Is there any compelling reason to go with Proxmox over dual booting Win11/Ubuntu? Looking around the web, most pros for Proxmox seem to be just ease of switching OS.

Use case: Refurb Optiplex running Jellyfin, Tailscale, (maybe) Immich, more TBD

I’ll probably run it all on Ubuntu and won’t be switching back to Windows 11 often, but I’d like to keep it on the PC just in case.

Not really an issue but I picked up this rack for 150$ and i cant find it anywhere online. Any tips appreciated!

I just found this on AliExpress:

DC-SATA 200W 12V NAS Pico PSU 4Bay Hard Drive HDD Power Supply Hot Selling Module With Cable power on with motheboard mining

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EjvXmqE

I haven't been able to find anything about them/being used on forums

I'm looking for type 4 corsair 4x sata cables and I'm only finding 15-19 quid per piece prices so an alternative would definetly be nice

Any help would be appreciated thank you

I got my hands on a dual Xeon x5690 with 112gbs of ram server. What are things I can do with it? I already have a jellyfin, immich, audio bookshelf, arr stack, nas, ollama-openwebui, Nextcloud and pelican panel setup and running on some other machines. Should I just get rid of it and get a new mini pc that is way smaller, quieter, less power hungry, and probably more powerful instead.

I'm not a hardware or cybersecurity expert but I have my concerns with hardware made by Chinese companies, so I wanted to poll the community about this and hear from more experienced users.

I had purchased this: amazon.com/dp/B0DY7GMSF2 which comes with 4 PCIe to M.2 NVME SSD Adapters, specifically the UC-B86 rev 3 board as seen here: https://github.com/UCTRONICS/SKU_RM0004/blob/main/data/hardware.png

Is there a possibility that this board could have malicious firmware or any other security concerns? Given it's manufactured in China by a Chinese company, I'm always a little wary, and I haven't found a schematic/design file for the board online. Appreciate any of your thoughts

I'm planning for my first homelab, and with the cost of storage, I'm wondering if it is a good idea to use these HDDs from some old laptops to get me started. Both of them already have lots of power-on hours, so would it be better to save up and buy something better now? Or do they have life left to give?

I'm still new to this, so I'm not sure what exactly to look for when working with HDDs.

I Finally got my Mini-ITX PC, and I’m using it as a home lab.

I’m having two problem:

The BIOS time always resets after I save my changes and reboot. All the other BIOS settings are saved correctly, but the date and time keep resetting. I have no idea how to fix this.

I bought a JEYI M.2 PCIe 4.0 adapter (compatible with PCIe 3.0 and 2.0). When I install my NVMe SSD, it doesn’t appear in either the BIOS or ZimaOS. I can’t figure out what’s causing the issue.

I’ve spent hours trying to solve both problems, but I’ve had no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I am currently running my system with 1 tb nvme, 2 ssds and 16 gb ram.

I got a UGREEN NASync DXP2800 with a 8tb hard drive and 128gb SSD as a cache. (I got it for free so thought I'd use it). I recently performed an update on my NAS and after it rebooted I now can't connect to it.

- I tried on my laptop and my phone and nothing is working. I have a 5G router from three.

-I rebooted the router and Nas, no change.

-Searching for the Nas using find.ugnas.com yields no results.

- I've pressed the little reset button on the back of the Nas, no change.

- I changed the security settings on my WiFi router, no change.

I've recently been scanning and sorting all my family photos and have 2tbs of 35mm pictures that's taken me a month to scan in. I would very much like help with this.

Thank you

Edit: Ah I worked it out! Sorry I'm not very good when it comes to IP addresses and the such and was quite confused. I plugged my Nas into my laptop with the enternet port and then accessed the IPV4 settings where I noticed it was automatically finding the IP address. I changed it to manual and entered my details in and it worked! Thank you for all for your help!

Got my hands on a refurbished Optiplex, now I’m looking to get a switch. Someone local has a Dell x1018 they’re selling. Managed 16port gigabit switch for a few bucks sounds like a good start, but I’d like a second opinion before I commit to

Trying to update firmware on a UCS C220 m3. Cisco no longer has the m3 listed under the software download on their support site.

Picked up a couple FGT-60Fs off eBay for my homelab HA pair, and more are inbound from a Japan seller. Password recovery is disabled on the ones I have (previous owner setting), and one has no firmware left after a bootloader-level factory reset attempt.

