Post your setup. no matter how uggo
Only use jellyfin. Have a list of things want to update... but it works for now.
Yes that is a laptop usb cooler used as supplemental placebo cooling. Also a pc fan I have propped up against the hard drive feeding into the pi.
Can't recall last time used the ps4 or switch. But they're there
600
Comments235
Seven Raspberry Pi 4's and one Pi Zero, mounted on some tile "shelves" inside some IKEA furniture.
What do you do on that many pi's that could not be done easier on 1 x86 box?
They're fanless and low-power, which was the primary draw to going this route. I run a Kubernetes cluster on them, including a few personal websites (Nginx+Python+Django), PostgreSQL, Sonarr, Calibre, SSH (occasionally) and every once in a while, an OpenArena server :-)
I did a 4 node Pi4 kubernetes cluster for about 5 years. The learning experience was priceless. I think most notable was learning to do proper multiarch container builds to support arm and x86_64. That being said, about half a year ago I decided to try condensing it all into two n100 nuc-like clones and keep one pi as the controller. For me and my apps and use cases there was no going back. Performance gains were substantial and in this regard I think I was hobbling myself after the educational aspect plateaued.
Actually, as a web guy, I find the ARM architecture to be more than sufficient. Most of the stuff I build is memory heavy and CPU light, so the Pi is great for this stuff.
Except the Pi doesn’t have much memory.
Each Pi 4 has 8GB of RAM. With six devices, that's 48GB to play with. More than enough for my needs.
My 12u setup On top I have two pi's; home assistant and pihole The ONT for fiber, hue bridge, and hdhomerun.
My dream machine pro
Patch panel
48 port switch i got from coworker
Patch panel
My unraid server
jbod
Battery UPS
Ok, now this is just showing off. Patch cables all the exact required length and everything all nice and neat. I bet you check your backups regularly and do a monthly DR fail over test too.
...Kidding aside, your setup looks really good.
Haha I need more Patch cables to get rid of those long ones. Also when I opened up the cabinet for this Pic I noticed the left fan isn't dusty like the rest so it might be dead x_x
Where do you source your diagnostic dust?
I contract that out to my dogs, they go out and source the finiest dusts for networking diagnostics
An old HP laptop with Debian hosting Klipper and Home Assistant. Waiting for an OTG cable so I could replace the laptop with a phone for less power and heat
Using phones with a continuous power supply might do nasty things to the battery.
Source: I finally figured out how to open a glass back phone with no tools.
Heat, then suction?
On a related note, I solved the battery issue with my wall mounted Fire tablet (for an HA dashboard) by connecting the power supply to a smart plug and setting up an automation to only give it the juice for about 3 hours per day, spread throughout the day
It still amazes me that the smartest phones aren't yet smart enough to have direct power supply.
Like my 40 year old AM radio.
Because $$$ !
I've done similar with an old Android tablet. Installed Fully Kiosk Browser to display the dashboard AND read the battery level - above 75%, switch off power...
But... automations only trigger when going past the threshold once, so if there's a random issue where HA doesn't see the battery drop below 10%, (had that happen a few times in the past), then I also have multiple triggers for 5% and 2%... to turn the power back on again 😉
Yeah, the tablet runs Fully Kiosk and I tried the same thing with the battery percentage thing and ran into the same issue, so I just simplified and made the automation time-based.
The tablet also likes to freeze a few times a day, so I also created an automation that toggles the smart plug power whenever HA loses connection to the tablet for more than 5 seconds, then toggles back to the original state at the start of the automation, which corrects the problem. Until the next time. But hey! It was only $60, so it's fine.
Ah, good call on using the power to get the tablet to respond... I don't have that problem (tablet freezing), but it does drop off the wifi sometimes.
For what its worth, some Samsung phones can stop charging while the plug is in, while also not disconnecting anything on a USB dock (such as internet)
Wait I see EMT piping for that printer frame... Did you convert an Anet A8 to an "EMT-8" like I did!? :D
Just seemed like a neat coincidence!
The stock A8 was such a scary fire hazard lol.
Yup you're indeed seeing an EMT8 :D. This thing's got a SKR mini e3 V3, E3D v6 clone and an E3D titan clone. I have a post about it in my profile.
I bet there are dozens of us EMT8 owners! Dozens!
That's so cool! Nice work! I feel a certain kinship with anyone who also got tons of 3D printing XP by building, rebuilding, researching, modding, head-scratching, laughing, crying, screaming at an A8 lol.
