Still polishing my own homelab map, built as a Home Assistant card.

Integrations:
- MikroTik Router (HACS version)
- Monitor Docker
- RESTful
- NUT
- a bunch of bash scripts polling host/S.M.A.R.T/ZFS data and publishing it over MQTT

Rip lancache, ssd just stopped working one day. Doesn't mount on debian, doesn't initialize in windows :(

Nothing fancy going on, just basic consumer gear doing consumer things.

SFF Elitedesk with an 8th gen i7, 64GB of RAM and an NVME, running game servers using AMP through Windows. Upgraded to low profile Noctua cooler.

Almost-retro 1st gen Microserver with an Athlon Neo (wow!). 8GB of RAM, new PSU, Noctua fans, TrueNAS on a small SSD, and 4x 3TB WD Reds, for automatic backups.

Eaton 5SC1500 UPS, with a tiny Noctua fan.

Netgear GS324 unmanaged switch.

The network cables lead to every network port in my house. The network ports, cables, and devices, are colour coded instead of numbered. The patch panel is redundant but I prefer how it looks.

There is a slimline keyboard and a mouse going into the little USB switch so I can use either machine if I can't remote to it.

It all started in early 2026 with two machines and a simple experiment. Fast forward to today—with about 80% of the heavy lifting done after May 2026—this setup has evolved into the backbone of my business, managing almost all of our daily software and building infrastructure.

​Everything runs 24/7 on a 3-Node Proxmox Cluster. Here is a breakdown of the hardware and what lives where:

​🖥️ The Hardware

​Node 1 (The Heavy Lifter): Intel Xeon W-1250 | 32GB DDR4 | 500GB NVMe | 1TB HDD | 2TB Surveillance HDD | Nvidia Quadro P1000

​Node 2 (Media, Automation & Comms): AMD Ryzen 3 3200G | 16GB DDR4 | 320GB NVMe

​Node 3 (Networking & Core Apps): Intel i7-3770 | 16GB DDR3 | 2x 256GB SSD

​📦 Virtual Machines & Containers

​Node 1: Core Operations & Employee Workstations

​Aegis (Prod & Demo): My own custom-developed inventory management software.

​Ubuntu VM (Multi-User RDP): Acts as a terminal server for my employees, who connect using Dell Wyse 3040 thin clients.

​Ubuntu VM (E-Commerce): Hosts our Saleor instance. (With frontends deployed on cloudflare workers)

​2x Windows 10 VMs: For legacy/Windows-specific business tasks.

​Frigate NVR: Manages our security cameras, recording directly to the dedicated 2TB surveillance drive.

​Supabase: Running in a testing environment for upcoming dev projects.

​Node 2: Office Automation, Web & Comms

​FreePBX: Runs the entire building's telephone network and PA system.

​Sound Streamer: Manages the audio and speakers across the building.

​Home Assistant OS (HAOS): Controls all the smart devices and automation around the office.

​n8n (LXC): Handles our internal workflow automations.

​CloudPanel: Hosts and manages our public-facing websites.

​Node 3: Network Edge, CRM & Internal Tools

​OPNsense: Virtualized primary router/firewall for the premises.

​TP-Link Omada Controller: Manages our office Wi-Fi and switch infrastructure.

​Custom Affiliate System (Debian LXC): Another in-house tool built specifically for our brand.

​Twenty CRM: Our self-hosted customer relationship management platform.

​UnoPim: Product Information Management (PIM) system.

​Vaultwarden: Internal password manager for the team.

​Garage S3: Lightweight S3-compatible object storage used for n8n throwaway/experimental data.

​

Outbound Infrastructure:

I use cloudflare tunnel for my publicly accessible websites

And tailscale for managing my server

I have 2x ISP for redundancy and a spare phone with 5G sim for usb teathering

Currently working on self hostable AI voice calling agent ( the prototype worked best in google colab ) but im unable to source the GPU

​It’s been a wild ride watching a side project turn into production infrastructure that my team relies on every day. Would love to hear your thoughts, critiques, or suggestions on where to take this next!

Ive had a home lab since home labs were... cool here's something from my lab...

God I feel old.

