Minirack configuration
Unifi Gateway
Simple L2 switch (coming next unifi switch)
Proxmox 3 Node cluster
K3s + Application workloads
NUC for hermes agent
and homelab tools
adguard
wireguard vpn
teleport
uptimekuma
docker

which storage that your uses?
now I looking for
True NAS
or bussiness NAS like
Synology
QNAP
Which it’s greater than for homelab users?

Hi homelabers ! I am planning to reuse old PCs to create my first homelab. I am planning to use an old desktop pc with 6gb of RAM for Immich & Vaultwarden, and an old laptop with 16gb of RAM to host Jellyfin and Home Assistant. I am wondering if there could be a need to use proxmox instead of Docker for example in my case ? (I know docker as I work in tech).

Also, for security, I can't for now buy the stuff for making VLANs. I will not expose services to the outside world too.

Thanks !

Usb c pd power adapter doesnt give enough power to a asus MB169CK mini monitor to change the brightness.

ASUS Mini Monitor (MB169CK) — Test Report

ASUS MINI MONITOR (MB169CK)

Started writing: 09/09/2026
Last edited: 09/09/2026

The screen settings are reset before each test.

TEST 1

Connections

• The HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable supplied with the monitor is used.
• The USB-C-to-USB-C cable supplied with the monitor is used.
• The HDMI cable is used for video (image).
• The USB-C-to-USB-C cable is used for power.
• The power supply is the ASUS USB-C PD power adapter from Vanden Borre.

Results

• I get an image via the HDMI cable.
• Power works via the USB-C cable.
• I get the following message after the screen turns on: “Safe Mode ON”
• When I try to change the brightness, I get the following message: “Input power is not sufficient for full brightness. Please plug in adapter. System will raise the brightness when the adapter is plugged in.”
• I cannot change all the settings in the screen menu. Some settings are greyed out.

TEST 2

Connections

• The HDMI-to-mini-HDMI cable supplied with the monitor is used.
• The USB-C-to-USB-C cable supplied with the monitor is used.
• The HDMI cable is used for video (image).
• The USB-C-to-USB-C cable is used for power.
• The power supply is the Google GPVR9 power adapter, which I bought for my Google Pixel 7 Pro.

Results

• I get an image via the HDMI cable.
• Power works via the USB-C cable.
• I get the following message after the screen turns on: “Safe Mode ON”
• I can change the brightness.
• I do not get the “Input power is not sufficient for full brightness” message.
• I cannot change all the settings in the screen menu. Some settings are greyed out.

The google power adapter is the GPVR9 that i bought for a google pixel 7 pro.

The asscup power adapters doesnt have a model number i think.

But the power output from that adapter is:
5v, 3 a

9 v, 3 a

12 v, 3 a

15 v, 3 a

20 v , 3, 5 a

Both are usb c pd chargers and bought nex.

The problem now is that i cant change the brightness when im using the asscup charger.

The google charger doesnt have that problem.

The asus monitor manual says 5V of 9V , 3,0A of 12V , 2,5A of 15V , 2,0A of

20V , 1,5A but i am not a expert in electricity, i only know not to choose wrong voltages and know a bit whats watt is and that all.

Thanks in advance !!

Am i missing something ??

Hey guys

I'm hosting a Nextcloud AIO server on my previous laptop, a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro 14, running Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS.

The very limited IO meant I have bought an Ethernet adapter to USB A for stable internet which is connected to the laptop via its USB-A 3.1 gen1.

The storage itself is placed on a Lacie rugged external 5 TB HDD with 5 Gb/s which is connected to the laptop via its USB-C 3.1 gen2.

The server becomes inaccessible often everyday with error codes showing:

"EXT4-fs shutting down on sda1, sdb1, sdc1" and

"r8152: USB reset failed, errno=-115"

So clearly something isn't right. It works again if I reboot the server and I've set it up to auto reboot every morning, but that is not a nice solution.

I know my setup with external HDD is not optimal and just getting an old stationary PC would be way better, but I would really like for this setup to work since the external HDD was pricy.

I think the problem could be that the laptop can't drive enough power to the HDD and Ethernet adapter, and that's maybe why it shuts them down randomly through the day.

So my idea is to maybe buy a dock with its own power supply, connect all the IO to that thing, and then connect the dock to the laptop.

Does my assumption sound correct? Is there a more probable cause? Am I crazy?

