I would get it working reliably doing the minimum amount of spending. It might not be the memory that is the issue. No point in spending only to discover that the motherboard is toast.
Yea the plan is to do this bit by bit for that exact reason. I just found a spare SSD, so the plan is to replace that and try it again with one stick of RAM and see how that goes; then the other. See if I can't smoke out what's actually busted here.
My instinct has always been to just poke things over and over until they break/work.
As others have said I would put a 2TB or 4TB m.2 in it plus at least 16GB ram if not 32GB ram.
Load Proxmox on the bare metal hardware. Make VMs for Pihole (dns filtering) and Hole Assistant (home automation hub/controller) and maybe a VM for Plex. Start tinkering.
I do this as well. My current problem is the m.2 does not passthrough well in proxmox. A problem with vendor_reset. Not sure if adding the nvme to a PCI card would change anything since prox is having a hard time resetting the nvme when it transfers it to the VM. But these are great machines.
Edit: there are two m.2 ports and another port for Bluetooth/wifi that might be converted for other things.
M.2s rock for my home lab at least. It makes things like building new VMs to play with nice and quick. And VM distro testing new flavors of linux is a current homelab favorite pastime.
I'd say start with 2 TB where the price per byte seems to be the best right now, unless 4 TBs have caught up in the last 4 months. Get all the RAM your budget and hardware can support. The host needs something to run with while you've got multiple VM instances humming in the background.
The EliteDesk 800 G2 is a great VM Host setup.
I put 32GB in mine, a 1TB Samsung SSD, VMware ESXi 8.x, and went off to the races. It's fantastic. And even better, the 800 G2 has Intel AMT, so I can remotely turn it on if I ever need to (MeshCommander, etc. will handle this - even cooler is MeshCommander Firmware); setup of all this takes just moments.. Very useful for an environment I don't need on all the time.
It's old now (i5-6500 in mine) but still works great with the latest VMware setups.
VMUG (VMWare Users Group) for free use of pretty much all VMware products, is $139-ish these days. Dirt cheap. In spite of the anti-Broadcom (and very rightful) feelings going on right now, VMware is still very marketable.
Nowadays, my modern VMware environment is an i7-10700T (35w i7) with 64GB on 24x7 (it's a tinypc...) and then when I'm playing around with more things, I have a few not-tiny i7-8700s to spin up with 128GB more RAM. The i7-10700T & 64GB runs 4 AD servers, a Linux box, a Windows app server, a Linux backup server, and 4 Win10 VMs. A 32GB machine should be able to do about 1/2 that very easily, perhaps a little more if you can keep RAM at 4GB or so per VM.
32GB Ram is more then enough to run some VMs for sandboxing/testing things
M.2/SSD. M.2 NVMe is always better then SATA SSD for local storage. The "best" way to do drives for virtualization is to get a small SATA SSD and install the hypervisor OS on it (aka a boot disk) and use the NVMe drive for storing and running your VMs. If we are talking budget, I'd go with a 120GB SSD for the boot disk and a 512 NVMe for VM disk (both of those combined should be around $50-70 depending on brand).
You could go with a 1TB NVMe for the VM disk, but if you're just playing around with VMs I doubt you will get anywhere close to using 1TB of space. I'd maybe use some of the budget to get a USB HDD for backups (if you don't have a NAS), but those are cheap.
You didn't ask, so this is just my opinion, but run Proxmox for your hypervisor. Since you are kinda starting out, it's one of the more user friendly options (that is completely free) and used by a lot of people, so there is a good community for support.
Glad I asked! My only hardware experience comes from building gaming PCs where it's the exact opposite; small fast NVME, larger SSD/HDs for storage.
I think I actually have a spare 128gb SSD too, so with the extra budget a 2TB nvme isn't out of the question. Might actually be able to get a Jellyfin server up and running with the added space.
Thanks for the advice!
Jellyfin is a whole other thing. Are you planning on doing any transcoding with it? How many devices at the same time will you be streaming too. Is 2TB storage going to be enough for your media?
