Exploring the Dell Wyse 3040 in my homelab
I waste my money so you don't have to? In this article I explore potential uses for a Dell Wyse 3040 in my homelab, and I identify some roles to which it is definitely not well suited.
I recently purchased a Dell Wye 3040 Thin Client from an auction site for £30 including power supply to investigate it's potential to replace the still very scarce Raspberry Pi.
It has a quad-core Atom x5 processor, 2gb RAM, 8gb local storage, dual Display ports, 1gb Ethernet, 1x USB3 and 3x USB2 ports. It draws around 15w in use, making it similar in spec to a Raspberry Pi 4, although it lacks Bluetooth, Wifi and GPIO pins.
Exploring the Hardware
The hardware has some 'unique' traits:
- 64-bit UEFI Only. The device can only boot 64-bit code via UEFI. There is no 'legacy' BIOS boot option in the device firmware.
- MMC-based internal storage. The internal storage presents as an MMC block device 'mmcblk0'.
- (Dual) Display Port Video Output. Whilst marked-up DP++ I nevertheless found I had to use an active Display Port to HDMI adapter to attach to a HDMI display.
- Very dim power lamp. The power indicator lamp is so dim I initially though the unit was DOA.
Exploring potential Roles
For fun, I tested the device in the following roles:
| Role | Result | Commentary |
| A pfSense firewall | Fail | With the addition of an Amazon Basics USB3 1gbps ethernet adapter I was hopeful the device could be a cheap to run, always on firewall. The installer ran and installed; however, UEFI support in FreeBSD (upon which pfSense is built) is buggy, causing the device to intermittently freeze on subsequent reboots. This was confirmed with pfSense CE versions 2.6 and 2.7 booted directly from a memory stick (and not via Ventoy, which also fails). This occurs when the os is installed to local storage or to a USB3 pendrive. Unfortunately, this will impact all FreeBSD-based applications, including opnSense, m0n0wall, etc. |
| An ipFire firewall | Success | Being Linux rather than FreeBSD based, IPFire 2.27 - Core Update 180 installed from an iso image via Ventoy and ran perfectly. It found and successfully used the Amazon Basics USB3 1gbps ethernet adapter. |
| Debian 12 64-bit | Success (with workaround) | Debian 12.2 'netinst' booted and installed via Ventoy, provided the GUI options were deselected and just SSH and standard system utilities installed. However, on reboot, the system failed to start due to being unable to find an operating system. To workaround, I again booted from the installation media, selected Advanced and Graphical Rescue Mode, mounted the root partition mmcblk0p2 and when prompted, the associated boot partition. I then 'Forced GRUB installation to the EFI removable media path' and rebooted the system. Subsequent reboots worked. |
| Lubuntu 22.04 | Fail | Booted live via Ventoy. Installation commenced but ran out of disk space. |
| Linux Lite | Fail | Booted live via Ventoy. Installation commenced but installer repeatedly crashed. |
| Ubuntu Mate 22.04 via pendrive | Success | I have an existing 32gb USB3 pendrive with Ubuntu Mate 22.04 installed that I use as a portable operating system. It booted and worked perfectly. |
| Various JeOS apps such as Recalbox, OpenElec | Success | Booted and ran from external USB media, but local installation not tested. |
| ProxmoxVE8 | Fail | Installer booted via Ventoy but refuses to proceed due to lack of internal disk space. Maybe worth a retry targeting external USB3 media, although how many VMs am I going to run in 2gb RAM? |
| VMware Esxi 8 | Fail | Installer booted via Ventoy then crashed. I accept I was chancing it with this one. |
| Raspberry Pi Desktop | Fail | Boots. Automatic partitioner fails. Manual partitioning works but installer fails during file copy, suspect disk space exhausted. |
| An OpenWrt firewall | Fail | Booted a live Lubuntu session via Ventoy, then followed OpenWrt install instructions to write an OpenWrt efi image to internal storage using dd. OpenWrt booted, then crashed. |
Notably Untested
Due to lack of time or resource, and / or poor alignment with my current homelab technology estate:
- RedHat-derived Linux distros
Potential homelab applications
So, what might the potential homelab use cases be?
- Firewall - using ipFire with additional USB ethernet adapters.
- A lightweight general purpose desktop - using Ubuntu Mate, Lubuntu or similar running from an external USB3 storage device.
- A dedicated appliance for retro-gaming, media player or home automation - using Recalbox, OpenElec or homeassistant installed internally and / or running from an external USB storage device, although you may also need an active Display Port to HDMI converter to attach to a domestic television.
- An alternative to a headless Raspberry Pi server - using Debian to run docker containers and other apps on (what might be) a cheaper, more reliable, available and performant hardware platform
- OpenMediaVault NAS appliance - untested but likely to work due to being Debian-based
Recommended homelab application
Debian 12 as a Raspberry Pi replacement
As per my original intent, I will be exploring Debian 12 as an alternative to an aging, unreliable Raspberry Pi 2 that I use as a TVHeadend server.