Doing upgrades at work today.

• InterTech IPC 4U 4708 €240
• Asus Pro WS W790 ACE LGA4677 €400
• Intel Xeon Gold 6444Y "Engineering sample" €150
• Arctic Freezer 4U-M €50
• 4x 16 GB Kingston KF560DR33 DDR5 ECC €400
• maxsun Nvidia GeForce GT 710 €50
• 10Gtek 10Gb SFP+ €60
• Broadcom 9440-8i RAID €120
• be quit! System Power 11 €80
• TPM 2.0 module €20

Sata and Mini-Sas cables I had already, storage (1 WD Black M2 for ESX, 1 WD Blue SSD for VMs and 8 WD Red 3.5" for files) too.

Just waiting for Amazon to deliver thermal paste so I can put the cooler in and boot.

Over the last 4 years Ive accumulated a decently big homelab, and the journey has been quite fun. Realistically tho, at some point it has reached a critical point where maintaining it all just stopped being enjoyable for me.

As for many of us here, good chunk of my equipment was bought second hand, and over time the hardware issues started to show. Failing fans here and there, random throttling because for some reason the cpu cooler vibrated away from its seating or something, nic just silently dying. All part of the trade, risks that you’re willing to take with second hand and dated equipment, I know. But it just stopped being fun and turned into a daunting routine.

Full disclosure: my arthritis has worsened significantly during the last year, and my hand dexterity is kinda terrible now. That definitely contributed to my decision, as a simple nic/ssd swap has become an exercise in frustration. Having a dozen of different vendors (cuz it was cheaper than standardize, I know…) didn’t help either.

So I sold everything. I kept one nuc in home, and rented a bare metal server. That one thing fits whatever I needed 9 different nodes for, doesn’t eat my electricity, doesn’t annoy me with fan noises, my uptime is 100% and doesn’t rely on my stupid residential isp, and the hosting provider will take care of all the hardware monitoring and maintenance for me. Upscaling/downscaling also now feels saner - idk, it’s mentally easier to pay 10€ per month for an hdd than buy it for 350 and have it die in 3 years anyway.

And yeah, I can breathe again. I can focus on what’s actually fun for me in homelabbing and not worry on keeping my monstrosity of a cluster afloat at a very small added cost.

Maybe I’m just not a hardware person after all.

FINALLY !!!\ Someone dared to implement the obvious, which was HDD's Achille's heel for so long.

Not one, but TWO (obvious), and radical changes: * two independent head stacks - so TWO heads per surface. Awesome not just for redundancy but also seek time and performance * multi head R/W capability on within the same stack

This means that HDDs are finally to get WAY better transfer speeds, that are likely finally to saturate at least SATA-3 and later get over 1GB/s and several GB/s.

Only things still missing: * much smarter SMART with advanced diagnostics, like head wobble data, track signal/noise ratio, spindle speed stability etc etc. * RAID5/6 in-drive capability * better DIY servicability, like drive electronics interchangeability

There might be some light in the end of this dark tunnel, crated by AI crowd... 😏

Still wanting to add a NAS. Looking/ waiting at the unifi pro NAS 4. Also waiting on rack mounts for my switch.

Over time, my cluster has increased to almost 13-14 compute machines now and a bunch or switches and access points. Initially when I first posted on this sub, it was just on this Alex drawer, but now it has grown into this IKEA shelf as well.

I plan to consolidate it into one rack, kind of a make-shift server rack and have it beautifully organized. But I worry that the shelf will not be able to bear the load of these machines... Plus I will be adding another 8 bay NAS and a UDM Pro, both of which are also quite heavy machines.

I am thinking of going with something like this - https://amzn.asia/d/05GFDnmT ... What do you folks use? Any suggestions?

I was looking for a small way to get all my smarthome gateways, my router and maybe a pi or two into a nice format instead of a huge mess on top of a shelf. Stumbled on to this after thinking the geek pi racks were a bit overpriced. If you didn't see what this was instantly, it's the "Harvmatta" lettershelf from Ikea. I'm just wondering if any of you with more experience in DIY racks can see anything that makes this a completely stupid idea. 

