How to calculate required hw specs?
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Hi all
I am about to get another server for my cloudron installation and I would like to spend as much money as needed, but don't overbuy in terms of overpowered hardware. Is there any way to calculate how much CPU power I would need? I am fine with some "buffer" but don't want to spend money I don't really need to spend.
Right now I am looking at some kind of older CPU inside a cheap server. Its a Xeon E3-1275v6. It comes with 64 GB ECC RAM. I will install Nextcloud, run a mail server for my wife and me and a Mastodon instance. Besides that I am planning on running a few small web-services like FreshRSS, Wordpress-Blog (personal) and Collabora for Nextcloud.
In case the hardware is powerful enough, I am thinking about running a minecraft server but I am okay if it doesn't work (for me and 2-3 friends). I would also like to run some small services like a personal git, haste or some other small services.
How can I calculate what kind of CPU I need? Like I said - everything is personal and only for my own usage (+wife). I don't expect many visitors on my blog (its more of a personal diary) and besides the minecraft server (3-4 players) all services will be used by just me.
thanks all for your input on this
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@Stardenver no need to nickle and dime calculate. that's plenty, go for it.
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Agree with @robi to go for it
For home servers, it's always good to future proof your puchase so that it runs well atleast for next 4-5 years. You can get a good NUC these days for 500 USD or so. If you get refurbished this can bring the price down further. -
@girish said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
Agree with @robi to go for it
For home servers, it's always good to future proof your puchase so that it runs well atleast for next 4-5 years. You can get a good NUC these days for 500 USD or so. If you get refurbished this can bring the price down further.Thanks for your reply. My homeserver is already set and done. This server is in a datacenter and I am about to rent it for a good price. Just wasn't sure the hardware is sufficient enough.
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@Stardenver I would say 64GB is plenty for the services you want to run! Another thing is make sure you get a fast disk - SSD or NVMe. For the CPU, generally any CPU of last 8 years should be totally fine for web apps.
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Test the harddisk speed with something like
hdparm -Tt /dev/nvme0n1p1(replace with your disk name) -
@Stardenver fyi I'm running 48 apps and they are only using 12GB ram and almost no CPU.
I don't have heavy usage on any of the apps and so the only apps using more than 1GB ram are discourse forums (I've got 3 of them using about 1.5GB each)
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@Stardenver said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
Xeon E3-1275v6. It comes with 64 GB ECC RAM
This is overkill. Recycling old and cheap hardware is good but think about power consumption too! Running costs will eat up these savings quickly and I doubt you can utilize its potential.
For example my home NAS is a Intel 11th gen Unraid server with 4x 16TB drives with results in 1/4 of the energy bill I would have with a regular RAID5 NAS.
Within my main Cloudron, I have 30 apps running (Nextcloud, Element, Wordpress...) on a Netcup RS 4000 and RAM consumption is below 10GB for apps and less then 14GB for the whole system. CPU spikes (Collabora, Video Calls, peak time for websites) but there is enough headroom and I even thought about downgrading to a RS 2000.
For a small app server/NAS Intel NUC is fine but lacks the option to expand on disk space and in most cases computing power. For my homelab I use ASRock Deskmini X300 and B660 as they can hold up to 64GB RAM and 2x 2,5 SATA Drives + 2x m.2 NVME drives.
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@girish said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
@Stardenver I would say 64GB is plenty for the services you want to run! Another thing is make sure you get a fast disk - SSD or NVMe. For the CPU, generally any CPU of last 8 years should be totally fine for web apps.
Machine comes with 2x Micron_5100_MTFD 960 GB and replacement is for free in cases of drive failures. They are running in a RAID 1 configuration.
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@subven said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
This is overkill. Recycling old and cheap hardware is good but think about power consumption too! Running costs will eat up these savings quickly and I doubt you can utilize its potential.
Well.. server is running in a datacenter I don't pay anything additional for energy consumption. Its all included. I pay 50 EUR for this machine and thats a price I am willed to pay. Actually I was just afraid I'd have to pay more to get a more sufficient machine. They sell servers for 100, 200 or even more per month and thats still the lower end. Now it looks like its more than enough and I am okay paying 50 bucks.
Thanks for your reply
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@Stardenver said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
I will install Nextcloud, run a mail server for my wife and me and a Mastodon instance. Besides that I am planning on running a few small web-services like FreshRSS, Wordpress-Blog (personal) and Collabora for Nextcloud.
In terms of resource usage, this could be run on a Raspberry pi 4 with 4-8GB RAM (not compatible with Cloudron) at 4-5W power consumption ^^
@Stardenver said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
I pay 50 EUR for this machine and thats a price I am willed to pay.
