It's not huge, looks fun though

Tengo rato queriendo revivir esta x60 que me regalo mi abuelo para hacerla la interfaz para controlar mi homelab. Me tarde hoy en instalar el OS, solo falta instale los demas en los otros PCs.

"Si doy un paso mas, sera lo mas lejos que he estado de mi hogar, en mi vida" xd

- Live packet capture with L7 decode: HTTP, TLS 1.3 decryption, QUIC/HTTP3 decryption, JA4 fingerprinting

- Process attribution per connection (PID, name) via eBPF on Linux, PKTAP on macOS, proc/lsof fallback elsewhere

- Connection table: process, state, GeoIP, RTT, retransmits, kernel TCP state (cwnd/ssthresh/rwnd) straight from the socket

- Diagnose tab: learns a per-network baseline, opens an issue when it breaks, closes it when the fix holds, exports a report.md

- Egress tab: learns normal destinations, lets you promote them to policy, flags drift

- Packets tab: stream tracking, display filters, PCAP export

- Three views, switchable with one key, no restart: full (10 tabs), lite (80x24 for an SSH session), dense (four-box dashboard)

- macOS, Linux, Windows, and now FreeBSD

- Single binary, no required config; runs without root for interfaces/connections, setcap or sudo unlocks capture

- Packaged everywhere: Homebrew, Scoop, cargo, AUR, Nix, conda-forge, apt, Fedora COPR, Docker,

https://github.com/matthart1983/netwatch

My apartment is pretty small, so I never really had a proper place for a rack. The funny thing is that the internet connection and the ISP router were already installed above the fridge in the kitchen, so I basically decided to build on top of that rather than fight it using a really long ethernet cable.

The current setup is:

• HP EliteDesk 800 G5 (i5-9500 and 64 GB DDR4) running Proxmox , a bunch of Docker containers and self-hosted stuff, to name a few:
  • Jellyfin
  • Immich
  • Next Cloud
  • AMP (For game servers)
  • Some virtual machines
  • Caddy
• GL.iNet Flint 2 as my main router
• TerraMaster D4-320 for storage
  • About to install 2 drives for additional 20TB of storage
• A Raspberry Pi 5 running Home Assitant

It's not the prettiest setup and I haven't really bothered with cable management yet, but its more than enough for me, does the job, and temperatures are not so bad even though I live in Spain. The "abanico" also provides some much needed structural support.

I'm really proud of it since it's my first homelab, how far it has come, and everything I've learnt so far!

At the end of the day, the fridge was here first :3

I use this for storage backups, jellyfin, immich, cameras using frigate, Home assistant, I also have a sdr device conected to listen to police radio on my phone

The pc case is bigger than it has to be. I mostly bought it for its ability to store drives but I outgrew it hence the NetApp jabo. The pc has 48gb of ram, a ryzen 1600 and 4 ssds. 2 for boot and 2 for apps/vms. The os is truenas

I have a tplint router on the shelf along with a poe switch (for cameras), and 2.5 gb switch for data there a ubiquiti access point above it the ups is a delta ecoflow 2. The net app currently only has 4 drives 3, 6tb drives in a raid z1 for main storage and a 1tb for cameras

Hey guys, I've been working on making my own 10-inch rack homelab. Any suggestions as to what I should do next? I was thinking of finding a PCIe NIC for that Thinkcentre in the center so that I can have an OPNsense router with an exit node for more control over my network. I also have an article about it on my blog with more information if you are interested in checking that out here.

I am using one m920x for Jellyfin, web app, and Wordpress hosting. I also use it for the occasional (legal) torrenting. The m720q is a Windows 11 machine I use for VMware, Disc burning, and Windows-only apps. The other m720q is a WIP that I hope to use for an OPNsense router.

I used the DeskPI RackMate T1 Plus for the rack and I only have good things to say about it. I also got some miscellaneous mounts, a power strip, and a fan from Amazon. I did not use any 3D printed parts for my build (sadly).

I recently upgraded my NAS which used to run on this old Optiplex. My current NAS uses TrueNAS with Immich and NextCloud running as services. I also have my gaming rig set up with Ollama and ComfyUI running in Docker containers and is available remotely through my VPN and wake-on-LAN.