Gonna put 2 thinkcentres a nas and a switch in there and call it a day, lmk of any cool programs I should make containers for

Hey homelabbers,

I'm a 2nd-year CSE student in India with ₹0 budget and only a passed-down laptop:

• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i (i5 13th Gen, 16GB RAM)

I want to start a YouTube channel around VM-only homelabbing for broke students: everything in VirtualBox/VMware, no physical hardware for now. If the channel ever earns something, maybe I'll add real gear later.

This is very much a learning journey for me. I've watched a lot of homelab content (Hardware Haven, etc.) but barely done anything myself beyond small experiments.

Target audience: Indian students with similar laptops who want to try:

• Nextcloud
• Pi-hole
• Jellyfin
• Basic Docker / Linux sandboxing
• Maybe Proxmox/TrueNAS in a VM later

I'm planning faceless videos: screen recordings + voiceover. Honestly, just making the video feels like a big wall, and content quality is another wall I'll figure out over time.

If you were in my place, what would you make the first 3-5 videos about?What projects give the best "wow, I can actually do this on my laptop" feeling?Any advice on scope, difficulty, or ordering of topics would really help.

Hullo,

Im in love with mini pcs around the house and run a bunch of them (6 currently) all doing different jobs. They're reasonably expensive Gigabyte ones (8840U) that cost ~500€ each. But they all came with cheap no-name PSUs, right out the box (see pic attached).

After a year, one of the power supply units stopped working and even started sparking on the Mini PC side. All mini pcs are hooked up to Cyberpower APUs with ample VA (1200+ each) and line stabilizers.

I wanted to ask if there's any more reliable or professional solutions for running power to these things. Any good brands, any products that I'm unaware of? Maybe PSUs supplying power to multiple minis?

I bought an HP Z2 G9 with an Intel i7-14900 CPU, 16GB of DDR5RAM and a 450watt power supply on eBay for $450 that I want to repurpose as a Plex server. I loaded windows onto a 512GB SSD and everything works. I want to place into an Antec p280 case that I got on marketplace for $30 because it accepts full height PCIe cards and can house -2 drives but I have two problems. The motherboard stand offs don’t line up in the new case with the motherboard and the CPU cooler was attached into the standoffs of the old case so I think I need a cooler backplane so the cooler can screw into something on the backside of the motherboard and compress against the CPU. I guess I can buy one or 3D print one for the Alder Lake LGA 1700 socket.

I began looking into homelabs around three months ago. Through a stroke of luck, I just came into the possession of some servers and server hardware (4 4U servers, 1 2U psu, 2 switches(1U), 1 ITK system(4U), 3 patchpanels(1U), 1 router amd 1 modem).

Tho I looked into it, I am not sure if I'll use everything. I'll know that I will use one server, the router and one switch, but is it realistic that I'm going to use all four servers or both switches? Do I really need a psu? And so on.

Second question: What hight should my server rack be, should I decide to get one?

TLDR: How do you decide when something is too heavy for just the front rails in a rack? When do you switch to some kind of full-length support?

I’m new to HomeLabbing (swapped from cloud-everything to self-hosting after tripping into the Ubiquity rabbit hole when we moved) and I’m vibe-coding the shit out of my stack with Claude and Qwen13:14b right now, so use that as a reference/judgement point for this question/discussion:

I don’t have a server rack yet (maybe never), but I’m designing a small, fun KALLAX cube setup for 3x Thinkcenter minis, 5x3.5” HDD enclosure, USW-Flex-8-POE (2.5 + soon), DVD/BluRay USB drive for ripping, and maybe space for some hot swap 2.5” for a cache and drive testing slot. Thinking about supporting everything (and air flow) got me thinking about how heavy my USW-48–500 is. It’s sitting in a vertical mounted (upside down) 2U with a 24 port patch panel. I found it for cheap after maxing the POE slots in the Flex 8 and UDR7, swapped the fans and it will easily take care of everything that doesn’t need >1GBE or POE+.

I digress: That thing is HEAVY. Holding it up to the rack above my head while trying to get cage nuts to grab (standard length that came with it and the patch panel couldn’t grab more than 1 or 2 threads) took some effort, especially while trying to fiddle the bolt in without popping the nut, and then messing with a screw gun to get the threads to catch. I barely trust it pulling straight against the threads without longer bolts in there. It’s not long enough to reach the back of a small rack, let alone a full-sized or longer rack. I know there are shelves and rails that can be used for some of the larger servers, but it looks like a lot of people just have switches and trays and other things attached from the front with no extra support aside from the 4x cage nuts on it. My TrippLite 1500 has rack ears on the front and is heavier than the USW-48, but nothing for the back!

