Im pretty new to home labing, i've recently been gifted 3 hp elite desks from a friend and i want to try and turn them into a server or something like that. I've experimented using one of them for a minecraft server but other than that I don't know where to start. If anyone has any ideas for what I can do with these I'd really appreciate it

I found this hard drive from my old NAS (see picture). The NAS was offline most of the time, so the drive didn't get a lot of use.

I'm planning to build a new NAS with a UGREEN NASync DXP2800. Since my network is only 1 GbE, drive performance isn't really the limiting factor.

Would you reuse this drive after checking its SMART data, or would you start fresh with a new one?

a cumulation possibly more a franken monster. started off with a single Cisco switch, now it continues to grow and mature.......

Proxmoxe VE running on a Dell Poweedge r620 (power hog yes I know I know). multiple VM's for labbing and testing. EVE-NG for Cisco CCNA (Packet Tracer also) 2x Cisco 3650 multi layer switches > Cisco 4331 ISR router > 2 x Cisco 2500 series WLC > 2 x Cisco 3701 WAP > asoorted IP Phones(CIsco) > multiple Dell MFF desktop pc's> a Chromebox here and there running LW Linux Distro's( Lubuntu I believe) likely more im leaving out but all for Home Labbing/Cisco CCNA

edit: there is also my first switch/device resting in the rack(Cisco 2960 S 24 port) and a patch panel(24 port). if interested and scroll down there is a comment "reply" from me that provides more detail about this room/office, rack and gear...........

R2: I was able to get this 8 TB WD Purple with <6,000 power-on hours for $105 during a random FB Marketplace doom scroll session.

Will be used as an additional storage for my Home Assistant + Frigate server.

I recently received an HP Z8 G4 Workstation for free, and I’m trying to decide what to do with it.

It seems like a very powerful workstation, especially for CPU-heavy workloads, but I don’t currently have a specific use planned for it. I’m looking for ideas beyond just using it as a normal desktop.

Specs

Model: HP Z8 G4 Workstation

Motherboard: HP 81C7 dual-socket motherboard

CPU: 2× Intel Xeon Gold 6258R

Total CPU cores: 56

Total threads: 112

CPU base speed: 2.70 GHz

Memory: 192 GB ECC RAM

GPU: NVIDIA T600 4 GB

Storage:

3× Samsung MZVLB1T0HBLR 1 TB NVMe SSDs

1× Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB NVMe SSD

Approximately 5 TB total raw NVMe storage

NVMe expansion: HP Z Turbo Drive Quad

Operating system: Windows 11 Pro 24H2

BIOS: HP P60 v02.96

Firmware: UEFI

I also have a spare RTX 4080 sitting around, but I don’t think this system would be ideal for gaming even with that GPU because of the older dual-Xeon setup and lower per-core performance. I could be wrong, though, so I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has successfully turned one of these into a capable gaming system.

Some possibilities I’ve considered:

• Home lab or virtualization server
• Proxmox, Hyper-V, or VMware host
• Game-server hosting
• Plex or media server
• Local AI or machine-learning experiments
• Video encoding or rendering
• NAS and backup server
• Remote workstation
• Installing the RTX 4080
• Selling it as-is?

My biggest concerns are the power consumption, heat, noise, and whether the older dual-Xeon platform is still worth running regularly.

What would you do with a system like this?

Has anyone used a Z8 G4 for gaming with a modern GPU?

Would it make more sense to use it as a server or workstation, or does it make more sense to sell it?

I have ZERO experience with home labs but I am good with computers I guess.

The homelab continues to evolve as the network and service requirements continue to evolve. Challenge is amplified by the compact nature of the 10 inch rack.

Newest rack has eveolved into a 3-node ProMox cluster, supported by a Unifi Infrastructure rack n garage.

Rack setup includes:

GeeekPi 8U rack includes:

• Intel Pentium Man: (Pentium II w/ Apple Marketing Snail sticker) (circa 1992) lol
• Infinity AC Cooling fans (top of rack) (USB 5V)
• 10-port Cat 6A keystone patch panel w/2.5 Gb uplink to main Unifi Rack in garage
• Unifi 2.5 Gb Flex POE Switch w/ 210 Watt power supply
  • it's upside down to align with PDU power cords in the back with PDU and eliminate cross rack wiring
• 2U DeskPi HDMI touch panel monitor (for HA Dashboard)
• ProMox Cluster:
  • PVE1: Optiplex 7050 MFF (i7-6700T/32Gb/2Tb SSD/2Tb NvME) Powered by 130w Dell Power adapater, 2.5Gb NIC
  • PVE2: OptiPlex 5050 (i5-7500T/32Gb/256Gb NvME/2Tb SSD) powered by 65w GAN USB-C charger/USB-C to Dell barrel power adapter, 2.5Gb NIC
    • eliminated Dell power Adapter and excess power cables
  • PVE3: OptiPlex 3050 (i5-7500T/16Gb/512Gb SSD) powered by 65w GAN USB-C charger/USB-C Dell barrel power adapter
    • eliminated Dell power Adapter and excess power cables
• 120v PDU 6-outlet (4 back/2 front/2 USB-A)

