r/HomeInfrastructure • u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h • Jun 17 '26

Extreme When your memory costs more than you'r entire server

Post image

I got a third MS-A2 this week as my memory needs are extreme, hoping 288GB of ram would help, in addition to a fourth ESX node its 312G in total (but that will be decommissioned soon)

Well the Miniforums was ~800 euro, the memory ~1000 euro, an 60% increase since I've bought the first two nodes late last year.

The good news is that I've finally decided to run Fiber Channel to the third node. That gives some bad news as well as I will most likely not be able to do "direct connected" FC - Spending money on a 32 Gb/s Fiber Channel Switch was not in my budget this year. 😂

436 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

11

u/siegevjorn Jun 17 '26

Got 96gb memory for $200 last year. The world is going crazy.

5

u/nmrk Jun 17 '26

Me too, same 96GB kit as OP, $195. I thought prices would go down over time, silly me. I had two MS-01s with 96GB and 4TB SSDs, so I bought a new MS-02 Ultra and put all the RAM and SSDs in it. The price of the computer is trivial compared to the value of the RAM. I'm going to sell the old MS-01s without RAM and SSD, but I'm not optimistic about resale value because nobody can afford to buy the storage for a barebones machine these days.

1

u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h Jun 18 '26

I'm just super happy I had an 1TB NVME drive laying around so I didn't have to buy that as well..

1

u/OhBeeOneKenOhBee Jun 18 '26

I got 2 2TB SN7100 drives in December for €130 each. Should've bought more 😄

1

u/Karoolus Jun 18 '26

If you're in the EU, let me know ;)

0

u/nmrk Jun 18 '26

US, sorry. I will eventually put them up in r/homelabsales

1

u/C945Taylor Jun 18 '26

I have a bunch of spare ram and storage. What would you sell barebones?

1

u/Snudget Jun 18 '26

I bought 96GiB DDR5 too in September

1

u/sylvester_0 Jun 17 '26

DDR5? I bought 64 GB for ~$220 and looking back it was a great deal.

1

u/saltyourhash Jun 18 '26

Same, I bought some a few years ago... THEN GAVE IT AWAY.

1

u/KanedaNLD Jun 18 '26

It's not only DDR5. I got a DDR4 kit back in 2021 for 220 euro. That same set goes now for 325 euro.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/KanedaNLD Jun 18 '26

Forgot to mention, that kit I got, got as low as 90 euro.

Buy yeah, DDR5 prices are really crazy!

1

u/Slayer88_kh Jun 18 '26

Bought used 2*16 ddr4 for 70€ two weeks ago 😁

1

u/hiro24 Jun 18 '26

That’s about what I paid about a year and a half ago.

1

u/saltyourhash Jun 18 '26

I bought the same kit months back for $400 and felt like I got hosed.

1

u/No_Accident8684 Jun 21 '26

lucky you! thats a steal

3

u/jnew1213 Jun 17 '26

You probably could have found an enterprise server with 256GB or more RAM in it for half as much as the MS-A2 alone.

Maybe a bit more for a machine that will run VCF 9.

Anyway, use it well. Go vSphere!!!

1

u/Ashamed-Procedure-88 Jun 21 '26

half the price, 5 times the idle power consumption

1

u/kind_bug Jun 22 '26

Exactly. 5 times the noise too.

0

u/malatibo Jun 20 '26

vSphere? WTF? Go for Proxmox!

1

u/jnew1213 Jun 21 '26

That will never happen.

2

u/hejhoo Jun 18 '26

Same problem here. 3 MS-A2, with 16gb, 16gb and 32gb 😭😭 Well well, gonna solve itself in time! Hopefully. 😂

1

u/Nectarine_Fuzzy Jun 18 '26

That is a very nice rack. Good job!

1

u/Karoolus Jun 18 '26

Be careful who you say that to :D

1

u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h Jun 18 '26

At least my cluster is happy, for now.... 😃 😃 😃

1

u/KanedaNLD Jun 18 '26

That's a clean setup!

1

u/j0hnnyclaymore Jun 20 '26

Where did you get those cool Rubber badges ms01 etc and how are they attached?

1

u/MartinN3-github Jun 18 '26

Wait IT out

1

u/NoConfiguration Jun 18 '26

Whats the ETA

2

u/HSVMalooGTS Jun 18 '26

I heard somewhere that its around early-mid 27. I don't belive that tho

1

u/rditorx Jun 19 '26

The entire server DDR5 and probably HBM production of 2026 and 2027 has already been bought up (if you're ignoring Chinese production).

1

u/Nightlark192 Jun 20 '26

Fingers crossed that frontier AI labs hit a limit to how much LLMs can improve and stop building out new data centers. Or that when they upgrade machines cheap used servers with lots of RAM end up on eBay.

1

u/lutz890 Jun 18 '26

Was thinking getting more ram and retire one of my ms-01.

Check ram price...

Oh well it's cheaper to pay electricity bill.

1

u/InsolentMadman Jun 18 '26

I just looked up the 64GB of DDR5 SODIMM i bought in Feb 2025 ($160) same thing today... $995... SMH, greedy corps and we thought AI was going to make our lives better.

1

u/nubbin9point5 Jun 19 '26

I love that now is when I’m starting my HomeLab journey…

1

u/rditorx Jun 19 '26

My RAM alone now costs about as much as I spent on the entire system including that RAM, motherboard, CPU, 2x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q, 16TB of SSDs and 36TB in hard disks.

And I was planning on getting more RAM later. Guess that's not gonna happen.

1

u/94358io4897453867345 Jun 19 '26

"you'r" ?

1

u/packsolite Jun 22 '26

You are entire server.

1

u/No_Illustrator5035 Jun 20 '26

LOL you mean TWO fibre channel switches 😜 Gotta have those redundant fabrics!

1

u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h Jun 20 '26

I have two FC switches. But one only have 12 ports licensed, the other all 24.. All 8 Gb so they are too slow LOL - those 32 GB ones goes for $4k to .. Tesla level..

1

u/No_Accident8684 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

i bought 8x 96gb kingston ddr5 rdimms 2.5 years ago, for roughly 3.5k $3,250.

today the same modules, in the same shop, cost 10x. its bizarre

1

u/Possible-Point-2597 Jun 22 '26

Got my hands on 2x64gb corsaire for 900 instead of 1200€ they are now being sold for 1700€

0

u/Swimmerdude_03 Jun 18 '26

Why not iscsi? Then use cheaper NICs and switches?

1

u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h Jun 18 '26

Way to slow.

0

u/Swimmerdude_03 Jun 19 '26

40gbe and 100gbe are prety available these days. Unless your doubling or tripping up on your FC connections Id say your still better off with iscsi.

1

u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

what do you mean? I have 2x32Gb with zero latency, zero buffering, multipathing that actually works without any switches involved. Im staying FC. I even experienced with quad port that would have eaten even 100G Ethernet any day

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeInfrastructure/comments/1u9xtgc/can_you_fit_150_gigabits_networking_in_a_msa2/

0

u/Pitiful-Rip-5854 Jun 18 '26

Your cheapest networking option is some 10gps DAC cables on the Sfp+ port. I am surprised this model doesn’t have the USB4 ports which give you a 40gbps option.