This here is mostly fire prevention: Basically an updated stock motherboard, better PSU, an aftermarket MOSFET board for safety, thicker gauge wires with ferrule crimps for all the power cables, the bed is now attached directly to the thicker wires by way of crimp connectors.
The printing surface is upgraded to carefully cut and polished picture frame float glass. 😂
Added that sweet fan duct mod, a little Noctua 15mm (because it softened and jammed otherwise LOL), and printed that purple bracket at the library because the plastic decided to literally crumble away.
Also the adjustable Z-stop was nice but the PLA softened so it's a bit unpredictable, and the right motor will gently slip until it's engaged so the gantry needs to be leveled every time...I also can't guarantee that the Z rods are straight anymore because it requires such a Goldilocks level of tension I probably overdid it lol.
Oh yeah, I had to replace the main power cable because the one provided just...had a break in it.
It still works for small jobs though! And it printed all those parts for itself, so that's kinda the RepRap dream right there right??
Lol I feel like an amazing machine is in here somewhere if I bothered to research custom boards and stuff. The stock bearings are also terrible. But if I can bother someday I'll stick Klipper on it maybe.
It was a crazy, stressful journey...but I learned a ton of electronics stuff, and how to use a multimeter, and engineering stuff! XD
My Ender3V2's felt like such a crazy luxury by comparison. 😂
Yeah I thought this thing was pretty decent, way better than originally, but then I got to use a Prusa MK4 at school...
My little cluster
Optiplex gang represent
That's so weird at first look on this picture I was like: "What's O...P...D? 🤔" LOL
Cupboard + DiskStation + OptiPlex = Win
Got the same optiplex to eventually replace the pi.
Nice and clean.
Very easy to find good deals (and parts) on these 1L business PCs!
was going through some old pictures and decided I'd post a retro setup. pretty sure I took this picture with my android g1....so 2008ish?
here is a pic of one of my first selfhost setups. I began selfhosting for music and have never stopped. this iteration was stuffed behind a bar that was built in to the basement at my old house
the old fashioned was custom built and was running some flavor of windows server. the one on the floor was the first Linux server I had run to do something useful...torrents and subsonic IIRC. I pieced that server together with random parts, mostly donated from old family PCs. two UPS units were on the bottom rack of that metro shelf to battery back the servers and the tomato router out of frame.
That monitor looks so sexy.
oh, she was. found her several years earlier in a trash pile at an office building I was working at.... with the protective plastic still stuck on the screen.
she met her doom against a concrete floor during a studio shuffle.... sad day.
Man this picture is such a vibe lol. Love it. :D
Could I interest you in some diagonal bracing today?
lmao mine looks simple af compared with most people here.
Behold my server :
Hardware:
Rasberry pi 5 8GB
1TB raid between old drives ( one from PC the other a just a regular external WD hard drive ).
Services
Everything in containers, if you want to know more check this blogpost.
Nothing wrong with simple! If it works for you that's all that matters!
What made you go with a RPI 5?
Right now I don't have much to tinker with, so I got something that down the line would serve that role.
Why the 5 specifically, instead of the 4 or other SBC came down to pricing in my region, raw power, and the PCIE slot in which I intend to put a nvme when upgrading my laptop.
Oooo I should do something like this! Right now I have a Pi 4 with OMV and just OMV on it. It’s even running on a SSD. It could do so much more!
OMV has such a nice Docker management interface too. I really feel spoiled with it.
I was planning on all my services running in ProxMox or something, but my OMV VM handles all of them except PiHole basically lol. OMV is snazzy. :D
I have a second pi for Pi-Hole! I’ve tried using OMV’s Docker, but I am too dumb to get it configured D: Would you happen to have any resources for getting it up and running?
Hey sorry for the delayed reply! That's a VERY good question, since things got a little different since they moved away from Portainer I remember a bit of friction switching over, but geeze it was a while ago...
I did find this link though:
https://wiki.omv-extras.org/doku.php?id=omv7%3Adocker_in_omv
That might be similar (and possibly better organized!) than the guides I was working with when that OMV subsystem was still a bit new. I hope that might help! 🙂
mine is a pi 4 but basically the same, just shoved inside a box for protection
This one gave me the confidence to post my setup, I salute your bravery (°_°)7.
The best of luck with your future insurance claim.
Hey it works!
To be fair I just moved and had to get Plex back up for the wife and audiobookshelf back up for me asap! Should look better soon
messy asf, a proper hobbiest system
Your machine is going to get fried
What do you mean? Because no ups?