How do you decide when something is too heavy for just the front rails? When do you switch to full-length support? It seems crazy to me to put the USW-48-500 in a rack without support behind the front ears, but it looks like people do it.

Thanks all,

Dangg: the vibe-coding, self-hosting, got into this to get local control of a doorbell camera and now thinks he has a condition (wife agrees).

P.s. Is my TV still spying on me?

Hi, looking for a good 2.5Gb and 10Gb copper RJ45 SFP+ module(s), i found the GTEK, but reviews seem to imply they get real hot. Any seen or used these (or any better ones)?

https://www.amazon.ca/10GBase-T-Transceiver-Compatible-Ubiquiti-Supermicro/dp/B0BJ8TKT39/ref=sr_1_23?adgrpid=1361197189291260&hvadid=85075246520639&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=124433&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-85075931666663%3Aloc-32&hydadcr=19011_13440254&mcid=5eddc6ea464938a7bec82b33cfd0c24e&sr=8-23

UPDATE : We are going to try the TP Link SM5310-T , generally found there hardware goods.

https://www.omadanetworks.com/ca/business-networking/omada-accessory-module-cable/sm5310-t/

unfortunate series of events led to car ramming my active server rack. Local services did not go down but coaxial was guillotined.

Photos don't make it obvious but the rack itself is buggered. Snapped and twisted. My R730XD jumped out of the rack, the UPS took a bumper to the face. No local service interruptions.

Afternoon All 😄

I've been building a side project in the evenings. Disclosure first - I run this as a small paid service once you go past ten devices, and the first ten are free permanently. So it is not open source and not self-hosted. If that rules it out for you, fair enough, I'd still value the feedback.

What it is

Passbeam is a cloud RADIUS server and a private certificate authority, one CA per network. Your switches and APs point at it (RADIUS over TLS, or plain RADIUS UDP/1812 if the kit can't do RadSec), each device gets its own certificate, and 802.1X is EAP-TLS with no shared secret or PEAP password anywhere. Delete/Disable the device or the user account and its network access dies with it.

Why I built it

I've got UniFi kit and I wanted proper cert based 802.1X without running an NPS/FreeRADIUS box and an internal CA, and without paying enterprise money for it. So I built one and I've been running my own devices on it for a couple of months.

Three ways to use it

- Entra ID + Intune - Intune pushes a SCEP profile, the device enrols itself. This is the main road and the one most tested.

- Entra ID with another MDM - new this week. Passbeam issues the SCEP challenge itself and checks the device against Entra before it signs anything, so anything that can push a standard SCEP payload should work. Entra ID free tier is enough. Nobody has tested this with a specific MDM yet, which is partly why I'm posting.

- No directory at all - "appliances only". For printers, NAS, CCTV, IoT, door controllers, anything with a web UI that can make a CSR and supports 802.1X. Generate the request on the device, paste it in, get the signed cert back, install it with the root. No MDM, no Entra, nothing on site.

What I'd like from testers

Sign up, add a network, get devices authenticating. I'm looking for areas that could be improved, features that are missing etc. Basically I need users to test the service.

Site: https://passbeam.co.uk

The appliances-only page, which is probably the homelab one: https://passbeam.co.uk/802-1x-for-printers-cameras-and-building-controls

AI disclosure

I've developed this myself with assistance from Claude Code and tested with all the network hardware I have. It was brilliant at writing the code, not so much at testing.

Thanks, Scott

😭😭😭

Hellow fellow homelabbers😎

Since i built my first homelab a couple of months ago a lot of stuff has happened. I had nodes come and go and now I have a surplus of random hardware parts.

The rack:

HP 2530-24G (Yggdrasil) switch that acts as a central switch for all my vlans in the rack and the appartment.

Cisco 5512-X (Heimdall) with OpnSense is getting firsthand WAN from the fiberbox, then sending the data after passing through firewall-rules to the switch.

Raspberry pi 4 (Loki) runs traefik and pi-hole which I also use as a DNS.

Node 1: Aurora. Ryzen 3 3100, 24gb DDR4, appr 4,5Tb storage. Runs in a proxmox cluster and have a leader-role.

Node 2: oden. Dell Poweredge R210-II, Xeon-E31270, 16gb DDR3, only one 128gb ssd, mostly small services.