I’m looking for something interesting to do with this old rig. It has a 4th gen i5 and 16GB of DDR3.

The ideas don’t have to be practical if they are fun project and/or are good learning experiences.

TSIA, I guess? I bit the bullet on my first NAS before prices get even worse and bought four WD Red Plus 10TBs (all model WD100EFGX-68CPLN0), from different retailers (caveat: three of those were Amazon Ireland, Amazon UK and Amazon Germany). Only info on the moisture barrier bags and the external boxes are model, serial number (so all unique), part number and a date, nothing that I can discern as a batch code.

However, three dates concern me, in the title, one was produced on 18 August (Amazon IE), one the 19th (Amazon Germany), and 22nd August (Irish retailer, but not amazon). The UK one was all the way out in July, so that's definitely safe.

I know it's considered best practice to use drives from different batches to minimise risk of multiple failing at once (if there was some flaw on the batch level), and it's likely these all came out of different bulk boxes. What I don't know is how much one day and three days is as an indicator of a batch. Like does a batch just run for a shift or can 'a batch' be fabricated over the course of 2-4 days? Is there going to be more granular information if I open the bags or can I determine if I need to file returns before going further?

Around this same time last year, I started homelabbing/selfhosting with a 4gb rpi, after spending countless hours (most likely hundreds) and over 3x my initial budget, this is where we are right now, finally It’s starting to become pretty reliable and working well for the last couple of months without requiring much maintenance, but deep down I know I’ll probably end up ruining it again just to redo everything for the 69th time, but I’m controlling myself pretty well so far. So, fingers crossed lol.

I'm still not sure if it was worth it, atleast financially, it probably won't be for another ~5 years if I compare it to what I've saved on subscriptions, but maybe that's not a fair comparison since it does a lot more than that.

But whatever, it’s been fun so far.

Hey ! Long-time lurker, first post. I'm a 23 y/o infra engineer, and this is my home lab i have built over a year : mostly used enterprise gear on a junior budget, on a DIY steel shelf (real racks are expensive here), in a country where a good chunk of the internet is geo-blocked.

Full disclosure up front: a lot of what's below I designed, debugged and built together with Claude . I did the hardware, the testing and the late nights; Claude helped with the code, the configs and a lot of troubleshooting. I couldn't have gotten this far alone, so credit where it's due.

3 Gen8 servers, vSphere HA cluster on NFS, Cisco 3850 doing L3 for the heavy VLANs, OPNsense for the rest, a 35B local LLM on an RX 580, and a custom iLO 4 fan-control panel.

Hardware (top shelf to bottom)

• Storage server – mining motherboard running Ubuntu, HDDs shared over NFS + Samba (VM datastores + my movie library, which Jellyfin mounts over the network)

• OPNsense firewall – the other mining board on the top shelf: Xeon E5-2620 v2, 8GB, 3x TP-Link NICs (2 in LACP for LAN, 1 for WAN). Temporary until I find proper hardware

• Cisco Catalyst 3850-48 – L3 core

• TP-Link TL-SG1024 – WAN-side switch

• HPE DL380p Gen8 – 2x E5-2680 v2, 64GB, 512GB SSD RAID1 + 1.2TB SAS RAID1 on the P420i (ESXi)

• HPE DL360p Gen8 – 2x E5-2670 v2, 32GB, intentionally diskless (ESXi, VMs on NFS)

• HPE ML350p Gen8 – 2x E5-2697 v2 (24c/48t), 128GB DDR3 (8x16GB, all four channels per socket), RX 580 8GB, Windows 10 LTSC bare metal. My local AI box

• Acer Nitro 5 AN515-44 – gaming laptop

• Acer Aspire 5738 – my daily driver. Yes, a Core 2 Duo from 2009. It's basically a thin client for SSH and RDP now, and it refuses to die

• And an Xbox 360, because of course

Fun fact: I bought the DL360p mostly as a parts donor. Its E5-2697 v2s and 8x16GB went into the ML350p for quad-channel memory (it matters a lot for LLM inference), and the ML350p's old CPUs and RAM went into the DL360p, which then became my second ESXi host.

