What do you use your server cores for?

[Underi]

I've been running an old Fujitsu desktop as my home server for a while but recently got a good deal on a Dell Poweredge R730 from a friend of mine working in a datacenter. I've migrated my services over and I'm left thinking what the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of the capabilities of this server. I have Jellyfin, Nextcloud and a couple of small personal projects running and I'm looking at an average of 0.12% CPU usage for last week and 10GB of ram usage. I'll probably set up an opnsense firewall soon but it's not like that is very hardware intensive.

 

So I'm here to ask you guys, what do you use your server for and how do you utilize it to the max?

[Dutch_Master]

Given electricity prizes here, mine are off

[Underi]

4 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Given electricity prizes here, mine are off

I get that lol, I live in a student apartment right now so the electricity is included with the rent.

[Biohazard777]

24 minutes ago, Underi said:

I have Jellyfin, Nextcloud and a couple of small personal projects running and I'm looking at an average of 0.12% CPU usage for last week and 10GB of ram usage.

How much RAM do you have?
I'm guessing a lot more... if so, mount a RAM disk and tell Jellyfin to transcode to RAM.

 

25 minutes ago, Underi said:

I've migrated my services over and I'm left thinking what the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of the capabilities of this server.

Never had this kind of a "problem". I analyze the requirements first, then I purchase what is needed.
Which for most people is typically a power-efficient, small, and quiet Tiny/Mini/Micro PC - not a rack server.

[Anghammarad]

I got a thread here about my homelab server...

 

Currently I run Kodi, Hyper-V, a 2022 Domain, Ubuntu 24.04LTS with docker, on docker Pi Hole, NPM, Backup server, Wire Guard, and always changing "playthings" to learn or test out features etc...

 

All runs right now on windows 10 pro... 

 

the machine has 16 threads, 64 gig of ram, a hba with 8 disks a 4 tb ironwolf and reds in 2 raid 5 drives. Pondering to upgrade one of the raids with 18 tb refurbished drives... and a 2 tb ssd for the VM Images, currently running a GF1060, so no AI stuff right now.

[manikyath]

running fairly light lately...

- a minecraft server, basicly only one thread.

- a virtual windows 10 desktop running on 3c6t cores.

- a discord bot

- vareous little bits and pieces like a simple http server for a local homepage and some samba shares.

 

so yeah.. out of the 16c32t on "new server" and 4c8t on "old server" i'm using like.. 8 threads?

[Underi]

On 3/26/2025 at 9:51 PM, Biohazard777 said:

How much RAM do you have?
I'm guessing a lot more... if so, mount a RAM disk and tell Jellyfin to transcode to RAM.

 

Never had this kind of a "problem". I analyze the requirements first, then I purchase what is needed.
Which for most people is typically a power-efficient, small, and quiet Tiny/Mini/Micro PC - not a rack server.

128GB total. Obviously a rack server is 100% overkill for my uses but I'm trying to look for stuff to run on it and actually use it's capabilities. I'm studying cybersecurity in uni so I'm also getting useful experience to pad my CV with.

 

On 3/26/2025 at 11:30 PM, manikyath said:

running fairly light lately...

- a minecraft server, basicly only one thread.

- a virtual windows 10 desktop running on 3c6t cores.

- a discord bot

- vareous little bits and pieces like a simple http server for a local homepage and some samba shares.

 

so yeah.. out of the 16c32t on "new server" and 4c8t on "old server" i'm using like.. 8 threads?

How is the mc server performing on a single thread? I remember my old i5 4460 having a hard time running a server for like 4 friends lol.

[manikyath]

54 minutes ago, Underi said:

How is the mc server performing on a single thread? I remember my old i5 4460 having a hard time running a server for like 4 friends lol.

minecraft servers essentially run on a single thread. if you're maxing out an i5 4460 with 4 friends, you're doing things you should not be doing.

[scrumptious starfruit]

On 3/29/2025 at 2:57 PM, Underi said:

I'm trying to look for stuff to run on it and actually use it's capabilities

If you mean use its capabilities as in, using 80% or more of its cpu, that's not very likely. Unless it's a tiny cpu, you either need to be running services used by many users, in which case you need users, or you have to run workloads which are computationally expensive, eg media transcoding, scientific computing, compiling, crypto mining, etc. The folding/boinc forum might have good ideas for computationally expensive workloads.

 

Other than that, your best bet is just to get as many services running for yourself as you find time and interest for. I've already got a few like jellyfin, music streaming, file server, calendar syncing, etc, and if I had time I'd probably add some combination of matrix, mastodon, peertube, maybe some others...pretty much anything in the yunohost catalog could be interesting, just set it up yourself to learn how it's done and how to maintain it. And I'd probably recommend not opening up public registration/use of anything you run unless you have plans for moderating and preventing abuse of the services. Presumably you don't want unexpected visits from the cops in the middle of the night.