No, the case is open and there is stuff everywhere. At some point something will fall in and it will cause chaos
Oh, definitely. Waiting on a power supply for that machine. Using a backup that doesn’t quite fit right now.
This is how I started in a tiny room. I am not proud, but maybe good to show between all the shiny things here.
Christ Almighty
Runs Debian Bookworm
Hosting:
Probably some more stuff I'm forgetting. It's basically my everything box.
Below, a picture of my small rack, which is located in my home office. Due to the selected components, it is virtually silent and still bobs along at only 26 - 28° C.
The hardware is divided into two Proxmox clusters. The first consists of the three Lenovo M920qs shown here and is home to my publicly accessible services and VMs, the second consists of the two Beelink EQ12s and is responsible for the internal services or those accessible via VPN.
Not the greatest or best Homelab, but for me, it fulfils all my needs and at the same time keeps the electricity costs down to an unimaginable level.
I host the following services on the public Internet:
Internally, I also provide the following services:
Any chance on getting more info about the hardware specifics? From the sounds and looks of it this is almost exactly the scale of what I’d like and running pretty much the same things I’m thinking interested in.
You’re very welcome! I’ve provided a detailed overview of my entire setup on my blog, and following your request, I’ve updated it to reflect the latest changes.
You can check out the post here: https://blog.klein.ruhr/homelab/
Very, very clean
Thanks a lot, that's how I like it. 👍🏼
Very German even.
I don't know what you are talking about. 😇😂
Just a NAS for now. Plan to add PiHole at some point.
Wait so you have like rack mounted server but only run jellyfin? Am I missing something here ?
There's no rack mount server there. I see a UPS, switch (network and Nintendo varieties), PS4 and mini PC
My bad. I’m so dumb that I see a shelf UPS and I assume this is some advanced network shit. I have an old gaming pc and a mini pc as 2 nodes in my home network.
I had the same thought - an entire 8U rack to hold a single raspberry pi with an external drive?
Come on guys, that’s a whole 8TB.
There's no rules here
This table rack was the most space savey option i could find. It looks less stable than it is. It is super minimal as far as the actual self hosting stuff goes.
Room to expand eventually.
Its a rack mounted rack without the server.
What would be wrong with that?
I considered it pretty heavy equipment for just a single service but that’s coming from my experience running like 8 vms on an old gaming pc and tearing my hair out over how janky it all looks (it works fantastically for me tho)
I guess it depends on your library size and how many users you are serving. My plex server has a library of over 110 TB and over 60 users, so to me a rack mount server for Jellyfin alone doesn't sound overkill at all
Damn how does one amass 60 users? That’s a big ass family
About a third of it is friends of mine, the rest is family and extended family
That’s awesome!
now that is uggo. but i may be able to top it. doesn't have to pretty for me if it works
Uggo = uptime
"Uggo" is a slang term that means "ugly".
That's a nice setup. I am weirdly jealous of the sliding shelf. The CS350B is very nice as well.
So nobody is going to ask about the rotary phone?
It's a GPO 706, which is a classic British bakelite phone from the '60s. I have it hooked up to a SIP trunk through an OBi 100. Right now it can receive calls but not make them because I haven't gotten around to sorting out a pulse-to-tone dialing converter yet.
Be the change you wish you see in the world. :)
Oh yes the bright red rotary phone...I imagine if it's ringing, something has gone terribly wrong.
Old setup:
Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 that I bought refurbished for ~€130
New setup:
Custom build
(Not the Proliant Microserver Gen8 on top, the device below)
The antennas are from a Sonoff Zigbee dongle and a bluetooth dongle for Home Assistant.
I've mostly focused on power usage, price, and reliability since I'm a student and don't want to spend a month's worth of income on a "home lab".
It's running the following:
It's using about 10% CPU and is running below 40°.
I have three of those Proliant Microserver Gen8's. Two of them are part of my Proxmox cluster, and the other one is waiting for me to install Proxmox on it.
I'm currently just using it for occasional backups (it has 12TB storage) since the power consumption (60W idle when in the BIOS) is just unreasonable.
Why on earth do you have so many DVD drives. Also, are you using Windows?
Sorry to be so judgmental
That’s awesome you have a server for ripping. I made a dedicated machine using my old desktop.
Ryzen 1700, 16gb ram, 12 dvd / Blu-ray drives (one drive does 4k Blu-ray’s) and 2 more usb Blu-ray drives on top.
I ripped so many thousands of DVDs that my neighbor gave me after he passed away.
I did do custom firmware for the internal drive for 4k ripping, but didn’t find the right firmware for the external ones (years ago). Maybe I can find it again once we unpack our storage. We are moving to another state now. Thanks for the info!
