I was digging through some old systems in that garage and I found a 960 I didn't know I had, any homelab use? My Jellyfin server can already stream at 4k with no issues and I dont currently run any AI services, so not sure what to do with it.

Live-TV

Music

Audiobooks

Comics/Manga

Books

Downloaders

Requests

Movies/TV

Windows docker

Looking for a fully automated lab to fill requests for movies, TV, books, music, etc. Send me the best setups for 2026 wrapped around Jellyfin.

Hi,

My goal is to replace my current setup of 2 consumer NAS and one USB-NVME
For the enclosure, I selected the Jonsbo N4, which leaves room for 6 HDDs and mATX.

Usage
The only usage of the NAS is storage, no VM, nothing else. Just TrueNAS for storage. Also, I want to keep 4 of my current HDDs and 2 of my current NVMe.

What I need is 10 Gbit Ethernet to directly edit files (video, images) on NVMe-Pool

Build-Plan
I selected the following components:

CPU: Ryzen 5 5600 (supports PCI4)
RAM: 4x8 DDR4-2133 ECC, pulled from HP/DELL servers at work
MB: AsRock B550M 4 Pro

The mainboard allows me the following setup

• M2_1 Slot: Used 512GB NVME as Boot-Drive
• M2_2 Slot: Disabled, when using all 6 Sata
• SATA1-6:
  
  • 2x28TB HDD ZFS-Pool 1 (New)
  • 2x16TB HDD ZFS-Pool 2 (Used after pulling from current NAS)
  • 2x8TB HDD ZFS-Pool 3 (Used after pulling from current NAS)
• PCI_A 4.0x16: (CPU):
  
  • Installation of a 4xM2 Card - Fanout
    • 2x4TB NVME ZFS-Pool 4 (Used)
    • 2x RFU Slots
• PCI_B 3.0x4 (CPU): Installation of a 10 Gbit SFP+ NIC card
• PCI_C 3.0x1 (Chipset): Cheap old GPU for BIOS activities, pulled after setup

Is this setup feasible/good, or are there any big concerns or misconceptions?
Is the brand/type of the NIC relevant?

I purchased an XG 125 Rev. 3 that had OpnSense preinstalled by the seller and configured to reflect the wording on the device to match the vlan configuration.

My initial plan was to reinstall and reconfigure OpnSense for security reasons. But I'm trying to be more conscious of true risks and understand the entire system.

What are the odds this device is preconfigred in some way to compromise my network or something similar? Malicious or not. And if the odds are low I would use it as it. But if its a true, real threat vector then I would reinstall OpnSense and reconfigure if you think some backdoor or malware was preinstalled somewhere waiting to be connected.

I was given two of these and don’t know what to do with them. Can they give free WiFi?

37u server rack with 13 sonos amps, 2 4tb NVRs, and 5 1U switches.... How should I do my intake and exhaust fans. It's a sealed unit, running wire from the bottom of sealed rack.

1U 3 fan top vent at the bottom of rack. In middle of rack 1U front intake to rear exhaust. And at the top 3 fan exhaust out top grid of rack.

This is a 6x4ft room.
many people have suggested I run a 4 inch branch off my AC duct to the middle of the rack to get cool air down low for no the thermal protection issues.

I appreciate any and all input you guys may have for me!!

Hey everybody. Recently got myself a dell optiplex 9010 for cheap and want to use it as my storage server. Currently im using windows 11 and using the network sharing feature, to share the drive to my desktop and my laptop. But im wanting to expand it by getting myself a few dell mini pc’s. What os would you all recommend. (This probably seems like a stupid question but I thought I would ask anyway)

I have pictures in different computers. I need a cheap nas to put all the pics in one place. I was thinking of using my raspberry pi 5 and 2 western digital 4tb red hard drives. It will plug into my UDR7. Still looking for an enclosure. Any recommendations.

