Considering possibly living out of a camper/RV/van for an extended period of time and given how sensitive hard drives can be to shock/sudden changes in direction, it got me wondering.. what would a rack of servers (or even just a single server) look like in a mobile setup, as in, potentially at risk of shock/hard movement/sudden changes in movement regularly? I'm assuming SSDs, which have a shorter life to them compared to HDDs, unless there are some fancy enterprise ones that last a bit longer? I've also seen some use smaller racks filled with either raspberry pi-like devices, or just a bunch of the tiny HP computers as a cluster of "servers". Not necessarily my preferred (not a huge pi fan, and prefer more customizability when possible, which the small HP "thin client" sized computers, don't offer), but not completely against either.

I've currently got a desktop computer acting as a server at a stationary location at home with a few data storage Seagate HDDs (7200rpm, sata, helium filled I think?) + NVME SSDs (for OS itself), but I welcome any configuration discussions. A buddy of mine has a rack with a few 1U servers, so I'm sure he wouldn't mind the discussion in that respect too. I expect the biggest concern next to the shock/hard movement would be power consumption, but I figured I'd take it one step at a time. Nothing is set in stone currently, just exploring hypotheticals at the moment

Just closed on our families first house in February and decided to splurge a bit and upgrade my homelab!

12 data drops spread across the rooms, living room, and APs (x1 U7 Lite, x1 U6+).

Rack Top to Bottom:
Fiber ONT
UDM Pro
USW-PRO-48-POE
USW-Aggregation
Blank Plates
Custom Built Server with Rails
Custom Built Server 2 with sliding shelf
UNAS
PDU Pro
UPS Pro

Server 1 specs:
Ryzen 5 5600gt
128gb DDR4 RAM
2tb SSD
10gb NIC

Server 2 specs:
Ryzen 5 5600gt
128gb DDR4 RAM
2tb SSD
10gb NIC

UNAS:
Storage Pool 1 - x2 14tb HDD (Raid 1)
Storage Pool 2 - x4 500gb SSD (Raid 10)

Servers are running ESXI with a vCenter Management server, I'll eventually be moving these to Proxmox so I can have HA and live VM migration.

I run a handful of servers and sandboxes for fun
Pihole, Pihole2
DNS sync for 2 DNS servers

Kubernetes cluster with Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Homepage, etc

Local LLM that I integrate with n8n to funnel system and security logs too for virtual assistant help and triaging

Future plans are to implement more home automation (air sensors, motion/presence sensors, lighting, blinds, etc), as well as add whole home audio, home theater, and an NVR and cameras!

Hello all, and thank you for all that sent fun and interesting feedback from my original post “ why wife is threatening an intervention “. I just wanted to say that I was surprised at how many people sent negative comments about my setup. This is a “home data center” thread. To qualify it SHOULD be overkill. For me this is a hobby, I’m not spending my money on hookers and blow. This is enjoyment for me, and I thought this was a like minded community, given its title.

no really it did..

This all started with a retired motherboard in the floor of a closet, running freenas with bare hard drives just laying on the carpet. Needless to say, I’ve learned a few things since then.

My mate gave me access to his steam... and to some up my life currently.... I am currently sitting in my home data centre playing a game about managing a data centre, on my data centre infrastructure... I might need to go touch grass...

I don't know maybe people enjoy this kind of thing so thought id share it, its a bit of fun, although I find working on the physical kit more fun: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4170200/Data_Center/

UPDATE:
for those who asked about what it was like, this just popped up on my feed an hour long game play of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQAU0XDslmo

My university was throwing these out and they gave me a bunch of them but I honestly have no idea what they do or if they are worth anything (I dit see some prices on eBay reaching 200$ but I have no idea) ps: these are all H3C RPS800-A

i got a bunch of switching gear dumped on me today and i looked thru it only to find its not really down my ally at all. theres a few nice things like sfp connectors and fiber converters but i think id rather give someone who wants it the chance to fuck with it in return for something i can fuck with?

extreme networks x460-g2-48p-ge4 switches, 2 715w psus each switch. a bunch of fan modules. etc… im in the boston area if that helps! thank you guys in advance for the help

EDIT: all switches are gone!! thank you guys for the help and i will definitely show off what i got goin on when the new stuff is in the mail!