4,000 disks is insane
Maybe post to datahorders as well. I can see why you need so many drives
Did you automate the backups?
Probably bought an old Redbox and is making a local backup of all the disks
Is that a Unifi PDU/UPS? Didn't even know they made these.
Also, you need to peel the stickers of the screens.
Only real reason IMO is dust can collect on the seam and it's annoying to clean without taking the peel off anyway.
IDK why people get weird about it.
It seems they don't make a variant for Europe so that's probably why I never heard of it.
Top to Bottom:
Bottom area:
The access to the crawlspace isn't great so the CrapRack ^tm^ had to be assembled in the crawlspace.
Yo dawg I heard you liked patch panels
Ha indeed, every room in the house is getting 2 faceplates (on roughly opposite sides of the room) with 4 Ethernet that runs each back to the server rack. Is every room having 8 runs right back to the switch excessive, you bet.
In my old place I had one faceplate with 2 ethernet, coax and phone to each room, but phone and coax is useless and I didn't have enough Ethernet.
Hope you grounded your hardware to the wood.
This is a custom built mini PC, with a mini-ITX motherboard and an Intel N100 CPU. It gets powered by a power supply that I got from an old computer. Also, it needs no active cooling, just a heatsink. It almost never gets above 60°C.
(and yes, it has no case).
In it I run:
I think I have the same motherboard, it's the ASUS N100I-D D4, right?
Yes, this is it. I bought it because it was cheap (100€) and had a built-in CPU. The only problems are that it hasn't got many SATA or PCIe ports. This is fine however, because I have no need for them right now.
I did need multiple SATA ports and chose to use an m.2 to SATA adapter myself.
What are those machines on the floor?
The meat and potato's of my homelab. It is just a Proxmox cluster hosting some things.
Most of it is pretty ordinary as I just have a bunch of Debian VMs hosting docker compose. Ansible for deployments and I am working on moving completely to NFS for storage.
The two notable things I have is a virtualized NAS running TrueNAS and a virtualized desktop running Linux Mint. The NAS has a pcie sata controller passed though with two SSDs and the desktop has a RX580 and the USB controller passed though. The tower seen in the back has both of those currently and what you can't see is my monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Here are the services I'm running:
Jellyfin
Nextcloud
Matrix
my website (it is not much at the moment)
I'm using busybox http
Graphana and Influxdb
monitoring. I will eventually move to something else.
The hardware is the follows:
Dell precision tower with a i7-6700k and a standard ATX power supply
Lenovo think center with a i5-8500
HP whatever its called with a i5-8500
Also the router and my AP (not in picture) is running OpenWRT with vlans
http://gethomepage.dev/
From top to bottom:
Small, 10 inch rack, with some 3D printed rack mounts.
This is great. I have couple of those HP machines which are awesome but was just stacking them on my desk. 10 inch rack will be great for them. Need to do some hunting.
My HP has a 65 watt CPU built in, when it's running at full load it is quite loud.
Not taking a picture, but here's what I have:
Running:
I also have a VPS to get around CGNAT, and I have a Wireguard VPN configured so communication is encrypted.
Plans:
So yeah, somewhat simple. My family likes Jellyfin, but I haven't really gotten them on board with anything else.
My tech stack:
And my storage NAS:
Bottom NUC: General compute
Top NUC: Proxmox with homeassistant, windows server and debian
Raspberry Pi4 inside N64 case: PiHole
Access Point: Unifi Pro
PC for gaming: R7 7800X3D + Nvidia 3070 inside Fractal North
NAS: Ugreen 4800+ with 4x 15TB drives for a total of RaidZ2 30TB usable storage. Used as NFS storage for proxmox.
How it started: 2 8TB external HDDs connected to my bottom NUC.
Primary applications:
*arr Suite, Jellyfin, several minor apps.
Why do you have the AP in there? Doesn't that affect your Wi-Fi range?
Wood in both directions. Also I have no other place to mount it without looking ugly as hell.
Also I'm renting so no easy wall mounting.
Ah, that makes sense. I have 7 nano HD in my house because constructions here are all concrete, so pretty much 1 AP per room.
The wall to the right is also solid but doesnt matter as I am not much in there.
But for concrete in all walls...Jeez must be expensive and annoying to run cable in all rooms.
That's an understatement, lol. And all my cabling is 6A, which is basically an iron bar 🤣. It took me and a friend of mine almost 4 days to push that wiring through
Had to pleasure of reorganizing a half depth networking closet with patchpanels and a half-depth 48-port switch.
