Here's my beautiful unemployed-for-too-long-have-no-money-dont-care-about-looks lab :)
Hey it's more than good enough to run all this ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Started with a nicely packaged mini-pc running some docker containers. Recently added an external gpu through an m.2 to oculink adapter, so now it also hosts wolf for game streaming 😁 Will package it all up at some point...
I used to have a random server box. This past year my hobby has been CAD work and 3D printing to turn a bunch of mini PCs into a fully remote controlled cluster, complete with a DIY IPMI KVM and custom built outlets that are controllable for power cycling (hard wired, not radio smart outlets). It's all self-contained with a single plug to the UPS.
I plan on releasing all my models/etc as I usually do on my site when everything is finished.
I will say, I don't miss the dusty box 😄
Edit: And yes, I color coded cables from each system. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Still busy building it. Have a few more parts to print, like the back trim and plug holder, and I need to remove the protective plastic from the aluminum sheets.
sexy 😍
Love it, i'll probably end up doing something like that with a few HP elitedesk.
Thanks! I made it from some scrap pieces of wood from my IKEA headboard, aluminium extrusions and some aluminium sheets, then just 3D printed trim and fittings.
I was lucky and got a good deal on some ram, so each has 24gb.
Its supposed to be my kubernetes homelab. My actual server is hidden in the electrical box in my apartment.
Love this thread, here's my contribution
Just a pi4B and some external drives for Linux ISOs
edit : they resting on a piece of foam to reduce vibrations
Bonus pic of the zigbee dongle for Home Assistant
You may get better signal by not folding the antenna.
Oh! So you mean pointing it downward? Would you mind explain how that works? I'm clueless when it comes to these things
Some context, the house is on two levels and this is level 0. The ceiling above is level 1. Also we're on the edge of the house not the center, the tip of the antenna is pointing towards the center
this is the way :)
I bought a 16U rack this year to organize stuff a bit. Zigbee dongle is still installed exactly like this. I'm not convinced there's a better solution.
Honestly, I doubt there is. You’re suspending it away from metal and wood, seems like the best solution other than replacing the antenna with something expensive and “mounting” that separately.
Behold the Splendor!
My literal tech stack:
HP Prodesk and NUC i3: Proxmox hosts
NUC i5: Debian server (primarily docker server)
uGreen NAS: TrueNAS NFS-Storage for proxmox host (connected via 2.5G NIC)
RaspberryPi4 (NES case): docker host for pihole (so I don't take out my whole DNS access when doing maintenance...)
White sandwich at the botom: HPE Aruba 1930 24G PoE switch
All stacked on my PC (Win11, Ryzen 5 7800X3D, 16GB RAM, RTX 3070)
Edit: Power is stable enough to not need a UPS. In fact I had never experienced a power outage at home.
✅ Rackmounted
❌ Professional
What front end are using for your apps? Looks nice.
Moving to a new house soon where it will be in a rack, but this is the current setup. Mini pc for opnsense, UPS and server. Behind that the spaghetti includes a kvm, switch and AP.
Can't believe you did all that but never upgraded your RAM
Here my homelab.
I moved not too long ago and I am still lacking some furniture, so it's on the floor with cables lying wild. Does not look like much but it actually covers almost all my needs.
I still need a VPS because of email ports and resident ISP not being compatible...
people put too much "lab" and not enough "home" in homelab. we need more dust, more cables, more jank. love this.
Dust and jank you say? Behold, my old basement homelab when I rented just outside Boston with a very permissive landlord who agreed to let me have Comcast gig pro fiber pulled into the basement, running off an outlet I installed without asking on a free slot in our breaker box. The dust was terrible, the rack was a hodge podge, I had to put up that sign because maintenance guys kept plugging their power tools into the UPS when I wasn't around and tripping it. But Comcast fucked up the billing and the 2gig + 1gig symmetric internet is still active to this day for free, which I left behind minimally working for the next tenants after parting out the rack. The tower by the side was a friend who wanted to colocate on my fiber, and I had some fun stuff like a slide out vga console. I also pulled Ethernet into every room, most of them installed with nice wall plates all bundled down to the rack, so with a house full of gamers, you could have multiple people pulling a gig on a game download without anyone stepping on anyone else's toes.
a bunch of ebay specials with more ebay parts scavenged over time + some 3d printing.