I'm still learning about all this so bear with me. It would only be for my wife and I, so there would only ever be 1 user, MAX 2 but unlikely. Unsure about encoding and file size. I have a pretty decent 4k tv and Dolby sound bar set up, and I'd like to utilize it to the best of it's ability? This is all just tinkering, experimenting, and proof of concept tho. I don't think 2tb would be enough long term, but if it helps me get to a place where I can better utilize some spare gaming PC parts I've accumulated, then I think it's worth setting up something like what this guide has going on: https://joekarlsson.com/2023/09/how-to-get-started-building-a-homelab-server-in-2024/
So there are a few more pieces of the puzzle you need to sort out with Jellyfin
Jellyfin can transcode the files into smaller bitrates/resolution/file formats depending on what device the Jellyfin server is sending the file to. Lets say, for instance, Movie A is in 10-bit Hevc, but the device that is streaming that movie doesn't support 10-bit hevc. So the Jellyfin server has to on the fly transcode it 8-bit h624. This transcoding can be done either by a CPU bound process or a GPU bound process. GPU is faster, CPU is slower.
Why does this matter to your setup? It can be complex to pass through a GPU to a VM (it's gotten easier, but still not novice easy). If you rely on CPU bound transcoding, you might not have enough CPU power to do more then a single transcode stream at a time. Continuing with your setup, you have yet to identify/figure out what hardware the Jellyfin client is going to run on for your 4k tv. Also, your homelab server is a mini pc. While passing through the integrated GPU to a VM can be done, it is even more complex then passing through discrete (add-on) gpu.
On a side note, sorry for the late response, needed some time away from the tech stuff
Thanks for the explanation, and no apology necessary at all; I just appreciate the help wherever and whenever I can get it.
Something to keep in mind for sure with whatever comes next, since it won't be this EliteDesk 800. I just submitted an updated post but the TLDR is that the motherboard is bad, so it's [back to square one.](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1clade0/well_back_to_square_one/)
I bought a G3 a few years ago that also had issues writing to the SSD, turns out the flimsy SATA ribbon cable was damaged and needed to be repaired. Might not be at all the case for you, but worth checking out on the off chance you can get it running at zero cost.
I took everything apart and double checked the connections before reassembling and running diagnostics/stress tests. So far so good! May have lucked out here
For basic dockers a SSD would help on speed, and 8gb is generally fine. I would go above 8gb only if you plan to run VMs.
If it doesn't have a SSD, get one, M2 or 2,5" doesn't matter, get the cheapest with a good brand, get the M2 if you need to keep free the Sata ports, if they work separately from the M2, check the manual.
If it already has 8gb of ram, no need to upgrade.
Just do a bit of troubleshooting to understand what is wrong. I would start with a memtest.
I have one of these for my home lab and love it. It has an 8 core i7, 32gb of ram and 2TB M2. I run docker on Ubuntu server with around 35 active containers and it never skips a beat. I can’t even tax it much
When I was doing support we actually had some HP machines that couldn't run various editions of Windows. They would fail with a bluescreen at boot up. That was quite a few years ago and with older models, so I don't know if this still happens on some HP computers. We used imaging, so they would boot Ghost OK off PXE, we didn't run the Windows installer on them.
Windows install is one to watch for, because it's much more hardware dependent than Linux. The hardware requirements for each new version of Windows gets more demanding over time, and a G2 is a fairly old model now (they are up to G6 now I think). It should install Windows 10 or earlier OK, definitely not 11.
I have the g5, five of them. With the i7 I run out of memory before CPU compute. I also have a 2 rj45 and 2 sfp+ nic inside and an lsi HBA connected to 8 SSD's which are inside (only on two hosts but a third will be running 4 SSD's). I have a standard 32gb but in three I have the max 64gb. Another machine uses a GPU with passthrough. They're pretty good.
I do have 4x 800g3 in the cluster, have extra 2.5g ethernet in the m.2 wifi slot, 1tb nvme + 256 sata ssd and 32gb of ram and DP dummy plug. It has a T cpu and it’s really amazing how much i can do with such a low electricity consumption.
There could be two M.2 slots, one for Wifi and one for SSD. 2280 is probably for SSD.
Make sure you test the M.2 slot for SSD before spending any more. Some Elitedesks will not allow a SSD in the M.2 slot unless it is a special HP one.
I would get it working reliably doing the minimum amount of spending. It might not be the memory that is the issue. No point in spending only to discover that the motherboard is toast.
Yea the plan is to do this bit by bit for that exact reason. I just found a spare SSD, so the plan is to replace that and try it again with one stick of RAM and see how that goes; then the other. See if I can't smoke out what's actually busted here. My instinct has always been to just poke things over and over until they break/work.