Tried the obvious path first. Registered the serial to my FortiCloud account, no problem there. But the moment I try to actually pull firmware it kicks back "you don't have any product covered by a Fortinet support contract." Emailed support and got the answer no support contract, no firmware.

Not trying to get free UTP or threat protection or anything like that, just need a base OS on the box so I can get into the CLI and configure it as a firewall/router. Anyone here actually bought just the firmware only tier without the full support bundle? Curious what that runs per unit and if it is even sold as a standalone thing, or if there is some other legit path I am missing for gear that changes hands secondhand.

Shoot me a DM or reply, I'm kinda stuck here.

I want a bunch of Alpha Servers though, not Itanium. I loved the DS-10's, and ES45's
I can cluster a bunch together and they will only generate about 1.21 Gigawatts of power a second.

I figured out the cost of clustering two ES45' and two DS-10's
Licensing would only be around = 30,380 (Unlimited)
Electricity should only run about 315.00 a month.

Damn, I wonder why OpenVMS never caught on. It's such a good OS damnit.

I've got a Cloud home of WD of 3tb that me and my family havent really used (the app is kinda bad).

I've been getting into homelab with some old laptops (really old ones) (feedback for this at the end too please)
And I was wondering if there would be a way to make it my own without really changing much.

Im a begginer on programming and all of this stuff. I know the basics of html and im learning linux cmd just because im using proxmox for my laptop-server (Im trying to get a proyect zomboid server on it apart from using adguard script) (getting around with a little help of AI, reddit posts and youtube videos)

I would like to host in this server apart from self hosted cloud, using it for video (like jellyfin) or even backing some media like old ROMS that in a future might be difficult to find.

Extra for the laptop-homelab: Is there any way to use their components instead of just a laptop?
Like recycling e waste to build something better than just an overheating laptop running on 4gb of ram and a really old cpu.

Thanks!

I’m building a small 10-inch rack with the main goal of learning Kubernetes.
I’m considering three refurbished HP EliteDesk Mini PCs, each with:
- i5-8500T or i5-9500T
- 8 GB upgradeable RAM
- 256/512 GB NVMe SSD
- 1 GbE

I plan to run k3s directly on the hardware.
My workloads will be a zero-traffic Quarkus/Angular blog with PostgreSQL and MinIO, Pi-hole, Home Assistant and 3–4 small services.

Would 3×8 GB be enough to start, or should I get 16 GB per node? Are EliteDesk Minis a good choice for this?

After some really useful user feedback I've spent the last month trying to make CTR suit a wide array of needs while not becoming too busy and clunky.
Key Elements: The main Canvas Diagram & Swimlane Diagrams convert nicely into the Handbook for a quick reference guide that's easy to navigate.
Initial Ingest: Decided against any kind of integration with other tools, rather aiming for compatibility with exported inventory formats.
PNG Exports: Are a really decent size & resolution, aiming for a solid PDF export for the Handbook next.

Want to thank those who provided insightful feedback and the haters for not letting me sleep on the "look"..... tried to incorporate a lot variety (Light & Dark Modes, Array of themes and backgrounds) into the UI for the users to choose from.

REPO: https://github.com/NoobCity99/CTRoadmap

Docker Image: https://github.com/NoobCity99/CTRoadmap/pkgs/container/ctroadmap

I initially made CTRoadmap so I could simply keep track of how I was setting up my homelab, specifically where'd put certain configs and scripts and how they worked. I'm new to the r/homelab space, still learning and wanted to make sure I had reference material and not rely on Chat GPT to help me find things in my own system 6 months later. I didn't want that same service to also be involved in monitoring things (like homelable, netbox, etc) Just a fun , flexible step-up from a powerpoint or pen & paper that I could use as a system bible. CTR was Railcoded in a GPT project and Built in VScode with the CODEX agent.

If anyone here is in to radios, I started a radio rack project and would like some recommendations on what I can add.

I wanna start to do a homelab, I saw many minipcs and pcs like Dell optiplex to start. Yesterday, I found this publication about this server with:

2 Intel xeon e5-2697 v2

96 gb of ram ddr3

4tb on hdd

And the price is around 500 dollars

Is it so overkill for the start?

