Building a Low Power, All-in-One, Silent Server

what if I told you that this little machine is  the perfect proxmox virtualization server and   what if I told you I crammed an Intel Core i5 64  gigs of RAM a one terabyte nvme SSD another one   terabyte SSD all in this tiny little box that's  dead silent without any fans and what if I told   you it can run proxmox virtual server post a  pfSense router run true Nas with a terabyte of   storage run Ubuntu server with Portainer running  a few Docker containers run Windows 10 or 11   and run into Ubuntu desktop and pass through  all of the hardware so I can use this server   as a desktop all while running a Plex server  and doing Hardware transcoding with three 4K   streams no way no way yeah I thought you'd say  that you might have heard of Protectli before   they're known for making really great appliances  for many open source software distributions and   most people think of Protectli devices as the  perfect device for a router like like PF sense   and that makes sense considering that the device  comes with anywhere from two to six Network ports   but their devices can be used to run almost any  software imaginable from Linux to Windows to a   dedicated firewall to even a virtualization host  or a hypervisor that's possible because of the   hardware that's inside of these devices Protectli  sent me a vp4650 to help with some of my home lab   projects and this device is a beast this is  the BP 4650 and comes with an Intel Core i5   quad-core CPU with hyper threading that is rated  at 1.6 gigahertz and can turbo boost up to 4.2   gigahertz the nice thing about this CPU is that it  supports vtx for virtualization and vtd for iommu   so I can pass through devices to the guest and  because it's an Intel processor it comes with AES   and I support which is super nice for encryption  and decryption for VPN or TLS it supports up to   64 gigs of RAM which is plenty for what I'll be  using it for but you can scale back down if you   need all the way down to four gigabytes it comes  with six Intel 2.5 gigabit Nic ports giving you   enough throughput for most of your networking  needs it also ships with a 16 gigabyte emmc   module on the board and many options for storage  also because this machine has an nvme slot and a   SATA port you can mix and match your storage  to fit your needs I opted for a one terabyte   Samsung M2 nvme and a one terabyte Evo drive you  also get the choice of adding Wi-Fi modules and a   4G LTE modem however I decided not to want this  device because they also sent a lower powered   bp2420 as or network ports along with a Wi-Fi  and LTE modules to help me build the ultimate   router which you'll be seeing in a future video  if you notice from everything I listed you didn't   hear anything about fans that's not something  that's obvious from the specs on paper but   but taking one look at this device and you can  see a huge heat sink that passively cools the   entire device it definitely looks like a grill  but I promise you can't cook anything on here foreign as far as connectivity goes you have  plenty of options for connecting devices from   USB 2.0 3.0 USBC to HDMI to DisplayPort and even  a Micro SD port for console axis one thing that   I like about these devices is that you have your  choice and firmware to use you can use a standard   Ami bios that works great or you can try out the  core boot bios which is a Bare Bones open source   bios that lets you customize some pretty cool  features for instance if you've flashed one of   their devices with core boot you can boot to the  network and download and install many different   operating systems from the network or even  from the internet this is a neat feature that   I welcome and it saves you the hassle of loading  up that ventoy USB disk with yet another ISO I   did however opt for AMI bios because I did have  a few issues with core boot related to using my   ventoy USB disk but that's the nice thing about  the BIOS being open source it will get better and   more secure over time with more eyes looking at  it and more Engineers contributing to it so what   did I do with all this Hardware a better question  is what didn't I do I knew that I wanted my build   to be completely silent and I wanted my hypervisor  to be proxmox so the first decision I had to make   was where I was going to install proxmox remember  I have the choice between the nvme drive the SATA   drive and the emmc module turns out the emmc  module isn't really an option because Proxmox   won't let you install it there without some  hacks and I didn't want to hack this device   so I decided to install it on the nvme drive  and use the rest of the partition for virtual   machines now typically I would have installed  the OS on the slower drive and say the nvme for   VMS but I have other plans for that installing  Proxmox was straightforward just like any other   Proxmox installation after it was installed I then  configured iommu so I could pass devices through   to the guest machine and everything else I have  on my first 11th things on Proxmox video after   that was all set it was now time to install some  virtual machines I knew that I wanted to install   a router on this machine this will give me the  flexibility to run a network firewall for all of   these devices and give me the option to protect  any device I use when I travel but more on that   later so I installed pfSense and passed through  two of the Nyx from the host down to the guest   this first Nick is the WAN Port so an upstream  provider like an ISP or even some Network I don't   trust and then the other Port is for Lan if I do  want to connect all of these devices to my local   network passing these through and configuring  them was pretty simple and if I forget which   Port is which they even included some stickers for  me to label the ports I also added another Network   Port that's used as a network bridge in case I  want these VMS to use an internal Network that   doesn't communicate with my local network now  that the router was done I wanted to configure   a Nas on the device this Nas could be any open  source Nas but I chose to go with TrueNAS Scale   I went with TrueNAS Scale because well it's true  nans and I wanted scale because I wanted a Linux   based operating system that plays better with  proxmox after installing trunes I then created   a one terabyte drive in proxmox and then assigned  it to TrueNAS so that I could have one terabyte of   storage on manasse now I know it's not CFS and  I know I don't have redundant drives so if you   do the same thing you'll want to be sure that you  have your data backed up to another machine once   I had trunass up and running I could set up NFS  and Samba shares just like I would normally on a   physical install of an S I can also pass through  one of the Nicks to my Nas so that it can have a   dedicated 2.5 gigabit Nic if I like so router and  Nas up and running awesome next up I needed to   run some containers yes I know I can use trunas  to do this but I wanted to go with my preferred   combination of Ubuntu Server Docker and portainer  having a dedicated Ubuntu Server running portainer   gives me a great UI and so many possibilities  after installing and configuring it I then created   a few containers this is a perfect host now to  run all of my self-hosted services after getting   the foundation all set up I then had my choice  of desktop os's I could choose between Windows   and Ubuntu desktop then I looked at how much disk  space I had and how much RAM I had left over and   I thought to myself why not both I first installed  Windows 11 and configured it no problems there but   after installing Windows I wanted to pass through  the GPU on the device to the virtual machine along   with the sound card and USB devices so I could  use this as an all-in-one server and desktop 2.   