I received an Odroid H2 system last week and have it stood up with Proxmox on it. I bought this system so that I could consolidate some virtualization functions onto it with the intent of powering down a few other systems that consume more power. One big thing I wanted to get was hardware transcoding for Plex as I had been relying purely on software previously and had some trouble with reliable playback at times.
My configuration is:
(Proxmox needs to add support for UEFI. Seriously)
The NICs are Realtek which kinda made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, but when I sloshed over a few TB of data to it with rsync, the transfer was bouncing off the 1gbps redline, so I suppose this is alright (I'm surprised the HDD could sustain this, but it did). I've got it setup nicely with Open vSwitch on the second NIC with VLAN tagging that I use for connecting VMs and LXC containers with the first NIC dedicated to the management.
I also connected a USB serial adapter to the first UART on the expansion header and enabled a console on it. I need to explore this more as I think I recalled seeing an option for console redirection in the BIOS which, while certainly not full IPMI, would be quite welcome.
The first thing I tested out was whether I could get hardware accelerated transcoding working with Plex in a container, and I'm delighted to say that it works well so far. The Proxmox kernel is new enough to recognize the Gemini Lake CPU fully and all the right stuff in /dev/dri was present. The userland wasn't new enough for vainfo to detect anything unfortunately, but I configured an Ubuntu 18.04 LXC container (2 CPUs, 8GB of RAM), configured it to pass through the stuff under /dev/dri/ and /dev/fb0 - created the right devices under the /dev in the container (which I then automated), and passed in the storage for some movies before firing up Plex. It is able to smoothly stream 1080p movies to devices on the LAN and to some WAN clients that required transcoding without skipping a beat, verifying that all streams that weren't played directly were transcoded fully in hardware. I didn't test how many simultaneous streams it can support, or 4k - but it's working much better than it did with bigger/badder Xeon setups so I'm considering it a win.
I need to finish migrating a bunch of containers to it now but it seems to be more than capable of performing duties of the always-on infrastructure services for my house.
Enough CPU to run light server duty? Check
Enough RAM to let me overprovision the CPU? Check
Access to fast storage? Check
Access to bulk storage? Check
Quick Sync video? Check
Low power? Check
I need to pick up a fan for it as I didn't realize when I bought it that it isn't a standard 4pin header as while it's not overheating, I'd like to keep it cool.
I'm now shutting down an older D525 system (X7SPA-H-D525) which was really getting long-in-the-tooth. It was reasonably low power, but really felt weak these days. I have a few ARM SBCs that are much more responsive, but this was actually server grade hardware so I kept it around. I'm also going to power down an X10SLM+-LN4F system. I liked this box except I wish it had more (smaller) PCIe slots for expansion.
The last "big" x64 system that's running is my OpenIndiana NAS. Everything else is either ARM, or embedded-esque like this H2. I'm looking forward to seeing my energy bill next month!
My configuration is:
- Odroid H2 board (Celeron J4105 proc)
- 2 x 16GB DDR4 SODIMMS (the bulk of the cost)
- 15V/4A power supply
- H2 Type 4 case
- 256GB Samsung 950 Pro m.2 (pulled from another system when I upgraded)
- 4TB hdd (some consumer grade drive I had lying around)
(Proxmox needs to add support for UEFI. Seriously)
The NICs are Realtek which kinda made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, but when I sloshed over a few TB of data to it with rsync, the transfer was bouncing off the 1gbps redline, so I suppose this is alright (I'm surprised the HDD could sustain this, but it did). I've got it setup nicely with Open vSwitch on the second NIC with VLAN tagging that I use for connecting VMs and LXC containers with the first NIC dedicated to the management.
I also connected a USB serial adapter to the first UART on the expansion header and enabled a console on it. I need to explore this more as I think I recalled seeing an option for console redirection in the BIOS which, while certainly not full IPMI, would be quite welcome.
The first thing I tested out was whether I could get hardware accelerated transcoding working with Plex in a container, and I'm delighted to say that it works well so far. The Proxmox kernel is new enough to recognize the Gemini Lake CPU fully and all the right stuff in /dev/dri was present. The userland wasn't new enough for vainfo to detect anything unfortunately, but I configured an Ubuntu 18.04 LXC container (2 CPUs, 8GB of RAM), configured it to pass through the stuff under /dev/dri/ and /dev/fb0 - created the right devices under the /dev in the container (which I then automated), and passed in the storage for some movies before firing up Plex. It is able to smoothly stream 1080p movies to devices on the LAN and to some WAN clients that required transcoding without skipping a beat, verifying that all streams that weren't played directly were transcoded fully in hardware. I didn't test how many simultaneous streams it can support, or 4k - but it's working much better than it did with bigger/badder Xeon setups so I'm considering it a win.
I need to finish migrating a bunch of containers to it now but it seems to be more than capable of performing duties of the always-on infrastructure services for my house.
Enough CPU to run light server duty? Check
Enough RAM to let me overprovision the CPU? Check
Access to fast storage? Check
Access to bulk storage? Check
Quick Sync video? Check
Low power? Check
I need to pick up a fan for it as I didn't realize when I bought it that it isn't a standard 4pin header as while it's not overheating, I'd like to keep it cool.
I'm now shutting down an older D525 system (X7SPA-H-D525) which was really getting long-in-the-tooth. It was reasonably low power, but really felt weak these days. I have a few ARM SBCs that are much more responsive, but this was actually server grade hardware so I kept it around. I'm also going to power down an X10SLM+-LN4F system. I liked this box except I wish it had more (smaller) PCIe slots for expansion.
The last "big" x64 system that's running is my OpenIndiana NAS. Everything else is either ARM, or embedded-esque like this H2. I'm looking forward to seeing my energy bill next month!