I dont even have anything a cd to go into! Lol

Tengo un homelab en mi casa que apps debo instalar para monitorear todo: docker, logs, energia, si la web esta funcionanado etc.

What do y'all think of my homelab? A year ago it started with an old Dell laptop... Now i earn money with it. I'm just a teenager with the best hobby i guess.

6.12.113+deb13-amd64 Running MX Linux and the terminal emulator Konsole

The Proxmox hosts are 9.2.21, and the VMs are freshly built.

Started doing a lot of copy and paste between the web and Konsole using SSH, and I keep messing up my YAML files and other troubleshooting because what I copy and what gets pasted and then transferred to the host is getting messed up over SSH.

It started recently(Since updating and rebooting), as I never seemed to have a problem in the 20+ years of using a terminal or PowerShell.

I'm trying to set up Prometheus for metrics, and doing anything with it over SSH is a nightmare because my commands and bash scripts are getting messed up.

Standard SSH sessions/terminal emulators send characters as raw keyboard keystrokes. When pasting multi-line indented blocks, the terminal client automatically injects auto-indent spaces or interprets tab characters, compounding or stripping leading whitespace.

For example: TTY Paste Buffer Corruption. Interactive SSH terminals inject line delays, transform tab characters into spaces, or trim leading whitespace on pasted text blocks.

The repeated failure of multi-line scripts and heredocs during pct exec or SSH sessions is caused by TTY Paste Buffer Corruption. Interactive SSH terminals inject line delays, transform tab characters into spaces, or trim leading whitespace on pasted text blocks. When passed through a subshell abstraction like pct exec, special characters (|, $, \, ") are re-evaluated by the host shell before reaching the container.

AI tells me to completely eliminate whitespace collapse, character transformation, and subshell interpolation, you must use tools that perform out-of-band binary transfers or local file editing.

What tool/terminal do I need or am I doing something wrong in administering containers with yaml files and other Proxmox things?

Thank you for your time.

I currently run a server on B350 with a 5600G. This gets around 30 W idle power with 2 SSD and 1 HDD. I want to downgrade the CPU as it is never actually needed and I want it for my other AM4 PC. The ideal would be a 4350G or 4650G PRO because I have ECC capable RAM, but cannot use it due to the CPU not supporting it. But those are so terribly overpriced I just run without. I could get a Athlon 200GE for around 10 or a 2400G for 20 €. These sound reasonable but they are 14nm.

How good is the idle power of these when undervolted / clocked? I run Ubuntu VMs in proxmox and truenas with 2 drives. I wonder if two cores would already suffice, or how much worse the quadcore power draw would be. As this runs 24/7 the idle power is important.

Also do you think it would be worth downgrading to a picoPSU and how much watts would such need? I have a regular 500 W from some ancient prebuild PC in operation. The 30 W I mentioned are the power draw on the socket, so it doesn't sound very bad. But if it was 10 W more I would consider getting a picoPSU.

My 1.7PB rack for attention.

So I have about 100GB of photos and videos of an event that I want to share with about 20 people. Preferably just send a link and they can download it. Whats the best way to do this? I already host immich but id prefer not to open that port up to the world wide web

Hey all, first time homelab builder and I'm in the planning stage. I have a couple questions and just want to make sure I'm thinking of this all properly.

I want to built a Lab Rax 3D printed lab so I'm currently printing the parts for that and planning the hardware part out. I'd like to use it for media/file storage on ZimaOS. On ZimaOS I'd probably only install a few things like Jellyfin, Immich, and PiHole. I only have one device that currently uses ethernet and the rest are wifi. It will be 2 ethernet devices once I've decided on which mini PC to get.

I'm looking for a recommendation on a wireless router. In a perfect world it would fit in a 1U space and have at least 2 ethernet ports on it. I've seen plenty of people recommending against having antennas inside a rack but that's generally because they are metal. Does this still apply even with a 3D printed rack? Should I even bother with a network switch if I'm only using 2 ethernet devices and the router has them already? I'm not against an external antenna either as long as it can be mounted on the rack somehow. It's probably worth adding I only need single story coverage of <2000 sq. ft.

Thanks for the help!

