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Setting up a server for a research team. What should be in my checklist? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 3 days ago by bergetfew@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been asked to set up a server for a research team at my university. I've already had the practice of setting a server at home, so I have a rough idea of how things should be done. Still, I wish to follow best practices when setting up a server for this use case. Plus I would prefer to avoid too much tinkering for the setup since I'm planning to keep the installation as simple as possible.

Following are some rough constraints and considerations for the setup:

Server computer is a Mac Mini (latest model I think?). I've been told they would replace macOS with Linux, still I believe I should ready if they don't (I don't have experience with macOS at all)
Server will be situated in university and provided a static IP address
Team needs remote access to the server, presumably comfortable with using CLI
I am unlikely to be permitted access to server myself after setup, so it should be ready to be managed by the team
Extra hardware and/or paid software could be arranged but to a limited extent and within reason

I don't think they have really any requirement other than having remote access to the server. I think SSH should suffice, however I was wondering if I could also arrange for backups, GUI server panel etc.

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[–] littleomid@feddit.org 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oof. Do you have any experience doing stuff like this? If you don’t, I don’t think you should take this job. If you know what you’re doing however, then I don’t understand many of your questions. What is the DHCP and firewall situation at the Uni? What is your backup solution? Why will you not have an access key after setup? If there is another team also managing it? What do they think?

In any case, I would NOT use a Mac as a server. You can run Asahi or such on it, but many of our idioms just don’t work on Mac.

If it’s from a Uni and power consumption and Noise don’t matter, I would buy (consciously) three used 1u servers and cluster two proxmox nodes. On the third I would run a proxmox backup server. If money also doesn’t matter, I would do the same, but buy new.

However, you may not even need proxmox, but the issue is that you don’t even know what they are going to use the server for. This makes it impossible for us to give you good suggestions.

[–] bergetfew@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I was proposed to set up the server knowing that I have limited knowledge on managing stuff like this. They already have an sysadmin in the campus, but I think their setup is simple enough that they were willing to approach me. Besides I do consider myself to be experienced enough to work my way around CLI and troubleshoot issues even if I haven't had experience with hardware like this.

I don't think negotiating for a different computer would be possible. The main challenge would be to make best of the hardware I'm provided, with additional peripherals if needed.

I do plan on asking them the nature of the work to be done on the server, but I wouldn't expect it to be too niche or computationally intensive since they have separate computers for that. In any case, I will relay the points highlighted in this thread to them and get a clear idea of what is needed to be arranged.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

How big is the university?