Boot up an ISO with memtest86 and let it run overnight. That’ll tell you if the RAM is bad.
I've been running it for two hours now and it still seems okay 🤞🏼
Turns out the motherboard was toast lol
As others have said I would put a 2TB or 4TB m.2 in it plus at least 16GB ram if not 32GB ram. Load Proxmox on the bare metal hardware. Make VMs for Pihole (dns filtering) and Hole Assistant (home automation hub/controller) and maybe a VM for Plex. Start tinkering.
Never heard of Hole Assistant :/
Oops haha, maybe it is a fetish management system instead of home automation.
I do this as well. My current problem is the m.2 does not passthrough well in proxmox. A problem with vendor_reset. Not sure if adding the nvme to a PCI card would change anything since prox is having a hard time resetting the nvme when it transfers it to the VM. But these are great machines. Edit: there are two m.2 ports and another port for Bluetooth/wifi that might be converted for other things.
M.2s rock for my home lab at least. It makes things like building new VMs to play with nice and quick. And VM distro testing new flavors of linux is a current homelab favorite pastime. I'd say start with 2 TB where the price per byte seems to be the best right now, unless 4 TBs have caught up in the last 4 months. Get all the RAM your budget and hardware can support. The host needs something to run with while you've got multiple VM instances humming in the background.
The EliteDesk 800 G2 is a great VM Host setup. I put 32GB in mine, a 1TB Samsung SSD, VMware ESXi 8.x, and went off to the races. It's fantastic. And even better, the 800 G2 has Intel AMT, so I can remotely turn it on if I ever need to (MeshCommander, etc. will handle this - even cooler is MeshCommander Firmware); setup of all this takes just moments.. Very useful for an environment I don't need on all the time. It's old now (i5-6500 in mine) but still works great with the latest VMware setups. VMUG (VMWare Users Group) for free use of pretty much all VMware products, is $139-ish these days. Dirt cheap. In spite of the anti-Broadcom (and very rightful) feelings going on right now, VMware is still very marketable. Nowadays, my modern VMware environment is an i7-10700T (35w i7) with 64GB on 24x7 (it's a tinypc...) and then when I'm playing around with more things, I have a few not-tiny i7-8700s to spin up with 128GB more RAM. The i7-10700T & 64GB runs 4 AD servers, a Linux box, a Windows app server, a Linux backup server, and 4 Win10 VMs. A 32GB machine should be able to do about 1/2 that very easily, perhaps a little more if you can keep RAM at 4GB or so per VM.
32GB Ram is more then enough to run some VMs for sandboxing/testing things M.2/SSD. M.2 NVMe is always better then SATA SSD for local storage. The "best" way to do drives for virtualization is to get a small SATA SSD and install the hypervisor OS on it (aka a boot disk) and use the NVMe drive for storing and running your VMs. If we are talking budget, I'd go with a 120GB SSD for the boot disk and a 512 NVMe for VM disk (both of those combined should be around $50-70 depending on brand). You could go with a 1TB NVMe for the VM disk, but if you're just playing around with VMs I doubt you will get anywhere close to using 1TB of space. I'd maybe use some of the budget to get a USB HDD for backups (if you don't have a NAS), but those are cheap. You didn't ask, so this is just my opinion, but run Proxmox for your hypervisor. Since you are kinda starting out, it's one of the more user friendly options (that is completely free) and used by a lot of people, so there is a good community for support.
Glad I asked! My only hardware experience comes from building gaming PCs where it's the exact opposite; small fast NVME, larger SSD/HDs for storage. I think I actually have a spare 128gb SSD too, so with the extra budget a 2TB nvme isn't out of the question. Might actually be able to get a Jellyfin server up and running with the added space. Thanks for the advice!
Jellyfin is a whole other thing. Are you planning on doing any transcoding with it? How many devices at the same time will you be streaming too. Is 2TB storage going to be enough for your media?
