I need some ideas how to use spare server
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I have a Supermicro server with 2x Xeon E5530 and 24GB Ram, with 1TB storage. It currently runs free ESXi with some VMs that are going to be shut down in a few days. I also have aging Nagios/Opsview server that needs modern replacement. I need a few ideas what to put on that server. I plan on running all Linux VMs, and only free, open source apps. I also cannot add any local storage, it has 8x 15k SAS drives, replacing it would be fairly expensive.
This is spare server at work, so things like Plex or Minecraft server are off the table.
Suggestions?
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Icinga, or Zabbix for the nagios replacement. Add Graphana to that and you'd have a badass monitoring solution.
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I've used Zabbix in the past and wasn't impressed. Web interface was horrible, and there was no comparison to Nagios in terms of what you could monitor.
Icinga is a fork of Nagios so I don't know how I feel about it, Nagios has one of the worst config structure I've seen, defining hosts or checks in Nagios is a pain and require more babysitting than a newborn baby. I don't know if Icinga devs learned the lessons or if they continued with the mess. Nice web dashboard on top doesn't make things any better.
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@marcinozga said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
I've used Zabbix in the past and wasn't impressed. Web interface was horrible, and there was no comparison to Nagios in terms of what you could monitor.
Icinga is a fork of Nagios so I don't know how I feel about it, Nagios has one of the worst config structure I've seen, defining hosts or checks in Nagios is a pain and require more babysitting than a newborn baby. I don't know if Icinga devs learned the lessons or if they continued with the mess. Nice web dashboard on top doesn't make things any better.
Depending on how long ago that was... Zabbix 3 has actually come a long way in what you can do with it... Sadly, I agree with you that the web interface is a pain. But you don't have to baby sit it as much as you do Nagios.
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Somebody posted in the umm... What are you doing thread about FossWiki (https://foswiki.org/). This looks interesting if you have any project managey type needs.
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Move to LXD containers!
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@scottalanmiller said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
Move to LXD containers!
Interesting. Do you run it on bare metal? And what's the recommended backup for containers?
Esxi will be gone for sure, I was looking at Xen and KVM, I haven't really considered containers, but I'm open to it.
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@marcinozga said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
@scottalanmiller said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
Move to LXD containers!
Interesting. Do you run it on bare metal? And what's the recommended backup for containers?
You can run on bare metal making it basically identical to KVM. That's what ProxMox is doing as well. Or you can virtualize and do it nested. But bare metal if you are doing nothing but Linux.
You can backup in most normal ways. Veeam Linux agents inside the VMs is a common approach. Or just backup the data.
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Not sure if this is what you mean but maybe try the Elk stack, maybe a wiki like i do, possibly a proxy server, and maybe some type of monitoring solution. Hope something there sparks an idea.
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@jmoore said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
Not sure if this is what you mean but maybe try the Elk stack, maybe a wiki like i do, possibly a proxy server, and maybe some type of monitoring solution. Hope something there sparks an idea.
Or Graylog
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@jmoore said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
Not sure if this is what you mean but maybe try the Elk stack, maybe a wiki like i do, possibly a proxy server, and maybe some type of monitoring solution. Hope something there sparks an idea.
That's exactly what I meant. Proxy I got, wiki too, so keep the ideas flowing.
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Host your own blog, bulletin board, Irc, mail client, and I'm running out of ideas.
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@jmoore said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
Host your own blog, bulletin board, Irc, mail client, and I'm running out of ideas.
Wrong direction. All that is more of a hobby. Elk stack was a good suggestion, I'm leaning towards Sensu, Vector, Salt, Consul, perhaps Snipe-It, that kind of stuff.
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Ok got you. Sorry lol I was running out of ideas. I want to try Snipe-IT soon. Working on Log.io from Scott's previous thread currently
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@marcinozga said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
I have a Supermicro server with 2x Xeon E5530 and 24GB Ram, with 1TB storage. It currently runs free ESXi with some VMs that are going to be shut down in a few days. I also have aging Nagios/Opsview server that needs modern replacement. I need a few ideas what to put on that server. I plan on running all Linux VMs, and only free, open source apps. I also cannot add any local storage, it has 8x 15k SAS drives, replacing it would be fairly expensive.
This is spare server at work, so things like Plex or Minecraft server are off the table.
Suggestions?
Install KVM and work on using configuration tools like Chef, Saltstack, Puppet, and Ansible for configuration management of Webservers (Apache2, Nginx), Databases(MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres), Load Balancers(HAProxy) ,Container Hosts(Docker Host, CoreOS), and other services(ELK stack, Nagios, BIND, DHCP, etc...).
When you've finished send me your resume; especially if you get good with Chef. We're looking for a couple/few good DevOps Engineers.
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@ramblingbiped said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
@marcinozga said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
I have a Supermicro server with 2x Xeon E5530 and 24GB Ram, with 1TB storage. It currently runs free ESXi with some VMs that are going to be shut down in a few days. I also have aging Nagios/Opsview server that needs modern replacement. I need a few ideas what to put on that server. I plan on running all Linux VMs, and only free, open source apps. I also cannot add any local storage, it has 8x 15k SAS drives, replacing it would be fairly expensive.
This is spare server at work, so things like Plex or Minecraft server are off the table.
Suggestions?
Install KVM and work on using configuration tools like Chef, Saltstack, Puppet, and Ansible for configuration management of Webservers (Apache2, Nginx), Databases(MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres), Load Balancers(HAProxy) ,Container Hosts(Docker Host, CoreOS), and other services(ELK stack, Nagios, BIND, DHCP, etc...).
When you've finished send me your resume; especially if you get good with Chef. We're looking for a couple/few good DevOps Engineers.
Does it have to be Chef?
It seems a bit dated, it's like implementing monitoring and using Nagios for it.
Currently I'm fighting with LXD, turns out setting up networking on that thing is far from trivial. I might have to document the process. -
@jmoore said in I need some ideas how to use spare server:
Ok got you. Sorry lol I was running out of ideas. I want to try Snipe-IT soon. Working on Log.io from Scott's previous thread currently
Log.io is cool, and useful for tiny environments. For a cooler project, Graylog is really something neat.
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I will check that out Scott, thanks!
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Graylog is nice use.
Now you wanted see pfsense logs in Graylog, you will have to use pfSense 2.2 Graylog extractors. -
That does sound interesting. Ill probably waste another night of playing with new stuff instead of writing on my blog lol
