I love repurposing older hardware by either optimizing stuff software wise, or jsut doing this. I got a bunch of old Android boxes with the Amlogic S905X SoC. Turns out you can put Armbian on them and use them as any other Linux machine, which works as a great Raspberry Pi alternative.

The performance level is somewhere between RPi 3 and RPi 4 benchmark-wise (GeekBench 4), although it seems like Amlogic has a lot better instruction set for media decoding/encoding compared to RPi. According to btop, it shows up as an armv8 rev4 CPU.

The only downside is that these boxes only got a gigabyte of RAM, but that's still plenty for low power stuff, the power consumption is also very low at around 2-3W directly from the wall socket.

tl;dr - e-waste saved!

Printed a rack for my new switches and sorted out some cables. Have to order myself some keystones and a modern patch panel.

This was addictive. Wifey's not stoked 💀🫠

New apartment and my wish this time was to mount everything on this wall, the goal being not esthetics but rather practicality when cleaning.

But when I noticed how hard it was to drill the wall I settled on this compromise. Everything is on wheels so I can easily push it around when I clean. (The wall is littered with metal and electricity according to my cheap detector. I just barely found room for the AP and switch.)

The rolling IKEA shelf called RÅSKOG houses my HCI cluster. I plan on adding a dedicated switch to it and only have one cable going to the wall mounted switch.

And the rolling IKEA laptop table is called BOLLSIDAN. I use it for my laptop, or a tiny portable 15" MSI screen when bootstrapping nodes or doing maintenance.

The AP is from teklager.se and runs OpenWRT. The firewall to the far right is from Amazon and runs OpnSense.

I really want to mount more things on this wall, it's just plaster but behind it is a lot of wiring and a vent. Maybe if I could drill only the width of the plaster I'd be safe, but I don't dare risk it.

After days of waiting for parts, I finally had everything set up.

Ubiquiti Ecosystem: Modem, Gateway, Switches, & Aps.

Hypervisor: TrueNAS Scale (GPU is used for all apps)

MB - X13SAE

CPU – 12700T

RAM – 128GB DDR5

GPU – RTX 3070

NVME 1 – 128GB for TrueNAS OS

NVME 2-4 – 3 x 990 Evo 4TB

NIC – X550-T2

For: Apps & VMs

NAS: RS1221+

RAM – Upgraded to 32GB

Drives – 8 x 870 Evo 8tb

NIC – Upgraded to X550-T2

PSU Fan – Upgraded to Noctua NF-A4x20

System Fan - Upgraded to Noctua NF-A8

Extra: Sound Deadening Mat added (Unnecessary, NAS is quiet after replacing all fans)

UPS: CP1500PFCRM2U, connected to RS1221+ for UPS management.

Still a work in progress… I can’t see the end of this project 🥲🥲🥲

Hi everyone! I'm new to this reddit and have been doing some reading after my friend recommended me to this sub reddit. I got a bunch of SFF PCs from my old IT job and want to learn more for a job as a sysadmin, but I also want to know what kind of potential I have with this army of tiny PCs. I'm a little scatterbrained as to where to start because there's just so many ideas I don't know where to start, so I figured I would ask here for recommendations!

Here are the specifications for all of these PCs, all of them had their data wiped and got clean installs of windows 10 pro and got upgraded to windows 11 pro (which feels like a mistake on the old NUC)

Intel NUC with 5th gen i3, 8gb ram (ddr3), 256gb m.2 and a 1tb ssd (2.5" form factor)

Intel NUC with 8th gen i5, 16gb ram (ddr4) 512GB m.2

HP Prodesk 600 G6 intel i7 10th gen, 16gb ddr4, 512gb m.2

2x HP Prodesk 600 G5 intel i7 9th gen, 16gb ddr4, one has 512gb m.2 and the other has a 2gb m.2 and a 1tb m.2

What do I want to try Make a NAS for media storage to stream anime on my local network (I have my media currently on an external 4tb hdd, and there's 3tb of data on that) Virtualization playground (Proxmox cluster?) Active Directory playground

I've also heard of making a steam game cache to download games across multiple computers which is something I'd also like to try (outside of this pic I have 4 gaming PC towers with 1 for me and 3 for my friends when we do LAN parties)

Sorry for the long first post xD

My HomeLab has come together a lot more since I posted my last photo.

From top to bottom a 48 Port Dell power connect gigabit switch that I replaced my Cisco 10-100 with. As I needed the data transfer speeds.

