The Datacenter: 2022 Review

While I started hosting servers in 2020, it wasn't until 2022 that I got comfortable working with VMs, managing a large network, and using enterprise hardware. Here's a breakdown of what hardware I'm running now at the beginning of 2023, and what each piece is used for.

• HP DL380 GEN 9 Server ($600) x2
  Making up the bulk of my datacenter's compute power are a pair of HP DL380 Gen 9 servers, which cost about $550 and $650 (5TB and 7TB of total disk space). Each server has dual Xeon 2660 v3 CPUs, for a total of 80 vCPUs between the two servers. These two servers use the Proxmox VE OS, and the VMs hosted on these servers handle the bulk of the networking, web hosting, and file sharing software I run. While I can't offer complete specs, here's the best part list I could find to compare to:

• Custom Ryzen 5700G Linux Server ($1100) x1
  The third node in the Proxmox cluster runs on a Ryzen 5700G, Hosting the Minecraft servers and a Proxmox Backup server. This is one of my original servers from 2021, which was decomissioned when I started using the HP DL380's, but brought back online to test the performance difference between Minecraft on the Xeon 2660 V3, and on the Ryzen 5700G. The improvement with Valhelsia 3 was 30-40 TPS, or +10 chunk view distance with DynView, for the same player count.

• Custom Ryzen 5700G ($650) Router
  My main network controller is an off the shelf small business router right now, but I am working on migrating to the custom Opnsense router I recently built. I'm happy with the SDN management utility for my current router, but wanted the flexibility of managing my own hardware. A 10 gigabit NIC is significantly cheaper than a whole new 10 gig router, for example. A mostly complete parts list for the new router follows:

And that's all of the servers! I have spare parts to build a new server with a 3800X and am planning to do so, so that I can compare the server performance between 5700G and 3800X, but for now those 4 servers make up the entire network.