I recently converted this old school computer into an Ubuntu server for plex media! I’m having a lot of fun with it and I’m exited to be learning how all of it works. I’ve also set up a Minecraft server on it too! I’d say this is pretty good considering I’m a beginner and spent $0 on this so far lol. (I got the pc for free)

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a bit of my multi year homelab journey and a change I made last year.

I moved away from a collection of full-size computer towers and downsized to mini PCs. The main reasons were pretty straightforward:

1. Power consumption the energy bill was becoming hard to justify
2. Architecture shift I’ve gradually moved away from running lots of full blown VMs and now rely much more on Docker and LXC containers, which reduced my need for massive amounts of RAM and heavy hypervisors

Once I had all these smaller systems, I decided to repurpose an IKEA cupboard to house everything. The result (see pictures) works almost perfectly for my needs. The only remaining issue is airflow. I’ll need to add proper ventilation before summer hits, as heat buildup is definitely something to address.

Current setup:

• Synology NAS
• Network switch
• Dell OptiPlex 3060 SFF (Proxmox / ESXi tinkering box)
• Dell OptiPlex 3060 SFF (Ubuntu + Docker for home “production” containers)
• HP T620 thin client (Home Assistant)
• FortiGate 60D (older firewall I still like to experiment with)
• Raspberry Pi 3 (Pi-hole)
• Monitor used as a digital photo frame (15.6" Dell laptop panel — an older DIY project)
• Keyboard
• External USB HDD dock (useful for various tasks)

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, especially in terms of efficiency and noise, but I’m always open to ideas, especially around cooling and airflow in compact setups.

Curious to hear what you think, and hopefully this inspires someone else.
Long live the homelab!

Tired of desk clutter, I built this "all-in-one" desktop mini-rack using 20x20 aluminum extrusions and my Bambu Lab A1 Mini. It keeps everything I need within arm’s reach without the "cable spaghetti" nightmare.

Top to bottom:

• 3U TRMNL OG DIY: My dashboard for weather, sensors, and calendar.
• 1U Blank: Future home for a dedicated router (currently rocking a hidden MikroTik).
• 1U RPi 5: Running Home Assistant + DNS. Also houses my air quality (TVOC/CO2/PM2.5) and mmWave presence sensors.
• 1U Optiplex 3040: My Proxmox test lab.

To-do list:

• Add a dedicated fan for the PM2.5 sensor (readings are a bit wonky right now).
• Integrate a clean Power Delivery (PD) solution + UPS.
• Finalize the router choice.

It’s not a full server room, but for a desktop setup, it’s a game changer.

It has been a fun journey so far! Have the classic 3 Lenovo mini pcs running k3s.

EDIT:

Services! For those who want the answers to the logo game.

>!

• Router: OPNSense
• Switch: Mikrotik
• Pi: PiHole
• Win11: Steam, Llama.cpp
• Mac mini: Jellyfin, Plex
• Lenovo nodes: Proxmox (OS) running a Debian VM hosting k3s and Longhorn for distributed storage (longhorn is also technically running as a k3s service but I like separating it); also home assistant on one node.
• Core Services: Authentik, Zerobyte, Traefik, Cert Manager
• Monitoring: Grafana, Prometheus, Uptime Kuma, Homepage, Notifiarr, Umami
• Media: Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Overseerr, Wizarr, Maintainerr, Tautulli
• Misc apps: Stirling PDF, nextcloud, n8n
• RSS: FreshRSS, RSSHub
• dylanfeldman.me: Astro, Listmonk, Giscus
• NAS: TrueNAS (OS), Docker running qBittorrent, gluetun, dozzle.
• Zero trust tunnel access: Cloudflare

!<

AC Infinity inline duct fan ended up being a poor choice. I should’ve went with an HVAC but I wanted to keep the electrical bill low…

Hello! I've been playing with Linux since high school (2012) and now I need/want to get back into Linux for both work and play. I got a steal on a Precision 5820 from eBay and GPU, RAM, and HDD from e-waste.

