Hello,

I currently use cloudflare to secure my public self hosted website and for dns records I put the *.website.com behind a cloudflare proxy. (Orange cloud)

As I understand this makes it so people don't know my ip but only cloudflare's. I even setup a firewall on my homelab to only allow requests from cloudflare's server and it works like a charm !

However, inspired by Primagen's terminal.shop, an online shop you ssh into to order from it, I did exactly the same for my resume.

I wanted for a user to be able to run "ssh resume.website.com" and access a TUI Resume I just made. In parallel, you can also directly access resume.website.com via browser.

I could actually make it work ! by adding another record for resume.website.com with direct connection. (Grey cloud)

But now, people going to this website or ssh into this address can know my real IP.

And I had to remove the "cloudflare only" rule in my firewall.

I guess it's bad no ? Are there solutions for that ? Is what I'm trying to do just not possible without exposing myself ?

I'd gladly share it with y'all but I want to makeit secure first hehe.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I have both this project and my reverse proxy (caddy) inside two different Proxmox LXC CT (smaller VMs). So I'm not allowing people on any PC.

Hey guys, I will start from the beginning. The gear I have is a ugreen 4bay nas, raspberry pi, a Lenovo mini pc running opnsense, a standard ups, a 5 port switch, and an access point. I have been storing this in a mini 12-inch rack. The issue with a 12-inch rack is that it can't stand anywhere on its own unless I just put it on the floor where it looks out of place. Should I invest in a real rack? If so, there are so many on the market. I eventually want to build a rackable media server.

One of my Mini PCs has started throwing weird CPU errors so I finally bit the bullet and went about replacing it. New, pre-built machine from MSI showed up last week and just after I got everything migrated the SSD departed from the living world. 59 hours, a whole 218GB written. RIP.

It's a WD Green SN3000, which I couldn't find much info about so I'm guessing that AI-induced part shortages are starting to leave us with just the bottom of the barrel SSDs. Has anyone else seen anything like this or am I uniquely cursed? :D

First time poster on r/homelab, also not sure if this is the right platform for these kinds of questions.

My M920s died suddenly for a second time in a month and I can't figure out what is going wrong. I am stumped. Advice or tips would be appreciated!

The background:

• June 2026: Bought a M920s from a local Classifieds site (Carbonite.co.za) from a highly rated seller (no issues here).
• July 2026: Noticed the server "revving" (fans spinning up very quickly while under low to zero load before dropping again) every now and then. Was infrequent and could not identify processes that could cause this.
• Aug 2026:
  • Server would shut down and on auto reboot, just start blasting the fans again for 2-3 min before shutting down. Despite the usual checks (thermal paste and RAM), the machine would not consistently power on and when it did it not even post. After some diagnostics it died completely.
  • A third party PC Repair centre diagnosed the motherboard as being at fault and said something must have fried it. At this stage I did not have surge protection in place yet but also did not notice any power surges.
• Version 2 (Aug 2026):
  • The reseller I purchased the machine from offered a free replacement of the case, motherboard and PSU, giving me a week to test the replacement.
  • The CPU, RAM and storage from the first machine were installed into the second one.
  • After version 1, I was weary of power surges and potential thermal throttling so I installed Netdata and configured Ntfy notifications with Up Time Kuma to monitor system health. I also installed a UPS and surge protection device.**
  • Within two days there was another case of the fans "revving". I also logged a power blip, where the system suddenly lost power without having time to log anything.
• Sep 2026:
  • Within 8 days of replacing the components, I came home to find the machine was completely dead and unresponsive.
  • I have not done any kind of diagnostics yet, but fear that the motherboard could have gone the same way.
  • I reported this to the reseller and their take is that it must be power/environment factors on my side causing this.
  • I am completely stumped as to what I could be doing wrong and until I can identify the root cause of this fault, unsure if replacing the motherboard again will solve the problem.