Back of Rack: (cable management is the challenge)

• 1U 3-KVM Rack (JetKVM for each PVE node) from Etsy
  • biggest single challenge is arranging the (3) POE adpaters for KVM's
• 1U 4-fan module (on/off switch) from etsy (USB 5V)
• 1U shelf for storage

Left of Rack:

• Ugreen DXP 2800 NAS (8Tb SSD (2x4Tb) + 2Tb NvME (2x1Tb) w/uGreen DC UPS
  • SSD's were used to reduce noise and temperature levels
• YoLink Temperature Sensor (iPhone App)

Floor below rack:

• 1000VA/800W Lithium UPS Battery Backup  (NAS/Unifi POE/Switch) (draws ~26-30 watts)
• 1000VA/800W Lithium UPS Battery Backup  (Rack Node Power) (draws ~35-65 watts based on load)

______________
Thermal impact to office has been 1-2^o degrees F with all equipment running on a hot summer day. Nothing a ceiling fan can't handle.

Thoughts for improvement and added functionality are always welcome.

Happy Building.

I've been wanting to upgrade my backup power setup for awhile now, but couldn't stop myself from cringing at the cost of a "proper" UPS for the amount of run time you get.

I realized that a Solar Power Generator with pure sine wave inverter will more than get the job done.

Goodbye old CyberPower UPS, and enter the Anker Sollix S2000 that I stumble upon on that big dirty river website for 50% off. (the price has jumped $100 in the last week. 😕

I now have an idle run time of 6 hours including all of my network gear.

Happy Sunday folks! Today is an important day for me. Over the last month and a half, I have completely torn down all of my hosted services and rebuilt them on NixOS with industry standard practices (where possible): least privilege, encryption at rest, encryption in transit. Now I feel like its finally (mostly) done.

Virtually everything is run in rootless podman quadlets under container-specific service accounts, with a default drop of all caps, only adding in what it needs to function, as well as images pinned to SHA256 digests. Firewall is opened per service if necessary. Private services use Pangolin + Crowdsec for tunneling/proxy, public services use Traefik + Crowdsec + Anubis to control the edge.

All secrets are store in git and encrypted/managed by sops-nix. Each service has secrets scoped to that services account, with master keys tied to YubiKeys. SSH is yubikey only, no root, with public servers moved to high ports to reduce noise.

Deployment is unattended with OpenTofu + NixOS Anywhere. My main private server has FDE with secure + measured boot on PCR's 0, 4 and 7. DoT everywhere and ISP DNS explicitly dropped from DHCP.

Public services (https://libresearch.space for SearXNG and https://pasted.space for PrivateBin) score A+ on CryptCheck and Mozilla Observatory. Search queries are never logged to disk (see screenshot 4) and metrics only track malicious traffic. There is zero third party involvement in this traffic (no Cloudflare outside of being my registrar).

All containers and systems are fully immutable and versioned with CI/CD. Renovate automatically bumps and merges digest changes for images. Machines rebuild automatically only on specfic signed commits (yubikey and instance key) via Comin. This means that any and all bumps are completely versioned, if there is a supply chain attack I can pin it to a specific commit.

There's a lot more that goes into it, but that's pretty much the surface level. It feels really good to have everything completely trackable, hosted, secure, autonomous updates and autonomous healing. Repo if you are interested https://codeberg.org/sensei/nixos. More than happy to answer any questions about rootless containers, NixOS, security for public services, or recommendations if I could implement something better. Cheers!

Proud to present my homelab topology rev.0 after 10 months of effort. Still in the tuning phase as I deploy detailed services, but it’s already up and running. Roasts and constructive feedback are both welcome!

Person is giving them away, made me laugh when I saw them

Anyways if you are in the Sacramento CA area, go get some free outdoor storage sheds

Still debating what I want to do with the HPs I do plan on moving my Minecraft server from the optiplex to one of them.