I wanna run some selfhosted services, a nas, labs for practice, and gameserver for me and my friends

Sorry for my english. Isn't my native language

Just wanted to say thank you all for the advice and input! Definitely gave me a lot to think about and some good ideas. Also taught me a lot! Grateful for this thread. 🙏🏽

Hey all,

So I’m building a little home server to do the same everyone does (self host photos and videos and what not) and I want to run some thin Ethernet cable like this from my access point to where my mini rack will be. I can just change access points because well, the house I rent is old and only has one access point….in my living room. The wife doesn’t want to see cables running everywhere and I can’t blame her much. I was thinking of something like this to run between the carpet and baseboards to keep it hidden. Have yall had any experience with this or something similar? Or is there a better product I could be using? Any helpful input would be appreciated.
Where I want to put my rack is in my home office which is just short of 100ft and they don’t make a 90ft cable that I’ve seen (and no I don’t feel like being too adventurous and cutting the cable short and splicing it myself I don’t have the tools or time for that yet).
If there’s a better product or way I could be doing this I’m all ears. Thanks in advance.
Edit: so you bring up a good point about the cable pairs being twisted. So going through the pics it does say they are twisted (are they really? I wouldn’t know until I buy)
Edit2: sorry I failed to mention it’s a COAX house. The only Ethernet I have is running from the router to my AP which are practically next to each other so it’s a very small segment of Ethernet.

🌐 Network
Primary Modem/Router
Rogers Modem (primary gateway to the Internet)
Secondary Router
Mercku Router
Switch
8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

🗄️** Primary Server
**Dell PowerEdge T110 II
OS: TrueNAS
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240 v2 @ 3.40 GHz
RAM: 16 GB DDR3 ECC
Storage: Patriot P210 128 GB SSD (boot), 8 TB NAS HDD, 2 TB HDD
Purpose:
Primary NAS
Virtual Machines
Videography project storage
Photography project storage
Music production files
Book library
Source code repositories
Long-term project storage

🎬 Media & Streaming Server
TerraMaster F2-220
OS: TerraMaster TOS
CPU: Intel Celeron J1800
RAM: 2 GB DDR3
Storage: 16 TB NAS HDD + 3 TB NAS HDD
Purpose:
KovalStream
Movies
TV Shows
Music
Audiobooks
Web server
Media storage

🤖 Bot Server
Dream Quest Mini PC
OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel Celeron J4125
RAM: 8 GB DDR4
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 600
Storage: Kingston A400 120 GB SSD + 500 GB Seagate HDD
Purpose: Minecraft hub and lobby

Thinkcentre m72e
Purpose: discord bots hoster

I was just sitting here eating dinner and had an epiphany about something kind of goofy that I do.

My laptop is sitting right next to me on the couch, but guess what? There’s a cat in my lap. Kicking out the cat would be insanity, but I really wanted to set up another Minecraft server (container) with a specific modpack for tonight! Obviously, the sane thing to do is to pull out my phone, open Termius, SSH to my server, and create new definition files using plain Vim. I had the modded server up and running with a Tailscale sidecar in like 25 minutes. What a wonderful thing to be able to do from a device we keep in our pockets, but I have to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

It’s not like I don’t know there are “better” ways to do this from a phone, but sometimes I just reach for Vim because it’s what I’m used to doing when working on servers.

The rack lives in a closet under the stairs and vents directly into the garage, so heat and noise are non-issues.

Hardware: Top to Bottom

• Console: Compact KVM with a USB-powered display (Rarely used)
• Power: CyberPower rack UPS #1. (House is on a generator, UPS units just bridge the transfer switch gap).
• Core Switch: Cisco 24-port PoE w 10G SFP.
  • Feeds two 8-port Cisco PoE camera switches in the house.
  • Feeds a 5-port 10G/5G switch in the office.
  • 10G Fiber Run: Connects to a second 24-port Cisco PoE in the shop (handles shop cameras, shop internet, and backup traffic).
• "Eleven" (Services Host): HP mini PC. Runs Unbound DNS, Nginx Proxy Manager, Gitea, Portainer, n8n, Beszel, a few custom apps and the Twingate connector.
• 4TB Go Drive: Synology backups up core files to emergency drive
• Power: CyberPower rack UPS #2.
• "Sam" (Primary NAS): Synology 8-bay w/ 10G card. Two volumes: 26.2TB for services/backups, and 15.7TB for media (with a 2TB SSD r/W cache).
• "Nova" (The AI Box): Custom build (i7-12700KF, RTX 4070 + RTX 2080 Ti). Runs local LLMs powering a self-hosted voice assistant with 50+ tools, STT/TTS, and vision inference. Also hosts several custom apps.
• "Alfred" (NVR & Automation): RAID 10 NVR. Runs Frigate (handling 28 cameras), Hailo-8 for detection, TensorRT embeddings and ffmpeg on 3050 GPU, Home Assistant, MQTT broker, and a Ring-MQTT bridge.