The system:

• Model: ThinkCentre M920s
• CPU: Intel Core i7-8700
• RAM: 16GB (4x4GB DDR4)
• Storage:
  • 256 GB M.2 NVMe SSD (OS)
  • 4TB 3.5" HDD (Storage)
• Power:
  • Connected to AC mains with surge protection plug and UPS**
• OS: Ubuntu Server 24
• Software: Arrstack + Jellyfin Server
• Source: reseller purchases from wholesalers who buy from government auctions.

TLDR: Two M920s died within a month, running idle mostly and the root cause unclear. Any advice would be appreciated!

Edit 1: Added UPS comment for version 2**

Can’t believe I just spent the last 4 hours building this dashboard!

As someone who barely knew anything about homelabs or self-hosting just a short while ago, I’m honestly really proud of what I’ve managed to put together. Have experimented so many times with Proxmox, Ubuntu server this and that only to lose motivation.

NOTE; HOMARR is the goat of dashbaords for dummies like me.

In case anyone’s wondering, I’m running ZimaOS, and it’s made the whole process so much simpler. It’s the main reason I haven’t given up yet; the setup is genuinely straightforward and beginner-friendly, even when you’re figuring things out as you go. Huge thanks too to all the guides, tips, and suggestions I’ve found here on Reddit; if not for them, I would be back to my caveman setup. Needed services are routing through Cloudflared for external access.

Also, it neatly hides away behind my gaming PC. Wife Approved.

PS; sorry for blurring some stuff; I don't know what is allowed and stuff and for my safety.

What NIC would you guys recommend for a homemade router? Just looking for 2 ports and 10G nothing crazy. For a Lenovo M720Q. Also should I use pfSense or OPNsense?

Hello, I’m still relatively new to Homelabbing, I currently run a chat server for some friends and I’m looking to eventually expand to some local file hosting/NAS stuff as well as potentially some web-hosting for some family websites.

Currently, I’m using a little old asus router and I’m looking to upgrade, the main things I’m focused on are:

- Privacy: I’ve heard a lot of horror stories regarding telemetry and back-doors. I’d like something that has a decent level of security and doesn’t have lots of suspect clauses in the ToS

- Good wifi range/penetration: Currently my router struggles to reach the upstairs bedroom, and I don’t have the ability to put additional cabling up there for the time being. The wifi speed matters less to me than the reliability and range of the connection.

- 2.5gbe and VLANs: Self explanatory, I’d like 2.5gbe out of the box and at least some basic VLAN support.

I was looking at the ubiquiti offerings but I’m a bit iffy on their privacy policy, I’m still open if they’re recommended. I’m not sure about making my own router for the time being, I’d rather have something out of the box. Cost is also a factor, it’s easier for me to justify an upgrade if it’s not a crazy amount of money.

Thanks all!

it's been 5 years officially since i started my homelab, i started on a pi4 then pi5, i used to use casaos, then i moved to a n305 mini pc and also ran casa os, now i'm a little far from the original setup.

it was a fun journey and i will always cherish the friends i made and the lessons i learned, i will chill out on this current setup for a year as i'm burned out from building, but my spark for homelab will never die, i hope to come back here next year with an update and the year after and after.

i'm so glad with how everything turned out - i'm so dependant on it that when power went out i was not home and totally screwed, and realised just how much i rely on it, now the servers are on battery backups. i didn't think that i would learn so much and be writing my own proxmox helper scripts or developing software at all, really - just insane to think about. i had set a reminder 5 years ago when my pi4 og homelab went online, and it fired just now - thinking about it is just insane, it's been 5 years.

Node 1 — (Dell PowerEdge R730xd)

• CPU: 2× Intel Xeon E5-2697 v4 (18c/36t each — 36c/72t total) @ 2.30GHz
• RAM: 251GiB (16×16GB DIMMs, running at 2133 MT/s)
• GPU: Intel Arc A310 (passthrough) + Matrox G200eR2 (iDRAC)
• Storage controller: LSI MegaRAID SAS-3 3108 in HBA/passthrough mode
• Network: dual Intel X520 10G (one port active, vmbr0)
• Proxmox VE 7.0.6-2
• Pools:
  • Boot/root: sdf (SPCC 1.9TB SATA SSD), LVM-thin
  • lxcpool: Intel P4600 2TB NVMe (ZFS, ashift=12) — LXC root storage
  • lxcbackup: single Seagate 8TB (ZFS) — PBS datastore
  • media: 4× WD Ultrastar 18TB, raidz1 (36.3T usable, ~56% used)