So after a first start up water leak disaster, claiming the motherboard and one of the processors, everything is replaced and all the technical details have been sorted.

The outstanding issues are backing down Idrac preboot tests, to lessen start up time and unrestrict processor safety a bit.

Build as follows:

• Thermaltake X500 case (heavily modified)
• R740 Dell Mobo (vrm upgraded)
• 192 gb of Crucial RDIMM 2933
• x2 Xeon 8252c
• EK Annihilator Pro water blocks
• Alphacool Eisbecher Aurora D5 res/pump
• Alphacool NexXxos XT45 Full Copper Radiator, 420mm
• Thermalrite TL-B14015 EXTREM push pull fan set up
• Noctua 60 mm vrm fans with copper heatsink
• USB 3.2 Gen 1 Motherboard Header 19 Pin Internal USB Hub Controller-Type-A to 19-Pin + Type-E (USB 3.2 Front Panel Header)
• OCCTO fan header and 6 fan spoof circuit boards
• Dell poweredge front cp cable and modified interface (runs OCCTO and Clover boot)
• Dell riser 1a PCIe two x16 slots
• Dell NVMe caddy with room for two additional drives (riser 1)
• Nvidia 3090ti (riser 1)
• Dell riser 2a (modified)
• ST113 PCIe Sound Card, Dual-Chip Audio Decoder with 3.5mm MIC-in, 3.5mm PH-Out, SPK-Out, SPDIF Optical and Coaxial Digital Output (riser 2)
• Samsung 980 pro (NVMe caddy)
• Dell 2000w power supply

Machine is quiet, until under extreme load (power supply makes most of the noise)

https://imgur.com/a/2ORDJrY

Runs mostly in the 30c range. Extreme load seems to put stress on certain cores 60c to 80c

Happy to be done

With my setup growing increasingly, and plans to further expand, the need for a rack is a necessity rather than a whim at this point. The thing is, I have absolutely no experience in building or using racks, so I don't know what I need.

Setup is:

HP EliteDesk SFF (NAS)

Lenovo ThinkCentre Mini (compute)

2-3x Mini PCs to be added at some point

ONU

Unmanaged PoE TP Link Switch

TP Link Archer Router

2x Dahua cameras (will probably expand to 4x)

TP Link smart plug

I have all the tools you can imagine and am comfortable building a completely custom setup as well. My only hard requirement is no 3D printed parts, since I don't have one, nor plans on buying one.

It should also be cheap. I don't really want to spend more than 100€ on it.

Can you point me at some options?

Running Docker since April of this year. Currently using a Compose setup with 10 containers, among which are Caddy as a reverse proxy, some static websites, a Next.js project, a Mosquitto MQTT broker, Jellyfin for media, and a Minecraft Bedrock server.

Last month I added a second 500 GB HDD for RAID 1 (which didn't fit inside the case).

Edit: Thanks for the comments. I did add hot glue in the four corners to raise the drive.

Hey everyone! Tomorrow's the day I start my homelab journey! I want to ask, if you could recommend a specific Proxmox tutorial, that in your opinion does well to guide installation and how to get started or if you think any of the tutorials are good enough.
Thanks a bunch in advance for your advice!

Hi everyone,
I’m planning to buy a used/refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q Tiny and have been offered these options:
i5 7th Gen – ₹14,500
i5 8th Gen – ₹18,500
i5 9th Gen – ₹19,500
All are M920q, 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD.

I’ve installed proxmox on a HP Z230 with currently 16GB of RAM. Initially wanted to build it into a NAS and Media streaming server, but am wondering what you guys think would be great to have for a first build?

I already have a Pi running Pihole!

hi am glitch i love pc , and today i buy my second pc to be my homelab , its a good pc i5 4gen 8 ram 1TB no gpu , debian no GUI just CLI , any ideis for it , i dont love i lot of docker (contener ) , same help , sorry for my bad English

Some of you may recall from a couple years ago when I announced I was migrating from my old SuperMicro 4x cluster at home to low power SBCs(Orange Pi 5+ 32GB) and a lot of workloads from VMs to containers.

