Haven't seen anyone say this so I will: if your home isn't Fort Knox or a billionaire bunker, then presume it will be broken into. If they don't steal your shit, they might just smash it for funsies. If you're running home lab, you probably don't have the money to turn your home into Fort Knox, but even if you did you'd probably be better off removing the need:

1. back important data up to another site automatically: Friends house, family, cloud, etc. Preferably far away.
2. encrypt everything that's got private data on it, both onsite and remotely.

Then you don't have to worry about theft or damage or fire. Congrats, you're doing better than probably 50% of businesses-grade setups.

Encrypt your data period. A burglar isn't going to worry about your home lab unless it's oozing money from the look of it.

Your family and friends will be the ones to snoop your data. So know that and prepare accordingly.

A thief is going to steal car wheels, weapons, tools, electronics that seem resellable, gold and jewelry, things of immediate value to sell or trade for most likely drugs. Quick cash.

In my room.
Once that's broken into: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Server equipment is not on any normal burglar's list of items to nab. It's such a low risk I think it's completely not worth worrying about.

It's incredibly unlikely they'll know what they're looking at in the first place, and won't be assed to carry out heavy switches and PC gear "just in case" to look it up later. They want to get in, check rooms and closets, drawers, etc and GTFO before you come home or a neighbor notices. Computers aren't as expensive as they used to be. Gaming laptops might look attractive, but other than that you're fine.

They want jewelry, cash, guns, good tools, silver, modern game consoles, expensive bicycles, etc. These are all things that are easy to carry and pawn or sell well on the street. Nobody is selling switch gear at a pawn shop or to random people, so even if they know the value of what they're looking at (extremely unlikely) they'll leave it because it's too hard to fence.

If you're that worried about theft then set up good full disk encryption and have off-site backups of your data (should do that anyways) but you don't need to worry about physical security at home, at least not specifically in regards to your home lab.

Businesses are at much higher risk for hardware theft, from employees or from others that are targeting the locations specifically because they DO understand the value and have a way to offload the gear, but those same people won't be randomly breaking into people's houses hoping they've got Cisco gear in a closet somewhere.

I build from ewaste and keep things deliciously trashy looking.

Install a floppy drive. No one gonna steal a computer with one of those.

Considering I stole most my stuff from work it would be fair if someone else nicked my setup.

Mine is in the utility room, which is in the basement. There's no way in or out of the basement except for the stairway from the living room on the main floor.

That room is where all of the CAT5 and coax cables are distributed to each room (demarcation point?), and also where the furnace and water heater live. It's fairly well-ventilated, too, which is nice.

Actually you got me thinkng about some of my pieces.

But overall i agree with most of the thread here. Properly rack it, and secure the rack. Then basic locking does the rest (secure a rack door with a lock).

Security cameras system help police catch theives.

Encryption on data you care about and off site back ups meqns rebuilding is just getting the hardware again.

For mini pcs and laptops they have those security cables to at least attach them to a heavier thing (desk, cabinet, etc). (this is the thing i hadn't thought about).

Finding obsure places to hide my nodes is practical matter for me, because space is always a premium, so over sizing cooling solutions (liquid cooling to big radiators) and then finding wierd places to tuck them away (i mean why cant a computer rack be a night stand, the raspberry pi is clustered anyway why not stick in a lamp, the crawl space is actually always dry there and nice and cool to boot!, etc, etc). That probally adds some* factor to it.

The consumer stuff i have is a more likly target then the SOC or server stuff though. At least for me.

I don't.

If you're stupid enough to carry out my stuff, good luck getting anything for it.

My setup is a small-form-factor desktop, a NAS, and 2 other modest systems. Easy enough to carry away, but all worthless from a pawn standpoint, because it's all old, as in long past support dates from the vendor.

I guess you'd need to understand what a burglar in your area steals, and what homes they target.

I doubt they steal systems.

EASY does it: Experimental Autonomous Securitybot, Yellow.

Take this with a grain of salt but long ago someone broke into my house and at the time I was futzing with something so had the skin off of my tower and they did not touch it. I think they figured it was broke. Knew a guy who made a server closet with bare boards on wood shelves.

No need to worry about thieves. They mostly don't even steal laptops of TVs. It's just not worth the work and the risk.

Yes need to worry about floods or your house burning down. That's the real way to lose a home server.

I once put my homelab rack outside of my apartment, in the hall. Then used it to catch a bastard who kept stealing my bike light, and later tried to snatch the whole bike.

When was the last time you saw a headline: “Thieves steal home lab”?

Who’s gonna steal a loaded 90 disk enclosure xD

Its big enough that they will have to break back in to move it with a friend. Its built shitty enough that it will fall apart if they lift it. Its next to an attractive and less effort to steal TV.

I have 9 security cameras on my driveway, house, and office out building and own a 12 ga. I've got it covered.

I doubt that a server would be an attractive target for common thieves. It's heavy, bulky and not immediately clear how well it would resell and how valuable it actually is. So yeah... Just have plenty of other more stealable things lying around I guess 😄

Backup and encryption. encryption prevents the thief to see my data, backup allows me to make a new server. Furthermore, as other pointed out, I don't expect that a common thief will see a lot of value in a small black box on top of a shelf

Just put a big sticker on it signifying it has a tracker inside.

Even if they would want to steal it, it might just make them doubt enough to leave it be.

By living in the middle of fucking nowhere. I haven't locked my front door in over a year.

Go to the pawn shop and ask them how much they would pay for your server. I bet $20

Home... lab?

Dude, it's just a computer.

It would take hours to pull the servers from a mostly full full height rack. And then you'd get a bunch of heavy obsolete servers with zero resale value.

I plan on rack mounting things on the second floor, but normally someone running in and ransacking a place isn't going to bother with a server, especially if it's loaded down with hard drives. Heck, my NAS is in a desktop case and I hate even having to turn it around 😹

Mine is primarily a 4u server, in a rack. That's screwed to the wall (for added stability).

They'd need a couple guys to unrack it. It's in the garage I rarely ever lock, behind the cars which are more valuable and easier to steal. Behind the much more valuable tools.

Garage does get warm in the summer and cold enough in the winter the fans do funny things.

Anything important gets replicated to another location as well as backed up to a cloud bucket. So if it got stolen it would suck, but not the end of the world.

Door lock and house alarm, also mines at the back of the garage with plenty of more easily stealable things in front of it.