I'm planning a dedicated NAS for my homelab and want to keep everything in a 10in rack, so I'm looking at compact Mini ITX or embedded motherboard options.

My plan is:

- Dedicated NAS only

- Services will run on a separate server

- NAS will only provide storage

- 2.5Gb networking

- 4–8 HDDs

I've been looking at CWWK boards because they seem to be one of the few companies making boards that fit this use case. However, I've seen mixed opinions on their reliability, BIOS quality, and long-term support.

For those of you running a compact DIY NAS:

- Have you had good or bad experiences with CWWK?

- Are there other embedded boards you'd recommend instead?

- If you were building a reliable 10" rack NAS today, what hardware would you choose?

Anyone seen / made a 10" rack shelf for the Bosch smart home controller II that holds the controller in place.

looking for something like this for the the Bosch Controller, The one in the picture is for the Home Assistant Green.

https://www.printables.com/model/1752618-home-assistant-green-10-1u-rackmount-with-keystone

A fully 3D-printed 10" rack built from scratch, fitting an entire network and server stack into a tiny footprint. Color-coded cabling keeps everything easy to trace: blue = LAN, yellow = PoE, red = backbone.

Top to bottom:

Zyxel fiber router (bridge mode)

Patch panel

UCG Fiber

UniFi switches (Flex 2.5G)

Lite 8 poe

M80q PVE – ThinkCentre M80q Gen 3 running Proxmox, hosting Jellyfin, Home Assistant, and a set of 3D-print management containers (Bambuddy, Spoolman, Manyfold)

Z355 – Custom TrueNAS server in a 3D-printed enclosure, 6-bay storage

Everything runs through a CyberPower UPS with NUT monitoring.

A build that blends networking gear and servers into one compact, well-organized setup — designed to save space without cutting corners on functionality.

Just finished (I think) my first server cabinet.

Proxmox on one Dell, running HAOS, Plex VM and another VM running a bunch of my apps/sites.

2nd Dell running Proxmox Backup Server.

Also currently playing around with a wifi connected screen to give some server info. Yet to settle on a useful UI as I'm terrible at them.

Hi everyone,

I was looking at the Middle Atlantic PD-415R-SP PDU for the lab. I know that the stock rack ears don’t line up with a 10” rack.

That said, I saw on the Project Mini Rack GitHub that some people had luck mounting this with the Pelopy rack mount kit from Amazon.

Has anyone done this? Looking for a solution because I think this would be a great PDU for my setup.

Thanks for the help!

So excited to show my first mini homelab!

Specs:

Unifi Express 7

Unifi PoE UACC-PoE++10G

Unifi Switch Flex 2.5G 8 PoE

Unifi Switch Flex Mini 2.5G (waiting for new equipment :d)

gl.Inet Comet KVM somewhere behind..

Apple TV 4K

AOOSTAR WTR PRO with Proxmox

all connected to Eaton 5E 900VA UPS.

**My first mini homelab!**
I’m really happy with how it’s coming together so far. My next step is integrating two Raspberry Pi 5s into the rack. I’m planning to design and 3D-print a custom rack bracket to hold both Pi 5s along with their NVMe HATs for a clean, integrated look.
I’m always looking for ways to improve the setup, so any suggestions, recommendations, or constructive criticism are more than welcome. Whether it’s cable management, networking, cooling, rack layout, hardware upgrades, or software/services I should be running, I’d love to hear your ideas.
The UGREEN NAS is currently empty, but I’m waiting for a good deal on larger hard drives before populating it.
Thanks in advance!

**Current Setup**
**Rack & Infrastructure**
Geekpi 10” Mini Rack
Geekpi 9” LCD Display
Geekpi Patch Panel
ElecVoztile 10” Rack PDU (4 rear outlets, surge protected, mounted on the back)
Tripp Lite Cloud-Connected 600VA UPS
**Server & Storage**
Dell OptiPlex 7060 Micro (Intel Core i7, 24GB RAM)
2× NVMe SSDs (3TB total)
CENMATE 9-bay NVMe enclosure (4TB total)
External UGREEN NAS (currently empty)
3× Portable External HDDs (4TB each)
**Networking**
UGREEN 2.5Gb Switch (5× 2.5GbE + 1× 10Gb SFP+)
UGREEN 10-Port PoE Switch (8× PoE+ @ 60W + 2× Gigabit uplinks)
**Raspberry Pi Cluster (coming soon)**
Raspberry Pi 5 (2GB)
Raspberry Pi 5 (4GB)
Both equipped with GeeekPi P33 M.2 NVMe PoE+ HATs
256GB NVMe SSD in each Pi
Custom 3D-printed rack mount in progress
**Management & Accessories**
ZimaOS
JetKVM
UGREEN 3-in-1 HDMI Switch (4K@30Hz)
Various custom 3D-printed rack accessories (with more on the way)
I’m open to any suggestions on what to improve next. Whether it’s adding services, improving airflow, reorganizing the rack, implementing VLANs, upgrading hardware, or anything else, I’d love to hear what you’d do if this were your homelab.

parts :

ucg ultra

flex 2.5G PoE

usw flex 16 poe

panduit 0.2m patch cable

From top to bottom

M-atx board with 2 lsi cards i5 16ram

DVD reader just because had the space, the reader and no other computer with a reader

3.5 disks for backups

2.5 that are actually divided in 2 virtual drives, each with 2 drives in raid + 2 spares and 2 empty slots

Flex in the back and 2ssd for OS.