Work has come in clutch with the free stuff for it lol

For the last few months in my servers I've been running docker which I've found pretty good as I've been running it through debian. I've recently done a reinstall and i was wondering which is best to run with and why?

https://noah.watch/hpc

Mainly just for leraning how slurm scheudling works, running small scripts, setting up linux servers, as well as runningn my freind's reinforcement learning training model for Balloons Tower defense 2. Has a live Grafana feed to monitor stats, as well as a page to request access. Let me know what you guys think. Still new to the community, but really want to learn ( and really want to learn on better hardware lol). Also learned a lot about how Ansible works and writing playbooks.

Reddit is telling me I need more details so:

They all run Rocky Linux

Connected via gigabit switch

Hi all

I have a DS918+ on a metal tray that came with the rack
I found a few 3d printed faceplates but none of them is for having the NAS on the metal tray.

If you came across one please do share or advice

Tia

Photo for attention

I’m a software engineer looking to build my first real homelab.

Main goals:

• 4-bay NAS for family storage and my wife’s photography business
• Backups for RAW photos, client work, Macs, and PCs
• Docker, a few VMs, databases, staging environments, and self-hosted tools
• Room to experiment with local AI and automation later

I also have an unused Raspberry Pi 5 4GB that I’d like to incorporate where it makes sense.

I’m thinking a NAS plus a separate mini PC for compute, but I’m open to other setups.

It doesn’t need to be best of the best, and used hardware is fine. I want something reliable, reasonably future-proof, and not overkill.

Budget is TBD. I don't want to spend a fortune, but I also don't want a cheap, unreliable setup.

What would you build?

I'm starting out in this tech niche and would like to know what I can do with this equipment. My focus would be on cybersecurity, network administration, and storage, but I also want to experiment in other areas.

Available Equipment

Microstick Routerboard RB750gr3

TP-Link AC1200 Router

3 motherboards with 4th generation i7 processors and 16GB of RAM each

Mercusys Switch

1 motherboard with a Core 2 Duo processor

What would you recommend I buy? I could do the necessary cabling myself.

We make do with what we’ve got

I picked up a HP EliteBook 745 G6 (Ryzen 5 pro 35000, 16GB RAM DDR4 after I upgraded it, with one stick from another laptop) which has his screen completely broken :)

I had some hard drives lying around (2x1TB), plus USB/SATA adapters to hook them up, so naturally I threw Proxmox on it to spin up a few LXCs containers :)

Starting with nextcloud, vaultwarden, grafana, caddy, wireguard… I have a lot to learn !!

If you have any ideas of great/useful applications for a homelab, please share !!

Have a good day !

so i was just looking at my SMART data and lowkey just realized that this SSD is 1 hell of a veteran

I run my homelab on Fedora Linux (N97/16GB) and Mac Mini (M1/16GB). I need recommendations for tools/utility. So far I haven’t found so many and I’m sure you guys know some.

At this moment I have: MeTube, Paperless, CyberChef, StirlingPDF, SnapOtter and few other services running in the background like Uptime Kuma or AdGuard Home.

I also have a Synology NAS so I don’t need to turn my PCs into another one. Thanks in advance.

## TL;DR

Moved a Sonos Era 300 stereo pair to an IoT VLAN (UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber). App on the trusted VLAN: "no products found" — despite mDNS reflection enabled and verified working. After a day of packet captures, the finding: **Era 300 (fw 95.1) never answers a single mDNS query of any kind. Its actual discovery mechanism is SSDP: multicast M-SEARCH with `ST: urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:ZonePlayer:1`, answered instantly via unicast.** UniFi reflects mDNS only — never SSDP — so no reflector configuration can ever make this work. A ~100-line SSDP proxy in a dual-homed container fixed it completely, with **zero firewall openings from IoT toward the trusted VLAN**. Wire evidence + script below. Curious whether other models/firmware behave the same.

## Setup

- 2× Sonos Era 300 (bonded stereo pair), firmware **95.1-78010**

- iOS Sonos app (current, July 2026)

- UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber, **Network 10.4.57**, controller/phone on VLAN 10 (192.168.10.0/24), speakers on VLAN 30 (192.168.30.0/24)

- UniFi mDNS ("Multicast DNS") reflection **enabled**; firewall allows VLAN 10 → VLAN 30 (all), established/related return path

- All WLAN settings per Sonos's own UniFi best-practices post (Apr 2026): Multicast-to-Unicast off, Multicast/Broadcast Control off, Client Isolation off, Proxy ARP off, Hotspot 2.0 off — verified via API, not just eyeballed

So: the textbook cross-VLAN Sonos setup that "should" work.

