One of the few things I’ve actually liked from Intel. Of course it’s not profitable enough.
I hate that “profit” is the driving decision on everything. Does this product have value for our customer? Do our customers like this product. I actually know dozens of folks who enjoy and use NUCs. For hobbies, for work.
One of the most dystopian parts of modern society is that we got co-opted into believing that companies exist to make their owners/investors rich when they should be a vehicle for a group of people (employees) accomplish a goal that’s greater than an individual can accomplish. That means it’s OKAY to make a decision that results in less profit if it helps to achieve the company’s vision!
Providing consumers with budget friendly hobby PC’s should be what Intel’s mission is. Getting computing accessible, easy to use, compact.
Doesn’t provide enough shareholder value 🤢
Edit: Also since this article focuses on Intel competing with OEMS. Why shouldn’t the OEMs face competition? Intel introduced this format because OEMs were just shipping the same design and format, rinse and repeat like a money printing device. No innovation. Why? Shareholder value 🤢
Lower power is ARM, but aren’t X86 CPUs not still a lot faster? (While my Raspberry Pi 4 can barely run a Minecraft server, my 50$ SFF can run 2 servers at the same time and still has plenty of CPU cycles left)
Power consumption is higher ofcourse, but I exchanged 3 Pi’s (3*10W) with one SFF (25W) so it’s fine :-)
That’s a design consideration, not an actual problem. Remember the pi is also not running natively, and that the quite good M chips from Apple are ARM-based.
I don’t fully understand. What’s the design consideration? My biggest problem is actually that the least power hungry CPU (arm) has very little options if you want to run a server with a bit more processing power.
If you mean that Minecraft is not native… this is Java , so everything runs in the JVM independent of platform.
I might need a Mac Mini as a server and install Linux on it (is that still an option?) like some kind of NUC…
Providing consumers with budget friendly hobby PC’s should be what Intel’s mission is.
As a publicly traded, for-profit entity, it's mission is to create value for shareholders. Shareholder value is its product, not computers or microchips. Those are nothing more than strategies for creating that shareholder value.
What you've said is true, but it is also true that it sucks when good products go by the wayside because they don't provide sufficient shareholder value.
It absolutely sucks. And it's total bullshit. I don't mean to in any way come across as ok with it. I just think it's important to highlight what's driving things like this, because we very often have in mind that businesses exist to serve customer's needs.
And they do. It's just that consumers aren't their customers. They're in the business of selling stocks and ROI, not consumer products. The consumer products are just how they mine that value for shareholders, and like any miner, they're always going to be seekin gout the richest veins.
We deserve an Intel, or an AMD, or a whoever, that has a mission of creating quality and accessible products for the public. But under our current set of systems, we're never going to get that, because these organizations and industries don't work for us.
We're just a resource to them, to be exploited for their real customers.
Exactly. That’s the “problem”. It’s a vehicle for greed not efficiency. Why because efficiency is defined by your intended effect. The cost of the world’s resources, employees quality of life are all sacrificed for ever intensifying levels of “profit” efficiency. Which is absorbed by who?
The largest investors in the world for the most part.
It’s a pipeline of inequality. Systems that were intended to be open and give power to the majority circumvented to look fair but actually provision gross inequality.
And what is the culture? You too could be a billionaire if you work hard enough. If you just contribute to the same system that is promoting inequality you too can rise up.
Am I advocating for socialism or communism? No but it’s fair to say that Capitalism has failed as well.
There needs to be something better / newer that isn’t as vulnerable to exploitation.
The oems still compete with each other and probably have a more effective distribution network due to shipping much higher volumes
Honestly the intel bucks were always so tall compared to the other manufacturers much slimmer IL offerings. It makes sense to get a computer that fits better behind a screen on the vesa mount.
40 drives ? Why that is a huge amount of power , what is your space target
RAID 1 ? With 40 drives ? That would be absolutely stupid you want to use RAID 6 or 10 so you don’t waist 50 % of your space with RAID 1. Or some other N+2 disk redundancy.
Have you considered how much power such a large setup will need?
I’ll have to watch a video on it later, I assumed having a 1:1 backup was the most efficient backup method possible without compression. I don’t plan on utilizing every drive at once, and I don’t plan on having more than 20 to start with, but it won’t be much more than I already have, so I should be okay to start. I just want to make sure there room for expansion in the future. I don’t need all 40 immediately. My UPS will tell me how much power I’m drawing, right?
You need to research raid 1,6,10 and zfs first. Make an informed decision and go from there. You’re basing the number of drives off of (uninformed) assumptions and that’s going to drive all of your decisions the wrong way. Start with figuring out your target storage amount and how many drive failures you can tolerate.
Skip ZFS unless you’re planning to get all 40 drives up front, which is pretty bonkers for a home server setup. Acquiring 40 drives incrementally and you’ll be hit with the hidden cost of ZFS.
That’s definitely something to be aware of, but the vdev expansion feature was mergered and will be released probably this year.
Additionally, it looks like the authors main gripe is the current way to expand is to add more vdevs. If you plan this out ahead of time then adding more vdevs incrementally isn’t an issue, you just need to buy enough drives for a vdev. In homelab use this might an issue, but if OP is planning on a 40 drive setup then needing to buy drives in groups of 2-3 instead of individually shouldn’t be a huge deal.
I think the biggest issue home users will run into (until the finally merged PR gets released later this year) is that as they acquire more drives, compared to a traditional RAID cluster that they could expand, they’re going to see more and more drives proportions being used for parity. Once vdev expansion is possible, the system would be a lot more approachable for home users who doesn’t acquire all the drives up front.