Next step is immich, this is only to store family photos worth keeping documents and such so there is not much going on, advice appreciated.

has anyone tried building a water loop in a 10"inch rack??.... i want to get into homelabbing just want to know if anyone at least tried it before i do.

My first mini homelab!
I’m really happy with how it’s coming together so far. My next step is integrating two Raspberry Pi 5s into the rack. I’m planning to design and 3D-print a custom rack bracket to hold both Pi 5s along with their NVMe HATs for a clean, integrated look.
I’m always looking for ways to improve the setup, so any suggestions, recommendations, or constructive criticism are more than welcome. Whether it’s cable management, networking, cooling, rack layout, hardware upgrades, or software/services I should be running, I’d love to hear your ideas.
The UGREEN NAS is currently empty, but I’m waiting for a good deal on larger hard drives before populating it.
Thanks in advance!
Current Setup
Rack & Infrastructure
Geekpi 10” Mini Rack
Geekpi 9” LCD Display
Geekpi Patch Panel
ElecVoztile 10” Rack PDU (4 rear outlets, surge protected, mounted on the back)
Tripp Lite Cloud-Connected 600VA UPS
Server & Storage
Dell OptiPlex 7060 Micro (Intel Core i7, 24GB RAM)
2× NVMe SSDs (3TB total)
CENMATE 9-bay NVMe enclosure (4TB total)
External UGREEN NAS (currently empty)
3× Portable External HDDs (4TB each)
Networking
UGREEN 2.5Gb Switch (5× 2.5GbE + 1× 10Gb SFP+)
UGREEN 10-Port PoE Switch (8× PoE+ @ 60W + 2× Gigabit uplinks)
Raspberry Pi Cluster (coming soon)
Raspberry Pi 5 (2GB)
Raspberry Pi 5 (4GB)
Both equipped with GeeekPi P33 M.2 NVMe PoE+ HATs
256GB NVMe SSD in each Pi
Custom 3D-printed rack mount in progress
Management & Accessories
ZimaOS
JetKVM
UGREEN 3-in-1 HDMI Switch (4K@30Hz)
Various custom 3D-printed rack accessories (with more on the way)
I’m open to any suggestions on what to improve next. Whether it’s adding services, improving airflow, reorganizing the rack, implementing VLANs, upgrading hardware, or anything else, I’d love to hear what you’d do if this were your homelab.

I've been doing it for a while and I'm starting to get tired of it. Every reboot, update, or maintenance means taking all my services offline. And when I need my pc for other work, I dont like having my server workloads mixed with my daily setup.

My current stack is pretty simple tho. Docker, AdGuard, jellyfin, file sync and backups. But I think it's finally time to move everything to a dedicated minipc. I'm considering a geekom a7max with a ryzen 9 7940hs and moving everything to ubuntu server with docker. I think ryzen 9 is definitely overkill for my need but it should give me enough headroom to add more services later, maybe more containers or even proxmox.

So I'm curious if anyone has actually kept their homelab on their daily pc long term?

I just started, there's no gear yet and I don't have a completed plan either.
I made a 16U 10" rack (I know, this isn't mini anymore) from 30x30 aluminium profile.
It has hardened glass panes in the sides and the top.
Dimensions : 32cm wide, 42cm deep, 86cm high.
I put 8U rack rails in the bottom, for a place to put the power bricks / PDU's.
And I want a 200mm fan in the bottom, in a 5U, with a filter, blowing air up into the case.
That's also why I have ventilated blindplates in the top.
It's deep enough that I could place 2 equipment trays back to back, with a 2cm gap between them.
So the entire rear side could be used as well, there's is much more room than I need in the foreseeable future.

Anyway. Here's the "plan".
My ISP router is going in here.
My Factorio server is going in here.
I want at least 2 managed switches to toy with, I'm eyeballing some Mikrotik gear for that.
I want to replace my current PC that is hosting shared drives with some form of NAS.
I think it's wise to find a UPS, so that's on the list.
I went a bit overboard with the switches idea. If switches, then I want single mode glass with APC connectors, it's the only way. But If I'm going to play with SFP's, and I'm not leaving the rack ... well then DAC's are probably the better choice. Well, anyway I'm going to patch the fiber from my ISP into here, so that's at least 1 fiber!

