That’s okay, it had to be done.

You’re right, but it does still work.

Downloading music from YouTube will get you MP3s, but they will have gone through the YT compression algorithms.

Use Deemix instead. Downloads MP3s straight from the Deezer servers with all metadata and album art.

Everyone else has described the complications that a Mac mini would have. So why not consider something else? Lenovo, HP, and Dell make 1l ultra small form factor PCs and they’re pretty cheap on eBay. They’re also low power. Search for Tiny Mini Micro to find information.

I have three Lenovo Thinkcentre machines - two with 32gb RAM and one with 64gb RAM - running my Proxmox VE cluster. Highly recommend using those small machines instead of a Mac mini.

I have a 10" width rack cabinet where my Proxmox cluster (three mini Lenovo Thinkcentre) lives. I’m currently designing a 10" mount to hold an old phone so that I can see my server monitoring/status through the glass of the door.

3D printing is great for stuff like that.

Exactly. This is a terrible idea. I’m fairly certain that anyone caught doing this would be immediately fired at some companies.

Risking sounding like a broken record, I always suggest Tiny/Mini/Micro 1L form factor office PCs. Lenovo, Dell, and HP all create ultra small office PCs that make great low power servers. A Pi will use 5-9w at idle, while these PCs will use 11-13w idle. They also use more standard components such as NVME drives, 2.5" drives, and replaceable RAM. Easy to find under $100 USD used, I’m sure you can find them under 100 euro.

That’s a lot of money for what you’re getting there. I highly recommend used 1L office PCs, like the Lenovo ThinkCentre tiny machines. They’re regularly under $100 USD on eBay. Although if you prefer something new that’s totally understandable.

I think it’s a bleedover from car culture - you keep your fun car in the garage and have a second car that you’re okay with driving daily. Especially so during winter.

Look up 1L mini PCs - Dell, Lenovo, and HP have similar one liter mini PCs that would’ve been used as a lightweight frontend in offices. They are easy to find on eBay and can be pretty cheap.

For example, my lab at home consists of three Lenovo Thinkcentre tiny machines. I bought them off eBay for $60-80 USD. They each came with a 500gb HDD and 8gb RAM. I have since upgraded them all to a 500gb NVME, 500gb SSD (they have a 2.5" drive bay), and 32gb of RAM. They run as a Proxmox VE cluster.

I think I might have $500 USD into the entire setup, including my 10" wide rack enclosure.

What parts did you upgrade? I’d start swapping them with the original parts one at a time with testing after swapping a part in.

Also - for these SFF Dells, they should have the standard Dell power button trouble flashes. I don’t have the link right now but there is a guide on Dell’s website to diagnose issues just off how the power button blinks.

I totally missed that you have an uncontainerized service. Can you run the service directly on the hardware host (safely)? If so, here’s how I would probably run it considering your memory constraints:

1. Install Debian
2. Set up the uncontainerized service directly on the host.
3. Install Docker directly on the host as well.
4. Spin up the containers for everything else.

Not the cleanest/most separated answer but it would reduce the memory load of additional layers of host/VM/containers. If this isn’t storing any sensitive data or being directly exposed to the internet that should be fine.

If you are dealing with sensitive data or exposing to the internet, I would consider your original plan of Proxmox VMs to separate everything but see if you can add additional RAM to help. Also consider installing something like fail2ban on every host and VM.

The containers in Proxmox (LXC Containers) are a little different from Docker containers. You can’t deploy Docker containers directly as LXC containers. You can, however, run an LXC container and install Docker on it, then run Docker containers there.

In your scenario I don’t think I’d use Proxmox as you’re going to run into issues with lack of RAM. I think you’re going to have issues running out of memory either way though. Running the whole machine as a Docker node would probably be more memory-efficient than having the overhead of running separate VMs under Proxmox.

NGINX should run fine as a container. There’s even an official build available on Docker Hub.

I bought four of those drives from SPD to put in my NAS. After testing and burn in, one of them started failing tests. SPD had me send the failing drive in and they sent me a new one. Otherwise these have been great so far.

Editing this 10 days later, having two more drives fail SMART tests after a sudden sharp increase in offline uncorrectable sectors. I’m trying to go through the RMA process now. I can no longer recommend this unless you’re okay playing the RMA game until you get reliable drives. Backblaze tested the exact Seagate drives I’m using and only had a 0.60% annual failure rate. The fact that I’m seeing 3 out of 4 drives I’ve bought showing signs of failure makes me think something is wrong with the ones they’re selling.

This is the first time I’ve heard of this, thanks! Looks like a good addition to my homelab.

I’ve seen that before, but when I proposed that as a solution it was shot down due to being unsupported by Microsoft. I just wish they had an OEM option to skip it.

It depends on the version, but yes, it does. It’s especially a problem on prebuilt machines and laptops. It is incredibly annoying to work with in a corporate environment. Our helpdesk tech comes to me with issues related to this probably three times a week. I gave up with work arounds and we just have a throwaway Microsoft account now.

The 2001 TNBC show “Sk8”. One episode was finally uploaded to YouTube a couple years back. Beyond that, all that apparently exists are some clips and commercials.

Looks good. What type of plastic did you use? PLA? Any warping from heat?