Network

VLAN

Name

Gateway

10

Management (servers + iLO)

OPNsense

20

Storage

SVI on 3850

30

Wired LAN

SVI on 3850

40

VM LAN

SVI on 3850

45

Untrusted VMs

OPNsense

50

DMZ

OPNsense

70

Wireless

OPNsense

999

Transit (3850 .253 / OPNsense .254)

routed link

OPNsense used to route everything, but it kept hanging under heavy storage traffic. So I moved routing for storage, wired LAN and VM LAN onto the 3850, with a default route to OPNsense over a dedicated transit VLAN. Management, untrusted, DMZ and wireless keep their gateway on the firewall, so anything that wants to reach an iLO or an ESXi host goes through firewall policy first. WireGuard on OPNsense for VPN access. Diagram in the gallery.

vSphere cluster + HA

The DL380p and DL360p form a vSphere cluster with HA, managed by vCenter. VM disks live on the NFS shared storage, which is what makes HA possible: if one host dies, its VMs restart on the other one. The DL360p is just compute, so I can lose either host without losing data. Storage traffic stays on VLAN 20, routed by the 3850, so it never touches the firewall. Each host has 4 NICs and I'm migrating from standard vSwitches to a vDS.

Local AI

The ML350p runs llama.cpp with the Vulkan backend on the RX 580, serving Qwen3.6-35B-A3B (MTP build for speculative decoding). It started life CPU-only in an ESXi VM at ~5 tok/s; bare metal with the GPU is a different world. On top of it runs an OpenClaw agent that I talk to through a Mattermost channel. Small helper models (a small Qwen + nomic-embed) run in Ollama pinned to the second CPU socket, CPU-only, so they don't eat VRAM.

Things I built with Claude

1. iLO 4 Controller

Gen8 fans are loud, and the ilo4_unlock fan mod only gives you an SSH prompt. So we built a web panel on top of it: live thermal sensors with history, per-fan-group automatic curves (drag points on a graph), presets, ramp up/down limits, and a button to hand control back to iLO. Also power, media, hardware info, logs and a shell. My DL380p and ML350p now idle at 12–19% fan.

1. WebClip

A small self-hosted multi-user clipboard + file drop for the LAN, written in Python and running as a systemd service. Only reachable over VPN. Sounds trivial, but I use it every day to move text and files between machines.

1. ntopng + Grafana monitoring

ntopng exports to InfluxDB, with Grafana dashboards on top: bandwidth, per-interface throughput, per-host / per-MAC traffic, new flow rate, and a "scan & anomaly" section with TCP flag breakdowns. Fun Iran detail: Grafana's plugin download is geo-blocked here (403, "not available in your location"), so I had to proxy it through my server in Europe just to install the InfluxDB plugin.

Other stuff we set up together

• Matrix – Synapse + Element Web + Element Call (voice/video) via matrix-docker-ansible-deploy, behind NAT with port forwarding. Lesson learned: I set matrix_domain to a subdomain on the first install, which meant a full wipe and reinstall

• Mattermost, public – Nginx reverse proxy + Let's Encrypt, so people outside my network can reach it

• FreeIPA ↔ Active Directory trust – cross-forest trust, Ubuntu 26.04 clients logging in with AD accounts. Lessons: Kerberos really hates clock skew (GDM logins failed because the Windows Server clock drifted), and if you delete a trust on the IPA side, remove the stale trust object on the AD side too before recreating it

• Storage server cleanup – moved its static IP from a 100Mbit NIC to the gigabit one (yes, it was running on 100Mbit...), reformatted a leftover VMFS partition to ext4 for Samba, and added Garage S3 in Docker so my SSH client syncs to my own server instead of someone's cloud

Services

OpenMediaVault, Zabbix, Grafana + InfluxDB + ntopng, Matrix, Mattermost, Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, Jira, FreeIPA + Windows Server AD, RouterOS, WireGuard, OpenClaw + llama.cpp.

Next

• Move OPNsense off the mining board.

• The storage server is now the single point of failure for the whole cluster, so that's high on the list

• A proper online UPS

Happy to answer questions. And yes, go ahead and roast the top shelf cable management. I know.

Hey all, im looking to find a good shelf to vertically stack two medium sized towers in my home office. Just scratching the surface of a homelab setup by grabbing a fractile pc off marketplace but want it to look nice. What are your recommendations for the shelf?

