The mission in this Lab is to create genuine hands-on experience for technology learners using the learner-friendly NUC PCs.

Mission:

• Auto install Ubuntu servers
• Install and use Ansible to manage our servers
• Install and run a FAH protein folding cluster
• Install a Kubernetes cluster

Materials:

• Wireless router providing DHCP and internet access
• NUCs
  • 4 minimum for the Kubernetes portion; 5 recommended, or more are recommended for testing Kubernetes resiliency
  • wifi cards to make it easier to run large stacks of NUCs
  • D34010WYK was used to Lab testing as they are readily available; I used 8GB RAM and 32GB or greater mSATA SSDs
• USB sticks
  • 3 USB sticks, 8GB or more each
  • Using a pair of sticks for booting and one more for firmware upgrades

More projects for your Stack of NUCs:

• Trying running different workloads on your Stack of NUCs
• If you are interested in testing Kubernetes, there are some good tutorials on running Kubernetes all on one NUC using LXD to virtualize all the nodes.

References:

• NUC cluster building: cloud-init https://jimangel.io/posts/automate-ubuntu-22-04-lts-bare-metal/
• Then ansible https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-automate-initial-server-setup-of-multiple-ubuntu-22-04-servers-using-ansible/
• https://github.com/brettplarson/nuctestlab

This Lab was refactored, improved, and moved to GitHub in 2024.

https://github.com/doritoes/NUC-Labs/blob/main/Stack_of_NUCs/README.md