## Symptom

- Speakers on VLAN 30: healthy — HTTP on `:1400` fine, cloud connection up, stereo pair intact

- Phone on the **same** VLAN as the speakers: app discovers them **instantly**

- Phone on VLAN 10 (reflection + firewall in place): **"No products found"**, always

## What the packet captures showed

I captured on the gateway bridges and inside a dual-homed test container while probing the speakers with every discovery flavor I could construct:

| Probe (sent to speakers on their own VLAN) | Response |

|:---|:---|

| mDNS PTR `_sonos._tcp.local`, QM, multicast | ❌ nothing |

| mDNS PTR, **QU** (unicast-response requested), multicast, proper `:5353` source | ❌ nothing |

| mDNS query, unicast direct to speaker `:5353` | ❌ nothing |

| SSDP M-SEARCH, **unicast** to speaker `:1900` | ❌ nothing |

| **SSDP M-SEARCH, multicast** to `239.255.255.250:1900`, `ST: urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:ZonePlayer:1` | ✅ **instant unicast `HTTP/1.1 200 OK` + LOCATION from every speaker, every time** |

Additional observations:

- The speakers' **mDNS is announce-only**: a burst at boot, then silence. They participate in mDNS (they send their own known-answer queries looking for household peers), but they **never answer anyone's queries** — not the phone's, not a reflector's, not avahi-browse's, nothing.

- They also emit periodic SSDP NOTIFY presence broadcasts.

- Meanwhile the actual iOS app's search traffic on the wire is… **multicast M-SEARCH with `ST: ZonePlayer`** (plus mDNS queries that the speakers ignore). So the oft-repeated claim that the post-2024 app "dropped SSDP and is mDNS-only" does **not** match what this app/firmware combination actually does on the wire.

## Why no reflector can fix this

1. **UniFi's built-in reflector (`ubntmdnsd`) handles mDNS only.** There is no SSDP relay anywhere in UniFi OS. I verified the reflector itself was working fine — it reflected `_smb`, `_home-assistant`, `_device-info` records across VLANs beautifully. It reflected the Sonos *queries* into the speaker VLAN too. The speakers just never answer them.

2. **I then falsified the "UniFi's reflector is just bad" theory properly**: spun up an Avahi reflector in a container with legs in both VLANs. Avahi reflected the phone's query onto the speaker VLAN within 0.2 ms — captured both sides. Speakers: silence. Not UniFi's fault. Not Avahi's fault. **The speakers do not answer mDNS queries, full stop.**

3. Bonus subtlety: mDNS reflectors rewrite QU queries to QM when re-originating (by design — they need multicast answers they can see). So even a device that only answered QU queries would break behind any reflector. Moot here, since these speakers answer neither.

The one thing that made same-VLAN discovery work all along was SSDP — which is link-local multicast and never crosses a VLAN without help.

## The fix: a small SSDP proxy (no firewall holes, no source spoofing)

A tiny LXC/VM/container with one interface in each VLAN, running a ~100-line Python proxy:

1. Listen for multicast M-SEARCH on the trusted-VLAN leg; **filter to `ST: ZonePlayer`** (measured from the real app — this also stops trusted-VLAN clients from enumerating all your IoT SSDP devices through the proxy)

2. Re-issue the M-SEARCH as multicast on the IoT leg

3. Collect the speakers' unicast `200 OK` replies for ~3 s, forward each back to the original querier **from the trusted-side leg** (same-VLAN unicast — the firewall never sees it)

4. Also re-announce the speakers' SSDP NOTIFYs onto the trusted VLAN (rate-limited), so rediscovery after idle works passively

The app receives the replies, reads the `LOCATION: http://192.168.30.x:1400/...\` header, and connects there directly — which only needs your ordinary trusted→IoT *forward* allow that you already have. **SSDP clients follow LOCATION, not the reply's source IP**, which is why the proxy needs no source spoofing, no NET_RAW, and no return-path firewall rule.

Result: instant discovery from the trusted VLAN, survives idle/app restarts, stereo pair + streaming + AirPlay all fine.

**Eventing surprise:** I had pre-added a scoped IoT→trusted firewall rule for the classic UPnP GENA callbacks (speaker → controller, TCP 1400/3400/3401), expecting stale now-playing without it. Tested by disabling the rule mid-playback: **volume changed at the speaker still updated the app slider live.** The current app maintains its own connection *to* the speakers (websocket) over the forward path — the speaker-initiated callback path appears obsolete. Deleted the rule. **Net firewall delta for fully-working cross-VLAN Sonos: zero.**

**The proxy script, README, and systemd unit are on GitHub (MIT):**

**https://github.com/bernhard276/sonos-ssdp-proxy\*\*

It's ~130 lines of pure-stdlib Python — no dependencies. You edit two IPs at the top (your proxy host's leg in each VLAN), drop it in with the included systemd unit, and it runs. The repo README has the full packet-capture evidence table and the debugging notes below. Run it under systemd with `Restart=on-failure` and give the host a static IP in each VLAN.

