I would love to build a test cluster as a playground for OpenStack, Docker, Kubernetes, you name it.
Anyone out there with a nice idea which hardware to use? IntelNuc? Zotac AIO? Anyone with experience out there?
Some of the machines were fairly compact desktop machines, and I liked that, but I wound up with a large desktop machine because I'd have room for expansion. (Maybe get a 10-series graphics card for media transcoding when they become available again.)
Small machines have more heat and heat creates more problems. I have owned two Mac Minis and they both have burned up hard drives at a high rate. It runs maybe 10 to 15 centigrade hotter than a typical desktop machine. The Mac Mini has a great design for cooling that stays clean, but I've had laptops and other machines in my house get seriously obstructed with dust.
I would watch out for NUC, Celerons, and other low-end parts from Intel, both in the sense of bad performance, but also because features are missing that matter for you. (For instance, you want the best virtualization support you can get)
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToBuildAKubernetesClusterW...