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+---
+date: 2023-07-23
+title: "My New Server Rack: Mieshu"
+tags:
+- GNU+Linux
+- Gentoo
+- Systemd
+- Garage
+---
+
+After saving up for a long while and thinking about what I want in my new home,
+I have finally taken the leap and gotten myself a server rack for home use. Its
+has a 15U capacity, which should be plenty to get started, but this same brand
+has larger racks too, in case I do want to upgrade it and keep the same style.
+
+That said, for now there's only two 4U units in them, one for (file) storage,
+and one for database purposes. I sadly don't have anything dedicated for
+workloads yet, so for now, both of these servers are intended to also run some
+light workloads. I haven't made my mind up yet on how to solve the workload
+issues. Now that I have a rack, I obviously want something rack-mountable, and
+I probably want it to run a Kubernetes cluster too.
+
+In this regard, I _could_ go for a set of [Raspberry Pi](https://www.raspberrypi.com/)
+units, there's [3U mounts that can hold up to 12 Raspberry Pi machines](https://www.uctronics.com/uctronics-19-inch-3u-rack-mount-for-raspberry-pi-4-with-8-mounting-plates.html),
+which would be a nice amount. However, I am not yet completely sold on full-ARM
+workloads, and I'm not entirely convinced of the power of Raspberry Pi units in
+general. I'd much rather standardize on another brand, [Odroid](https://www.hardkernel.com/),
+as they have more types of units available, and are not limited to just ARM. But
+since they're not the popular kid in class, there's very few off-the-shelf
+rack mounting equipment for it. I'll be thinking about this for just a bit more
+before making a decision.
+
+For now, though, I wanted to talk about the setup of the first server, Mieshu,
+who will be used as a storage server. Mieshu currently runs 8 HDDs, and 2 NVMe
+drives. One of the NVMe drives is used for the rootfs, and the other is used for
+caching in certain applications. The HDDs themselves offer the data storage
+capacity.
+
+The HDDs are currently comprised of four 16TB drives, and four 8TB drives. The
+smaller disks come from my desktop, Edephas, which used to serve as data storage
+until Mieshu took over. All disks are configured into pairs, which themselves
+make mirrors. This means I have four sets of mirror pools, two times 16TB, and
+two times 8TB, for a total of 48TB of storage. I'm currently using about half of
+this, and it should give me plenty of time before needing to increase the size
+again.
+
+I chose to use mirrors since it has a good chance of your data being recoverable
+on disk failure, and it allows me to buy disks per two, rather than in larger
+numbers. This hopefully keeps the cost of expansion within reasonable limits.
+The mirrors themselves are currently [ZFS](https://openzfs.org/wiki/Main_Page)
+pools, but I hope to be able to use [bcachefs](https://bcachefs.org/) very soon
+as well.
+
+Just a bunch of mirrors is rather inconvenient, however, so I'm also leveraging
+[MergerFS](https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs) to combine all the mirrors into
+a single usable pool. This slightly odd setup was chosen over RAID-0 or RAID-Z*
+to lower the impact of disk failure. Even if two disks in the same mirror were
+the die at the same time, I wouldn't lose _all_ data, just the bits on that
+particular mirror. It would be very annoying, but it wouldn't be disastrous.
+
+Apart from generic mass storage, I also host S3 buckets for personal use. This
+is where I upload CI artifacts to, and [my MissKey instance](https://fedi.tyil.nl/@tyil)
+uses it for storing objects as well. Future services such as [Mimir](https://grafana.com/oss/mimir/)
+will probably leverage S3 for storage as well. This is achieved through
+[Garage](https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/). I've also tried [SeaweedFS](https://seaweedfs.github.io/),
+which is a very neat project on its own, but Garage is just simpler to
+configure, and allows a replicated setup with only two servers, whereas SeaweedFS
+demands an odd number of master servers.
+
+And lastly, Mieshu runs [K3s](https://k3s.io/) for its Kubernetes component. It
+is currently not serving anything yet, as the other server is supposed to become
+the database server, which is needed for most workloads. Once that is up and
+running, Mieshu will start hosting things such as
+[Grafana](https://grafana.com/oss/grafana) and [Loki](https://grafana.com/oss/loki/),
+monitoring stuff basically. Perhaps I'll move [Laminar](https://laminar.ohwg.net/)
+to this server as well, but I'm unsure if I will run that as a Kubernetes service.
+
+The server itself runs on Gentoo, as it still is the most stable experience I
+can get out of any GNU+Linux distribution. I am, however, not using the default
+of OpenRC as the init system and service manager. For the first time, I'm
+running Gentoo with systemd. After several years, it appears to have become
+stable enough to trust with serious workloads. With its increased use, however,
+some things have become simpler by just using systemd. I hope to get a better
+understanding of it, and learn to bend it to my will as needed, by simply using
+it on my own systems.
+
+I hope to have time to work on the other server sooner rather than later, so
+I can finish up the base of my new setup. Be on the lookout for the next post,
+where I'll go into detail on Nouki, the database server.