Or is this a bad idea?
Reading through !selfhosted, I think I have found a new hobby. I have an old laptop HP ProBook 450 G5 4WU81ES.
16gb ram, solid CPU, shitty integrated gpu, and only 256gb ssd. Barely enough for system and some apps. Battery life maybe 30min unplugged so I take it as an UPS.
So the question again is, can I have permanently plugged external hdd to use as extension for this purpose?
256 GB is plenty. I start most of my servers at 30 GB and add space as necessary. Less for Linux.
I guess it shows what a noob am I, planning to use Windows lmao. Never used Linux tbh but I get it in these cases
Choosing linux is way more important than choosing the right server. Linux and docker compose is the way to go. With that, if you want to migrate to a new server it’s super easy.
Highly recommend installing Proxmox or just a server version of a distribution. Much lower OS resource requirement means more available for everything else.
In the end, you can chuck Windows back on if the experiment doesn’t work out.
People host stuff on Raspberry Pis, so why not a laptop. One limit you might have is USB speeds, especially if you want to add more drives.
Just so you know it is possible, you can probably disable sleep or other things the laptop does by default when you close the lid, so you can leave it running while the lid is closed.
Did this with my old Dell laptop (that is running Debian server now), and now I access it over ssh while the lid is closed and very rarely open the lid and do stuff on the actual device directly.
That’s a MacBook in the image, you can’t do that on macOS. :^)
Yes you can: sudo pmset disablesleep 1
That’s the setup when I started.
I picked up an x230 with a broken screen and used it as a hypervisor (proxmox 5.4).
I used whatever resources available to me at the time and learned weird networking (passing through nics for a router on a stick configuration).
I used that x230 until the mobo gave up.
I have some basic stuff (VPN gateway, a web server etc) on my X230 as well
Can do but be aware that the drive will eventually die, so backup backup backup
I did this for my first year and a bit for self hosting. It worked great! Really no problems with a USB 3.0 HDD station.
I actually used an HP probook 450 G1 IIRC.
No reason why it wouldn’t work! Worst case the drive is pretty slow, but you do have an internal SSD so you can put OS and databases on the SSD and use the external drive for bulk storage.
I had a RPi set up that way for a couple years, worked fine as a simple NAS and Kodi for the TV!
USB to SATA connectors as found in these external hard-drive enclosures are often very bad. You can try to get some better ones and pry the hard-drive out of the case, or if that Laptop still has a DVD drive, you can get an adapter to replace it with a hard-drive that connects directly via SATA.
Shucking is the way
There are certainly better ways to do it, but lots of people use external disks. I would put anything that needs speed on the SSD (so like a database or whatever) and anything else (media, isos, etc) on the external drive. It’s probably also worth thinking about a backup strategy, at least for anything there that matters.
It will work really well, but the difference between a laptop and a server is operational longevity. Laptops are meant to work for workloads for a few hours, whereas dedicated servers can work 24/7 for years sometimes because of how they are made and tested.
However, if the intensity of workload is light, a laptop can also run for a few months provided temps are well maintained. My tiny RPi ran for a few months till I manually shut it down.
Also, backups and backups.
My tiny RPi ran for a few months till I manually shut it down.
…for a couple months? Huh, I’ve got a rpi 4 and the little bastard has been running “almost nonstop” for 3 years and a half. And he is still kicking.
Just for fun I thought I’d check the uptime of the server I’m logged into at work. 1391 days.
That sounds like a security nightmare.
well, yes and no. It’s definitely behind on updates, but it’s running linux and isn’t web facing. Security is outsourced to the firewalls/IDS etc. If someone is trying to hack it, they’re already past the firewalls so we’re fucked by default even if the server is 100% secure.
