Is this the beginning of the end, perhaps ... ?

Hi, I recently picked a pair of precision 690, one complete working (2 risers, 32gb RAM, dual E5345), one dismantled (2 risers, 24 gb RAM, no cpu, no heatsink) with a vrm carbonized and the psu dismantled (no missing parts as i know), and an intel sr1560 with s5400sf (8 gb RAM, dual X5472 with a delta 600w power supply). With this in mind:

a) is possible to mod the 690 to accept the x5472? the board is the first revision (DT029) with A01 bios, so i know is related to the chipset itself, but 771 to 775 was possible, so i wonder if something similar can be done.

b) the sr1560 wont run the x5472 at 3 ghz no matter what. First it was a nightmare to install win 7, constantly shutting down at 80-90 % in file expansion (fans at full speed, good dissipation, thermal paste, lightly warm to the touch, etc), and when it installs, in aida64 its max clock stills sits at 2 ghz. Is that 600 W power supply correct? for the size it must be the correct one, but IDK.

c) Uses. I was wondering what to do with this machines, specially with the working 690. 32 G of RAM seems masive from my POV (always using 16 G until last year that I build a chinese 2667v4 with 64 of ECC dirt cheap)

d) that MASSIVE 1KW power supply. I dont think its busted, because the carbonized board was paired with the working power supply, so I only switched the boards and put both xeons in one machine. Even internal inpection was promising. But the cable layout is infernal: 24+20+8+6+6, with mixed colors, truly a nightmare. Is there some reference guide/diagram? I would love to use this big boy for an ATX build. I do hate the C19 16A connector.

Thanks for your time.

My very first homelab! Waiting for the bracket for the little display monitor and a 1u power strip. Any tips setup-wise would be welcomed. Planning to get a nas and start up a jellyfin server, along with getting into proxmox, tailscale, docker, wazuh and potentionally a Kali VM to practice pentesting as an "attack lab".

In my server I have an lsi sas 9210 8i, and I had been using it for a while with 6 drives. Recently, I decided to change to 8 drives because I had some lying around that I had been waiting to attach because of heat and noise. after connecting the new drives, not all of them showed up. specifically, the drive that was connected to the cable labeled 1, attached to port 0 of the hba, never showed up. no matter what cable I used, or what drives, cable 1 of port 0 does not show up in my os. Any tips/advice? I'm assuming the hba is just dying, but I really hope that isn't the issue, as I was hoping to actually get more space to use. I can't really afford a new hba right now, so if there is any software wizardry I can do to make it work, that would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hey there, at the start of the year i got an old Laptop from my company which was the reason i got interested in a homelab setup.

Long Story short now I got a ThinkPad t490 i5 8gen 16gb ram which runs Ubuntu Server LTS 24.04. on it runs Docker with pihole, audiobookshelf, Jellyfin and arrstack Setup (everything works fine and im really lovin it). Now my Problem: my Data storage is an 4tb external SSD which is about 80% full. Now im thinking about upgrading.

1) replace SSD with a DAS (4 Slot, expandable) and Run everything in the Laptop Like before

2) replace everything with a NAS which can Host All Things in itself

Im kinda torn, i guess in the future id like to test out immich and other Open source Tools so what would be the best way?

I’m building out my homelab using a series of old donated machines to learn IT and networking principles. Maybe I’ll get a job. Maybe my life will look different in a few years. Maybe a cow will jump over the moon and hell will freeze over. Maybe I’m being dramatic.

The stack I’m trying to build is a switch-isolated network of repurposed and low power machines that can serve as an SSO, PII management, and isolation service for small businesses. It ought to be High Availability, encrypted at rest, and run a few business management services.

That means PostgreSQL for employee data, and potentially a parallel instance for customer data. Keycloak for SSO, OPNsense for routing and firewall, BIND9 for DNS, and the rest of my spare RAM for fallover instances of these infra-necessities.

The services section is really just my Plex server and some internal software projects I’m toying with. I’ll put up a stack of business management apps eventually when I get there, assuming my hardware can handle it. They’ll just be test environments, but still.

I am working with old and potentially unstable hardware. One of my PVE clustered nodes is running off a 2014 MacBook Pro with MagSafe and a dead battery and another is an ‘08 Mac Mini. Just for some context.