Jesus Christ I needed all my strength (while standing on a 2 step ladder) to mash that switch in enough to screw the rack ears... Not pleasent in the slightest.
Rack server on a lack IKEA table.
Nice DJ controller you got there 🤓
mostly runs jellyfin for a group of about 30 users (2 or 3 on at most times). runs alpine on bare bones. the box was originally filled with foam cutouts from storing iPads in a school district I worked at. I figure it's 20tbs of storage and 16gb ecc is a welcome upgrade. it stays cool cause I cutout half the side and put an AC fan in there. future upgrades involve the Nvidia k40 card I have, but I need to design an active cooling system for it before it can be installed as that thing gets HOT
I'm impressed that you can handle that many jellyfin users
I just got 10 Gbit internet last week so I had a chance to tidy everything up. The ThinkCentre is the 10 Gbit router, the Synology actually hosts everything.
Also finally labeled all the mystery cables. Also replaced the proprietary 20V/12V bricks for the ThinkCentre and 10G Fiber ONU with USB-C adapter cables to keep things tidier.
Oh I love that mini toy rack!
I was so close to asking what the hell that thing was
It's from a japanese Gacha machine! https://bitbang.social/@kalleboo/112755170852099746
Interesting! May I ask why you use USB port on Synology for Ethernet connection instead of ports on the back? Are they 1gbit?
Precisely, the rear ethernet is 1 Gbit, the USB adapter is 2.5 Gbit!
I see! :)
The ports on most Synology devices are the weak spot indeed.
It's 6 years old now so I can't really complain but even new ones don't come with 2.5Gbe by standard, it seems that should be cheap enough to throw in there by now. At least a lot of the new ones can be upgraded internally to 10 Gbe.
Uh-huh, and plenty of NAS devices had 2,5Gbe even those 6 years ago.
Fascinating
Damn that's alot 😅😂
I need the 2nd cable from to top right to the front bottom left ;)
You people are such nerds. Wish I could self-host too.
You can get a setup going on whatever personal computer until you throw ~$150 on a mini PC.
I know!. I watched a few videos but I'm affraid I lack some programming skills for now. Or it would requires that I have a few days off and be in great mood haha. I have a few computers that would probably work, what I would need is someone by my side to help me troubleshoot whatever wont work. You guys already made me switch to linux which I wouldnt even have considered a few years back lol. Super happy, but it's always a challenge when something stops working. For example, after the last kernel update, I spent hours trying to get bluetooth to work again, and in the end buying a new adapter was the only thing that worked. But one day I will self-host too!
Well you are here so that's a start
My dusty Intel NUC 10:
With a 2TB USB drive plugged in on the right there.
Runs all these services via Docker like a champ: AudioBookshelf, Dockge, File Browser, Forgejo, FreshRSS, Immich, Jellyfin, LemmySchedule, Memos, Navidrome, Paperless NGX, Pihole, Planka, SideQuests, Syncthing, Wallos
I feel like this should be a quarterly post. Really liking all these setups.
Here's my messy-cabled 9u rack.
It has:
Everything is set up for low energy consumption (~90w), remote admin, and recovery from power loss.
Testing an image post from Voyager client...
I only own the gear marked A and B, which lives above the couch I call home.
A is my web services 24/7 Proxmox box, an Intel 8500T; 2 routers; an 8TB HDD; and a Back-UPS Pro so old its ethernet surge protection is rated for 100bT, with a brand new LFP battery in it. The UPS powers both A and B.
B is my personal Proxmox box, an AMD 5750GE, which I use for development and running desktop OSes which I remote into, plus a GL.iNet Slate AX router. These come with me if I stay someplace other than the couch (not pictured). That's why they're on different shelves. Also, there's a USB wifi dongle w/antenna connected to B which I used when some stupid website demands I drop my VPN (all traffic from everything pictured is routed thru 24/7 private VPN endpoints, aka a $2/mo VPS or three).
The range of sofistication in this thread is actually kind of breathtaking
Comment 1: a small raspberry pi
Comment 2: full rack with tens of thousands worth of hardware
I love it. I've seen shit that has literally had my mouth agape to the piles on the floor like little gremlins ater my own heart.
Used it for Minecraft server for a week then never used it again. Don't know anything it would be good for that my computer can't already do better tbh
You could give it to me .
Don't use a RPI for hosting
Get a cheap used workstation instead
Or one of those 1L business PC's
Care to elaborate? What's wrong with "hosting" on a rpi?