Having said that, this is probably a lot less of a concern for someone intending to setup 40 drives in RAID1, as they’re already ready to use half of it for redundancy…
Hey! You have the same shitty AIO that Comcast sent me! It overheated and tries to melt itself down all the time. Luckily it gets so hot that the adhesive melted and the screws were easily visible. I just took the chassis off and it mostly doesn’t overheat anymore.
Crazy, the thing is basically hollow and was right next to the window and would still overheat. The bottom doesn’t allow for any air intake so it sufffocates. Also it’s 80% plastic because they couldn’t be assed to add aluminum heatsinks.
Oh my goodness, this is the first time I’ve seen the innards of that AIO (all in one?) on the internet. Thank you! Where were the screws located on it?
They are all on the bottom, the rubber feet/stripping on mine started coming off, found it by mistake. One has a sticker, but those don’t really hold up to void warranties anyways. Plus, I’m just gonna super glue the rubber feet back on after, hahah. I just tucked the screws and the chassis in the back of a closet for now. No tabs or anything to break when uninstalling it, either!
Edit: yeah, all in one! Mine is one of those modem / wifi combos. I set it to bridge mode so I could use my own router, and the thing still overheated even though it was just acting as a modem, smh. Annoying how bad it is. Luckily, shucking it will clear up 9/10 problems. Put some tape over the LED if you sleep in the same room as it, it’s very bright when exposed.
So I finally shucked mine and found a 40mm fan in the bottom that wasn’t running. In fact, I don’t think it ever has run since I never feel any air flow or hear anything. Did your XB8 have a fan?
Though one has to wonder why it needs cooling at all. I’ve never had an actively cooled network device before, and most of my equipment hasn’t even gotten more than marginally warm due to excellent venting.
Oh yeah that would be a great alternative! It’s funny, I’ve been wondering the same. It’s in bridge mode, has a MASSIVE heatsink and a fan but is still super hot. Does modems really get that hot? I’d be curious to inspect what kind of traffic is coming out of the modem because my pihole isn’t catching anything from my router-onwards.
Wait, really? Like 3d print something? I was actually toying with that idea but I haven’t dipped my toes into 3d printing yet and don’t have much time lately.
For sure! What part of the world are you in? I have that same unit, so maybe I could cobble something together, but I’m not having your same problem with it (yet?)…
Small adapter that clips into the premade holes and has screw attachments for the fan. Dont have the unit for design purposes but could print the part (mid europe)
I’m in Canada - I’d be more than happy to pay for shipping and supplies but if it’s too much work or ends up being too pricey then don’t worry about it. :)
No worries at all! Are you able to send detailed, clear pics of what you want and how it needs to fit? Feel free to DM me, I’m game to give this a try. (Also, PacNW)
Oh, and before I forget: are you able to remove the top of the unit to give small zip ties a try?
A lot of people like having a NAS VM like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS that handles their drives via passthrough.
It sounds like you would prefer a lighter weight option—the way my storage is set up is ZFS pools handled by Proxmox itself, then bind mounted from the host into containers that handle the actual file sharing portion. I have separate, self-configured containers for Samba and NFS, but there are turnkey options in the proxmox template menu if you’d prefer.
Disable password authentication and allow only key/certificate/token/etc wherever feasible. Don’t even ask for a password if some other authentication mechanism can be used instead. Human-memorized passwords are weak and generated passwords are a poor substitute for proper cryptographic key exchange.
su, sudo, and Polkit are privilege escalations waiting to happen. Remove them if possible; deprivilege them (remove the setuid bit) if not. Do not allow any means for an unprivileged user to get a root shell, regardless of authentication, because unprivileged accounts may be backdoored and letting them elevate will grant root privileges to the attacker as well.
On your local machine, always log in as root on a separate virtual console using a separate password. On remote machines, always log in as root using an ssh key only accessible to the root account on your local machine.
I’m iffy about hiding SSH behind a VPN. Doing this creates a serious risk of being locked out of your own server, and if your SSH server is configured correctly (as described above), then the security benefits aren’t that big. If you do find the risks acceptable, feel free to do this, but you shouldn’t feel obligated.
Docker is unnecessary complexity and overhead. Use systemd to isolate things; it can do things like filtering system calls and hiding portions of the file system. SELinux might be good too, if you can figure out how to use it (I never could).
Fail2ban is unnecessary if nothing accepts passwords for authentication. There are no fails to ban.
I also want to know, being a beginner sysadmin myself. If you think that his advice is bad and you’re not elaborating, I’ll be taking his advice because his sounds sane so far.
Explaining why something is bad advice is as important as saying it is. Otherwise it’s just a pissing match between two random people on the internet. Why also keeps people from making similar problems.
This is definitely good advice - and an interesting point on removing ‘‘sudo’’
I would add a clarification: moving SSH to cert only prevents password guessing, but also - if possible - only allow specific IPs to access it. This could be down to the country level if roaming a lot. Also use >1 IP so that you don’t lock yourself out!
I had a similar, we'd kept an IRC channel open for years, then he went off the deep end with conspiracies and I cut contact. I miss my friend but that friend was a chill software geek, not the rage addicted lunatic who took his place.
I started picking up Used Tiny / Mini / Micro systems. I currently have a Lenovo M910q with an i7 7th gen running my frigate dockers. I got it from a local second had PC shop, but you can find them on eBay and Facebook market place often. Asus makes a NUC like box, and there are Aliexpress brands like beelink etc.
I’m shopping for servers right now and was distressed at the NUC situation (news to me). 4 months later your comment and this link are still helpful. Thanks!
Totally! There are a ton of used workstations on eBay for cheap too. I got a Lenovo M715q with a Ryzen 5 APU for under $100USD. I can’t afford not to have a garage desktop at that price.
I don’t know how much your electric rate is, but a router or server that sucks down a hundred watts 24 hours a day may be a concern. An arcade machine would be my choice.
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