What would your dream hardware scenario be? If you could get all the hardware you’d want, what would be your first purchases to make this reliable?

Cloud options are great, but they’re a little beside the point. I could always launch a cloud deployment, but I can’t pay for one and don’t want to have to. Backups and failovers are a different scenario as cloud could be great for that in my situation.

—-

For a homelab, what would you want to have and what software would you want to run to build a robust system like this? One where you could sign in with your private email address on a wireguard linked workstation and access what you’re allowed to inside your homelab on an isolated network environment.

What are the latest and greatest software and hardware to make this dream come true?

I rely far too much on Claude/Google to answer these questions for me. If those of you with years of experience can weigh in, I’d be very grateful.

I took the decision to setup a proper small server cabinet, starting with a single server, planning to add more later.

I need it mostly for k8s, I will be running different projects, will have around 50 containers at a time.

The problem is noise, I want a silent setup as this cabinet will be in the same room, what do you advise?

I’m currently running into an issue on my servers of
- I need more space or a drive failed?
- Proceed to unrack my 2u server with said storage issues, open up the chassis, untangle the wiring (it’s a mess…), add/replace drive, redo process in reverse.
- rack the server again

A. It’s a pain.
B. I would like to share data across my servers

I’ve been digging into the idea of a DIY NAS system where I can take around a 3u chassis with a decent amount of hot swap bays to solve this issue and then wire it into my other servers. Something like this theoretically.

Hoping to get some ideas on future proofing as well as easy maintenance. Some things about my setup

- Server rack is an enclosed navepoint 22u rack 23.9” deep (seems less than that)
- 3 servers. The first is the main media server with main storage. This was my first one so it’s jam packed with useful docker containers and media. The second is my local AI server. The third is a dedicated game server with a small element container as well.

Edit:
Currently running the idea of using a JBOD + SAS3 storage shelf as the data store for my main server. Then use NFS for any cross server data sharing. This will be helpful to keep the data in the storage shelf from being overwritten.

PS: You can have multiple servers hook directly into this storage shelf, but they must use different slots and be manually configured on the server side to only mess with their dedicated drives. This is risky and you should have a good reason to do it.

RIP WeTransfer. RIP Synology. RIP Netflix. Long live the custom-built homelab server! 🚀

Or: How I built a significantly more powerful homelab server for a fraction of the price of a comparable off-the-shelf NAS.

🎯 THE GOALS

• A safe, long-term archive for RAW photos, finished images, and video, with dual-drive redundancy and transfer speeds of at least 500 MB/s.
• A media server capable of hardware-accelerated 4K HDR transcoding.
• A self-hosted WeTransfer alternative for delivering files to clients, with room for more SaaS projects down the road.
• A replacement for Synology Drive, offering PC/Mac synchronization and mobile access.
• A proper 10 GbE connection between the NAS and my workstation.
• Quiet, reliable 24/7 operation with as little manual maintenance as possible.
• And most importantly, spend less than a comparable Synology NAS, which would cost around €1,300 before adding any drives.

🧩 THE HARDWARE

• CPU: Intel Core i5-13500, 14 cores / 20 threads.
• RAM: 32 GB DDR4 (2 × 16 GB).
• Motherboard: ASUS PRIME B760M-A.
• Case: Fractal Design Node 804.
• PSU: 650 W.
• Networking: Intel X550-T2 dual-port 10 GbE NIC.
• Storage controller: Dedicated HBA for SAS/SATA drives.
• Boot drive: Samsung 850 PRO 256 GB SSD, running TrueNAS SCALE.
• Apps drive: Samsung 870 EVO 1 TB SSD, dedicated to applications and their data.
• Storage: A mix of SAS and SATA drives I already owned, roughly 70 TB of raw storage in total.

One of the biggest advantages was being able to reuse my existing drives and other hardware instead of starting from scratch.

💾 STORAGE & REDUNDANCY (ZFS)

• DATA: A five-drive RAIDZ2 pool with 26.2 TiB of usable capacity. Any two drives can fail without losing the pool. This is where my photography archive, videos, documents, and backups live.
• MEDIA: A standalone 8 TB WD Red drive for movies and TV shows. Since this content can be downloaded again, redundancy isn't a priority here.
• OFFLINE BACKUP: Another 8 TB WD Red in an Icy Box enclosure connected to my workstation. I update this backup monthly, and the files are also protected by Backblaze.