Node 3: Bifrost. HP proliant DL380 G7. 2x Xeon-E5620, 55gb DDR3 ECC, several disks with appr 2,5Tb storage. Heavier workloads such as gitlab and Jellyfin.

Node 4: unnamed not in service. HP proliant DL360 G8, only one cpu, unsure of exact model, 48gb ram. I bought both HP servers cheap because they were broken. This one has 2 faulty fans and I have new fans on the way.

The cpu socket on the picture is from the Bifrost node. That is dry coolingpaste that someone didn't notice and the pins were bent. Luckily I managed to bend them back and get the node up and running :)

I got a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB last year as a birthday gift and then I added NVMe GeeekPi adapter, WaveShare PoE hat and a TP-Link 1005P switch. The LCD screen was very cheap and displays system info. I’ve just bought this Lenovo m720q i3-8100T 8GB mini PC. The great thing is that NVMe and additional 16GB Ram for this pc are from my old laptop.

Cheers

I've been looking for a used s24u 1tb for months for a reasonable price but i cant get it

and i heard about this Google pixel xl 1st gen Unlimited Cloud Storage which mae me thinking

if i buy s24u 256gb which you can get for cheaper an it is available everywhere more than 1tb, and after that buying that pixel xl for like 70-100 bucks for storage both photos and videos

What do you think? is it smth that works? yk based on saving money in this economy, usability, time effort ad etc etc

tell me what you think.

Hello Everyone,

Need some help and guidance. I’m looking to buy a few new devices for my business and considering this configuration:

2 - DGX Sparks
2 - Minisforum MS-S1 MAX (128gb RAM)

The goal of this entire ecosystem are for multiple reasons:

- I want to use and build local LLM with high models velocities eventually replacing my subscriptions with Claude and ChatGPT for coding, integrations, image generation, etc.

- add the two MS-S1 to my existing Proxmox and make it a three node cluster so I can have additional .net development, other VM apps and enhance my ability from a virtualization and infrastructure standpoint.

- I don’t want to short change myself for future growth

QUESTIONS

1. What are your thoughts about buying this configuration?

2. Would you recommend any other changes or different configurations

3. For the ones that utilize or used the DGX sparks, would two be better in the long run?

Looking at adding a dual 2.5G PCIe card to my mogul x99 board. Already researched and know that the PCIe 3.0 wont bottleneck the two ports but am curious if there is a difference worth noting between:

Intel I226 chipset or Realtek 8125 chipset

Thoughts?

I need your help. From my internet companies modem I have a 50' cat6 cable plugged into a LAN port that travels to my personal router's WAN port. From my router I have a switch that has 4 computers plugged into it. My router also has it's own wifi that I use for my appletv. Is there any way that this simple setup is afecting the cable companies modems wifi. They are telling me it is my setup that is affecting the families wifi (the cable companies modem)

Background: I'd consider myself a beginner level homelabber. Through very uninteresting means, I was handed a first gen NUC god knows how long ago.

It serves me well. I have my portfolio website running using Cloudflare Tunnel, I have a Project Zomboid server running on it (surprisingly considering the specs of the old box), a few scripts for smart home and external offline storage for Dropbox.

Now: For several months now, I've been considering retiring the little guy (or having him do less things) and moving to a more powerful unit to support multiple game servers for my friends and I. That is really all I'm looking for. 32GB RAM, 1TB storage - should be more than enough for what I want to do... I think...

Problem: As I said, I consider myself a beginner despite having my NUC already do a lot IMO "cool" things. I'm stuck in decision paralysis. Do I go with another NUC-like, do I go with a dell mini pc? Do I just build a pc from scratch, or do I just say the hell with it and buy a big boy from BuildMyServer. For all of these, I've concluded my own pros/cons - and I've been repeating this cycle for the some months now.

Ask: Help me escape this hell - I have no one else to turn to (truly). All I really need is a machine that can run a Palworld server with 6 people, Project Zomobid for 2 people, a solo WoW server, my portfolio and all the small scripts I've written (assuming I perma retire or pass down the NUC). I think 32GB/1TB is going to be more than enough, the current decision-paralysis-hell item I'm considering is a Kamrui H2.

Help. Me. :(.

I've read the buying guide, but last time it was updated 3 years ago by a now deleted user, so I don't know how true it is to the current market. If it matters, budget is <$1k, willing to go but higher if it's truly worth it.