A few months ago I came into possession of two Oracle Database Appliance X7-2S. How did that happen? A migration project that I was assisting with was completely cancelled due to the takeover of the company and the new organization had no interest in Oracle hardware and software. They kindly gave me the two machines free of charge. Here they are:
Both ODAs have no valid Customer Support Identifier (CSI), there is no current contract. We all know that without a CSI there is no support and therefore no Oracle software. As far as I know, there is no license clause that allows the operation of Oracle hardware and software without a license, even if only for training purposes (if anyone knows something better, please let me know). Or as an Oracle PM friend of mine put it on LinkedIn: “You have old iron there…” OK, there is the darkest of all dark ways, to get the software via an existing CSI and set up the ODA. But either way, the ODA would no longer be supported and that would be way beyond the legality. No way! Nevertheless, for research, blogging, etc. in the private sector, one is always happy to have new hardware for the home lab.
I have already ordered my new Minisforum server MS01, which will have smart home stuff on it, Grafana, InfluxDB, Ubuntu etc., but it won’t be available until the end of February. So, why not set up an Oracle database appliance as a home lab server in the meantime? Of course, the first question is about space, there’s plenty of that in the basement. Noise? That doesn’t matter at all in the boiler room. And what about power consumption? We’ll come to that later.
A few key facts about the hardware, the X7-2S is a pure Sun X86 computer:
- 1x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4114 CPU @ 2.20GHz – 10 Cores
- 192 GB memory
- 2 x 480 GB Intel SSD
- 8 TB NVMe flash storage for data (2x 6.4)
Components such as the power supply are designed redundantly, and there are also 10GBase-T ports.
What do you install on such a machine if the Oracle software is not an option? While looking for a virtualization solution, I came across Proxmox. Proxmox is an open source virtualization platform that provides tools for managing virtual machines (KVM), containers (LXC) and software-defined storage. Proxmox offers a user-friendly web interface, flexible cluster functions and an active community that continuously contributes to further development. For a small yearly fee you can get access to the enterprise repository. 3…2…1…go!
The installation was step-by-step and easy. Download the ISO from the Promox homepage, start the ILOM Manager Remote System Console and attach the ISO; before then doing a power cycle of the machine. We already know these steps when we re-image an ODA. After a short time, the installation starts.
I have a few individual screenshots of the installation here. Among other things, you are asked for the network interface. Since I only use one interface, it was marked green and could be selected. You also have to enter the IP address, gateway and DNS server. And finally, you are asked for a password for the root login.
The installation took about 30 minutes, and after that the web UI was available to set up the environment. Proxmox is new to me, there are still a few things to read up on. But my knowledge was sufficient for the basic setup. Here we see the overview of the node with the disks displayed. Existing data can be deleted with a simple wipe command. Logical Volume Groups are created based on the disks. These are used as storage space for the VMs’ virtual disks.
Within a few minutes I had a basic setup (currently without any special network segmentation etc.), uploaded an ISO and created a virtual machine with the ISO.
So far so good, the server is running, virtual machines have been created. But what about the power consumption? For this I have connected an adapter from the company mystrom.ch. Since I only use one power supply, the recorded data is sufficient. I realize that this is not the power consumption if the machine were constantly running at high performance, but it gives a first indication of the direction it is heading in. Incidentally, in standby mode, around 25 watts are consumed.
Currently, only three Linux machines are running without any special requirements. In 13 days, the ODA has consumed just over 17 kWh. At the current electricity price (https://www.strompreis.elcom.admin.ch/) for my community of 0.3598 CHF per kWh, that means costs of around 6 CHF, which works out to around 15 CHF per month.
So, is it worth it to have such a piece of hardware in my basement? Out of personal curiosity? Definitely. At the moment, I still have a lot of ideas about what can be installed. And I think I can live well with 15 CHF electricity costs per month. Because not everyone has one – or even two – Oracle Database Appliance X7-2S in their basement. And you know, my new MS01 is coming soon 🙂
#homelab #happyresearch #hardware