Underpowered and over priced
Modern amd64 CPUs will run circles around it. Pickup something with a i5-6500 and you will have a much better experience. You also could go older or newer depending on what you are doing.
I have a pi4 and been very happy with the dimensions and low power usage. What could I get for the same price and power use?
Genuine question. Im looking at a pi5 right now.
Old Intel mini PC
For the same price and power usage as the Pi?
Likely cheaper and the power usage will depend on the hardware. In idle it shouldn't pull much power. The raspberry pi has gotten a lot more power hungry while also being poor on performance and overpriced.
yeah I just ended up using my PC as it is pretty much always on anyways
From top to bottom:
I’m planning to move my Lemmy instance to its own 1.5U.
The whole setup uses around 80-100 watts.
Is that actually an UPS or just a backup battery? Can it passthrough the line power directly or does the inverter need to run 24/7?
In the latter case you might want to check how much power the inverter eats just by itself. For example, my Bluetti with 2 kWh needs a whopping 50W in idle just to keep the AC ports powered. Of course your unit looks much smaller so it should be way less but still worth measuring.
It’s the Allpower R600: https://iallpowers.eu/products/allpowers-r600-portable-power-station-600w-299wh-with-lifep04-battery-1?se_activity_id=185831162163&syclid=csti70imlv4s738bo1rg&utm_campaign=%F0%9F%94%A5Black+Friday+Sale%3AUp+To+%E2%82%AC1800+OFF%2CBuy+Now+%C2%BB_185831162163&utm_medium=email&utm_source=shopify_email
It does do actual passthrough and I also measure wattage directly from the outlet.
Ikea shelf instead of a rack, but I used metal shelves for better thermals!
Top to bottom:
The disks are the most uggo part. They’re a bunch of old disks of varying sizes with a RAID+LVM setup to make the most use of them while still being redundant.
::: spoiler lsblk output of the whole thing
:::
Pretty clean
A simple homemade NAS, mostly for hosting my Plex library, VPN+torrent and cloud.
The synology needs to be emptied, removed and sold.
The m2 Mac mini was hosting some docker like pihole and actual budget but those are now on another Mac mini used as a workstation, so this one will be sold as well.
How's your experience with actual budget been? I've been considering it and am currently using YNAB.
I made the switch from YNAB cause [email protected]
I only had a small understanding problem at the beginning but then I quickly managed to replicate my YNAB (and import the data).
Now that I’m used to it I don’t see any problems and I like it. I believe you can try it locally without running the server version.
The lack of mobile app could be a downside but I don’t budget on my phone.
Okay, thank you. A lack of a mobile app isn't a big deal as I don't really use the YNAB mobile app to begin with since the browser version works so much better on a computer.
I may need this now. Would you are the brand? A recommendation?
Asking for the brand was a way to say that I would like to be able to check their data and perhaps buy it. I don't need a nice stamp on things:)
Not my favorite device
Why not? They look cool, if not a little pricey.
They don't represent a good value for me. I want something cheaper that has room for expansion.
What other products would you recommend for a router?
Any off the shelf device that's not Broadcom.
Flash OpenWRT and be done
No but you don't need a lot of horse power for just gigabit
16TB btrfs (+ECC RAM) on Debian 12.
Simple, elegant, rock solid. Very nice. :) Love your decals too!
So mines a weird hodge-podge of a HP Proliant (running my modded Minecraft server and Plex) under a bistro table that I use as a standup desk. A HP Thinclient that I run lighter services like my Pi-Hole and Homebridge. and a laptop
The small board you can see is a pi hole
I do have more tech elsewhere but this pile is comically ugly
Extra points for not lifting the spagetti pile when you're hovering.
Orange pi zero?
yep! good eye
Running TrueNAS with 4TB usable mirrored storage, 32GB RAM, and an i5-7600. Mostly holds backed up files from my switch from Windows to NixOS. I've got it running Frigate with a Coral TPU, Gitea, Homer, Unifi Controller, and Uptime Kuma. I was managing some helm charts on the TrueNAS k3s cluster with flux but conveniently dialed back to only using their built-in apps right before they removed it in favor of docker only.
For the network I'm running OPNSense on a Protectli device with Ubiquiti Unifi for the wifi. The native WireGuard integration on OPNSense is pretty nice.
Mines nothing special, i5 10400 with 16GB of RAM and a 1050ti for video encoding. System runs TrueNAS Scale for Plex and Immich and has 44TB of drives running through a Dell H310 PERC SAS card. I desperately need more storage but I've been lacking the funds for new drives, I'd also need a 5.25" drive bay converter to hold the 2 additional drives I need in this case since all the bays are full, and another SAS card since this one's used up.
I'd like to move to Jellyfin but from what I've read it doesn't do as well for streaming from outside the network compared to Plex and half the users of my server are outside my network. So it works for now.
Also have a Raspberry Pi 5 running PiHole
Also a buddy 3D printed a fan mount for the H310 to make sure it doesnt overheat when doing file transfers and I slapped a Noctua on it
Damn, that's actually pretty sexy for a fresh-air rack How's the noise levels?
Synology NAS running media server + live document editing server + seedbox. Plans to eventually build a proper server for it. Can't wait until my setup looks like the rest of yours.
The alebrije on top protects from bad torrents (only linux isos :v) and viruses.
Iteration one, the original https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/old_website_hw.jpg
Iteration two, taking it seriously https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/ye_olde_server-rack.jpg
Iteration three, evolved LACK rack https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/new_apartment.jpg
Bonus https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/backside_mess.jpg
I’m in the middle of moving so everything is packed up. But this was the rack before we moved.
Networking, 3D printer, black and white laser printer and a color laser printer, several servers.
I had home assistant, Plex, Minecraft server, 7 days to die server, and many other services.
Servers are Ryzen 5950x and the other is a threadripper 24 core.
The other side of the rack was HDMI switchers and some game consoles.
Going to miss the 1gbps fiber internet, we now have Starlink.
My dirty data diddler. 10+ yr old amd octacore black running at 4ghz. 4TB of writeable space in it. HD and SSD mix. Old sb xfi audio running to a BT5.0 USB dongle for my games and music. Pioneer CD/DVD writer. Yes I still burn CDs and DVDs for my music and backup purposes heh. White cable on the right hanging vertical is a USBC data/charging cable. The squirrely wires lefttoright are a power line for a digital clock I'm gonna hang on the wall soon.
Can't but join in the fun. Meet the Egg Mini. Does all sorts of humble servitude, but the coolest thing is a webserver only accessible via Wireguard through HAproxy running on a Digital Ocean droplet.
https://lotide.fbxl.net/api/stable/posts/165851/href
My whole empire, made almost entirely of parts scavenged from roadside signs. (not a single fan on the whole setup)
Roadside signs? Hah! what processor do they have?
The two top ones host invidious, searx, and yacy on one and lotide (what I'm talking to you on) and matrix on the other, they both have Intel Atom D2550s. The bottom one has an Intel Core i5-4570TE, and hosts basically everything else including my reverse proxy server.
At some point I'd like to move to low-end ryzen embeddeds, because they are either as powerful or more powerful than anything I have and remain fanless, but one step at a time (and finding something that powerful that's inexpensive and scavenged from a roadside sign is tough sometimes)
Very tidy!
The cable modem is no longer in use, finally got fiber in my neighborhood but the ONT/GW is in the basement. Beelink is my single (for now) proxmox node, HP is running Plex w/ Intel iGPU for transcoding. DS220+ NAS w/ 2x 16TB drives. Unifi switch 8 and USG-3P (fiber ONT/GW passes through to that and it's soon to be replaced with a Palo Alto 410, thanks to work) and then another Unifi 8 port lite in my basement office where the ONT/GW lives. Nothing special, very ugly but I hope to upgrade the wired network to 10g in the future to support a proxmox cluster and my ISPs 5Gbps offering. Also plan on converting my old desktop into an Unraid box since I can get a lot of drives from work and don't really want to stick with the Synology.
Edit: finally got it moved and looking better
My main server cabinet at my parents house. I have one old Synology for backups, one home built Xpenology for streaming and one small server with old gaming hardware for steam link, but its barely running anymore. Theres one HP server with 2x Xeon E5 and 128GB missing in the photo that I got for 100€ at an auction, which I use for occasional game server hosting.
At home I have this setup, my main synology NAS and a thinkcentre with an i7 and 16GB of ram for Minecraft and FiveM.
What I took from this post is that every living room / home theater setup needs a server rack instead of a HiFi rack. Dudnt matter what you thrown in it, it looks badass.
I'd rather not. It's literally a Dell workstation machine from the mid-2000s. It's like Wolfgang's Channel kryptonite
Install Linux on both ps4 and switch and selfhost something on them
Tower of Pisa would like a word with you.
Or is it just the camera angle that makes it look so tilted?