You buy a Ferrari to drive to the bakery every sunday then
If this is just about private usage and not mission critical big corpo stuff, you are better off with just renting a VPS/ROOT that really fits your needs like everybody else does. 50€ for colocation, 18$ for Cloudron, at least 5-10€ for external backup space per month egals to at least ~70€ per month. Thats a lot 
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@subven said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
You buy a Ferrari to drive to the bakery every sunday then If this is just about private usage and not mission critical big corpo stuff, you are better off with just renting a VPS/ROOT that really fits your needs like everybody else does. 50€ for colocation, 18$ for Cloudron, at least 5-10€ for external backup space per month egals to at least ~70€ per month. Thats a lot
Yes, you are right with everything you said. But wel.. what could I say. It is how it is xD
I am actually running a Netcup VPS for another project (which I don't have to pay) and I am facing 2 problems here. At first, the Netcup IP often seem to be a bit "burned" in terms of reputation. I have more problems with blacklists on Netcup IP than I have on lets say Hetzner. Thats just my personal experience and probably there are ways to get erased from those lists. But whenever I get a Hetzner IP it seems to be with a somehow better reputation. That alone wouldn't probably justify the higher price. But..
Second - I am using a bit more of storage space. Mastodon and Nextcloud are taking a lot of storage in my cases. I do have more than 100 GB in my Nextcloud and I actually want it that way. So the minimum would be a Netcup RS4000. And as I prefer monthly payments for VPS I'd pay almost 40 EUR if I remember right. And therefor the RS4000 would be just 10 bucks cheaper. So actually I am paying just 10 EUR more for a dedicated bare metal which will probably be faster in almost every aspect.
But you are right saying that I probably don't really "need" it
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@Stardenver said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
the Netcup IP often seem to be a bit "burned" in terms of reputation. I have more problems with blacklists on Netcup IP than I have on lets say Hetzner.
This won't change if you rent a server somewhere. I pay for a SMTP service to get around this problem because blocked mails and support requests are painfull. Costs around 8€ per month (Mailjet - older contract) but there are cheaper options (Amazon or free tiers).
@Stardenver said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
I do have more than 100 GB in my Nextcloud and I actually want it that way. So the minimum would be a Netcup RS4000
Take Hetzner CX41 for 20€, CPX41 for 30€ or Netcup RS 2000 G9.5 for 17€ then. My RS 4000 is 24€/month (31,59€ usually) and comes with 8 CPU, 32GB RAM and over 800GB SSD which I dont need but it was a special offer back then.
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@Stardenver said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
I am using a bit more of storage space. Mastodon and Nextcloud are taking a lot of storage in my cases.
I'm on Netcup VPS 3000 G10 which comes with:
10 vCore
18 GB RAM
640 GB SSD (RAID10)for €18.52
I used to be on Hetzner (mostly for the much better UX), but I needed more space and you get WAY more space with Netcup.
I did also forget to think about IP reputation before migrating and so had some issues to start with, but after jumping through the various hoops (a few more than I had to with Hetzner, but had issues with their IP reputation too - I think that's inevitable with anyone providing such great value) I'm off all the blacklists now. Next time I'll check the health of my IP before using the server and either ask for a better IP or do the work to clean it up before using it.
Also, re Mastodon, I'd recommend storing the media off server using some cheap object storage (I use Scaleway but there are lots of other options), it's very simple:
@jdaviescoates said in adding S3 bucket:
@redegelde nothing in the Cloudron docs yet (I think @staff should probably add something), but it's very simple.
All you have to do is use the File Manger to edit your
/app/data/env.productionand add something like this:# Store data using S3 object S3_ENABLED=true S3_BUCKET=bucket-name AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<key_id> AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secret_key> S3_REGION=fr-par S3_PROTOCOL=https S3_HOSTNAME=s3.fr-par.scw.cloudLots more info in this thread https://forum.cloudron.io/post/50193 (even though it's ostensibly about Minio)
@staff you really ought to add those details to the docs
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@jdaviescoates said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
@staff you really ought to add those details to the docs
*snarky voice* actually you could contribute to the doc as well
https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/docs
Yea you're right, this can be added to the docs for mastadon
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@BrutalBirdie said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
snarky voice actually you could contribute to the doc as well
https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/docsThanks for the link.
I contribute to the docs all the time, actually
, and last time I looked on gitlab for a place to more directly contribute I couldn't find what you've just shared (is it new?), but from now on I shall make my contributions there!@BrutalBirdie said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
Yea you're right, this can be added to the docs for mastadon
MastOdon
(so many people do that because of how it sounds) -
@jdaviescoates my answer was meant in a funny way, hope I did not step on any toes
Many people think the docs and many other stuff is only managed by the Cloudron team but is open for anyone to improve.