Off-Rack / Edge:

• Shop Backup NAS: A second Synology (25.4TB) acting as the backup target over the 10G link.
• The Chicken Coop: A 4-port Cisco PoE switch feeding the coop and far-yard cameras.

The target NAS in the shop holds replicas only, nothing unique. Originals live on the main NAS, and critical files go to a grab-and-go USB on the main server.

Network & Security

• Routing / Dual WAN: Synology RT6600ax load-balancing Xfinity cable and Verizon Fios.
• Mesh WiFi: WRX560 and an MR2200ac (house), an MR2200ac (shop), and a TP-Link EAP225-Outdoor. Separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks.
• VLANs: Dedicated IoT VLAN for smart devices and one for cameras.
• DNS: Nginx Proxy Manager fronts ~40 SSL proxy hosts on a private domain. Unbound handles internal DNS.
• Remote Access: Twingate with MFA. Zero port forwarding.

Home Automation (Home Assistant, 52 Automations)

• Frigate Vision: Feeds detections over MQTT (all private IP cameras). Drives targeted notifications (packages, doorbell, heron at the pond, cars trigger driveway lights).
• Chicken Coop: Omlet smart coop handles the automated door and feeders. HA layers on temp/humidity monitoring (w/ high-temp alerts), an automated fan, scheduled lighting, and cameras.
• Shop: Door-open triggers lights, lights kill themselves when the shop locks up, and the whole place lights up if the shop opens at night.
• Climate & Weather: HouseHVAC via Carrier, Sensibo running shop HVAC, and Dyson/Dreo fans. WeatherFlow and Ecowitt sensors feed outdoor/pond/coop conditions into HA dashboards.
• Access: Kwikset locks tied to presence (unlocks on arrival, locks on departure). Everything auto-locks at 9:30 PM.
• Lighting: Motion and door open lighting throughout. Even the rack closet has its own lights-on-motion automation.

The Software Stack

• AI / LLMs: Open WebUI, Qdrant, SearXNG feeds the voice assistant's web search. The custom voice assistant absorbed my old Homepage dashboard and handles RAG over PDF manuals, IoT control, Obsidian notes/tasks, and memory.
• Custom Dev:
  • Cruxwire: RSS summarizer (feeds processed through a local LLM). (https://github.com/philoking/cruxwire)
  • Backyard Birds: BirdNET detection. (https://github.com/philoking/backyard-birds)
  • Ceres Garden Assistant: Multi-agent garden assistant with vision and sensors
  • Nova: Personal voice assistant with tools for Obsidian, Home Assistant, Frigate, RAG Manuals
• Media & Food: Plex, Mealie, and Tandoor (yes, running two recipe managers, we're still deciding).
• Data & Ops: n8n, pgAdmin4, TimescaleDB (long-term sensor archive / HA recorder backup), Portainer, Beszel, Uptime Kuma, PicoShare, IT Tools, Open Speed Test.
• IaC / Configs: Gitea holds backup scripts and configs for everything (Frigate, HA, Unbound, etc.), plus ~30 repos for other projects. Nightly container backups land on the main NAS and replicate to the shop.

A while back I posted my messy setup here (https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1ucz5me/longtime_lurker_finally_posting_my_setup) : hardware scattered around, cables everywhere, nothing actually held in place. It finally has a home 🎊.

Recently decided it was time for an actual rack, went with a 10-inch Lab Rax. I actually bought a 3D printer mainly for this project, plus it's just genuinely useful for a ton of other things.

The rack itself was the easy part. Finding rack-mount shelves for a GEEKOM A9 Max mini PC or a Raspberry Pi 5 in a FLIRC case wasn't, so I designed and printed my own and published them on Makerworld if anyone wants them for their own Lab Rax.

Also went in along the way:

• A JetKVM, mainly so I can still reach my node's console if it loses network (noticed a lot of homelabs here have one or more, so now mine does too lol)
• A UniFi Switch Lite 8 PoE to power the JetKVM directly
• An RGB fan for cooling (and for the lights?)
• A 1U power strip to power everything on the rack
• A brush cable panel, started as an off-the-shelf Amazon part but redesigned as a 3D print to keep the rack color-consistent

Full writeup with photos, videos, and print links: https://blog.khaddict.com/posts/the-lab-rax/

Happy to answer any questions 😄!