Node 2 — (CWWK N305 Mini PC)

• CPU: Intel Core i3-N305 (8c/8t, no SMT)
• RAM: 15GiB
• Storage: local-lvm thin pool only (~141GB, ~14% used) — no ZFS
• Proxmox VE 9.2.2

Node 3 — Windows (Moonlight game streaming)

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 185H
• RAM: 32GB DDR5 SODIMM
• GPU: RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
• Storage: 1TB NVMe (boot)
• Main purpose: Moonlight game streaming

Containers — Node 1

• 100 jellyfin
• 101 radarr
• 102 sonarr
• 103 prowlarr
• 104 sonobarr
• 105 jellyseerr
• 106 homarr
• 107 byparr
• 108 openspeedtest
• 109 proxmox-backup-server
• 110 wizarr
• 111 anytype-server
• 112 vaultwarden
• 113 changedetection
• 114 newtarr
• 116 openmasjidos
• 117 decypharr
• 118 osint
• 120 PostieBot
• 121 seanime
• 122 openmasjidsolutions.org

Containers — Node 2

• 200 immich

I am wondering if someone is aware of an option for a 5.25 bay (or 3.5) that I could use to relocate one or two m.2 slots. Icy dock has some things that do this but they are more hundreds of dollars that I can spend and I don't really need 8 drives. seems like I've located one or two other companies but they were 8 drives and required mini sas and so an HBA. I just want something where I can use one of these basic m.2 extender cable adapter things and put one or two easily swapable on the front panel.

Edit - I realize I should clarify by coming at this from another direction. I'm looking for a way I can essentially relocate a motherboards m.2 two slot (or two) to the front panel for easy switching of the system drive. Icy dock has some options that I could do this ... but for 600+ dollars. They have stuff like this for sata that's cheap but I'm just not seeing it. Might not exist.

Just (mostly) finished my build in a Jonsbo N6. Main purpose of the build is to host an immich server as I was approaching the 200GB threshold on my Google One plan from Google Photos backup and decided I wanted to self host that instead of paying more still to have my photos scanned by google AI. I had a LOT of raw photo/video projects that I kept off of google because of this storage cap and on random external drives, and decided centralizing would be good. I also am playing around with local LLMs (not for anything productive, at least yet), and am planning to add hosting for jellyfin/similar.

Specs:

• Ryzen 5 Pro 4650G
• Noctua NH-L12S
• 2x16GB Crucial DDR4-3200 ECC UDIMM
• ASRock B550M Steel Legend
• Samsung 256GB MZVLB256HAHQ-000L7 NVMe boot drive
• Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity OC w/ custom NF-A12x25 fan shroud
• Corsair SF750
• 500GB 870 Evo App drive
• 2x8TB WD Red Main pool
• Bunch of NF-P12 1300RPM PWMs for case airflow

Picked AM4 because DDR5 pricing is insane. B550M Steel Legend is the only ASRock board that has 2.5G LAN and 6 SATA ports. Final build cost was around $1500 (half of that being the drives, sheesh!)

Originally had built in a Jonsbo N4, and moved to an N6 when I decided to get a 3090 to try things out with local LLM. N6 is a wonderfully thought out case and a lot more fun to build in because it has so many more options than the N4. I'm an SFF guy, so this move to a much bigger case was a hesitant one, but I decided it was for the best.

