As with all things backups, testing and maintenance is key.

If there were ones that vibrated or had interference enough to affect neighboring units, that would be marketing points. As it is now, no one mentions any of those points. It’s all capacity, I/O and features.

If there were units that showed any of those issues, the reviews would tell.

This unit is basically dead silent in normal operation. During charging and discharging there is an audible hum, but nothing else. I haven’t noticed any vibration or ZFS scrubs reporting corrections.

PiKVM is based on Arch for ARM.

Yes.

Not aware of any such project. I’d assume you’ll need some hardware anyways as you need it for the level of access (ATX etc.). Not sure how that would be preferable to this.

It’s a KVM in the same sense but instead of switching it provides the functionality over a web interface so that I can manage my server from my workstation or laptop instead of crawling in the space beneath the stairs where my server is if something goes wrong. Compare with IPMI.

It’s not a graphics card. https://pikvm.org/

It’s kind of the point here to occupy the video out as this is a server and has no screen connected otherwise. Normally it doesn’t need one.

Would’ve loved to gotten one of those. But the power consumption of a Xeon is a bit higher than I’d like. This was a nice to have, not need to. It was a Christmas gift from my wife 🥰

There is power/reset and power/hdd LEDs as well as a USB 3 header for mouse and keyboard and flash/disc emulation. That way you can mount an image and boot from that if you want. Super handy for re-installs or troubleshooting tools.

Exactly, it isn’t a replacement. It is redundancy in the form of a screen with keyboard and mouse directly connected, but accessibly from remote (my couch). It is far from my primary interface with the server.

It’s part of my PiKVM-kit. https://geekworm.com/products/pikvm-a8

It’s also PoE which is very nice.

UniFi

It’s why I went with TrueNAS. It has built in support for VMs and containers in K3s. So far it’s been super nice. A lot to read up on, but you seem to have the same background as me so it should be fine. I find it fun!

My thoughts exactly! I recon that I’ll probably keep the case the longest of all, out of all those a hardware.

My trick is setting a monthly saving for this a few years ago. Today me thanks past me.

Also, I started out with 2x 4TB in raid 1 in my previous server. Or really just an unused desktop with a 1TB disk before that.

About half the cost was just the disks 😅

I searched far and wide for the perfect chassis. Silverstone make some awesome stuff.

I haven’t dared summed it up yet. It’s been purchased over a stretch of time. Guesstimating to around €3000.