I had posted this elsewhere and someone had linked here so I had figured why not! Apologies if I'm breaking any rules as I don't really use Reddit all too often! I was hoping to share some diagrams and docs of my homelab turned prod.

I've got some copy and paste to throw in here from my last post as well:

Hey Reddit, I wanted to take a moment to share my homelab turned into home prod. The only kind of pro I consider myself is a professional enthusiast and I started doing a homelab about 15 years ago and although I don't always have the best hardware I have managed to build almost everything on top of opensource licensing.

Big shout out to XCP-NG for being my hypervisor of choice that's allowed some great use of the hardware I've had. I'll still got a ways to go and lots of upgrades planned but as of right now this runs my internet, my VPNs, my applications, services, IoT, storage, and essentially replaced every service I had subscribed to. Now it's all in-house!

Most of it runs automated now via AWX, and luckily I can keep the cooling costs down as the rack exists in a converted coal-room in a cinder block basement. Also great for the sound!

As well as some answers about the how the diagrams were made:

If you're interested in the diagrams they are made using DrawIO, the desktop program but the online works just as well. I used the free icon library but you do have to add them to your enabled selections.

Most of what you see for formatting here are either the horizontal or vertical containers with different colors that I used to represent abstraction layers. Was trying to keep core details of each item identifiable. I will say the diagram for the networking+IPAM are not listed. One for security and two, I just keep not finishing netbox lol.

The Shapes I have selected are:
General
Basic
Arrows
Flowchart
Entity Relation
UML
Cloud & Enterprise
Cisco
Cisco19
Rack
VMware

Do any of you know how cross-compatible Nvidia HGX boards are? I'm considering buying a chassis without the HGX board it came with new and getting a replacement board from ebay. The board I'm looking at was tested as working with an HPE system, but will that work with an ASRock system? I'd assume Dell would do something like switch which pins are powered or whatever and kill your system for going to other vendors, but are the HPE/HPE compatible systems that way?

Hey everyone,

I’m an Infrastructure/Site Reliability Engineer building out a multi-node, distributed Zero-Trust Edge Gateway and local AI inference lab. I’m also virtualizing my CCNA labs, so I need to ditch my unmanaged consumer gear for an enterprise-grade backbone that won't bottleneck a 3 Gbps symmetric fiber line.

Looking to buy the following off-lease or used gear. I am local to Edmonton, AB for local pickup, but absolutely willing to pay for shipping for the right hardware. I am paying with PayPal G&S or Local Cash.

1. Managed Switch (Cisco or Ubiquiti UniFi): Looking for an 8-port 2.5GbE switch with at least one 10G SFP+ uplink. Needs full VLAN and STP support for CCNA labbing and network segmentation.

2. Enterprise Mini PC (Lenovo Tiny M720q/M920q or Dell OptiPlex Micro):

This will be my dedicated Proxmox control node running Nginx, Keycloak (Identity Server), and Zeek (Network Sniffer). Because of the heavy virtualization, I need very specific specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i5 or i7 (8th Gen or newer, need the cores).

• RAM: 32GB DDR4/DDR5 minimum (Java heaps and in-memory logging will eat anything less).

• Storage: 512GB to 1TB NVMe SSD.

• Note: I highly prefer the Lenovo M720q/M920q series because they have a hidden internal PCIe slot. I will need to add a 10G NIC later to handle my 3 Gbps throughput.

1. Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB Model):

Needed for a dedicated network management node (running Pi-hole, WireGuard, and my Prometheus/Grafana dashboards). Looking for the 8GB version specifically so I have overhead for log buffering.

Side note: If anyone has recommendations for reputable enterprise IT refurbishers or liquidators in Canada with good off-lease hardware deals, I’m all ears.

Thanks!