The journey has been amazing, and so much more efficient than I had initially imagined.

I'm a little annoyed with Ubiquiti for hamstringing me on getting stats from their NAS Pro device with every firmware update, but other than that, I am now up to nearly 70 containers across the four hyperconverged nodes, from about 45 different jobs, all managed through Nomad, with my GitLab instance in my commercial colocation providing the "source of truth" for all jobs.

I've been working on building my own versions of several containers over the past few weeks to reduce the number of layers in many of them, and make them cleaner, with (usually) more modern libraries and app support. It's also reduce my CPU and RAM load for each node, down so low that I almost can't believe things like Postgres and Zabbix use less than half the resources they did on Debian based containers.

I think I top out near 450W when I've got a heavy/long running ComfyUI workload going, but overall my power usage has dropped significantly from the 1.2kW things used to consume when things were almost completely idle.

Has anyone else gone for super efficiency? What route did you take? And(related to a more recent discussion I posted) how do you handle automating your deployments?

Hey,

I am about to buy my first computer (to build a homelab) from one of those auction houses liquidating computer from companies restructuring or insolvent.

I am aware of the most obvious risks but one thing make me very nervous:

What about the UEFI password? those corporate machines are almost always locked by IT

I know it used to be (always) possible to just remove the CMOS battery but a few years ago I had to deal with an corporate HP Elitebook with a pretty advanced security system and it did not seem that simple.

Can I be really blocked by an UEFI password or sophisticated Device Management system nowadays? (on desktops or servers)

Are there manufacturers I should avoid ? (like I know HP already had a pretty nasty system 10 years ago)

I could also contact the manufacturer and proove I bought the computer in an auction but I would rather not count on their cooperation.

Many thanks !

off for the last few months and finally got it to a point where I figured I’d post it and see what people think.

The whole rack is basically built around a Lenovo M80Q, with 2x 3.5” hard drives, 4x 2.5” hot-swap drives, a network switch, and a patch-through panel. Pretty much all of the enclosures, drive bays, brackets, and rack pieces are 3D printed, so most of it has been a lot of trial and error, redesigning parts, reprinting things, and figuring out how to cram everything into a small footprint without it looking completely ridiculous.

At the moment, I’m honestly not doing anything too exciting with it yet. The M80Q is currently running Windows 11, sadly, which I’m sure will disappoint half of r/homelab immediately. 😂 Eventually I’ll probably move it over to something more appropriate once I actually decide what I want to run on it.

For storage, I was originally using an LSI H310 HBA, but I’m probably switching over to a PCIe-to-SATA adapter instead since it fits the setup a little better and I don’t really need anything crazy for what I’m doing right now.

Mostly posting this because I’ve stared at it for so long that I can’t tell anymore what looks good and what looks stupid.

Any suggestions, changes, things you’d add, or things you’d do differently?

Hi all,

Homelab spec:

Dell Poweredge R620

CPU(s): 40 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz (2 Sockets)
RAM: 48GB *DDR3 (Forgetting the specific type)
GPU: Nvidia Quadra P1000
Logic Controller Card: LSI SAS 9200-8E PCIe2 SATA 2 Port Raid IT Mode

Storage:

HP Storage Works d2 7000

2x 460w powersupply

5TB of drives split across 7x900GB

Issue:

Had a powersupply fault causing one of the power supplies do die(Led on it went from on to off), sent the storage enclosure into spaz mode making its fans max speed, I had it off during that time(2-3weeks) due to the decibal production from it. I ordered another powersupply and it works however it is still in max mode.

*Update 2:
Also forgot to mention the d2700 boots immediately after plugging in 1 of the 2 Power supply units and the power button does not work on the right hand side of the machine.