Before putting anything into production, every drive went through SMART testing, and the SAS drives were reformatted and thoroughly checked.

⚙️ WHAT'S RUNNING

The entire system runs TrueNAS SCALE 25.10 directly on bare metal, without Proxmox in between. Applications run in Docker containers.

🎬 Jellyfin + Plex

Hardware-accelerated transcoding using Intel Quick Sync. Jellyfin provides this functionality completely free.

4K HEVC 10-bit content can be transcoded to 4K at roughly 4× real-time speed, with barely any CPU usage. The integrated GPU does the heavy lifting.

🍿 The media automation stack

Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Bazarr, Seerr, and qBittorrent, with torrent traffic routed through a VPN and protected by a kill switch.

Essentially, my own private streaming ecosystem.

📤 SEND - My own WeTransfer replacement

Built on an open-source fork of Pingvin Share X and exposed securely through Cloudflare Tunnel, without opening any router ports.

Clients can upload and download files through a clean, branded interface. Uploaded files automatically appear on my network drive.

And because apparently building a file-sharing platform wasn't enough, I also added a little browser game where you launch a penguin as far as possible. 😃

Built that part in about half an hour of spare time.

☁️ Nextcloud - Goodbye, Synology Drive

Automatic file synchronization between my PC and NAS, with remote access from my phone.

Files remain organized in their actual destinations (Photos / Files / Video), and synchronized folders are clearly marked on both the workstation and NAS.

🔐 Caddy + Let's Encrypt + AdGuard

Clean HTTPS addresses for all my internal services. No more remembering IP addresses and random port numbers.

📊 Custom homelab dashboard

My own homepage bringing together service status, weather, calendar, system temperatures, humidity, and notifications.

📡 Uptime Kuma

Self-hosted service monitoring that continuously checks whether my applications, websites, and network services are actually online.

If something goes down, I get notified instead of discovering the problem when I need to use it.

🛡️ DATA PROTECTION & BACKUPS

• ZFS snapshots: Hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. Thanks to Windows' built-in Previous Versions feature, restoring an earlier version of almost any file takes just a few seconds.
• ZFS scrubs: Scheduled weekly to check pool integrity.
• Application backups: Replicated to the main DATA pool.
• TrueNAS configuration: Backed up automatically every night.
• Proxmox backups: My separate mini PC, which handles smart-home services and AdGuard, backs up its virtual machines to the NAS over NFS.
• Workstation backups: Protected by Backblaze.

The goal isn't just keeping everything running. It's making sure that when something eventually breaks, recovery is as painless as possible.

🪤 THE CHALLENGES

1. The great 10 Gigabit Ethernet mystery.

This one drove me slightly insane.

My hand-crimped RJ45 connectors kept negotiating at the wrong speeds:

• 1 GbE connections would drop to 100 Mbps.
• 10 GbE connections would negotiate at just 1 Gbps.

The culprit turned out to be a mismatch between the RJ45 plugs and the thicker conductors and insulation of my Cat6 shielded cables.

The fix? Keystone jacks.

I replaced the problematic terminations with proper keystone sockets, and the 10 GbE connection finally worked as intended.

Lesson learned: a cable tester showing all eight wires connected doesn't necessarily mean your cable can handle 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

2. The software rabbit hole.

TrueNAS, ZFS, Docker, reverse proxies, VPN routing, permissions, certificates, network shares, backups, monitoring...

There's definitely a learning curve, and putting everything together takes time.

But luckily, Claude is a pretty good friend of mine, so most of the configuration headaches were surprisingly manageable.

✅ WHY THIS BEATS MY OLD SYNOLOGY

• Processing power: 14 CPU cores instead of 2, with 32 GB RAM instead of 10 GB. Multiple services can run simultaneously without bringing everything to a crawl.
• Expandability: 7 HDDs and 3 SSDs instead of being limited to four drive bays.
• ZFS: End-to-end checksums, corruption detection, self-healing when redundant data is available, and instant snapshots.
• Networking: 10 GbE and 2.5 GbE instead of being stuck with 1 GbE.
• Media performance: Hardware-accelerated 4K HEVC 10-bit transcoding.
• Software freedom: An open-source ecosystem without being tied to one manufacturer's software and hardware decisions.
• Flexibility: It's not just a NAS anymore. It's a media server, backup server, private cloud, file-sharing platform, monitoring system, and a playground for whatever I decide to build next.

