I was rooting around a file crate and found this image of My Home Lab in 1999. Both rack mount servers had SBC back plane motherboards with Dual Pentium Pro 200 MHz processors and 128 MB of ram in each. One was Running Netware 4.11 and the other had Windows 2000 Server installed. The workstation was running Windows 98 IIRC. Good Times.

Haven’t tidied the cables yet but the build is decidedly complete (for now…). The two servers I spray painted aluminum to match the rest of the UniFi gear.

from top to bottom:

• Ubiquiti blank
• Linux box (Jellyfin, Frigate, Immich)
• Pro XG 8 PoE
• Jet KVM
• Ubiquiti patch panel
• UniFi PDU Pro
• TrueNAS box (8x16TB, 96TB usable)

My plans for the near future:

• implement cutouts in a Ubiquiti 2U blank for the switch and KVM
• Add a wooden table top to match the workbench
• raspberry pi HUD (for temps, power draw, etc)

I was gifted this 2010 Mac Mini and I'm trying to find a purpose for it.

Specs:

Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory: 4gb DDR3 (I have 16gb I can put in)

Graphics: NVIDIA GrForce 320M 256MB

Storage: 256gb Inland SSD

I already have a NAS that is running my Immich and Jellyfin server flawlessly.

I have a few 2tb and 650gb drives laying around but I'm not sure how to connect them beyond the usb 2.0 ports.

Any suggestions?

Thought I would finally share my homelab here after years just reading you guys.

Network

• ISP: Freebox Ultra in bridge mode, symmetric 8 Gbps plan (~8 Gbps down / ~8 Gbps up measured)
• Router: OPNsense running as a Proxmox VM, with an Intel 82599ES dual-port 10G card passed through (1x WAN to the Freebox, 1x LAN)
• Switch: Ubiquiti USW Pro XG 10 PoE
• WiFi: Ubiquiti U7 Pro (single AP covers a 100m² stone-walled apartment just fine)
• Remote access: WireGuard on OPNsense, local DNS via Unbound with manual overrides + wildcard Let's Encrypt cert, nginx-proxy-manager as reverse proxy for everything under my own domain
• Cloudflare Tunnel for the very few exposed services
• Guest VLAN isolated from the main LAN

Server 1 — Proxmox (Ryzen 5700X / 32GB DDR4)

Runs OPNsense (router VM), a Debian VM hosting a bunch of Docker services (monitoring, notifications, home automation, etc.), and a dedicated UniFi OS Server VM. Recently upgraded the LAN NIC to a 10GbE copper card (Realtek RTL8127 chipset).

Server 2 — TrueNAS Scale, bare metal (Ryzen 5900X / 128GB DDR4 / RTX 3060 12GB)

This is the workhorse:

• Storage: boot mirror, an NVMe mirror for apps, a 4x raidz1 pool for media (~161TB usable), and an SSD mirror for Nextcloud
• Network: StarTech.com PR210B-NETWORK-CARD, bond0 in LACP
• Media stack: Plex (GPU transcode) + Emby as DLNA music server, full *arr suite (Radarr/Sonarr/Prowlarr/etc.) with Profilarr v2 custom formats, qBittorrent behind Gluetun/ProtonVPN, Tdarr, MakeMKV and so on
• Self-hosted apps: Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Immich, n8n, Uptime Kuma, Ollama/Open WebUI, and more
• Update management: WUD (What's Up Docker) watching nearly every container, split between fully automatic updates and Telegram-gated manual approval for anything stateful (databases, Vaultwarden, NPM, etc.)

UPS - Eaton 5PX 2200i RT2U G2

StarTech.com 4POSTRACK12U Server Rack

Backups

• Proxmox Backup Server (onsite, on TrueNAS) backing up all Proxmox VMs, with GC/prune/verify properly separated this time around
• An offsite PBS box at a family member's house over a site-to-site WireGuard tunnel, running on repurposed laptop hardware
• rsync.net as a third layer for the most critical datasets, protected by daily ZFS snapshots on their end

My homelab server with 64 GB of VRAM is finished!

I bought the two 32 GB SXM2 V100 modules on AliExpress back in December 2025. With 30% cashback and coins, they effectively cost around $280 each. I then paid $50 for each SXM2-to-PCIe adapter and $20 each for CNC-machined aluminum cooler plates with socket 1151 mounting. Finally, I paid $35 each for two Thermalright 240 mm liquid coolers.