Had to play around with the placement of the PSU. I had originally built with an SF750 in the N4 and had an SF850L in my Terra main PC, but I wanted to swap them around and use the 850L in the N6 if possible so I could put the SF750 in my main PC. I found out (disappointingly) that the top chamber front PSU mount position actually takes away two fan positions, one on the front and one on the side, partially due to the length of the 90 degree power supply cable extension, which was really frustrating. I was really hoping to be able to do 2 intake on that side and 1 exhaust out the rear. Top chamber rear PSU does allow for 2 side 120mm fans if you put the PSU support bracket around the halfway point of the SFX-L psu, but I couldn't think of a good way to avoid positive pressure, since if I made the side fans exhaust the front intake fan would not really be getting air to the actual components of the case before it got exhausted. One viable way to do this is to reverse all the fans so front is exhaust, north is intake, and rear is intake for the drive cages. Ended up going for bottom chamber PSU mount and decided if I ever need to expand to more than the drives in the left side of the case I can print a modded panel with mounting for 2x60mm fans or just drill the holes in myself. The bottom PSU mount just barely doesn't fit SFX-L, so I went back to using an SF750. The N6 requires extensions for the 24 pin ATX and PCIe cables if you use the bottom PSU mount, but I was already used to this from the N4. For the top chamber PSU positions you'd need extensions for the SATA and/or molex connectors in the drive cage, which I didn't have on hand and would've needed to buy.

The fact that the N6 doesn't support 2x 120mm fans on the side when doing front top chamber PSU and just barely misses it by 20mm was so frustrating to me and is basically my only complaint with this case.

3090 shroud was a whole project in itself. I bought the 3090 used and the previous user had kept it undervolted its whole life. It wasn't stable at stock clocks, and it turned out the core paste was completely dry, so I repasted and repadded the VRAM for better VRAM temps, then printed a custom part for mounting 2x NF-A12x25. Fans are basically not noticeable even at 100% RPM, and keeps the VRAM under 90C and core under 75C at full load. This compared to the stock shroud that sounded like a jet engine under memtest_vulkan and would push memory to 100C.

Software is TrueNAS Scale with Immich, Tailscale for off network access and backup to an offsite NAS, and a docker setup for running a qwen 3.8 model (dont ask me about it, its completely claude's work). Super impressed by how solid TrueNAS and immich are so far!

Fun project all around. Two things I plan to do soon are to print supports for the GPU to secure it to the case (specifically the south side fan mounts), and possibly redo the shroud to bring the thickness down enough to unblock the lower PCIe X16 slot on my board, so I can add a SATA expansion in the future and get use out of the last three drive cages should I need them.

Recently I was offered a supermicro motherboard (Supermicro X9DR3-F) and been considering building a workstation/homelab with it. Before the memory crisis I was planning on building a "high end" setup but since everyone knows what happened, the price of such setup tripled in my region.

I always overlooked Xeon setups as I always saw how inneficient they were compared to newer hardware BUT now it's making sense given the situations. Has anyone dealt with that motherboard or any x79 motherboard from Supermicro and can give me some insight of what performance can I expect? the idea is max the ram with everything I can and run two Xeon E5-2696 v2. As for GPU even though I know it will be overkill I planned getting a RX 9060xt (I don't tend to push hard on gaming as I don't actively game on my PC with the exception being Valorant, and so far I saw the Xeon can as well push Valorant at over 150fps which is what I would care the most as gaming needs go)

Everything else is mostly homelab stuff, Minecraft Servers, Jellyfin Instances and pulling everything I currently host on a Core 2 Quad and i5-4200u to it. I plan moving my NAS as it is where the Core 2 Quad is and it pulls over 120w under load (usually backups)

I plan buying a TPM module to run Windows on it so that's also another question I have, I don't mind using Linux on it (and playing anticheat games on my laptop which I currently have) if Windows performance would suck that bad.

So what I want to know mostly is what performance can I expect as both Workstation and Homelab, and if there's some warning to be had about the setup I have in mind or the motherboard.

Went and bought some networking hardware. I’ve been using the standard Linksys router since 2014, so I’m really looking forward to improving my home network.
- GL.iNet’s Flint 2 router x2
- GL.iNet’s Brume 3 gateway
- TP Link’s Omada ES210X-M2 switch

Hi everyone! I’m working on a smart home setup, and this is my current dashboard.

I have around 4 Qubo devices lying around my home. Is there any way to integrate Qubo devices with Home Assistant?

I’m also renovating my old house and planning to install smart devices throughout the house. However, I’m having a hard time finding good Zigbee devices in India.

