ZimaBlade - Single Board Server for Cyber Native

Using the ZimaBlade to replace an OpenStack server running a few services in VMs, with a small beast to run the same services in containers. And it runs all I need beautifully. Great little solution.

The ZimaBoard and ZimaBlade are excellent devices that deliver impressive performance and flexibility for home servers and media setups. With seamless support from the vibrant IceWhale Discord community, any technical hurdles are swiftly addressed, making it a perfect choice for both beginners and advanced users. The combination of powerful hardware, customizable OS options like ZimaOS, and a highly responsive support team makes Zima products stand out in the market. Whether you're building a media server, running Docker containers, or setting up a NAS, ZimaBoard and Blade are reliable, versatile, and backed by an outstanding community.

I was a complete new guy to the world of homelabbing and "servers". I ran into a YouTube video or two after playing with raspberry pies about the zima board and zima blade so i gave the 7700 a try to build a NAS. Well now ive got a full blown proxmox server running truenas among other things. This blade is legit for small or large builds. I wish there were more sata ports. But again, if you are looking for some fun, this is it.

Honestly, I can't say I'm usually fond of reviews, especially when you realise that those so called inflentubers who review stuff actually don't have to pay for the hardware they're opiniatedly reviewing...

But anyway, that's just to say I'm just a "normal / average" user and, for all the servers I've set up so far, I've almost only ever used ARM based boards : initially, the main reasons for this choice were that ARM based boards used to be affordable, relatively energy efficient and even quite powerful for some of the most recent boards, such as those with a RK3588 CPU. One of the major drawback though is that these boards aren't really ready for and out-of-the-box prime time experience yet ; they very often require some fiddling for the basics to work, or even sometimes don't quite fulfill the promise at all - Sorry NPUs, you're useless and I don't have time to waste trying to make you work ! - , which in itself isn't really such a big a problem, which you can ignore, unless you only need to setup a "basic" server based on mainline kernel and then forget it altogether because it just works !

So there, I recently had to replace a deceased Borg backup server, based on a Raspberry Pi 4 compute module with two 1 Tb hdds : nothing complicated really and it's done a good job but I remember setting it up wasn't completely straightforward... I guess they call it learning !

But, here comes the big BUT, when I started to have a look at what's on offer these days, keeping in mind my usual (aforementioned) requirements, I said to myself : WTF has happened here ? What are those ridculous prices ?? Then I figures out this must be the (very good) reason why some people are trying to become influentubers, so that they don't have to get an insane 10 generations mortgage just to fiddle with a Rasporange Pi !!!

Fine then... After my credit card attempted suicide, I was simply considering NOT building a replacement backup server... But then I thought this was a really bad idea and started looking around again for a viable alternative and, guess what... Surprise, surprise ! This is where the Zimablade comes in : affordable, energy efficient (according to the promise), more than powerful enough for my needs AND easy to setup since it's no longer an ARM but an x86 CPU : too good to be true, isn't it ?!

Well, considering I'm no inflentuber, the only way to find that out would be to actually order one... And this is what I did !
A couple of weeks later, the kit arrived safe and sound... I'll spare you with the usual unboxing malarkey and get right to the point : setting up the whole thing took about 1 hour, including installing a bare Debian with XFS headers and firing up Borg backup - quite a long time for so few you could say but I have to admit I didn't anticipate the PCIe card mounting (for a NVMe SSD) so I had to 3D print a custom support and therefore delay the first startup for a short while. By the way, I've seen there's such a support available with the Zimaboard 2 kit so maybe this could be a welcomed option for the Zimable too, in a possible future.

Finally, this is it, no more fiddling and wasting time !!! All I can add is that Bob has worked like a charm since that day and I suspect I will soon totally forget about it, just because, as expected, it works, to the (surprinsing) point that I'm currently seriously considering a complete migration of my entire setup... A Zimablade cluster absolutely sounds like a **** idea that surely won't make me go bankrupt, maybe even with a Zimaboard 2 addition for that more demanding tasks, but that's if I ever become a rich and famous influentuber, obviously !!!

ZimaBlade - Single Board Server for Cyber Native