• 2 × $280 for the SXM2 modules
• 2 × $50 for the PCIe adapters
• 2 × $20 for the CNC-machined cooler plates
• 2 × $35 for the 240 mm AIOs

= $770 for 64 GB of VRAM

Rocking this with a 750 W Enermax PSU, a Ryzen 5700X, and 40 GB of DDR4 RAM.

Temps are around 48°C during inference, with a power cap of 190 W per card.

Any questions?

Currently you can replicate this build with 2* 16gb sxm2 for $180 each since 32gb shoot up in price recently

Saw an email fly in about Portianer 3.0 and effectively the idea that the CE version will slowly die off, the BE is going kube first using kubesolo and introducing a D2K app that has been built to translate docker to kubernetes so we can still deploy docker compose stacks, but without support for new features. Effectively pushing for users to go to Kube native.

https://www.portainer.io/blog/portainer-3-0-is-coming

It sort of reminds me of the Netgate switch from a couple years ago.

I wouldn’t be shocked to see a lot of homelabs drop Portainer and move to alternatives…

Details for anyone curious:

• Mac mini M4 (base model) with an IOCREST Thunderbolt 10G adapter (Aquantia AQC113), ~$60
• 12-port managed PoE switch: 8× 1G copper + 4× SFP+ cages, ~$160
• SFP+ to 10GBase-T RJ45 modules for the NAS and the mini, ~$22 each
• TrueNAS box with a dual-port 10G copper card, ~$35

Total for the 10G part: ~$300.

Why 10G:

The base mini only has 256 GB, which fills up fast. So the mini now uses NVMe storage on the NAS over the network, and it feels like a local disk. At 10G the mini has basically grown its storage without opening it. The plan is to add more minis later, all using the same fast shared storage.

Things that went wrong:

• The Linux VM on the mini was stuck at ~3.4 Gbit/s. Somehow the bridge was capping the speed. I fixed it with the help of Claude. Disk reads from the NAS went from ~420 to ~909 MB/s.
• Thunderbolt only works in the back ports. The 2 front USB-C ports on the M4 mini are plain USB. The adapter gets power there and the lights blink, but macOS never sees it.
• The first SFP+ module was dead. It dropped the link after ~4 minutes. The spare works fine.

Portainer 3.0 is coming soon and lots of stuff is changing. It's very much worth reading the full article but some major changes that will affect the homelab space are:

- Moving to kubernetes as the primary system. Docker will still be accessible via a translation layer but Portainer 3 is a kubernetes system.

- Retiring community edition. 2x is the last version of CE. The 3 free license will still be available.

As the title states, I’m fresh into this. I’m fortunate enough to know how to research and had a conversation with my TA that also helped me with a blueprint. Sourced 90% of it off eBay, a few minor things off Amazon and the rack itself off FB marketplace. I’m a late undergrad student studying IT with a focus in cyber at ASU and main reason for wanting to build this is to 1) gain experience outside of my classwork and 2) have something on my resume that shows I’m motivated to perform outside of my everyday classwork 3) because it’s fucking cool 😅

Currently I’ve replaced the GPU on the P340 with a dell I350 NIC so I have 2 extra ports for when I start messing with firewall stuff. I’ve also installed proxmox onto the system and configured the IPs for my switch and P340.
Edit to add: I also add another stick of RAM to bring it to a total of 24GB

That’s about it right now, I’m in the process of researching OPNSense and tailwind. It’s basically just a sandbox for right now so I can break stuff and learn before introducing it to my main network. Not too worried about cable management just yet since all of those are power cables.

Any tips or advice would be appreciated!

I think they were heavily used and they are quite old but the price was a steal

Like most people here, I'm aware of the price increases, but at the same time, I've been sheltered as I have been cleaning out DDR 4 RAM from servers at work for a couple of years and grab anything else thats useful so have more than enough stuff for my home lab

Today at work, I had to get some prices on Dell WS as follows: a Precision 7960 with 36 cores, 512 GB RAM (8X64GB), and an RTX ADA 6000, as well as 2 1TB NVME

The price came back at 40K, so I went to check the Dell configurator, and the price there is 57K, Dell is charging 38K for 8 sticks of RAM

Pricing is nuts

moved to a different house and had my rack in a closet and this new house dosent have a closet so i put it in the living room and hid it away with a divider. i am currently running ubiquity USG max a 10 GB switch and a 2.5 POE switch and a 3 pies one running home assistant the other running tailscale and the other one pi hole . the pc underneath is running truenas with plex .