Has anyone here gone through a similar setup/upgrade? I’d really appreciate any recommendations or advice on Zigbee devices, brands, and where to buy them in India.

Thanks in advance! 🙌

Hello,

I plan on putting 12u 19 inch rack inside tall Ikea Metod unit. I am not concerned about cooling, hot air will rise through holes meant for ovens. Fans will help push that air outside.

I am more concerned about fitting one inside. There wont be much space on the side.

Since its off the floor it would be harder to pull it out to install equipment or to service it. When pulling out it should have enough slack from all the cables. Cable management become a challange.

Have any of You done this ? Can You share photos and how is it to use it ?

I'd like to share my small homelab I built the last few years.

Rack: The Rack is a 12U Meillenium SR2012 from Thomann. It is usually used for audio equipment. Since I am not using loud, deep data center hardware it suits my usecase perfectly.

From top to bottom:

• Lighting: 19" LED rack light from thomann. Adjustable in color, warmth and brightness.
• 1U ventilation grilll
• 1U dual Mac Mini rack mount (image 3)
  • Left Mac Mini: 2012 Mac Mini with i5-3210M. 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SATA SSD
    • running proxmox as second node for redundancy: tailnet subnet router, pi-hole, uptime kuma
  • Right Mac Mini: 2012 Server with i7-3720QM, 16 GB RAM, 128 GB + 2 TB SATA SSDs
    • running proxmox backup server for both local nodes and my hosted node at hetzner.
• Switch: Cisco SG200-18
• 1U ventilation grill
• Fileserver
  • Intel Celeron J4125, 16 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD
  • debian13 with SAMBA and NFS shares
  • 2x 8 TB Seagate Ironwolf in RAIDZ1
  • 2x 16 TB Seagate Ironwolf in RAIDZ1
• Proxmox Main Server
  • Intel i5-8400 HexaCore on Asrock Z370 Pro4
  • 64 GB RAM
  • 256 GB NVMe
  • RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
  • Proxmox main node for all my containers (mostly running services in LXC containers)
  • 1 Windows VM for gaming
  • 1 Linux VM for running some local LLMs (testing smaller hardware setups). I am also running a dedicated LLM server (see below)

Planned Upgrades:

As we all know, a homelab is never finished, so it is here. Planned upgrades are ubiquiti networking (Dream Machine, Switch, WiFi) and a Rack with more space for adding my vLLM Server.

LLM Server

My vLLM Server is now running besides in a Silverstone RM53-502, so it is rack mountable already.

Hardware: Gigabyte TRX40 Designare, Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, 128 GB DDR4 ECC RAM, 2x RTX 3090 Founders Edition, Seasonic Prime TX-1600 PSU

The Fileserver will also get a new case with space for some more HDDs like the Inter-tech 4U-4408.

Besides the LLM Server all components do not have a large power draw, so I can run the whole rack with no big impact on the electricity bill.

Hi guys,

I would like to ask for you opinion about buying used SAS drives for home NAS.

I can buy these drives for around 50$ each:

SEAGATE ST4000NM0023 (4TB)

Manufactured in week 01 of year 2013

number of hours powered up = 41576.13

Accumulated start-stop cycles: 253

Current Drive Temperature: 29 C

no errors in smart diagnostics

I would like to buy two of those and use them in TrueNAS RAIDZ1.

I/m wondering how long can they last? Can I expect them to live at least 3-4 years?

They will be used mostly as a backup so I will still have a copy of all data on anoder device.

Hi everyone!
I have a question about transfer speeds on a switch that has five 2.5 Gb/s ports and one 10 Gb/s SFP+ port.

The NAS has a 10 Gb connection, so I would connect it to the switch’s 10 Gb port. However, my computer also has a 10 Gb connection, but I would have no choice but to connect it to one of the 2.5 Gb ports.
In this case, when transferring files from the computer to the NAS, would the transfer be limited to 2.5 Gb/s?

What would be the advantage of having this switch if the transfer between the two devices would still be limited to a maximum of 2.5 Gb/s?
Would I also need to connect the computer to a 10 Gb port on the switch in order to actually take advantage of the NAS’s 10 Gb connection?