The centre tower has a miniitx mb and PSU behind those panels to run the NAS, and the drive bays are in the bottom.
The right is a failover cluster that isn't finished yet.
After seeing some of you guy's set ups, I don't feel so bad. LOL
That's the idea :D
I wasn't degrading. There are many nice , well equipped racks and there are smaller form factor setups, of which if they serve a good purpose and perform as expected, that's all that matters. It's always interesting to me the ingenious ways selfhosters will come up with to solve certain constraints, or maybe problems. With 3d printing we can make our own racks, and pieces parts for field expedient modifications or repairs.
When I was a wee lad, I could have never dreamed how far technology has brought us. I've watched a fad called the internet completely envelope the planet. It's pretty wild man.
I’ve watched a fad called the internet completely envelope the planet. It’s pretty wild man.
Right? I still remember my parents and their friends telling me Internet will never take because if they want to know the weather they can turn on the radio. Glad I didn't listen, it's what has paid the bills ever since.
parents and their friends telling me Internet will never take
As a septuagenarian, I have tried to distance myself from that way of thinking. It's a very isolationist type of mentality and it does not fit into my 'wide eyed, boyish, enthusiasm' for technology.
Built a year ago, didn't change anything but drives since. PCengine APU OpnSense, two Proxmox cluster hosts, one mini PC NAS with JBOD. All DIY.
Makes mine look boring.
Yours looks power hungry though…
I'm on a variable rate electricity tariff and I use Home Assistant and iLO to power things on and off automatically, so most of the time it pulls 30-50W. At peak it pulls north of 1.5KW but that's really rare.
Wow! How do you do that? Do you accept that something could be down sometime?
Just a smol bramble.
All is network booted from the head node. Had to mess around with iscsi mounted root because i'm running k3s, and it needs block devices.
Offsite backup with a Hetzner storage box.
Two rack rails bolted together with a power strip and a tray holding my server mini PC. My router is bolted on as well to act as a switch for everything while also providing Wifi to my phone and laptop
Such professional. Much clean.
Not pictured: my raspberry running adguard. It's tucked behind a TV, because it also runs Kodi.
Also not pictured, my Sophos SG-135 rev 2 running OPNsense. It's in the box where my Starlink equipment is, on the other side of this room.
Awesome thread !
So many cool homelabs !
Mine is a little janky with some old tech. The tower was running an old FX-8320, but the hard drive "landed" a few weeks ago.
the hardrive just out in the wild, living life like it was meant to be lived.
Did some one ask for dust cos I got plenty! Also have one desktop with 30TB of memory, separate small form for HA and Pihole, networking equipment, cooling fans and a UPS all packed into one (un)tidy cupboard. The door doesn't quite close but enough to hide it from my partner!
30 TB of memory?!
You’re a billionaire!!
Projects that im running:
Old system 76 machine from a while back. Its what is running a majority of my services for self hosting. Only one screw keeps the case together, since I get into the insides quite often.
Solar powered web server. Its going to be repurposed into a meshtastic node soon.
Somewhat jank setup of a heltek which is also an ebook reader. It runs a webserver to upload the book in txt format, then I can take it on the go. I still have to do some work on the text.
I was too lazy to put on clothes and go out to my shack. This picture is a bit old. It's missing a lot of mess and my PeerTube server.
It is strange seeing the physical manifestation of a web endpoint, to me, in 2026, after decades of cloudslop.
Its just a computer! on a shelf! you can go hold it!
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