specs: intel atom 330 1.60 ghz, 2 gigs of ram, 3 western digital enterprise storage 1tb drives.

Rack
Variant of a S9.0-2000CFM, built by a Japanese company called Si R&D specializing in sound proof racks. Picked up second-hand for about 450 USD (including shipping). It's in pristine condition and still smells new. I absolutely lucked out here. It's very quiet (low humming) and I can comfortably work next it, probably even sleep if I wanted to. It can split into two pieces for easy maneuvering into small spaces.

Servers
4x Supermicro Superserver X10DRT-PIBQ (16 nodes in total though only 8 are active). Configured with 2x e5-2697 v4 and 64GB per node, 12TB HDD per node for Ceph (though each node has 3 drive bays so can handle 3x more). Each node cost about 100 USD for the chassis and another 350 USD per node for RAM + CPU. All second-hand.

Networking
Mellanox SX6036 56Gb InfiniBand switch, I modded the firmware to use 40 Gpbs ethernet. A bit overkill but still very cool to have. Connects with the superservers though QSFP cables. The servers are k8s nodes where the high bandwidth helps for fast image pulling and possibly faster rook-ceph syncing, but needs more testing. I learned a ton about QSFP and SFP+ when installing this.

Mikrotik RB5009UG+S+IN with cAP, connects with the mellanox switch over SFP+. So while the link here is technically capped here at 10Gbps, my internet uplink can only handle 1Gbps so not a bottle-neck until I have datacenter-level 100Gbps or something... Bought new for about 300 USD

Panasonic Switch-M48eG dumb switch with 1gbps ethernet ports, Used for everything that doesn't require high speed like IPMI (superserver admin panel), orange pi (for PXE boot), etc. 20 USD

Others
APC Rack PDU Switched 2U 30A 200V (about 150$ for a brand-new unit that someone put on auction)
Orange PI 5 (150 USD?) crucial piece that serves as a cloudflare tunnel and PXE netboot server.

Power
At idle currently uses about 900W, PDU reports about 3~4 amps at 200V, electricity bill is about 200 USD per month.

My homelab made with raspberry pi4b and Pi5. There's a Synology NAS and old Dell i5. It miss 4 pi4b as cluster.

Physical Network and hardware side is done and now I just need to configure the software side of things! Debating on getting a patch panel to tidy things up more but at this small size idk.

I stopped by Microcenter today and picked up my first NAS and a few 16TB. Now time to figure my life out.

You did this to me! Yes you! 😂

After more tinkering since my last post, I’ve got a new version of the stick, this time with a TF card slot added. Not gonna lie, I might’ve gotten a bit carried away... and yep, it made the whole thing a bit longer (I know, I know... you all wanted it less chunky!). But hey, it’s a tradeoff 😅 The TF card can be switched between target and host, so I figured it might be handy for booting OS images or installing systems directly to the target. But what's matter is what do you think, useful or overkill?

Also, I took the earlier advice about the “7mm gap between stacked ports” and made sure the spacing between the two USB-C female ports is wide enough now. Big thx to whoever pointed that out 🙏

Oh, and just a little spoiler, still working on a KVM Stick VGA female version too. Just... don’t expect it to be super tiny. Definitely gonna be a bit bigger than the HDMI one since I need to squeeze more chips and components onto the PCB 😅

Would love to get your thoughts again, especially if you’ve done hardware testing before. I’m planning a small beta test group, so if you’re interested, drop your insights on my Google Form Link. Honest feedback welcome, good and bad. Thx again, you all rock!

my first server is an HPE microserver Gen10+ v2. i’ve been using it as my NAS, multimedia server, and also set up a bind9 DNA server with AdBlock. i set up everything so they run in containers as systemd units with podman, and it’s been working great so far. figured it was time to expand a little and have more fun.

today i got a used DL360 Gen10 with dual Xeon Gold 6140 and 64gb ram. only complaint is somehow it doesn’t have the small label on the front that shows its model name.

my main plan is to use it as a game server (satisfactory for me and my friends), but also to learn more about virtualization, kubernetes, and ansible. maybe eventually host some stuff for close friends too. super excited to get everything set up over the week!

as the title says, this is my first homelab build! it will be a workstation, NAS, plex server, VM hoster, and server hoster for my own apps. GPU(b750) is a temp pick, might return it for something Nvidia based to run AI models on it. All from microcenter, the only two things i couldn't find were a fractal node 804(need them 10 drives) and the b650d4u with 10gb networking. 9700x as the cpu pick, with an skhynix ssd 2tb that will be a boot drive and act as storage for the workstation side of the computer. Picked up the last ddr5 ECC memory from microcenter! Listened to people on this sub(thanks u/RaymondVL) and chose a different cooler. Hope it goes well!