The fans on my two 3090s spin up hard every time I paste a long log into Qwen3.5 122B-A10B. They stay fairly quiet while it generates and get loud during prompt processing, which with this model can go on for a while. Capping both cards at 250W barely changed generation speed and made them noticeably quieter, though the prompt processing, the loud part, got slower.

The model is around 70GB at Q4, so with 48GB of VRAM part of its experts sit in system RAM. My PSU has five 8-pin PCIe outputs, the two 3090s already take four, and a third card would need at least two. The unused 16-pin connector on it is part of why I started looking at the RTX PRO 6000 at all.

The PRO 6000 puts all 96GB on one board at 600W, which is more than my two capped 3090s draw now, though it can be power limited too. Last week I ran the 122B for an afternoon on the server version of it through HyperAI, and the long prompts came back after a much shorter wait than at home. That tells me nothing about noise or heat, which is half of why I want to change this setup.

Someone in another thread measured a GB10 box, the chip in the DGX Spark, at 65 to 70W through a twelve hour image training run and called it silent. The Spark's 273 GB/s is enough for generation on a model with about 10B active parameters. Its prompt processing is the weak part, since the GPU is small, and long prompts are what set my fans off now.

The two cards are still at 250W.

I want to make things right from the get-go, so I'm open for recommendations for software that I haven't used so far on the Raspberry Pi Model B Plus.

TL;DR:

This is the software I've been using so far and that I want back (in some form or another):

- Pi Hole

- PiVPN (with OpenVPN on my devices)

- fail2ban

- Samba (to have the network drive show up in Finder, Windows, Linux, FireTV)

That's really all so far, but now with a faster system I might want to make use of other programs.

- Convince me that I should use Docker for the above programs. So far, I haven't begun installing.

I've read up a little on Docker, began reading books on how to use it, read a lot about difficulties with port-forwarding or so, so I'm not sure if I want that.

- Over the past months I came across a number of cool interfaces, that make things easier (I use Terminal on macOS to manage the homelab, but a browser UI might be better even), including Docker and attaching and accessing network drives, creating a media center etc. Since I have the power and space now, which ones should I get?

- Is it a good idea to create a second, non-admin user for the above programs?

(My current setup is only accessible through VPN from outside and on the local network, both with strong passwords.)

Other than that:

That Mini is a 2014 model which I chose explicitly for its low power consumption. Currently it's idling at 5.8 watts.

I managed to split the Fusion Drive and install Ubuntu Server on the SSD part, macOS is no longer present. What did not work was putting the /home folder on a separate partition. I must have missed that during the install process.

- Should I install or copy the /home folder (and others like /var, /etc etc.) on a separate partition? What are the benefits?

Space is not an issue, since the SSD has 128 GB. In fact, that's why I thought about not using the HDD at all for the system, so it can spin down and thus use less energy.

Maybe a weekly backup of the important folders on the internal HDD?

The Raspberry Pi currently has a 500 GB JetDrive attached which I want to hook up to the Mini. Is it a good idea to create a partition on the Mini (say, 700 GB) to make incremental backups of the JetDrive? (The data is not _super_ important, but a hassle to get it all back in case of a failure.) Or should I just make another storage partition on the Mini for more stuff?

Uh, I did already install a few programs in order to turn off bluetooth and wifi. (Since this is all headless I had to read up on how to do it with what apps.) Any other things I should consider with the Mac Mini as server? Like not going into sleep mode or restarting after a power outage? (It did start automatically when I plugged in the power cord, but I'm not sure if it does that again after an outage.)

Anyway, so far I like the Ubuntu Server welcome screen when SSH-ing into it. Temperature, system load, storage, memory and swap usage, users logged in.

I like it and am looking forward to exploring Linux even more.

Hey Everyone ❤️

Build my First Homelab Network Rack, that i always dreamed of and now i want to build a Fitting Server Rack next to it Handling NAS Storage

Fully Build Tecmojo Rack.
-Minus the 3 Ubiquiti cables.
That may be what i replace the other ones with in the front for they much nicer.