The main server. Specs:
Server runs:
Bonus: I use Oracle Cloud server for:
Ah interesting to see where our Korea community is running on :D
Top to bottom:
Not in picture: My UPSes, RIPE Atlas probe and an Odroid N2+ running my Home Assistant instance
The server runs Proxmox with a bunch of LXC containers running a Docker Swarm cluster.
There's too many services running so I'm not listing them all. Let's just say my phone is not going to be thrilled if it goes down. Also, this post was posted through said server.
Why would you need so many cat5 cables with just a few servers?
The entire house is terminated there, that's where all the cables go. :)
You don't use WiFi for your non-server computers?
Not really, the only wifi devices are phones and IoT.
Some context shots. This is in my garage which is directly below my living room. Everything leads back here and the cat cable from the fibre ONT leads here from the other side of the garage also. I have 2 redundant gig links to a switch in the living room where it was weirdly easier to go outside the garage, up the outside wall and then back in to the house.
There is a rack mount standard desktop with a 4 port Intel NIC and an IT mode HBA, 6 spinning HDDs, an SSD and 2x NVME drives. This is my main Proxmox server running Opnsense and a whole host of other services, including email. On to of it I have a monitor, 3 external HDDs used for backups and another desktop I picked up cheap which runs as the Zoneminder CCTV box.
At the very top there is a cheap POE dumb switch that powers the CCTV camera and then a Netgear 24 port switch with VLANs configured for various networks - Main, IoT, VoIP, CCTV... I have the same switch up in the living room also.
At the very bottom almost invisible is a Belkin UPS and a strip adapter that has several smart plugs in which I use to power my backup drives. That way my backup drives are off, not just unmounted unless a backup is running. The aim was to avoid any attacker / system wide issue taking down the backup drives. I sleep a smidgen better at night for that.
Not pictured is an Odroid HC2 that lives upstairs and that I had hoped to rig up as a remote backup device, but I've never really got around to setting it up properly or putting anything other than a small capacity HDD in. It does run HomeAssistant though so that's pretty useful.
A bit more context
More guts showing the mess.
Lets just appreciate how damn lucky I was when I picked up this server rack. It doesn't fit with the carpet down, so had to peel that back. Millimetre perfect.
Nice trapezoid
A bit concerning that it is propped up on a night table and sitting right next to a doorway. There's only two of us in the house but I would never place electronic equipment like that near a doorway where I myself could just knock it over (because I've done stuff like that in the past). Get it on the floor or on the opposite side of the room where no one including yourself can walk or move around near it.
What do all you guys use these setups for?
My primary use case is safeguarding my important personal artifacts (family photos, digitized paperwork, encryption key / account recovery / 2FA backups) against drive failure (~2TB), followed by my decently sized Plex server (23TB), immich, nextcloud, and various other small things like selfhosted bitwarden, grocy, ollama, and stuff like that.
I run all of my stuff off of a 6 bay Synology (more drives helps with capacity efficiency as double redundancy with 6 drives costs you 30% and I wanted to be protected against drive failures during rebuilding) with an Intel nuc on top to run plex/jellyfin transcoding using quicksync instead of loading the poor nas with cpu transcoding, I also run ollama on the nuc since it has faster cores than the nas.
Life
A mini pc, a raspberry pi 4, 3*usb HDD (2*8tb mirrored and a 1tb for local back up), some Netgear router, a whole lot of spaghetti.
shes listing to the starboard side
Soon to be neater, with the official memory fan, more drive caddys, and an extra DHCP/DNS server.
I know it's a mess 😅 That NUC holds my Proxmox server.
That box is my 20TB Unraid server exclusively for storage.
Main Server
Services
Hardware
OS
Reverse Proxy
Services
Hardware
OS
Router
Hardware
OS
Why did you go with a CPU with DDR 3 ram?
It wasn't a deliberate choice. It was simply hardware that I already had available at the time. I have had no performance issues of note as a result of the hardware's age, so I've seen no reason to upgrade it just yet.
Looks like a Fractal Node 304? I have one too ! I took it on a boat for 3 months a few years ago, it was fun.
Hardware
Router
Unifi Dream Machine
Backups
14TB USB external HDD
OS, Core and Network services
OS
Network
Supervision
Services
Programming and Stuff
Media, files
Social
Other
Soon
Yep! I've found that the case is possibly a little too cramped for my liking — I'm not overly fond of the placement of the drive bay hangars — but overall it's been alright. It's definitely a nice form factor.
Is that just, like, an external hard drive?
How do you like immich? Any thing you don't like? Favorite features etc? I have a setup I built, but, immich looks very nice
My Selfhosting setup:
And a Logitech K400 Plus that I use when I have to use directly the NUC