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Looking to build a K8s cluster, what are your strategies for finding affordable hardware? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by Eldaroth@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I currently run all my self-hosted apps either on Podman in a VM or in LXCs on Proxmox. For hardware, I'm using a Chinese-made mini computer with an Intel N150 and 16GB of DDR5 RAM that I bought before the whole AI hype started. I also have a Synology NAS that I use mainly for media and photo storage.

I've been thinking about tinkering with Kubernetes in my homelab for a while now (I already use it extensively at work, so I'm quite familiar with it), and I started looking around for used hardware to use as bare metal nodes. Nothing fancy—I'm looking for 1 or 2 mini servers or SFF with at least 16GB of memory and a decent CPU (4–6 cores). But with current prices, even decently priced used hardware (~200–250€) is quite difficult to find in Europe, and most of it is HP stuff with Lenovo being a rare breed around here. I won't even get started on newly bought hardware...

If you've bought hardware in this market recently, how did it go for you? Or are most of you holding out for now, waiting for better times?

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[-] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago

Have you tried using Ceph or other distributed storage systems in your kubernetes cluster?

[-] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 1 points 1 hour ago

Well, I run a one node cluster...

But yes, I did use ceph via rook-ceph, because Openstack (a locally hosted AWS alternative), at least the Kubernetes version, wanted a ceph "cluster" to store stuff on.

Longhorn is much easier. Although again, my "cluster" was one node. I deployed it because I wanted snapshots.

this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
44 points (100.0% liked)

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