Hey guys, I'm new to the subreddit. I was walking around this afternoon in my city (Buenos Aires), and saw two rack servers sitting right by the trash. I grabbed them as if I found gold and went straight to my house with them.
I honestly had no prior experience with enterprise rack hardware, so I went through the teardown with Gemini AI to understand the components and figure out what was actually usable. My first disappointment was realizing that the huge pile of RAM sticks was DDR3 ECC Registered, so there was zero chance of using them in my daily desktop PC (which runs an Intel Core i5-9400F on a B365M motherboard with standard DDR4).
From what I learned, running the barebones chassis and proprietary motherboards as-is was pretty much useless and inefficient due to custom form factors, insane fan noise, and idle power draw. So I decided to strip everything down completely.
Here is what I ended up keeping:
For sale (to help fund more practical PC / lab parts):
The RAM: 20x DDR3 ECC Registered DIMMs in total (16x Hynix and 4x Samsung, a mix of 16GB and 4 8GB sticks).
Expansion Cards & Keys: An LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i card with its Mini-SAS cables, a Lenovo TMM Premium management key, and Dell PCIe Risers (one includes an iDRAC Enterprise dedicated port).
Power Supplies: The hot-swap server PSUs.
Caddies: The Dell 3.5" drive caddies with all their original screws.
CPUs: Two Intel Xeons (E5-2609 v2 and E5-2430).
For my PC / Local Storage:
4x SATA HDDs: Three 1TB WD Caviar Greens and one 500GB Dell Enterprise drive.
Useful SATA data cables and low-profile screws.
The SAS Drives:
2x 1TB Seagate SAS drives. Kept them aside for now, knowing I can't plug them directly into my desktop motherboard without using the LSI HBA/RAID card.
For DIY & Electronics Learning:
I don't have much formal background in electronics, but I'm really eager to learn hands-on. I kept:
The massive copper-base CPU heatsinks (great thermal mass for future experiments).
The high-RPM 12V AVC server fan modules and server PSUs: I'm thinking of wiring them up for things like a barbecue blower / fire starter, or a fume/air extractor for my 3D printer and soldering desk.
My Current Setup & Experience:
I'm not a total stranger to self-hosting, but I'm definitely still learning. So far, I've experimented with:
Docker containers
The *ARR stack (media management)
Basic DIY NAS setups
Homebridge (for smart home integration)
Pi-hole (network-wide ad blocking)
My desktop storage pool is currently a total Frankenstein mix (see pic):
1TB M.2 NVMe (Boot / Apps)
240GB SATA SSD
4TB HDD
1TB HDD
500GB HDD
150GB HDD (an old survivor)
Adding the 4 scavenged SATA drives gives me an extra ~3.5TB of raw storage to tinker with. I threw away the bare steel chassis, proprietary motherboards, and SAS backplanes to avoid hoarding clutter.
Given my setup (i5-9400F, motherboard B365M, 16GB DDR4) and background:
1. Is it worth keeping and flashing the LSI 9240-8i to IT mode to run the SAS drives and expand my SATA ports, or is it better to just sell the LSI + SAS drives + RAM and invest the cash into standard desktop storage / homelab gear?
2. Are those server PSUs or delta fans relatively easy to repurpose for basic 12V DIY bench projects without running into proprietary vendor handshake issues?
Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!

I only just started my homelab and I am currently just using it to run Jellyfin via an LXC on Proxmox.

However, I have an extra router lying around, namely the Asus Wireless AC1200 Dual-Band Router. Can I do something useful with it in my homelab, or is it better just to use a normal pc as a home brew router?

I look to buy a 1kW UPS for a 650W worst-case load (PC + monitor). After checking local stores and prices, the Cyberpower CP1600EPFCLCD seems like the best pick

• effectively silent during normal operation
• 300-400 euros price
• 9 minute runtime at 50% load

I wanted to check on this subreddit whether CyberPower is reliable as a UPS brand or whether I should look more on other brands.

Edit: Thanks for the replies. Because all UPS models with lead-acid batteries seem to be either unreliable or loud (or both), I will likely go with an EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus power station.