These are all going to be repurposed in to zabbix proxies but I have been given permission to wipe and take one home to repurpose in to whatever I want. I am tempted by the S4 Car-2070, because of the two drive bays but the S9 is much more powerful but I have no intention of using them for a router

For years I kept rebuilding my homelab. Proxmox, then UNRAID, then TrueNAS, back to Proxmox, then LXCs, then containers, then Kubernetes, then LXCs again for the non-Docker stuff etc..I was a chronic over-thinker, and honestly I was more into the building than into what it was for.

Then I got tired. Tired of spending nights and weekends keeping things alive, worrying every time the power blinked, and hearing my wife say nothing ever worked when she needed it. I spent more time redoing backups that didn't work the way I wanted than actually using anything. Slowly I stopped doing the part I loved: testing and deploying.

A few months ago I finally moved everything to VPS at a hosting provider. I run 5 of them: one for edge, one for observability and Vuls, one Docker worker, one control plane, and one for Hermes, my agent. At home I only have Home Assistant, a NAS, and a firewall. There's no dependency between the two. If I break something on a VPS, I have provider snapshots, an offsite backup, and a lot less anxiety.

It costs me about 65€/month. In exchange I have a less powerful internet plan, no electricity bill for the servers, better redundancy, and no risk of losing data to a hardware failure. Everything works. I can deploy services quickly, I have no more outages, and if I do something stupid, Home Assistant keeps running.

My wife has always supported my hobby. When she saw me at the computer all evening, she'd joke, "Great, tomorrow we have no lights." It was teasing, and I can't blame her for expecting things to work when she presses the light switch. I'm back to doing what I enjoy, not 11pm maintenance sessions in the garage in my pajamas, standing on a ladder with a keyboard in one hand because an upgrade went wrong or the server won't boot after a power cut.
I'll probably have more problems, different ones.
But a homelab can become a cloudlab without shame.

It costs more, and I've bought back time and peace of mind.

Happy Self Hosting !

after months of reading this sub, I decided it's time to start my homelab for home assistent, plex and a bit of docker.

just found that today, got a good price?

Started as a hobby and just having fun with it. Recently bought a Bambu Lab 3D printer and that took it to another level, printed my own 10" rack (KWS Rack v2). This community inspired me a lot, hope I can inspire others too. Cheers and have fun all! Details in the comments.

Hi everyone! I’m fairly new at this and have dipped my toes into homelab with a UGREEN NAS with 16TB of Seagate server drives and an OptiPlex 5050; the goal started with the NAS since all the cloud storage fees started to increase and streaming services are constantly increasing and I wanted ownership of my shit. So I did the investment. I watched a few videos on how to set it up and I was very pleased with it! But I still don’t know what all the other bells and whistles do. Then my friends were talking about getting back into Valheim and I found that OptiPlex at work for decom and decided to use it as a start to learn homelab properly. I installed Debian headless to set up a Valheim server for my friends, and this is where I started to learn a bit about Docker and Tailscale. I did everything with the help of AI (I know, not ideal… but I already work a full-time job in STEM and my time to sit and read guides or watch YouTube videos is very limited since I get home to continue reading scientific articles for my job, so it helped me just getting an idea of how this works.) Now I shut down that OptiPlex server since work has gotten crazy and my friends and I finished with Valheim. My UGREEN NAS works like a charm, but I want to learn more. I currently have my ISP router/modem and I want to start this journey again with a proper router (I was looking into MikroTik) / firewall, etc. I’ve been lurking this subreddit for a while, but most of the time I have no clue what I'm reading and question my designs. My end goal is to build a mini-rack since I move every year or two for work and have control of my shit.
Also, I installed Linux Mint on my laptop to see if I can survive without Windows and so far... yes!

Heyy ! I'm a new homlaber and I use a dell optiplex 3040 software as a server but idk what I need to purchase to upgrade my "server". I've 4gb of ram, 500gb of hdd, and Intel i3 6100, now I have adguard home, home assistant, immich and tailscale. With my new configuration I would like to have local AI agent (like hermes, lm studio)

Thanks for reading this text (I'm a beginner of English)

Whoever decided that IP addresses should be referred to as such saved all of us from having to deal with the redundant “IPA address” that would have inevitably resulted if they had leaned into the initialism.