Here’s a look at my home lab setup, housed in a StarTech 12U Quiet Rack:

Top to bottom:

•Cisco 2901 – Handling SIP trunking and VoIP phones •Cisco 3850 48-Port POE+ – Acting as the core switch •MikroTik CCR2116 – Main router (beast mode) •MikroTik CCR2004 – Backup router with VRRP configured •ThinkPad – Serving as a physical domain controller •Supermicro Server – Dual disk arrays running Hyper-V workloads •APC UPS – Keeping things running when the lights go out (yes, I’m aware the battery’s crying for help) 

Not pictured: my distribution layer. It’s currently a cable jungle… a future weekend project in the making.

Hi everyone, Just wanted to share my homelab setup that has now been running with 2 years of uptime:

OptiPlex 3050 – i5-7500T, 32 GB RAM Running Proxmox and Docker, hosting several services for my family: Vaultwarden, Immich, Jellyfin, and others.

FortiWiFi 50E-2R – used for firewalling, VLANs, and the wifi at home

Synology DS211 – 2×2 TB in RAID1 for storage.

And a simple TP-Link 4-ports switch that connects everything together.

It’s a simple setup, but stable, 45W on idle and does the job well, very well.

First of all, my knowledge of racking is zilch, and it's dawned on me already that I've probably been an idiot. I bought a custom built computer with a Silverstone RA02 rack mount assuming it would fit my desk but the holes don't match up. I though that maybe if the holes started off with 2 the bottom then maybe it would have fit but since lining up I think the sizing of the rack required it different (or that there is most likely a completely different racking for computers that is different from racks for audio gear). I am now looking to buy a smaller cabinet rack to house it but I want to make sure I buy the correct one. Can someone please point me in the right direction or tell me if I'm missing something? Many thanks in advance.

One of my cats dropped my server from a table when we were moving to another home, after replacing the damaged parts all that remained was the front but I couldn’t find a replacement so I laser cut one in acrylic + made an engraving at the top. I think it now looks cooler than ever.

In the end I just needed to replace the HDD, the CPU fan and that front panel, plus using a screwdriver and tools to realign the case back to its original unbent shape… good as new and ready for another 4 years of service(?)

Intermediate lurker, first time poster. For the past year I’ve been renting a Minecraft server for $20/mo for 1 vcore, 12 GB RAM. In the process of converting to a multi-server network, I realized the cost was gonna get asinine if I kept using a Minecraft host specifically. In the middle of VPS shopping I realized “wait I have fiber, why tf am I still doing this?” and started part shopping. Here’s what I came up with:

• Xeon E5 2640 v4
• X99 Chinese goofball board
• 32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM (originally got RDIMMS but this goofball board wouldn’t post with them, posted fine when I used DIMMs from my PC so idk if it’s the board or the RDIMMs themselves)
• 512 GB NVMe SSD
• R5 240 GPU solely for display out
• 700W PSU (originally got a secondhand 475W, but not enough power on the 12V rail for the lil guy to turn on)

No case yet, just antistatic foam and a dream. UPS is my next purchase, followed by the case. Documented the entire process for all of YouTube to see - https://youtu.be/E0NYvqz_hys?si=FSoeKXSPTc1icM8w

Let me know what y’all think as this is my first attempt at a homelab! Feedback welcome.

My 18U rack is pretty much full, so I'm done adding equipment for a while.

Here's what I've got:

ASUS monitor, part of my jury-rigged KVM console Trackball, also part of my KVM console 2 port VGA KVM switch, part of my KVM console Sliding keyboard tray Numpadless keyboard, part of my KVM console QNAP TS-431XeU NAS Dell C6220 2-node server 8 port HDMI KVM switch, part of my KVM console Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 8 Pro Patch panel Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 24 Lite Patch panel Patch panel Hubitat Elevation in a Hive Tech Solutions mount BeeLink EQ14 and BeeLink S12 Pro in same Empty Shelf Shelf with my Xfinity xFi gateway and a Celeron PC PDU PDU

Used to have this in a cabinet and now it's out in the open. What's the best way to get these cables organized and not looking so terrible?

I only recently discovered the Lack is of perfect dimensions for 19" equipment. Looked on thingiverse and printables for a mounting solution but they were all terrible. Decided to design one that works and is reliable. The ComXchange pictured is something I had laying around so I used it to test. Eventually my R410 will go on it for the real test once the mounting hardware arrives(Ledge thing that it will just sit on mounted at front and back with 4 of these adapters). if you're interested in printing some yourself here's the links. Designed in Fusion. Let me know what you think!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7054315

https://www.printables.com/model/1314957-lack19-the-ikea-lack-side-table-adapter-for-19-rac