after messing with this for hours I could not  get the single Intel GPU to display anything on   the screen even though it was definitely passed  through to the guess machine and I could see it   installed over remote desktop so I thought maybe  this was Windows 11 so then I created a Windows   10 machine and it did the same thing so passing  through the only GPU on the device was not looking   good so far so I decided to try again but with  Ubuntu desktop and sure enough it worked I was   able to pass through the integrated GPU from the  host down to the guest and use this machine as   a desktop now I will be the first to admit that  this isn't winning any performance Awards but I   was able to do most tasks that I would expect  to do on say a laptop I installed vs code I   customized the desktop watch some YouTube and  even pass through the thermal subsystem so I   could monitor the temperature of the host this is  pretty cool after I had this working I decided to   install Plex on this machine so that I could see  if I could get quick sync working so quick sync is   a technology and a dedicated chip on most modern  Intel processors that let you offload the decoding   and encoding a video from the processor down to  this chip so this technology is very similar to   nvenc on Nvidia and AMF on AMD but the idea is  that you give this work to another part of the   processor instead of pegging all of your cores  on your CPU Plex can take advantage of this if   you have a Plex pass and I do so I wanted to  see if I could get it working and that's where   I started to run into troubles again I thought  that since I had passed through the GPU on the   Ubuntu machine that Plex would just see quick  sync and use it no matter what I tried I could   not get Plex to do Hardware transcoding I even  tried Docker containers which supposedly should   work if the hardware is mapped properly however  I couldn't get that to work either then I decided   to try my windows VM because I could see the  Intel GPU when using remote desktop so I had   some hope sure enough when I installed plex and  started streaming a video the hardware enabled   transcoding kicked in and the CPU barely budged  I was able to transcode three 4K streams down   to 1080p 720p and even 480p no problem this was  awesome and puzzling at the same time the Windows   machine could see the GPU and take advantage  of quick sync but I couldn't output the display   from the HDMI or DisplayPort and the Ubuntu  machine could output to the monitor over HDMI   but I couldn't use Quick sync judging by the  fact that I was able to cover both use cases   with different operating systems told me that  this was probably something related to software   and not Hardware so I chalked this up as a bug  or a software issue that may be fixed someday   probably proxmox you might think that running four  virtual machines on this device would draw a lot   of power and generate a lot of heat well I thought  the same thing until I pulled out my kilowatt and   decided to measure it this particularly machine  running four virtual machines the host itself   with all of these devices plugged in pulled  in anywhere from 20 to 30 Watts which I think   is pretty good considering I have all of this  functionality in one device and if I wanted to   save some power I could power any one of these  virtual machines down when not using them and   even unplug the devices as far as heat goes well  do you hear that fan that's right no fan equals   no noise but it also means it's going to heat  up the fins quite a bit as you saw earlier The   Thermals were around 56 degrees Celsius on that  die and it's actually much cooler on the heatsink   fins so you definitely can't cook anything on  it as you saw I was able to create quite a few   virtual machines and spit up an absolutely quiet  hypervisor and then use use it as a desktop which   goes to show just how flexible these devices are  if you go with one of these devices you're getting   a blank slate where you can create and build  anything you want from a full-fledged server   with virtual machines to a small dedicated  development environment now it wouldn't be   fair if I didn't mention some of the beefs I  have with it too remember the emmc drive that   I mentioned well if you're planning on using with  proxmox it's pretty much useless proxmox can't be   installed on those types of devices and even if  I could it's only 16 gigabytes I'd love to see   another option other than emmc modules or even a  space for another solid state the other thing that   some have mentioned is the price these devices  are priced a little more expensive than some of   the other small form factor devices out there so  I wish the price would come down just a little bit   however these devices are purpose-built they have  lots of customization options and connectivity   options they're industrial quality and allow  you to swap out the firmware with core boot at   any time and if you like those options that might  just be enough for you to justify the premium cost   because I think these devices are premium devices  well I learned a lot about running proxmox on   Protectli devices running proxmox as his desktop  and I hope you learned something too and remember   if you found anything in this video helpful don't  forget to like And subscribe thanks for watching

Channel: Techno Tim

Views: 331,880

Keywords: protectli vault, protectli, 6 port, 2.5, gbs, 2.5 gbs, vp2420, vp4650, vp4630, vp4670, server, proxmox, silent, no fans, small, efficient, powerful, virtual server, pve, proxmox ve, hypervisor, windows, linux, pfsense, opnsense, ubuntu, docker, portainer, debian, containers, quiet, proxmox build 2023, low power build 2023, power efficient server build, router, plex, transcoding, gpu, ram, passive cooling, tiny, low watt, watts, aes, intel, network, storage, cooling, desktop, nas, truenas, pass through

Id: Aq6eoMjW7V0

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 08 2023