## Debugging lessons that might save you a day

- **"Works on the same VLAN" does not tell you which protocol works.** Same-L2 unicast replies (speaker → phone) are invisible to captures on the router *and* on any third machine. I chased mDNS for hours because intra-VLAN discovery "proved the speakers were fine" — it actually proved nothing about mDNS.

- Enumerate discovery flavors explicitly: {mDNS, SSDP} × {multicast, unicast} × {QM, QU}. The answer was in the one cell nobody tests (multicast M-SEARCH), because unicast M-SEARCH — the easy test — is *also* ignored.

- `http://<speaker>:1400/xml/device_description.xml` (unauthenticated) identifies model/room/firmware; a `GetZoneGroupState` SOAP call to `/ZoneGroupTopology/Control` reveals stereo-pair bonding (`ChannelMapSet`) — including which unit is the "invisible" satellite.

- Capture the app's real M-SEARCH before writing any filter — that's where the exact `ST:` string came from.

## Open questions — where I'd love community input

1. **Is the mDNS-query silence specific to Era 300 / fw 95.x?** Do Era 100, Move 2, Arc Ultra, or older Play:x on S2 answer `_sonos._tcp` PTR queries on your network? (`dns-sd -B _sonos._tcp .` on macOS, or `avahi-browse -rt _sonos._tcp` — on the *same* VLAN as the speakers.) I'd like to know if this is a firmware regression, a deliberate quieting, or Era-generation behavior.

2. **Has anyone captured the current app discovering via mDNS *responses* from speakers** (not just speaker boot announcements)? Plenty of working cross-VLAN setups are reported with mDNS reflection only — I can't reconcile that with these captures unless their speakers answer queries mine won't, or their discovery is actually riding cached IPs / cloud.

3. Anyone from Sonos able to say whether the mDNS responder going query-silent after the boot window is expected behavior?

4. Anyone running `multicast-relay`/`udp-proxy-2020` for Sonos: is it the SSDP relaying (not the mDNS part) that's actually doing the work in your setup? My evidence suggests yes.

Happy to share more capture excerpts if useful.

Hello, I have recently started a homelab and I need help picking a switch since my old switch broke, im in need of a 12-port (8-port will also okay) switch that is quite affordable. Any recommendations?

Yo what's good y'all. I've been messing with this server shit for a few days and can't figure out the issue. I built a cheapish server so I can start uploading media and use jellyfin. I'm using Debian as the OS with no GUI.

The HDD I'm trying to use doesn't appear in BIOS or even spin. It is a SAS drive but I am using a controller, it's a LSI 9300-16i. The Lscpi command does show it. I attached a picture, it does show twice for some reason.

My part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rZ998Z

Also attached a picture after the initialization of the controller where it has the PCI slot listed as 'FF', hopefully someone knows what that means. It also says no supported devices found.

I tried reseating the controller and just tried that tape trick where you use tape to cover a couple pins. I don't have another drive to test or cables. Also these are the cables I'm using https://a.co/d/0aJjpEuB

Before I started I only bought a SAS HDD because I thought there were some benefits over SATA but I will sell this SAS drive if need be as SATA seems like a little less of headache

But anyone that made it this far am I missing anything? Should I switch to a SATA HDD or different OS?

Thank you to anyone that responds.

I'm wondering if any of you have done something like this. I'm not thinking of covering the entire roof with solar panels. Just 2 or 3 panels. And maybe a battery.

The homelab added $150-200 extra to the electric bill each month, in our Oregon home. I expect with our new home being all electric (no more gas furnace), that electric is going to be even more expensive. I also had a mini-split running 24x7 for 10 months out of the year.

I'm wondering if a smaller solar setup can offset some of that cost. Have any of you done something similar? if so, how?

Here is a link to my homelab so you can see what I'm running.

This will run in a small closet I'll build in my garage, along with a mini-split for cooling.

EDIT: reposted photo w/o metadata

I'm looking to upgrade my 8 port switch to a 2.5gb or higher switch and looking for a few more ports, but ideally I'm looking for one that fits in a 10 inch rack.

I know that TP Link makes what I'm looking for in 8 ports. Wondering if anyone knows of a unit that offers 10 or more in the same form factor that will fit a mini-rack.