The current setup is built around a small but capable cluster of three Lenovo Tiny PCs, replacing some old bulkier towers I used to run. The goal was to reduce noise and take up as little space as possible.
Each of the three in the cluster have the following specs:
- CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-6500T @ 2.50GHz (quad-core)
- RAM: 8GB DDR4
- Storage: 120GB SSD
Far from being a powerhouse, but these machines were less than £80 each when I bought them a few years ago. The 6500T CPUs are low-wattage but still fast enough for what I want to run. I'm not currently maxing out memory but there's still a spare slot in each node if I needed more than 8GB each. Similarly, the SSDs are good enough for now but there's also a spare NVMe slot too.
Overall, these machines are silent, stackable, and draw very little power so they're ideal for running 24/7.
More substantial storage is handled externally:
- QNAP TS-231P (2x 2TB HDDs in RAID 1)
- WD MyCloud (2TB Standalone NAS)
The QNAP handles the daily workload as NFS mounts, while the MyCloud serves as a backup destination.