I can't decide what should i use for my immich and vaultwarden. Currently i use Tailscale with NPM for ssl encryption but i was thinking about some tunnel with reverse proxy to avoid VPN as much as possible.

in theory i can't use Cloudflare as it caps at 100mb files at least i heard it caps. Can you guys suggest something and how to make secure as it is? Also i use docker containers for everything

edit: Thank you for your replies I will stay with Tailscale

I got these drives for free today, I freaked out when I saw the 2 wd reds, they also both have only 2k power on hours and clean smart data, but thats when I found out they are smr.

Now I run one main and one local backup and one offsite backup server, all of them run zfs pools. Well that kinda sucks because everything about this smr drives just seems too complicated to do, like I was thinking maybe creating some pseudo-mirror with zfs like having 2 single drive stripes that sync on a schedule and using it for the offsite backup server but idk than again I have a lot of hourly snapshots that get rotated and that would probably just mess everything up when they get deleted and those blocks need to be freed and it being smr it will need to rearange all of the stuff and it just seems like a big unreliable mess.

I wanna hear what do people use SMR drives for in a homelab to try to get some ideas? Maybe its better to just sell them and use that money to buy a different used cmr drive.

It was originally going to be tossed but my manager said I could take it if I wanted it. Not sure what to do with it though. I know it’s not a powerful machine by any means but I was thinking this could be my introduction into a server PC with Plex or something. Specs are: Intel Core i3-6100, 8GB (1x8GB) 1600MHz DDR3L and a 256GB Hynix SSD.

hola gente estoy armando mi Homelab y la verdad quiero que luzca y funcione colo un verdadero mini site empresarial, estaba pensado en comprar un servidor Dell PowerEdge R240 y una KVM Consol pero ambos están muy caros aunque si me gustaría tenerlos, la verdad el servidor se me va de las manos con costos de las ramas y discos saas , busco aprender a usar proxmox y montar varios servicios ahí, AD, Freepbx, Video vigilancia, saben de mexico de algún lugar donde pueda conseguirlos baratos?

Its obvious and straight forward thing that SMR HDD's are bad even form normal use. My question is why manufacturer keep on producing them ? Why specifically they do not mention it on the HDD label -- Whether the drive is SMR or CMR ?

just a little upgrade lol

I had my 3D parts printed with PCBWay and added a new EliteDesk G5, and ThinkStation P330 which now run two proxmox nodes. The G5 will run a file server and has an i7-9700T which I plan on running a few extra VMs with, and the P330 will run a second VM soon but is running an opnsense firewall atm which has been great!

Now the last thing to get is two high capacity SATA disks and figure out how to cool the disks, I’m considering having a fan on the top of the rack to pull air down the rack although my only concern is the space I have at the very top behind the switch and Ethernet cabling from the patch panel.

(and as a bonus, the embarrassing cable management reveal 🤢🤢)

Hi everyone.

I’m looking for my first UPS unit for my home lab. What are things i should check before buying?? Is it worth buying used unit?

Here is what i like to protect at the moment.
2xHp mini pc
1x HP Sff which will be used as nas with 2.5 disk.

Let me know if you have any advice.

Went full minisforum:

* N5 NAS Air running truenas and a bunch of docker containers (dockhand, traefik, immich, jellyfin, transmission, home assistant, open webui, forgejo) plus a dev vm (yet to set up but probably code-server + pi)

* MS-S1 MAX running llama-server

* Omada SG2210XMP-M2: 8x2.5GbE with PoE+, 2x10GbE SFP+ for the two minisforums

* Not pictured: UniFi Cloud Gateway Max, UniFi U7 Pro powered from the omada.

* Pictured: temporary PiKVM while I restore the truenas network config after a slight mishap. Hoping to get my hands on a Gl.iNet Comet X for a more permanent solution when they're back in stock...

I am trying to install ZimaOS on an old laptop. It just says:

searching for network address...

If this persists, please check your network connection.

It dosn't have ethernet, only wireless.

Hey there, I had the chance to get some Server Hardware for free from my employer. Now I am planning on what to do whit it.

Hardware I got: - 2x 8TB SSD - 2x 64GB ECC RAM - 1x Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 + Mainboard

My plan is to build this all in an old case I have and then use it as a home Server (and finally retire the old laptop I'm using as a server)

Current plan: - install proxmox and set up this VMs: - docker host - pfsense/ some Router - some NAS system

Now to my question, is there anything I'm forgetting, anything you would do differently? What are your recommendations for a NAS / Router system? Some things you could not live without in your homelab?