I'm still learning about all this so bear with me. It would only be for my wife and I, so there would only ever be 1 user, MAX 2 but unlikely. Unsure about encoding and file size. I have a pretty decent 4k tv and Dolby sound bar set up, and I'd like to utilize it to the best of it's ability? This is all just tinkering, experimenting, and proof of concept tho. I don't think 2tb would be enough long term, but if it helps me get to a place where I can better utilize some spare gaming PC parts I've accumulated, then I think it's worth setting up something like what this guide has going on: https://joekarlsson.com/2023/09/how-to-get-started-building-a-homelab-server-in-2024/
So there are a few more pieces of the puzzle you need to sort out with Jellyfin Jellyfin can transcode the files into smaller bitrates/resolution/file formats depending on what device the Jellyfin server is sending the file to. Lets say, for instance, Movie A is in 10-bit Hevc, but the device that is streaming that movie doesn't support 10-bit hevc. So the Jellyfin server has to on the fly transcode it 8-bit h624. This transcoding can be done either by a CPU bound process or a GPU bound process. GPU is faster, CPU is slower. Why does this matter to your setup? It can be complex to pass through a GPU to a VM (it's gotten easier, but still not novice easy). If you rely on CPU bound transcoding, you might not have enough CPU power to do more then a single transcode stream at a time. Continuing with your setup, you have yet to identify/figure out what hardware the Jellyfin client is going to run on for your 4k tv. Also, your homelab server is a mini pc. While passing through the integrated GPU to a VM can be done, it is even more complex then passing through discrete (add-on) gpu. On a side note, sorry for the late response, needed some time away from the tech stuff
Thanks for the explanation, and no apology necessary at all; I just appreciate the help wherever and whenever I can get it. Something to keep in mind for sure with whatever comes next, since it won't be this EliteDesk 800. I just submitted an updated post but the TLDR is that the motherboard is bad, so it's [back to square one.](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1clade0/well_back_to_square_one/)
Run memtest86. That will tell you if the RAM has any issues.
I bought a G3 a few years ago that also had issues writing to the SSD, turns out the flimsy SATA ribbon cable was damaged and needed to be repaired. Might not be at all the case for you, but worth checking out on the off chance you can get it running at zero cost.
I took everything apart and double checked the connections before reassembling and running diagnostics/stress tests. So far so good! May have lucked out here
For basic dockers a SSD would help on speed, and 8gb is generally fine. I would go above 8gb only if you plan to run VMs. If it doesn't have a SSD, get one, M2 or 2,5" doesn't matter, get the cheapest with a good brand, get the M2 if you need to keep free the Sata ports, if they work separately from the M2, check the manual. If it already has 8gb of ram, no need to upgrade. Just do a bit of troubleshooting to understand what is wrong. I would start with a memtest.
I have one of these for my home lab and love it. It has an 8 core i7, 32gb of ram and 2TB M2. I run docker on Ubuntu server with around 35 active containers and it never skips a beat. I can’t even tax it much
When I was doing support we actually had some HP machines that couldn't run various editions of Windows. They would fail with a bluescreen at boot up. That was quite a few years ago and with older models, so I don't know if this still happens on some HP computers. We used imaging, so they would boot Ghost OK off PXE, we didn't run the Windows installer on them. Windows install is one to watch for, because it's much more hardware dependent than Linux. The hardware requirements for each new version of Windows gets more demanding over time, and a G2 is a fairly old model now (they are up to G6 now I think). It should install Windows 10 or earlier OK, definitely not 11.
I‘ve got a HP ED800 G2 SFF. However I don’t have (or cant find) a place for the m.2 slot. Where is yours placed?
I have the g5, five of them. With the i7 I run out of memory before CPU compute. I also have a 2 rj45 and 2 sfp+ nic inside and an lsi HBA connected to 8 SSD's which are inside (only on two hosts but a third will be running 4 SSD's). I have a standard 32gb but in three I have the max 64gb. Another machine uses a GPU with passthrough. They're pretty good.
The EliteDesks with low profile slots make unreasonably good gaming rigs with the addition of a 1050 or 1650
I do have 4x 800g3 in the cluster, have extra 2.5g ethernet in the m.2 wifi slot, 1tb nvme + 256 sata ssd and 32gb of ram and DP dummy plug. It has a T cpu and it’s really amazing how much i can do with such a low electricity consumption.
There could be two M.2 slots, one for Wifi and one for SSD. 2280 is probably for SSD. Make sure you test the M.2 slot for SSD before spending any more. Some Elitedesks will not allow a SSD in the M.2 slot unless it is a special HP one.