diff --git a/_posts/homelab/2025-12-31-homelab.md b/_posts/homelab/2025-12-31-homelab.md index 76d779e..e1387fb 100644 --- a/_posts/homelab/2025-12-31-homelab.md +++ b/_posts/homelab/2025-12-31-homelab.md @@ -9,22 +9,28 @@ highlight: true --- > _I recently picked up 3 refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny to migrate my Kubernetes cluster from AWS and slash -> my EKS costs. These machines are great for being silent and power-efficient, but out of the box, they're tuned as office +> my EKS costs. These machines are great for being silent and power-efficient, but out of the box, they're tuned as +> office > desktops, not as high-availability server racks. Here's how I configured the hardware and OS settings to make this -> 3-node production-ready cluster._ +> 3-node cluster production-ready._ -Not the cleanest setup, no cable management, servers upside down, stickers still on, no room for ventilation, and they have too much wiggle room in the rack, but the software is sound and that's 90% of the work done :D +Not the cleanest setup, no cable management, servers upside down, stickers still on, no room for ventilation, and they +have too much wiggle room in the rack, but the software is sound and that's 90% of the work done :D ![server.png](assets/server.png) # The Hardware Stack Before diving into the configuration, here is the spec sheet for each node in the cluster. These units feature Intel -vPro, which is essential for the advanced BIOS security we are about to toggle: +vPro and ThinkCentre BIOS, which is essential for the advanced BIOS settings that we are about to toggle: - CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 @ 3.60GHz (4 Cores / 8 Threads) - RAM: 16GB DDR4 - Storage: 500GB SSD - Network: Dedicated 5-port 1Gbps Ethernet Switch +- Wattage: 65W + +For this setup, we will not take advantage of vPro's features such as accessing the BIOS over the network, but we will +take advantage of features that come with ThinkCentre BIOS such as the auto-power on after a power loss. # ThinkCentre M720q: Node Configuration