Beelink SEi12 Core i7 Review as a Home Server

Рет қаралды 6,354

Күн бұрын

A full review of the Beelink SEi12 mini PC as a home server running enterprise hypervisors. Can this little mini PC with the P cores and E cores be used for a home server in your home lab? We take a look at this and see which hypervisor is best to run with this unit.
Check out the VHT forums to get your questions answered: www.virtualizationhowto.com/c...
★ Subscribe to the channel: / @virtualizationhowto
★ My blog: www.virtualizationhowto.com
★ Twitter: / vspinmaster
★ LinkedIn: / brandon-lee-vht
★ Github: github.com/brandonleegit
★ Facebook: / 100092747277326
★ Discord: / discord
★ Pinterest: / brandonleevht
Introduction to the Beelink SEi12 - 0:00
Overview of the Beelink SEi12 - 0:55
Performance vs Efficient cores - 1:20
Loading type 1 hypervisors like VMware ESXi, Proxmox, etc - 2:25
Looking closer at some of the hardware specs - 2:55
Realtek 1 gig network adapter - 4:28
Logged into the Proxmox dashboard looking at VMs, bulk start - 5:20
Powering on 30 virtual machines at once - 6:40
Enabling or disabling the Efficient cores in the BIOS of the SEi12 - 8:09
SSH'ed into the Proxmox host, looking at the cores from the command line - 9:09
Looking at pinning virtual machines to specific CPU cores - 10:50
Power consumption - 12:24
Physical overview of the Beelink SEi12 - 13:37
Concluding thoughts on the Beelink SEi12 mini PC as a home server - 15:45
Read the written review of the Beelink SEi12 here:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
Things to know before you buy a Mini PC Server:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
E cores vs P cores:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...

Пікірлер: 23

@yasaralzakout7691 6 ай бұрын

I like those little Mini PCs, they're power efficient and can run a decent size of VMs. The only issue I found with those machines is sometimes they support only 1Gbe Ethernet port, and from a home server perspective is very slow, specially if you want to connect the server to a NAS server, or run some services like Plex. I think these days 2.5Gbe should be the minimum requirement for a home PC.

@GrishTech 6 ай бұрын

The proxmox kernel deals with efficiency cores really well. It will avoid using them until the first faster hyperthreaded cores are utilized fully. It’s best to leave them on and leave it alone. The scheduler will use them appropriately. Pinning workloads on efficiency cores and only those cores will not make your system more efficient over all. There is a great KZfaq video about how proxmox deals with the cores. I don’t know about other hypervisors though.

@VirtualizationHowto 6 ай бұрын

@davidgrishko1893 thank you for the comment! My problem with the hybrid CPUs and most hypervisors is there isn't really any admin control over this behavior. Admins ultimately need to be able to control which cores VMs are assigned if needed. However, I am doubtful this architecture will make it in the data center, but I could be wrong.

@hubstrangers3450 6 ай бұрын

Thank you.....

@hyperprotagonist 6 ай бұрын

For the price, this is a powerhouse. Yes, for a few hundred dollars more you enter the realm of server-esque tech, but a few of these in a cluster and you get power minus the draw.

@zyghom 6 ай бұрын

I have SER 5 Pro with 64GB RAM and Ryzen 7 and all is ok except not enough RAM. Oh, and I had to add usb NIC 2.5Gbps. It is getting a git hot but not too much.

@substandard649 6 ай бұрын

I was looking buying 2 or 3 of the Ryzen based models to run a small cluster, they have notably better power efficiency but i dont know how Proxmox copes on AMD. I would love a review of one of those. Also i have USBC 2.5gb adapters in my current (old desktop pcs cluster) and that works extremely well.

@nadtz 6 ай бұрын

It's KVM on Debian with some kernel modifications, in my experience Proxmox works well with AM4 and Epyc Rome, not sure on AM5 or newer Epyc generations but I haven't seen/heard any mention of major issues.

@VirtualizationHowto 6 ай бұрын

@substandard649 thank you for the comment. Proxmox runs fine on AMD from my testing.

@northernman22 3 ай бұрын

Can this computer accept a 2TB SATA internal drive?

@JamesGreen-gv4yn 6 ай бұрын

Something to check on systems like this that have HDMI and Display Port. Which is the primary? I ask, because on a similar system I assumed that I could use either for the Proxmox console, which turned out not to be the case. I also could not disable either one via the BIOS. It uses the HDMI and I could not find a way to make it use the Display Port. Probably not a big deal for most people, but when it matters, it's a detail that is good to know.

@VirtualizationHowto 6 ай бұрын

@JamesGreen-gv4yn thank you for the comment. I don't think I have had an issue with the proxmox console, but I would need to do some more testing. I believe it picks the one that is active between the hdmi and display port. But are you meaning if you have both plugged in? Also, signup on the VHT forums and let's discuss this further: www.virtualizationhowto.com/community

@JamesGreen-gv4yn 6 ай бұрын

@@VirtualizationHowto In my case, I was using a KVM over IP that requires a dongle for each port connecting to a system. I had expected that the system would activate the port that has something connected to it but it did not. I am guessing it has something to do with the dongle and the system not figuring out which port has a connection and so it selects, or defaults to, the HDMI port. In the end, I had to switch all of them to using HDMI dongles instead of the Display Port ones. If I had known this before purchasing the dongles, I could have saved some money and time by not getting the Display Port dongles and spending so much time trying to figure out why they were not working.

@cybr774 6 ай бұрын

Have you seen the specs of the minisforum ms-01?

@zyghom 6 ай бұрын

you are right, it sounds amazing, but I find this, to be a limitation: "DDR5-5200MHz Dual Channel (SODIMM slots x2, up to a total maximum of 64GB)"

@cybr774 6 ай бұрын

@@zyghom Patrick from ServeTheHome tried installing 2x48GB sodimms and he was able to get it to work, you should totally check out his in depth review

@nadtz 6 ай бұрын

@@zyghomservethehome confirmed 2x48gb dimm's work, still not ideal but good to know you can get it up to 96gb.

@catatanteknokreatif 5 ай бұрын

after i watch your video, recently i just bought a new mini pc GEEKOM MINI IT12 with same procesor i7 12650H as BEELINK does. i hope you gave me some advice for bios setting in my proxmox VE 8 preparation. all of that, wait for you respon. best regard from indonesia here

@VirtualizationHowto 5 ай бұрын

@deckyokmal3145 thank you for your comment! Hop over to the VHT forums, and I can give you more detailed help there. Create a topic in either the mini PC or Proxmox help forum and we can discuss it further: www.virtualizationhowto.com/community

@nadtz 6 ай бұрын

Biggest problem with a lot of these mini's as home servers is networking, Minisforum MS-01 and Qotom Q20332G9-S10 both have SFP+ so it looks like some of the mini pc vendors are taking notice of homelabbers who have been asking for this. I'm sure there are a lot of use cases where 1gb lan would be fine or you can band aid the issue with USB but I wouldn't personally bother with less than 10gb for a server at this point and I'm guessing most people would want at least 2.5.

@VirtualizationHowto 6 ай бұрын

@nadtz definitely that has been my reservation with many mini PCs as well and has been why I have held off on a home lab refresh. I am very excited about units like the MS-01. I will have one in the lab soon to play around with so stay tuned.