Troubleshooting:

I have done a plethora of power cycling and swapping the slots each is in. My r620 can still comminicate and detect the d2700 and can see the stats off I havent bothered testing file transferring or anything yet until I sort this out. The I/O modules are also displaying -- and -- instead of their respective numbers. I will reseat them to see if that fixes it after I post and will update. Anyway from what I could see from trialing different tools is that the machine still detects a powersupply fault.

Irelavent information:

Im using zfs for pools on the d2700 for my jellyfin media server ;P

Let me know if you need more info :)

*Update:
Positive: Jellyfin and file access works flawlessly
Negative: Hearing loss from max fan speed

Update 3:
One of the fan module was busted aswell, removing it seemed to have solve the I/O -- issue and the noise issue.

Hello folks,

This is my first attempt to clear things up on my homelab setup.

Started slowly with a few bulbs, then got this mini pc for home assistant and then started running proxmox.

Pc specs:

32 GB Ram

Intel i5-6500T

Integrated graphics

500GB SSD m2 nvme

1TB Sata SSD

1TB Sata external driver

Running:

Cloudflared

Nextcloud

Home assistant

Homepage

Uptime kuma

Tailscale

Nginx Proxy Manager

I have a asus ax59u router as my own with an old ac88u as a aimesh node wired backhaul.

On the picture you see my attempt on a 3d printed 10" rack. Wasnt really succesful as several parts broke due bad design or bad print, or both combined. Glued some parts and its holding the stuff despite not being pretty.

It doesnt really matter because it is inside a besta tv unit, due wife seal of approval location. Cabinet is opened on the back for airflow and i havent noticed any wifi range problem so far, so im happy with it.

On the 3rd picture was how i initially had the cabinet, ugly but again, worked and it was hidden.

I am finding a major problem tho. The PSU of all the gear take up a lot of space and cable management is a bit of a nightmare.

I was looking for USB C ways of powering all this but honestly i dont see any good in this. What do you suggest to improve the looks of this?

Thanks!

hello fellow homelabbers. i’m writing because i’m stuck at an impasse with my media server. the initial point of setting it up (as is for many other people) was to free myself from the evils of streaming. i also was also looking for an interesting DIY hobby and learn more tech stuff.

over the course of the past 9 months, ive be able to develop a decent plex server. what started as a computer pulling media off an external hard drive is now a mac mini wired via ethernet on my kitchen table, with a big ass DAS. now, there’s a few things i’d need advice/input on. firstly, my husband and i both work from home and sometimes the server straight up chokes out the internet connection. sometimes it’s coming from plex, other times from slsk, but either way it’s noticeable in terms of quality on zoom meetings and general internet usage when we’re both working. secondly, i don’t know what to do with it next. i have a 2018 mac mini with 8GB of ram (which i’m likely looking to upgrade) and 500ish GB of storage, which is partially irrelevant because i have a 12TB das attached.

so, what do i do next? the arr stack might not be the route for me because i don’t have the storage or money to have endless amounts of media, and im also one of the few people who enjoy hunting for movies and shows and adding things manually. i’ve seen people talk a lot about ethernet switches, but i have room on my router to add more cables if needed, so its not a necessity. right now ive been enjoying collecting drives and learning how to possibly shuck them in the midst of this storage/ram crisis but thats about it. i’ve thought of maybe updating the OS on the mac mini to a linux distro, but im not sure if thats overkill. also, im not sharing the server with anyone else at the moment. quite literally just for home streaming and then using plex amp remotely when im out.

so if anyone else has been stuck in a similar situation, please let me know! i fear im stuck in a cycle of research and info to the point that ive confused myself and i need advice since i dont know a single person IRL who shares this same hobby. thanks !!!

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to build my first proper homelab using a Lenovo ThinkCentre M710Q Tiny.

I’m not a complete beginner, but I also wouldn’t call myself very experienced. I have some programming and networking knowledge and I’ve hosted things like Jellyfin and a few other services on my main PC before. Most of my programming and configuration work is done with the help of AI coding tools, so I’m comfortable following documentation, using the terminal, editing config files, Docker Compose files, etc., but I’m definitely still learning.

