As someone that works at a storage devices company - we do still manufacture 10K HDDs. They are faster than the 7200s of the same spec, by nature. All 2.5” drives for enterprise systems. And will actually continue selling them until ~2030. That said, they’re all but obsolete at this point, and aren’t really being developed on any more.

Shitty k8s cluster/space heater?

Quick note - HGST enterprise drives are great but those fuckers are LOUD. I’ve had one in my PC for a number of years and it’s done great, pretty quick too - but I can hear it across the room.

I’ll make sure to give the firewall a shot, then - I couldn’t explain it for the life of me but for whatever reason it’s always just gone straight over my head. Not like it’s too complex or anything… just a lack of willingness to learn! But that is changing :)

And it’s a Supermicro blade - I’ve already set up IPMI LOM! One of my favorite tools. I do a decent amount of sysadmin stuff at work, and we actually use somewhat similar servers - so luckily, I know what I’m doing there. But at work, IT does all of the firewall setup and everything for us, because we’re on one huge VPN - so I don’t ever have to worry about (or learn) security. Which explains some of why I don’t know it yet.

Hmm, well that’s good to hear, about the whole Tailscale thing. I was a bit confused on how that’s actually interacting with the internet. I suppose that even though I can access the stuff from anywhere, I do need the account to actually do so.

To your point about SSH keys - could you elaborate a bit more? I am familiar with SSH in that it exists, but past that, the whole key thing is a bit of a black box (which is part of this whole thing… to learn more about it!)

3D printing is the way to go, for sure. But if you’ve got the normal SFF optiplexes, I’ve got no idea how those will fit into a 1U form factor without a complete cooling system overhaul.