That's why I have to point this out some times, this time it just hit you
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@subven You know what.. you are right. You convinced me that its really too much for what I need. Just canceled the order and went for a Netcup RS 2000 G9.5. Already set up everything and worked on IP reputation. But everything seems to look fine.
Thanks for your very helpful posts.
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@BrutalBirdie said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
@jdaviescoates my answer was meant in a funny way, hope I did not step on any toes
No offence taken
my reply was meant to be funny too but perhaps I should've added more emojis or something -
@Stardenver for good measure I always check on https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx too
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@Stardenver you still will run into trouble sending mails to MS/Office365, GMX/WEB.de and so on
Take a look at the free tiers some SMTP offer and track your daily/monthly mail volume. Also remember you can always upgrade EDIT: Ah and btw a lot of us use Hetzner Storage Boxes for backup but there are also a lot of threads about Minio/S3 storages.
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@jdaviescoates Thank you very much for your reply and my apologies for getting back to you that late. I was working on my server step by step and according the information I get here. Right now I am working on different storage solutions and therefor its time to look at what you quoted regarding S3. This seems to be very interesting, as its somehow cheap and fast.
I am already using Hetzner Storage Boxes. At first I used them to extend my storage for some bigger files I don't need to access that often - almost like some sort of cold storage. Because its working flawless and 3 EUR for 1TB is like super cheap, I got another one for backups only.
Have to dig into the S3 topic, but it looks very promising.
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@subven said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
you still will run into trouble sending mails to MS/Office365, GMX/WEB.de and so on Take a look at the free tiers some SMTP offer and track your daily/monthly mail volume. Also remember you can always upgrade
thats not of a big problem, as I have other solutions besides this server, just in case. Also I rarely send mails, while on the other hand I receive a lot. But like 99% of all mails are incoming mails. I will still run some tests with several providers.
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@Stardenver yeah I use Hetzner Storage Boxes for all my backups too.
And for storing all my music (nearly 1TB) that I've connected to the Navidrome app on here
- my own personal Spotify! (not that I ever actually used that) -
@subven said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
@Stardenver you still will run into trouble sending mails to MS/Office365, GMX/WEB.de and so on
@jdaviescoates said in How good is the mail server?:
@JOduMonT said in How good is the mail server?:
Microsoft will simply ignore you (I'm might not being update on that part)
I've found that using https://sender.office.com/ and requesting access to your IP on Microsoft's Smart Network Data Service https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/ and signing up to their Junk Mail Reporting Program https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/JMRP.aspx helps with Microsoft.
Update:
I just hit issues with Microsoft again
and found this support request form:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/supportrequestform/8ad563e3-288e-2a61-8122-3ba03d6b8d75
I've no idea if it actually helps yet, but can't hurt I guess! I submitted a support request for each domain I've add issues sending to in the past (just now it was an @outlook.com address, but previously I had issues with @live.com and @hotmail.com address, all with essentially the same issue: my IP is in a range that has some dodgy IPs in and they are blocking the whole range, i.e.
@outlook:
Failure Reason: Error: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [89.58.52.168] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3150). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [VI1EUR06FT013.eop-eur06.prod.protection.outlook.com]
@hotmail.com
Failure Reason: Error: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [89.58.52.168] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3150). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [AM0EUR02FT045.eop-EUR02.prod.protection.outlook.com]
@live.com
Failure Reason: Error: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [89.58.52.168] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3150). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [AM7EUR06FT040.eop-eur06.prod.protection.outlook.com]
I've just message Netcup support about this too, let's see what they say...
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@jdaviescoates said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
I just hit issues with Microsoft again
Sadly it's a fight against windmills and there is nothing to prevent this in the long term. I payed the price since it's way cheaper then have urgend mails not reaching its target or constant support requests from users not knowing whats going on. Like I said, for private/light use you can take a look at free tiers of various SMTP providers (most of them apply small watermarks).
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@subven said in How to calculate required hw specs?:
urgend mails not reaching its target
so far none of the emails that have failed have been at all important so gonna stick with fully self hosted for now.
Interestingly emails to companies using Office 365 and with stuff very locked down are getting through but to Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com they aren't.
In my case it's because of the IP range I'm in, not my actual IP.
Be nice if there were a way to check that because at present I'm getting the all clear on all the blacklist check sites I've tried
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@jdaviescoates I did some quick and dirty tests and so far it seems to be okay. I received mails in my Gmail account and in several others from some small and mostly german providers. Mails arrive at my webhoster.
As I don't have an MS365 account I tested outlook.com Mail was accepted from server but was moved into spam folder. I marked it as no spam and next mail arrived. Guess thats okay for me. I also checked mails with attachments (pdf).
As I already mentioned, I am sending very few mails and like 99% are incoming mails. So its okay for me.