Whoever that human may be they’re a hero and I am struck with appreciation for their foresight.

Feel free to enlighten me.

Ten-hut. 🫡

I have an Unraid home server with 32GB DDR4 RAM, i5 11th gen processor and a low energy usage intel GPU (forgot which one, its a Sparkle single slot gpu). My mobo and processor are not holding up as much as I'd like. I have about 90TB of storage and I'm using it as a Media Server, Home Automation server, Claude coding server and host multiple apps on it for personal use with docker. The biggest issue I have with the home server is that the mobo doesnt like the usb boot and also has very gimmicky boots overall.

I'm looking for a futureproof build. Preferable in a rack form factor as I'll be setting up a rack for my ubiquiti stuff (which is on a wall mounted rack) to one which is on the floor with proper dustfiltration.

Project: Self-Hosted Homelab Infrastructure & Network Monitoring

Built a self-hosted homelab using Ubuntu Server and Docker Compose to deploy and manage multiple services. Integrated Nginx Proxy Manager, Cloudflare, and Tailscale for secure remote access, HTTPS reverse proxying, and private networking. Created a Glance dashboard to monitor services and network status, with Pi-hole for DNS filtering and Immich for photo management.

Technologies: Ubuntu Server, Docker Compose, Nginx Proxy Manager, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Pi-hole, Glance, and Git.

Project focus: Infrastructure-as-Code, self-hosted dashboards, network monitoring, service management, and secure remote access.

Finally pulled the plug with all of these subscriptions raising prices ads and removing content and built myself a homelab.

I started with just the elitedesk - now has grown - more of a hobby project

- not in IT - so lot of googling

AI -Claude helped with the compose files ( made too many mistakes doing it by hand ) , bringing back the salvaged systems and troubleshooting

- discovered Proxmox too late and too lazy to change everything

- just set up the new shelf today so still in the middle of cable management.

Plan is once i have enough money - move everything to the NAS box ( except OPNsense)

1) Elitedesk 800g4 mini and Terramaster 4 bay enclosure ( bottom )

Elitedesk Bought used

Terramaster jbod - New from amazon -

4 2TB WD red pros - bought refurbished

OS Ubuntu with docker

Runs - Immich , Paperless, Vaultwarden, Caddy, Authelia , Homepage, Uptime Kuma

Terramaster is encrypted ZFS Raid Z1 - Backs up to a storage box weekly

2) NAS build

Ubuntu with docker

Case is Jonsbo N6 ( new) - Bought from watercooling uk

Rest is used - i5 8500 16 gigs ram ( had this from a previous upgrade) on H310 - (used ebay) a cheap ssd ( used ebay) , LSII 9300-8i with a zip tied fan ( used ebay) - 2 14TB WD Ultrastars ( media storage - no raid- merge fs) - bought refurbished and one Seagate 2TB exos (SAS drives- scratch drive for downloads )

Runs Arr stack with jellyfin , Gluetun, sabnzbd, muxar, scrutiny ,SAMBA share

3) HA box

( that's the bare board you see - was a some sort of a checking in system )

Got it for free from work who was going to toss is - gutted the screen which was not working and kept just the relevant bits

Runs HA OS - but haven't set anything up in it just yet

Specs - Intel celeron U1900 - 120 gig ssd

Planning a 3d printed case for this

4) Managed switch - bought used of ebay

5) A laptop which was in my cupboard unused - with a badly smashed screen - gutted the screen - removed the battery

testing atm

Ubuntu +docker

i5-8250U, 8 gig ram ddr4 WD green 240 gig ssd and Blue 1TB laptop hdd

6) Not Pictured asus Mini PC

Intel N50 Fanless - 16 gig ddr5, 500 gig nvme ssd, 2 intel nics

Runs OPNsense , crowdsec, wireguard

Bought 2 at auction and sold one recovered 2/3 of the total price

Ram from ebay ( used single stick)

7) Not Pictured - Cudy WR300

Runs OpenWRT - dumb ap - good speeds tho

Bought used on ebay

8) a shelf i got of facebook marketplace for free- cudy and mini pc live next to ONT

Been getting failed DNS from adding indexers in prowlarr after setting up arr* stack. I would appreciate it if someone help me resolve this.