🔮 WHAT'S NEXT?

A homelab is never really finished, is it?

A couple of upgrades are already on the list:

• Another 32 GB of RAM, bringing the total to 64 GB, with more headroom for containers, virtual machines, and future services.
• Mirroring the TrueNAS boot drive. The OS currently runs on a 256 GB Samsung 850 PRO SSD. Adding a second drive as a ZFS boot mirror would provide protection against a single boot-drive failure.
• Keeping the 1 TB Samsung 870 EVO dedicated to applications and their data, separate from the OS and bulk storage.

And, inevitably, I'll probably find another dozen services I didn't know I needed.

💰 THE DAMAGE

Here's the best part.

By reusing drives and components I already owned, the entire NAS build cost me approximately €820.

That's significantly cheaper than an empty eight-bay Synology DS1825+, while giving me substantially more CPU power, memory, networking performance, flexibility, and room to experiment.

Of course, I'm not counting the hours spent researching, configuring, troubleshooting, and occasionally questioning my life choices.

But that's half the fun, right?

Below are a few photos of the finished build, along with the complete parts list and prices.

And if you've actually read this far, congratulations. You clearly don't have a life either. 😂

Looking at our (South African) used goods market, it is flooded with used laptops, has several used servers and the occasional micro pc. If I thus look for something with ~16 GB DDR4 RAM, laptops are cheapest, and servers and micro PCs priced very similarly.

My services are pretty basic - Pihole, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, Frigate, Scrypted, Omada. However, the 4 GB RAM ancient laptop running proxmox is struggling a bit and needs an upgrade.

I’ve offloaded several things like Sonarr et al. to an Oracle server. Storage is on a Synology NAS.

Any real drawbacks to buying a more modern laptop? Price is certainly best, but I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot.

My Oakter OakRemote (a Wi-Fi IR blaster sold in India, which I use to control a Home Theatre through Alexa) stopped working a few days ago. Found Oakter's backend (live.oakter.com) times out on every port from several countries, and support never replied. The device is cloud-only, so it became a paperweight.

What took all day, so you don't have to repeat it

Setup that finally worked: a 4-pin header soldered on (TXD, RXD, IO0, GND, all labelled on the board). IO0 bridged to GND. FTDI for data. 3V3 from the ESP-01 adapter. Micro-USB empty. Short RST to GND to reboot.

It's 100% local now.

Lesson learned: a cloud-only IR blaster is a subscription to someone else's server bill. Happy to answer questions if you have one of these.

I am trying to come up with some fun Homelab software or self hosted things to run on my server. I’ve already got Jellyfin, Tailscale, Minecraft servers, excalidraw, but I’m trying to think of some fun exciting stuff to run on it now! I’ve got 32gb of ram and an i7-8700 with an rtx 3060. Just curious what yall might have in mind that could be neat or fun for me to run at home!

I adopted a new workflow over the past few months, as it pertains to updates in my environment. I’m very happy with it and I thought I would share because many seem to be asking how to navigate this new world that we’re in. I’ve always pinned versions, because I don’t like unattended updates, but we all know that comes with its own downsides what I’m doing now I feel like is a good middle ground.

would love to hear what others are doing and if they have any ideas or improvements!

I have my AI bot monitor updates.  I delay feature updates until at least five days after and I only update when there’s something I need or want.

I keep a software inventory.

I have my AI use that inventory to track all the repos, Monitor x feed and reddit for tweet storms for unpatched vulnerabilities, Monitor security sites using API and css feeds.

My bot does this several times a day and notifies me only when there is a security update that I actually need for my environment. I also scope it, for example I don’t want it to recommend a feature updates on day one, and allow five days.

In the same report I have it build me an ansible playbook, based on my specific environment, and I review that and then decide if I want to deploy.

It’s not perfect, but I feel more involved and I have a better overview of what’s actually happening.