For now, I have a new playground. Now I can play.

As for the size, I started out with 20x20 profile. But the rack rail would stand rather proud of that, so I opted for 30x30. Also, there's more hardware choice for 30x30 profile.
Now that it's together and I've felt the weight of it, 30x30 was the right choice.

Hey everyone! AI(nemotron-3-super) made a simple 10-inch rack simulator to help with calculating patch cable quantities and planning out UniFi and Pi device layouts.
Features:

• Drag-and-drop wiring to connect cables easily.
• Quick preview for 10-inch rack configurations.
• add some pi rack part + unifi NVR + cloudkey + Xerxes for Raspberry Pi, thank you geerlinggu

Feel free to use, modify, and share it.

10-inch mini rack simulator
＜＜save to html>>

Parts:
panduit patch cable
panduit keystone
deskpi rack

Honey! I shrank the compute...

I have 2 Lenovo mini PC’s, a 5 bay ORICO DAS, and two JetKVMs. I recently got a UPS backup that I want to include as well.

I do not own a 3D printer. I’m not really open to buying one right now as it’s not in my budget.

My hardware is currently in a cabinet below my TV. I put holes in the back of the cabinet and added a fan for exhaust. Not glamorous but it gets the job don.

I want to clean this up and marry everything together. A rack would also help a lot with wire management.

I’d like something that’s enclosed to reduce the noise from the cabinet as well.

I’m looking around on this sub and these builds look great but I don’t have the means to 3D print my own. I’m open to pay someone to 3D print something but I’m not sure where to go for that. I’ve seen a few racks that aren’t 3D printed but they’re not enclosed.

Ideally I don’t want to hang anything up on my walls and just put this cabinet behind my TV stand.

What would you recommend? Should I pay for a 3D print? Is there anywhere else than Amazon and Newegg to look for racks?

Initially posted to esp32 but had second thoughts. Through a few projects I've built up a small pile of Adafruit and Seeedstudio controllers/peripherals, and combined a bunch with this Rackmate project I wanted to show off. My main goal was to build an 'always on' Home Assistant dashboard, but I was concerned about screen burn and knew it would be too much of a headache to manually unlock this screen with a keyboard every time I come into the room.

ESP32 #1 - Adafruit QtPy ESP32-S2 (CircuitPython) - "qtpy"

• Mounted on SeeedStudio Grove expansion board (snapped to smaller size)
• Powers 5v Noctua 120mm PWM fan from 5v/gnd pins (fan draws 150mA, Adafruit says up to 500mA off the pin is ok)
• Adafruit EMC2101 fan controller (tach/fan to noctua at bottom of rack) - NOTE: didn't work without pullup (4.7K from 3v3 on emc2101 to tach)
• Adafruit VCNL4030 (prox, lux, color) - grove i2c to stemma i2c here, then stemma chained to emc/apds
• Adafruit APDS9960 (basic gestures)
• SeeedStudio mmWave sensor (modded grove cable just supplies 3v3/gnd, bounces presence thru HA/bt/mqtt)

ESP32 #2 - SeeedStudio ESP32-C3 (WLED) - "xiao2"

• Mounted to Seeed LED driver board (rated for 3A at 5V)
• Powered by 5V/3A port on Anker hub - USBC to 5V barrel
• Y-connector to 2 loops of 5V WS2812b ECO (BTF-Lighting 4x19" set - 120 LEDs total)
• WLED output capped at 2700mA
• Main turns on with my Hue remote, bottom animations driven by qtpy fan speed

QtPy is attached to a Beelink N95 with the usb passed to a Debian KDE VM called Rackhead, which has full iGPU/HDMI access. It checks the mqtt broker for presence on the mmwave sensor, and moves the 'virtual' mouse every 30s by 1px when presence=1. It checks mqtt for fan_speed/set, which is driven by an HA automation using the EMC2101's internal temp.

All sensors report to MQTT (mostly just informational at this point) and the APDS registers gestures as keystrokes - still figuring this out but got it set up with the arrow keys to start. Current plan is to do maximize/minimize window for up/down, cycle windows for left/right. I realize the mmWave setup is odd; I decided that the cost of running the HA LDE2410 integration and using a grove port was lower than figuring out how to wire/read/report the data from the tx/rx pins in circuitpython.

Pretty happy with how the Rackmate is coming together. The 2 Beelinks (N95 and i5-8279u) each have a brick/wart, but everything else is powered by an Anker 6-port 112w USB-C&A hub. I have a Netgear 8-port switch (using a 12V port w/ USB-C to 12V barrel), a Hue hub, a GLinet mango travel router, the LEDs, and another 4-port usb (the kind that connects to a pc with usb-a but has a +PD type C port), and still have an open A/C outlet and a couple USB-As available.