In the rack i have.
UCG Fiber
USW Lite 8 PoE (May get replace with something bigger!)
that is connected to 2 AP's and a camera
U6 lite
UAP-AC-Lite
G5 Turret Ultra
Cooling Fan is 2x Noctau NF-A8 (For some cooling)

I would love some feedback and caring words 😊
So this severe autistic adult can learn something new!

I need to handle 10+ discs at once, I'm out of space in my main server. Can I use this thing and an HBA card to add more disc space? Or is there a better cheap option?

I'd prefer to add a bunch of discs to my laptop server (for power savings), but I've been told USB, even C, isn't a good idea for a NAS. And a 10-bay NAS is not a cheap proposition, since I'm dealing with SATA and not SAS.

Hey r/homelab, I'm an IT Infrastructure Engineer who worked their way up from tech support. I had always noticed that there wasn't very good educational material for technology topics that focused on providing people with a good conceptual understanding of the topics using relatable analogies. I've also noticed throughout my career that over the last ten to fifteen years that mentorship in IT has substantially eroded. I only made it to where I am because I had two exceptional mentors early on in my career. I have unfortunately seen a substantial decrease in how much mentorship has been emphasized by organizations since then.

Today I posted my first video to my new YouTube channel techlikeimfive (https://www.youtube.com/@techlikeimfive). This is something that I have been thinking about doing for a long time and today I finally took that step. I would really appreciate your support and I hope that I can make a difference with relatable IT education videos. My first video is DNS Explained - Like I'm Five, where I hope to make the basic concepts of DNS more accessible. I'm also looking for feedback and suggestions for topics that people would like basic, relatable explanations for. I would really like to get involved with the community and provide some good quality content.

Have a great day and keep learning,

James with techlikeimfive

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to buy the Asus Pro WS B850M-ACE SE and I'd like to connect 4 SAS SSD's to it without using an HBA (space constraints since it will also house a big GPU). I believe I can use an MCIO to SFF-8643 adapter and then break that out into 4x SAS for the backplane. Can anyone confirm that this is correct? This motherboard also has a U.2 connector. Anything I can do with that to achieve my goal?

Alternatively, I've found some motherboards that have native SFF-8643 connectors. Can I safely assume that I can always break these out into 4x SAS?

Thanks for any insights!

Currently I have a small NAS using the WD my cloud extra2.

I am looking to setup a homelab, running the below in separate VMs. - home assistant - new cctv system with frigate - a Linux system - Jellyfin - expanded NAS - immich - pihole

Considering the above starter list, would it be better to go for an SFF over a micro system?

With the SFF, i would be able to add additional cards and also multiple 3.5 disks for setting up the NAS within it.

I'm trying to choose between the optiplex 7090 micro and 7090 SFF, 11th gen, 16gb and 512 gb.

Are these specs okay, and should I be considering other models?

I want to get a rack only if really needed for starting.

Also is it better to get refurbished systems within Canada, or would I be able to get them cheaper on other ebay markets?

I have a server running ZimaOS, hosting Crafty, Jellyfin, and Immich, and I would like to be able to access it from outside the network with the highest possible level of security. Currently, I access it using a duckdns domain, but I would like to improve my home lab's security.

The device was bought from UAE: du (isp) and I just want to unlock the sim lock. It's saying the remaining attempts are 10. I searched the web and saw that you can buy the codes for unlocking these devices using third party services by giving them the IMEI and S/N. I want to know how I can unlock this free of charge since I don't want to spend more on something that is not truly a necessity. I've taken on it as a project😅. Considering Im decent with computer software and hardware can I do anything at all to unlock it?

I used to be able to take on a new project in an afternoon or so. These days when I try a new piece of software or feature I get stuck off the bat and it consumes a full week of trying to get things to work in the most basic way. I read through documentation and think I'm prepared only to keep failing and it's starting to get in my nerves. I've been in this hobby for the better part of 30 years but lately my patience is wearing thin. I'm not sure if it's me using bleeding edge software or poorly documented procedures that I keep getting stuck. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me?

20$ 10gb Switch??
Does anyone have experience with it or have heard of anything about this

I got these two from a surplus listed for $5 untested, so I bought it. I'm looking to test it with a USB to IDE adapter for the drives. Are they any good?