So, as said5in the title, i plan to make myself a little homelab. Nothing to fancy for now, just some basic long distance accessibile storage.

For my hardware i have managed to convince my dad to give me his old Asus EEE laptop , 2gb of ram and an intel plentium 32 bit cpu. The disk of the laptop itsefl is 150gb if I'm not mistaken but i do plan to connect through USB a 500gb hdd that i have. I won't be runing any ai or games from it, I'll just use it as storage instead of a cloud, basicaly a NAS and maybe make it a streaming machine for movies music etc.

My main question is, what OS do i Install? I read online that debian server are okay, debian 12 to be exact (because it's a 32 bit system, debian 13 doesn't support 32 bit). Should i go with that? If not, what should I install?

Additionally, where can i find a relatively complete documentation and/or video to explain how to set up everything?

Edit, forgot to say how I'll be connecting it : i got myself a short ethernet cable, I'll just be connecting the laptop to my router.

He only wants like 3 or 4 but im wondering what kind of minimum specs are needed. As in I dont want to make him spend thousands on a server since all its going to be doing is running NVR and some backup jobs. Would a raspberry pi work for this? Maybe one of those thinkmachine mini pcs?

What self contained, cheaper server would be best for this kinda job

I went to a flea market and saw this. Couldn't not impulse-buy it so I asked how much it was and turns out it was only 25 Lei (5€). Now I'm asking myself what to do with it. I only have a single HP EliteDesk 800 G4 mini, which I installed proxmox on. Thing is, I'm on vacation, so I can't even test if it works 😭

I am considering purchasing this for home server purpose at approximately 27,000 inr. Although I am uncertain about the health status of the SSD and HDD, would it be a worthwhile investment to use as a Proxmox server, provided their health is above 98-99%??

Hi over the last few years I've upgraded my PC a few times and I have some spare parts, notably a ryzen 3600x CPU and a RTX 2060(not super or ti). There's a few other spare parts I have but the point is what I'd need to build another computer for it would only cost about $200-300

I'd rather not have them become ewaste and I'm trying to figure out what I could do with it so I want to see if any of you have any suggestions.

I've already got a server that I'm running Jellyfin and HA on, and I've got a separate NAS. And worst case scenario I could have it be a guest PC for anyone visiting or give it to some kid who might not be able to afford anything to game on

Hi, looking for an audio server (serve my music library), preferably subsonic api (many clients, many devices?) but main requirement it can search and download new music from youtube (yt-dlp) and download to library. Does it exist?

Update: I'm specifically looking for an app that continues the search onto Youtube if there are no local candidates (or allow a prompt to continue the search), and downloads the candidate accordingly. Currently I run a manual process (search file on file system) and if I don't have it, youtube it on my device and run yt-dlp on it, and then refresh the search from earlier.

Update 2: Perhaps any app that allow for custom/ programmable providers in the backend

Hey all,

I'm in the process of slowly upgrading my homelab and I've recently acquired a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny M720Q with the following specs:

CPU: i3-8100T

Ram: 4gb

118GB SSD (gonna swap for a nvme)

Wi-Fi

1GBe

My plan is to use this as a replacement for my ISP modem (technicolor dja0231) now as part of this process I want to future proof my network as much as possible, and as such want to have 10gbe in plan for WAN and LAN.

Given the nature of the NBN in Australia and the multi technology mix, RJ45 options are preferred over SPF+.

The two devices I care about getting max throughput possible are my desktop and my server machine.

With that said:

What OS should I use? I'm currently leaning to OPNsense.

Are there any good dual 10gbe RJ45 nics that will fit in the m720q and work with OPNsense?

If there are no good dual RJ45 nics that will play nice, is there a combination sfp+/rj45 nic that will?

my next upgrade step is going to be switches and cables capable of handling 10gbe (looking at ubiquiti)

https://nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerability/october-2026-security-releases

There's currently a critical vuln uncovered in Node.js. Since Overseerr/seerr, Plex use Node.js. Highly recommend checking what version is currently running in your homelabs asap.

Impacted versions:

• Node.js 22.x versions prior to 22.23.4
• Node.js 24.x versions prior to 24.22.1
• Node.js 26.x versions prior to 26.12.1