Beneath the Dell switch there is a 8 Port Poe gigabit switch that I'm getting ready to learn how to use Poe cameras.

The Cisco 10-100 switch i still have and keep in the rack because well it doesn't take up space there.

Dell poweredge r320 currently not deployed. I'm thinking about using it to learn about VMware and Dockers so that I don't break my deployed servers. Or I might use it to learn about self hosting I don't know yet

Dell poweredge r230 getting ready to deploy it as an NVR since it's power draw isn't that crazy and it's got 3.5 inch drives.

Dell poweredge r420 it's part of my proxmox cluster kind of need to get more drives for it but I'm just using it to learn about server clusters and so forth.

Dell poweredge r620 8 bay, it is the second node in that proxmox cluster. Proxmox currently runs immich and I want to start using Jellyfin or Plex, but I've heard Plex is having issues right now but idk I haven't read about it yet.

Dell poweredge r620 10-day, it runs TrueNas and it is my mother's nas.

Cannon Printer, I just put it in the rack to get it off my desk as it was taking up to much space.

Belkin F1DE108B-NF KVM currently not in use because I don't have the cables for it, they're next on my purchase list.

Dell poweredge r720, it also runs TrueNas and is my Nas.

Dell poweredge r815, not deployed and do not plan to ever deploy. It was part of a purchase that I made recently and I don't know what to do with it other than just let it sit in the rack. Due to the fact that the opteron cpus aren't that good from what I've heard, and I just have no use for it.

So I've been lurking for a decent amount of time whilst slowly but surely learning to configure my own Proxmox-VE server/Nodes!

This is my current set-up, no rack currently :( but I plan on getting there one day.

I also would like to acquire more Lenovo Mini desktops for better node redundancy as currently my second node is the desktop you see in the 3rd picture. (Its all the spare hardware I had lying around at the moment.)

Let me know what you think!

*Updated to correct flair

Since my last post I've gotten myself a 20u rack.

I'm currently thinking about mounting it up high in the closet it will live in, but having second guesses for ease of access.

What are your thoughts on mounting it up high in the closet, or leaving it on the floor?

Anyone here wall mount a rack and regret it?

edit: made a mistake in the title, meant to say server PSU.

Hello,

I was just now rebooting my X3550 M5 when the warning symbol came up and the server started beeping. Few seconds later my UPS clicked and everything turned off for a sec, then booted back up.

I've checked the event log via IMM2, but I don't see anything to warrant that warning light.

UPS is APC Back-UPS BE-650VA, can do about 520W. My lab when at full tilt can only reach around 300-350W, so I'm not sure what happened. During normal use it hovers around 200W.

The PSU in the server did make a questionable sound for a few seconds - could it be on it's way out? It runs completely fine now, but I'm quite worried still. Right now the system is showing everything as online, no warnings.

https://preview.redd.it/rdo66dlva7te1.png?width=350&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba62af776ff7940e997986941eff290182c0ea67

Any ideas? I can't check the UPS log, since it's managed by the server that was rebooting.

I've started a project building a K3s cluster using my TuringPi v1 and v2. For now it's 5 CM3's and 3 CM4's. The case is 3d printed and features the two ITX boards, a crusty old power supply and two 512GB SATA SSD's hidden somewhere in between.

Don't mind the 10 year EOL "security appliance", just like the 500W PSU it's not being used to it's full potential and just being used for network separation.

Finally got to put that server case (black 4u generic on the bottom) I bought 10 years ago to work. I'm not sure what I was thinking then, but this is what it ended up being. From the bottom to the top:

• TrueNAS on bare metal 12TB raw raidz to ~7TB
• Proxmox hosting Jellyfin in a desktop on a rolling shelf.
  
• White PC is just an old gaming computer that needs a temporary home.
• Press fit Dell keeb.
• pfSense 3100 with VPN, DDNS, and content blocking
• Smort switch that is criminally underutilized gs724t
• big 40(?)U Winsted steel behemoth I saved from the side of the road
• Custom wire management arm.

Someone asked for an update so here is the arm update. I made it. I works really well...sorta.

Originally I wanted two. Now, I only need one because the rolling shelf on the inside uses magnetic hooks inspired by a comment on the last post. I ended up just using an arm to connect the rack to the wall. I should cinch it all down, but I'm still waiting for things to settle.

I still got a lot to do:

• Backups are not sorted and I'm open to suggestions
• I got a 580ti in there but it isn't setup to do the hardware pass through yet.
• Home assistant?
• Next Cloud?