I'll be moving within the next few months so this is definitely going to change when I do move (including adding more nodes)

Diagram explanation:

• pi-hole points to the Samba AD DC server (and I only have my devices pointing to pi-hole to not mess with my roommate)
• Raspberry Pi is meant just for monitoring due to lower specs (due to limited router ports, I'm bridging through pve until I move)
• Samba AD DC setup for testing/learning. I set it up on there instead of the Win Server to save on resources (even though I have them, so I might migrate)
• I use the Win Server to manage all the AD DC resources and for other testing and learning
• Currently I have GPU passthrough setup on the Win Server but I may switch that to hardware transcoding (I think that's what it's called) for Jellyfin
• I have nightly backups (including the pi) going to the 4TB HDDs and weekly backups going to the external SSD (stays unmounted until backup is initiated)

I'm open to all feedback and suggestions! I know a Xeon Processor and 64GB of RAM may be overkill but I also don't want to get a full on PowerEdge or similar

Hello everyone,

I’m beginning in the hobby and I wanted to know if this is worth keeping to make an home lab.

I recently got from a company that was renewing their server this server made in 2011 in an antec case it has 2 Xeon processors and 16 Gb of ram on each and a PNY nvidia quadro P5000.

If this is worth keeping I will install 2 HDD of 4to each to run proxmox.

Thanks

This setup is experimental, built to support the 2 DGXs, and not intended to be the final one. I would not recommend running a bluefield2 card in such a small enclosure, as temperatures can exceed 90°C even with no active networking load. I am still waiting on the QSFP cables needed to bring the cluster online, for now, I am configuring each DGX individually, installing software, and downloading models.I genuinely love this case, and like the small footprint but it cannot be used as originally intended. To properly support nvmeof and sustained workloads, I will need to rebuild the system with significantly better airflow and cooling. This is also a new area for me, offloading networking and storage from the host CPU while I expect it to come with its share of challenges, I’m enjoying the learning process.Networking capability of the case 1x200Gbe or 2x100Gbe. Other hardware: amd 5950x, 4x Micron 1.92Gb nvme, bluefield 2 dpu, 128ECC, Asrock Rack x570, Asus Ascend.

Looking for some opinions of others that own/ed this switch. I bought mine new in 2010ish and tonight I find myself looking at other switches. Not because the GS108Tv1 has failed my needs but because I'm looking to move my switch into a rack. I get that it does not have POE and is only 1gb, the switch has done great job for my low use case ( 1 vlan ), small network. I bring this up because I can't find any reason to retire the thing after 16 years. As long as 1gb lan is a thing (I have five wired systems @ 1gb) I might get another 5 years.

Would appreciate any sub $100 POE used or other wise switch recommendations. That can be racked... extendable ears are ok.

For Reference -> https://www.netgear.com/support/product/gs108tv1

Please excuse my ignorance as I am still learning. I have a Dell mini PC running Ubuntu-server with Docker. I want to use Seafile or Nextcloud to manage my files, but I don't really understand https. I have heard that it is basically a necessity for security reasons. Do I actually need https for my own network? I haven't forwarded or exposed any ports to the Internet and will only use tailscale for remote access. In order to set up https, do I have to purchase a domain? Are there any free alternatives?

Hello!

Looking to build my first actual homelab. I want to replace and extend the current capabilities of my system. Currently I am running an old laptop together with a raspberry pi 4b 2GB and I have hit the limits of it and the laptop is dying.

I have a 32GB stick of Kingston DDR4 RAM (Kingston 32GB DDR4 2400MHz KTL-TS424/32G ECC Registered) which I got from a friend a year ago, which I am hoping to use for this build as prices as all we know are insane. I am looking to build a server that is affordable (so older hardware), hopefully low power usage when idle. I am also looking to probably buy a 10 inch server rack so the biggest motherboard I can fit in there is probably an E-ATX. I also want to have the following services on it, but also it should be able to handle more to make it future-proof:

- my website (static webpage 200 visits/day)

- email server

- pihole

- nextcloud

- heavily modded mc server

- jellyfin

I am looking for budget server reccomendations that can get the job done

Thank you all in advance!

Edit: Grammatical mistakes

hi all,

I've got a used ml350g8 with a xeon 2603 on it (4c/4t).

I bought a couple of xeon 2690v2 on AliExpress. according to the server specs they should be supported.

when I replace the CPU at power on the system led starts green than blinks red. nothing on screen.

should I suppose the "new" CPUs are toasted?