[deltasquare4]

They'd be adequate at running a bunch of services, but cannot bring the connectivity and reliability that AWS provides. I myself have been running a bunch of Chinese Mini-PCs to the same effect since last few years now, and found Reddit Homelab community to be a source of inspiration.

I have an ultra cheap VPS instance that I run wireguard on, and expose these servers to the internet through there. The Mini-PCs are like NUCs, so they hardly consume much power, and I have paid less than 6 months worth of comparable AWS costs to own and run them till now.

The two biggest issues I have are power backup - UPS works for only 3-4 hours, after which the servers shut down, and internet connections - I have 2 100Mbps fiber lines load balanced, but the reliability of consumer internet leaves things to be desired.

I spend roughly 2-3 hours every other month to maintain the whole thing, which is pretty much hands-off. I'd say it's been totally worth it for me, but I still use AWS for mostly S3 and SES.

[justinclift]

> ... cannot bring the connectivity and reliability that AWS provides.

Connectivity, you're likely right about. But for reliability... that's probably not accurate.

Most laptops (with stable software) don't seem to show any issues when running for months at a time. And they have built-in battery backup too. :)

Depending on the battery life for those old macbook pro's, that battery backup might last many hours. As servers, they don't need to run with their screens on. :)

[frankreyes]

ECC Ram is important, and most laptops don't have it. Just because you don't see bit errors doesn't mean it doesn't happens. Specially in a 16gb of RAM laptop, that thing is pretty much sensible.

[justinclift]

That's a good point, for oriented production stuff especially.

Maybe not as important for homelab style things though.

[frankreyes]

Even homelab, I keep my life's photos in a Nas and a single bit flip can make any picture unreadable.

The probability of a bit errors is not low, and if you keep data for a decade, it gets bad

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/497044/what-...

[justinclift]

> Even homelab > I keep my life's photos ...

To me, those should be two different categories.

* Homelab -> experimentation

* "My life's photos" -> production

But I guess that's just arguing over semantics at this point. :)

[grocketeer]

This is good to know. Thank you for the reference

[deltasquare4]

Well, I have found that it changes with numbers and age of the device. Generally speaking, you are right though.

[thumbuddy]

Most laptops end up in the trash because of the case, keyboards, etc. If you keep it headless why not.

[grocketeer]

> ... found Reddit Homelab community to be a source of inspiration.

I've joined r/homelab based on your suggestion. I love their content. Thank you for the suggestion and your response.

[Mumps]

If you're a little less ambitious (as I am), /r/minilab is also a nice place.

[grocketeer]

Thanks!