Dear all,<p>Recently I saw someone mentioned that [Miniforums MS-01](https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01) is one of the more powerful mini PCs available (with possibility of extensions). Many people also seem to use mini PCs, as well as SFF computers (e.g., Optiplex), as homelab servers? I personally have a Beelink SER-5 and Debian for this purpose.<p>So this got me thinking, would it be possible/feasible to use mini PCs and/or SFF computers as business/production servers in serious settings, such as for small/medium business and/or (SaaS) startups? Or that even in these cases, a [HPE MicroServer](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/compute/proliant-microserver/proliant-microserver/proliant-microserver/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-plus-v2/p/1014673551) may be a better choices, due to the fact that it's more like an actual server? I guess in other words, what functionalities and/or features make a server server?<p>Thank you!
I am using a ZimaBlade (2 cores, 16gb DDR3L RAM) as my cloud server, and an old Nvidia Jetson NX (very outdated ARM CPU with negligible GPU power) as my email server. I also run a bunch of frontends and apps on both. They work flawlessly.<p>Of course is domestic use (indeed, homelab), but I am pretty sure a good NUC (pay attention to thermals!) can be used professionally.<p>On my old job, we used a raspberry pi 3b+ as a VoIP server and we were in the process of moving a bunch of hosting services on a mid-tower server which actually was less powerful than nowadays NUCs
The ECC stuff is like asking gearheads about motor oil.<p>You can absolutely do it. In a large production environment one of my teams used out of service thin clients (t620 iirc) to do some edge computing stuff. We also used t630s in a pinch to run ubiquiti controllers for temporary sites setup during COVID. They last forever and are surprisingly capable. The newer ones can handle 32GB ram and 1TB+ flash. The cpus are weak, but they don’t require cooling and sip power.<p>Just backup the locally generated work product if there is any.<p>Remember the “enterprise” nonsense is babble if you have a team who can think and operate outside the box. If you’re placing 1000 servers in dental offices nationwide, buy the HP server with the nationwide 24x7 support network. If you don’t need that, save the money.
Sans the HP, they lack ECC support which automatically puts them in the 'home computer' market.<p>Why would you use home-grade "servers" when a startup has access to a variety of cheap cloud solutions? What business market segment in a server space would these mini PCs occupy?
Any computer, even an Android phone, <i>can</i> be used as a server. The issue is MTBF and maintenance in numbers. ECC might be not that important if your workload is not critical and you have a correct reboot policy.<p>Lack of BMC like IPMI is much worse, meaning you will need to hop on a trip or ask someone at the installation site to check your HW.<p>So what makes a server server is probably a mix of remote maintenance capabilities and redundancies to minimize said maintenance.
Just get a<p><pre><code> Gigabyte MC12-LE0
Ryzen Pro 5650
4x32GB DDR4 ECC RAM 3200 Modules
</code></pre>
Much more of a server system with ECC Support, IPMI. With the newest BIOS there is Bifurcation Support and iGPU passthrough.
My home server is a little square PC and it has done a marvelous job. It's massively overkill for my use, but it converts full movies to H264 quickly.
absolutely!<p>Checkout these links<p>* <a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-cloud-is-just-someone-elses-computer/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-cloud-is-just-someone-else...</a><p>* <a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-scooter-computer/</a><p>The people screaming about ECC - meh, honestly you can grab some ecc ram and build a couple of small boxes if you want, but there's no reason you can't host a whole lot on these mini-pcs without ECC. Google had plenty of production going without ECC -- eventually they grew up though.<p>* <a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codinghorror.com/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/</a>
Lack of SATA ports, and sometimes lack of a PCI/PCIe slot which you can put a standard SATA card in mean you often are restricted to 2-disk models of RAID/Mirror filestore.<p>zimablade, for all its faults (USB-C power FFS. there are pins on the mobo for 12V direct in, if you want to risk it) and the low power budget to actually run drives.. has the PCIe slot. It means its just a tiny PC, intel arch, quad core, 16GB memory and .. a real PCIe slot which means you can run a real HBA.<p>I get round the power budget using an old ATX psu with the pins set to always-on, in the 24 pin ATX mobo connector.