So basically I am a 14 year old idiot who wants to make his own homelab. I would probably use it for storing data (probably something around 10+TB), 2 Minecraft servers, 1 assetto corsa server, 1 CS2 server and a HomeAssistant setup. I currently run the two Minecraft servers on a little mini pc, with an Intel Celeron N5030 and 4GB of ram, so not very fast. The homeassistant setup is currently running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+, I guess it works, but it’s powered by the NUC and looks like it would disconnect any second. My budget would probably something around 2000 usd. I live in Poland so getting some hardware might be hard (at a reasonable price).

I am at a loss how some FOSS project supporters seem to disregard the concept of FREE open source licensing of software. (I am less confused about happy free-takers.)

Do you care for differences between e.g. proprietary, permissive and free licensing? Or is it just the free no-cost part? What's actually important to you?

I got to this thought noticing the dynamics on an innocent, sleepy comment section where (supposedly) supporters of a particular free and open source project do not seem to like the free part of it, the getting things for free however wins all the way. Someone complaining about price losing the battle at the same time. How is that combination even possible?

What's your take? Did you actually swap something in your stack (not the hypervisor) BECAUSE you wanted open source AND free software?

Hey y'all,

I recently acquired a cisco aironet ap1815i-a-k9 from a friend and thinking to use it in a homelab. As I did not purchase it directly from Cisco I won't be able to download the image for mobility express. Does anyone have the image that I can have? Any help is appreciated!

I’m rebuilding my homelab and also trying to learn some new concepts (like BGP and L2VPN with a shitload of subnets and VLANs) and thinking about a high availability cluster with OpenStack (I just grew tired of Proxmox for now). What kind of over engineering have you done in your Homelab that you did just for learning and fun?

Hey I’m getting the following setup, since my QNAP NAS is standing on its last leg. Since I don’t do too many DIY projects anymore, I wanted to use this as an excuse to start one and setup a few things I always wanted to have.

Aoostar WTR Pro

32 GB RAM

8C/16T AMD 5820U

1 TB NVME (maybe for VM Storage)

120-250 GB NVME (NAS OS)

3x 4 TB HDD (Main storage in RAID5 or some kind of parity)

Uses:

- SMB Share (pictures, music, backup-storage)

- DLNA Share

- Offsite Storage for my business NAS (as well as the other way around)

- Dockercontainer (Bitwarden, Immich, maybe more)

- Probably some kind of VM but that’s not the main use

Question:

What OS would you recommend for this use case? I’ve read a lot about TrueNAS Scale, but I’m not quite sure. I’ve got quite a lot of experience with hypervisors and off the shelf NAS Systems (since I work in IT), but not sure which way would be the best for this little DIY project.

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Aim

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Strip an HP elitdesk 800 G6 down to bare components and refit with modifications into an empty 2U chassis. Prepared to customise and modify chassis as needed to make it work. If I have to afix my own mounts and standoffs, chop and change the internals etc so be it.

Addtional components: SFP+ Dual 10Gb NIC, LSI HBA, 4 x 3.5" HDD, additional NVME SSD's on pcie adapters for a fast ZFS pool,

This may be a stupid idea or there may be glaring reasons why it should not be done, please let me know. In doing this what are the major issues to be aware of:

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Motivation

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I recently got my hands on my first rack (12U shallow depth) and want to start reorgansiing everything. I currently use SFF systems but would like to go properly racked up and really be one of you :-D rather than just sittng things on a shelf (and maybe 3D printing front panels/spacers etc, dont actually have a 3D printer yet but Im eyeing up the Bambu P1S as I think its time to take my idle curiosity and tinkering to the next level)

I would also then be able to ditch my messy-wiring external SATA bcakplane caddy as I should be able to fit 4x3.5" HDD into the 2U chassis. Currenlty quite happy with 2 mirrored vdev zpool and if I want to expand on that I can look at storage racks.

I dont run anything heavy duty/serious on this server at home. I run everything in individual LXC's or VM's, its all just for fun and curiosity (I'm the only user really but for each of my 3 siblings' households I've created accounts on NC/JF/KVt). this is currently what I've managed to get up and runing succesfully in Proxmox so far.

[1] Caddy Reverse Proxy as I hve a static IP from ISP and want multiple services externally accesible through my domain

[2] Pi-hole unbound doing recursive DNS and adblocking network wide,

[3] Openmediavault SMB shares for all my containers and machines,

[4] Nextcloud - mobile uploads, file sharing and Talk chat and video between siblings, would like to integrate OnlyOffice Community Edition

[5] Jellyfin for media streaming,

[6] Kavita for sharing my ebooks with family.

[7] and lastly a self-hosted Wordpress - but just for my own simple personal website with 'Passowrd Protected' plugin published to my own domain as an access portal for everything else and a learning playground for myself and the nephews. I wanted self-hosted as I thought I could use more useful features without having to pay subscriptions than wordpress.com allows

[8] I might get round to sorting out my issues in OnlyOfiice Community Edition at some point as well I think just to round it all off.

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Why transplant SFF and not use server paltform

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Everything currenly running off a 6c6t 8th gen Intel. I have considered some of the older Xeon platforms (before my rack initiation I wanted a Lenovo P520) because I suffer from CPU core and PCIE lane anxiety but seeing as server does spend majority of the time at idle I'm under impression its better to stick with consumer platform for low idle power draw. I'm not really running out of CPU currently but I have a feeling/fear a few more cores headroom could be useful for future LXC's and VM's. My PICE lane needs are only for 10Gb networking and additional NVME storage and HBA so I beleive I dont really get limited by conusmer grade levels of PCIE lanes according to my daily use case as the bottleneck is the 10Gb network throughput where I mainly have client 'serially-consumed' data on the PCIE and going out of my house my upload towards my siblings is still only 70mbps from my ISP.

Was looking at 10th gen Intel to give me option for up to 10c20t if I ever really needed it in fuutre. So something like Eltidesk 800 G6 with starting CPU maybe upgrade to 8c16t. RAM Currenly at 32GB I'm not facing any issues, my biggest allocaiton is 16GB to OMV just so I can allow ZFS more ARC. If I was going to add mroe RAM it would go primarily in that direction? But really my use case doesnt even warrant existing ARC allocation.

I dont need a dedicated GPU currently, the intel igpu handles the load for Nextlcoud and Jellyfin adequatley. But in future if i get curious on machine learning or 3D tools etc could consider it. So 4 expansion slots in elitdesk motherboard covers me

I'd still use miniPC/SBC for router but I could build a custom plate to mount that along with an 8 port switch.

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Your thuoghts

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So do you guys think this is a stupid/inefficent way of going about this? Are there any serious issues I've overlooked? What suggestions or advice would you give?

Hello enthusiasts! I have a small closet in my new house I wanna use as a "server room". Its not huge but enough to add a 19" rack. I own 3 dell servers, 2 Cisco switches and a UPS for these. Do i need external cooling? And what kind of cooling do I need? I live in a relative cold climate and the house is at 23°c but these things create some heat. Thanks for all input.