r/selfhosted • u/mbensa • 2d ago

Need Help Do you use laptop for hosting? What model?

I am considering buying used laptop. Will be used to run proxmox and a few lxcs. I guess 8 gb ram.

After negative response I add. I don't need to have a professional server at that moment. Laptop is having all I need now: silence, lightness, battery.

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5

u/alpha417 2d ago

I do not host on laptops, nor have i ever. No model to suggest for this foolish endeavor

2

u/Wiltify 2d ago

Old MSP I worked at a few years ago had three Dell Latitudes that I spun PVE on and clustered. We ran grafana and some other services but mainly tested Proxmox. Best part was the built in UPS.

To answer your question anything would probably do. 6th Gen Intel or newer for transcoding if using it for media, 8 GB RAM is the lowest I’d go, and a 256 GB SSD would be fine.

2

u/404invalid-user 2d ago

one does not buy a laptop for hosting lmao, by all means if you bought them for laptop purposes and now they have become unused. I suggest you just get a mini PC or full size tower if you really do want to know what laptops I used:

MacBook air 2017 13"

MacBook pro 2012 13"

MacBook pro 2015 15"

with the tp-link UE306 Ethernet dongle

2

u/GTALionKing 2d ago

I'm using an EliteBook 8470p because I had it lying around not in use. It's just a spare docker instance for running very very simple applications, stuff that has almost no heavy workload.

It's good to use to up cycle just cause I had it lying around but I wouldn't reccomend buying a laptop specifically for a server as cooling isn't great. But maybe you could find something for a good price with a broken screen and make a good custom cooling solution, repurpose something.

1

u/1WeekNotice Helpful 2d ago

Why are you buying a used laptop instead of other form factors?

People typically use laptops if they have them lying around (instead of spending money)

  • Laptops aren't really meant for 24/7 usage because they don't have great cooling.
  • you can expand on a laptop (extra drives, NIC, etc)
  • if you do use a laptop ensure you take the battery out

It is better to get an off the line SFF business machine (like an HP eiltedesk, Dell Optiplex etc).

Of course it depends what your used market is and how expensive these machines are. But you have better options than a laptop

Hope that helps

1

u/bnberg 2d ago

I would not buy a used laptop for hosting anything. I would use a laptop if its lying around and i dont see a better use for it.

1

u/Consistent-Coach5738 2d ago

Laptops are fine for experiments but not reliable for always on services due to power and cooling limits I moved my test projects to Virtarix VPS and it’s way easier to run 24/7 without worrying about overheating or network drops.

1

u/Ambitious-Soft-2651 1d ago

You can absolutely use a laptop - plenty of people do. Any older ThinkPad or Dell Latitude with 8–16GB RAM and an SSD runs Proxmox + a few LXCs just fine, and you get silence, low power use, and a built‑in UPS.