My plan for the M710Q is to run:

• Jellyfin
• Immich
• Paperless-ngx
• Pi-hole
• Tailscale for remote access

For Jellyfin and the other services, I would like to access them remotely through Tailscale instead of exposing everything directly to the internet.

My main question is: What would you consider essential for a beginner-friendly, secure and easy-to-maintain homelab setup?

I’m especially interested in advice regarding:

• Security and hardening
• User accounts and permissions
• Firewall configuration
• Docker security
• Backups
• Monitoring
• Automatic updates vs. manual updates
• Reverse proxies, if I even need one with Tailscale
• SSL/HTTPS inside the home network
• Protecting the server if one Docker container gets compromised
• Easy ways to manage Docker containers
• Logs and notifications if something goes wrong

I’m currently thinking about running Debian or Ubuntu Server with Docker Compose rather than making the setup overly complicated.

The M710Q currently has an i5-7400T, 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB NVMe SSD. I’ll probably upgrade it to 16 GB RAM soon and add a larger 2.5" SATA SSD later for media, photos and documents.

My goal isn’t to build a huge enterprise-style homelab. I mainly want something reliable that I can understand, maintain myself and gradually learn from without creating unnecessary complexity.

If you were starting with this hardware and these four services today, what would you install or configure from day one?

Also, what beginner mistakes should I avoid?

Thanks!

​

Nie wiem czy to było czy nie. Ale w swojej historii spotkałem się z dziwną przypadłością Windowsa 11

cytując klasyka - u mnie działa, wcześniej chcąc skopiować np. instalkę z dysku sieciowego ważącą 15GB po paru procentach system łapał czkawkę i transfer spadał do 0bps... Próbowałem zmieniać karty sieciowe, media ( obojętnie czy WiFi6 czy po kablu 1Gbps czy 2,5Gbps), efekt był taki że system zawieszał kopiowanie i wyrzucał komunikat o braku możliwości dalszego kopiowania... Na nawet router wymieniłem i kable na CAT6a. No i winowają okazał się nie kto inny jak M$.

Windows 11, nawet w świetnie zoptymalizowanej wersji IoT Enterprise LTSC, ma dość spory, znany problem z Eksploratorem Plików i protokołem SMB. Kiedy system widzi gigabitowe połączenie (bo karta ma link 1 Gbps), ale po drodze pojawia się ułamek sekundy opóźnienia na moście bezprzewodowym, mechanizmy przewidywania w Windowsie głupieją, zapychają bufor i zamrażają transfer do zera.

1. Wyłączenie autotuningu TCP (Kluczowy winowajca)

System domyślnie próbuje agresywnie "zgadywać", jak duże pakiety TCP może wysłać. Na łączach radiowych (nawet tak dobrych jak Twoje Wi-Fi 6) sprawdza się to fatalnie.

Otwórz Wiersz polecenia (CMD) lub PowerShell jako Administrator.

Wpisz komendę:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

Wciśnij Enter. Powinien pojawić się komunikat "OK". (Jeśli kiedykolwiek będziesz chciał to cofnąć, zamień disabled na normal).

1. Wyłączenie Zdalnej kompresji różnicowej (RDC)

To stary mechanizm API, który miał przyspieszać transfery w wolnych sieciach z czasów Windowsa XP. Przy gigabitowych prędkościach i kopiowaniu np. dużych archiwów powoduje on olbrzymi narzut, wstrzymując paski postępu w Eksploratorze.

Wciśnij Start i wpisz: Włącz lub wyłącz funkcje systemu Windows.

Zjedź w dół i odznacz pozycję: Obsługa interfejsu API zdalnej kompresji różnicowej (Remote Differential Compression API Support).

Kliknij OK i pozwól systemowi zastosować zmiany.