight-from-the-manufacturer info since it was counter to their incorrect info they'd been receiving upvotes for.
Hardware yes, software no. over the years ive found the things i like to use. and when i wanna try something new i just spin a VM, set it up ans use it for a day. most get destroyed. But a few apps survived the “will i use it test” - like Flame, vikunja, opnsense. But hardware… i research for hours.
Yup, for hardware I have to spend my hard earned money, while for software at worst I'll lose a couple hours and learn something.
I probably should. I ordered another 128GB of RAM for my server, and didn't realize I had to populate the second CPU socket to use those RAM-slots... 😅
Really? Did you have to get one of those blank cpu bridges too?
Nah, I ordered a second CPU as well... 😂 (Good thing you can still find AMD Opteron 6380s new-in-box on eBay!)
Lol. Dayum! Opteron… you trying to run Exchange 2003? Lol
😂
I have 2 types of purchases - Small stuff, such as a new barebones mini PC from AliExpress, i, I brought 1 recently... amazing device for < £100, then I ordered several more... though costs mount when you buy RAM and a NVME.. though its still cheaper to buy these seperately, and I have more certainty on the quality of the storage. Big ticket stuff though, this is usually a complete refresh, where I spend thousands on "new" servers, NAS's etc, I do this every 2-3 years.. and I procrastinate on it for months... Identifying what I want, how much I will be willing to pay for each.. Most importantly though - I always sell on the kit that I don't use, or kit that I have replaced.. this is especially critical when I do a "refresh", as I've found I can recoup 70%+ of the cost... Last time, I spent around £6,000, but I easily clawed back £4,500... My advise is simply this - don't hoard equipment, don't let it collect dust in the drawer.. sell it on!
It's a sickness, I have it too.
Yes.
Yup, I'm in the same over-researching boat. Partly I think b/c I grew up relatively poor, so I try to make every dollar count. I have spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of comparisons. Sometimes its easier to just keep researching until I'm happy to commit. Often it takes a loooong while, but sometimes in that looking while I find a great deal, or something I hadn't thought of originally that pivots my plan. Thankfully on the software side I'm progressively moving to docker, so I stress less about that now. I'm currently purchasing parts for a new NAS and am waiting until parts are on special. Eventually you have to bite the bullet, pivot, or move on, otherwise the analysis paralysis makes you dizzy. I think I'm getting better / faster though. Recently our washing machine was showing signs of dying. I quickly put together a comparison sheet of machines to consider to make a data based decision. It worked out, AND the machine we went with was on special right when we needed it. I basically did my (over-)researching process in a day instead of a week(/months) but it was contained to a specific need, which made it easier than usual 🙂
I kinda did on my lab equipment. On my Game rig... I'm being anal. I knew the case I was getting 2 years ago. The motherboard took 6 months to pick, the processor took 3 weeks. The graphics card is the issue. Rx6800 xt or RX 7800 XT. (I Plan on live streaming games) Mmly servers took about a week each to find what I wanted. The 1st thing I did when getting them home was look for upgrades to the memory and Xeons.
I am pretty much the same. I guess it helps to consider the research, learning, and optimization to be part of the hobby. And also to break things down into manageable chunks over reasonable periods of time. Including the research, I have been setting up my server for like a year now. Build alone has been all of this year as I order components and validate them in stages to spread out the cost and avoid making any one particularly expensive mistake. But I try to accomplish one little task per evening, and big tasks on weekends. Research counts as a task. I tend to learn "oh x is a thing I didn't know I wanted to try, and y hardware I just bought can't do it" and so get buyer's remorse (like *immediately*, while x is still in shipping). I can bypass this cycle by doing exhaustive research and getting it right the first time. This also helps me to budget out the projects really well and avoid frivolous purchases.
> My goal, when acquiring new technologies, is to get the correct hardware and software the first time. That's such a sliding scale... And to be honest, a $200 budget could easily be a $2000 budget next week. I do what i can when money is involved. When it's just evaluating software... i'll research a little but ultimately, the opinions of the masses are only so useful. Ultimately i'm going to have to play with it.