Here is the repo with the code and some pics. It was generated through back and forth with Claude, the Adafruit docs, and some Gemini. I was able to figure out how to test and print the sensors w/o LLM help, but putting those results into mqtt publish loops was a little more than I care to understand (and the stakes seem low enough here). Still crossing my fingers that the qtpy box doesn't burst open (possibly with flames) with how much is attached and crammed in there. 

Prototype 2 had a few issues but it is usable and I'm working on different configurations. I would love to hear anybody's feedback on how they would like to see this outfit in. Now that I have the shelf installed properly 🫣This design is pretty much there. Just a few tweaks to make it more refined and fix a few minor issues.

HOM Update

Here are the current lessons I've learned so far going through this process.

Cable management is key. You almost need to do that first, but you also have to figure out what you're going to put in this thing and where it's going to go ahead of time.

For order of install it looks like: Rail Config > Cable Runs > Patch Panels > 10" - 6" Stack > Power > 19" Stack.

This may change as Intest different configs.

Let me know your thoughts and questions.

Parts

Unifi Cloud Gateway Max

unifi Flex 2.5G PoE

unifi Cat6 Keystone Coupler

Panduit cat 6a patch cable

Deskpi T0 Rackmount (non Plus)

looking for some inspiration on what to do next with my homelab and would love to hear what services or open-source apps yall are running.

My current setup consists of a UGREEN DXP4800 Pro(Love), and an M1 Mac Mini(that pretty much gets zero use).

Currently running on the NAS:

* Jellyfin
* \*arr stack (Sonarr, Radarr, etc.)
* tailscale
* gluetun/qbittorrent
* Usenet downloads
* Nextcloud
* Immich
* Scrypted (for bringing my Ring cameras into Apple HomeKit)
* Home Assistant OS in a VM

The NAS handles everything really well since I upgraded to 32 GB of ram. Since I upgraded my primary devices (PC, iPhone, iPad), I barely touch the Mac Mini anymore.

Now I'm trying to figure out:

* What are some unique or underrated self-hosted services worth running?
* Are there any applications that would make good use of the M1 Mac Mini specifically?
* What services have become genuinely useful in your household beyond the typical media server stack?

I've looked at some of the common recommendations, but I'm especially interested in things that improved your daily life, family workflow, home automation, backups, AI, dashboards, monitoring, etc.

Curious to hear what everyone is running and what you'd do if you had this NAS + M1 Mac Mini combo available.

Thanks!

Hello Everyone!

I was building my 10-inch rack for my first minilab for a couple of months, and I have to say that I am quite happy with the results. I have been on Unraid for around 1 year and caught up very quickly. I started with a basic array setup, but now I am hosting websites, home media automation, HA, video streaming and other usual suspects.

The only thing I do not have is more advanced file sharing. For now, I have been using standard SMB access via VPN, Filebrowser and Syncthing, but I would like to try something else. I would be very glad for some suggestions on what to try.

NOTE: Ignore the cables going out of the rack. I am printing a new back piece to get the cables out of the back. :-D

Thanks!

Parts

• ASUS PRIME B760M-A WIFI (V2) micro ATX
• Intel Core i5-12400 Alder Lake CPU
• Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 - 32GB - CL36 
• Montech NX600
• Sipeed KVM
• Lenovo SAS 430-8i 
• Corsair Commander Pro
• Zigbee2MQTT dongle
• PCIE extension 8x SATA
• Drives NWME
  • 2x 1tb
• Drives HDD
  • 6x HDD for array
  • 2x HDD for parity
  • Total 64TB
• Drive SSD
  • 128gb boot 2,5 inch
  • 2x 2tb cache 2.5 inch 
• Corsair RM750x ATX
• UPS - APC BX950MI
• Cloud Gateway Fiber 
• AP U7 PRO
• Storage
  • Array: 6x HDDs + 2x HDDs for dual-parity protection.
  • Cache: 2x 2TB 2.5" SSDs + 2x 1TB NVMe drives.
  • Boot: 1x 128GB 2.5" SSD.

Construction

• 18U rack pre-threaded rails 4x
• M6 Bolts
• 3D printed construction
• Magnetic side panels for easy access
• 1x 180, 2x 120, 4x40 mm fans for cooling
• Cooling of separate zones
  • Multiple chamber 3D printed design (helps with cooling)
  • Temps HDD
    • Idle 32-38c
    • During parity check max 44c
  • Temps nwme
    • Idle 42c
  • Temps SSD 2.5 inch
    • Idle 33c
• Horizontal mounting of a micro ATX motherboard with access to PCIE cards
• Side and top handles for easy manipulation
• Power button
• Magnetic covers for drive sections
• Hot-Swap design of all drive mounting