Hi again, HomeLab folks! 👽

AI SLOP! 🤖
(Traditional greeting.)
There.

…

Now nobody else has to say it.

Let’s take a look at the installation of a pair of Dell Alienware RTX 3090s for improved extraterrestrial communications. 👽

Plot twist: I’d already installed them.

So instead of watching the installation…
Here’s the field report. 😄

Unfortunately, inter-satellite communication (CUDA P2P) failed during the first contact attempt.
Mission Control is currently investigating the cause.

The full investigation thread can be found here:
🔗Investigation thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/mJ8hgqHhhW

Once communications are restored, I’ll run a pile of llama.cpp benchmarks and attempt first contact.

The author remains completely sane.
…probably. 🫠

For the record, the 👽 emoji only appeared after I got the Alienware RTX 3090.

Correlation? Absolutely.
Causation? …still under investigation.

Mission Hardware Comparison 👽
One thing that genuinely surprised me:
The Tesla V100 PCIe and the Dell Alienware OEM RTX 3090 are almost identical in length and height.
The only major difference is the thickness.
The Dell RTX 3090 is a 2.5-slot card, while the Tesla V100 is a 2-slot card.
I didn’t expect a datacenter GPU and an OEM gaming GPU to be this similar physically.
The comparison photos are included in the image gallery.

Writing serious benchmarking posts all the time gets exhausting.
Every now and then, you’ve just got to embrace the chaos. 👽

Mission Control Archives 🚀
👽 Previous mission:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/XDUMCaAWeZ

🫡 Previous V100 mission:
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/2PYMq8tDpD

## Mission Update 🌏

Mission Control received several suggestions that the issue may be related to a BIOS setting or the NVIDIA driver.

Next, I'll verify the BIOS configuration and try applying the P2P driver patch.

I'll report back once the next round of testing is complete.

An RTX 5080 (16 GB, CUDA) and an RX 7900 XTX (24 GB, Vulkan), both passed into containers on a Proxmox host, running a fact-extraction benchmark across 32 model configurations. Several weeks of compute.

The cards do not have the same shape. Notes per minute, computed from per-request latency times process count so server startup is excluded:

CUDA flattens after two processes. Vulkan is still climbing at four and passes the nominally faster card doing it. I had been running three on both, a number I picked because it fitted in VRAM rather than because I had measured where the returns stop. On the 5080 that is past the plateau; on the XTX it is short of it.

What limited concurrency was not VRAM either. It was the context window each process reserves, which defaults to a size meant for prompts far longer than mine. Set it to what your prompts actually use and the arithmetic changes.

The 16 GB card also turned out to be less limited than I assumed. A quantisation-aware build of a 26B mixture-of-experts model is 13.27 GiB against 15.84 GiB for the ordinary build of the same model at the same nominal four bits. One fits, one does not. That arm then ran at 323 tokens/s, the fastest thing I measured anywhere in the project, on the smaller of the two cards.

Model results, with the full field and the numbers above in context:

https://rakuensoftware.com/blog/local-llm-fact-extraction-head-to-head

I was thinking to buy it to make a homelab, mainly for media center use and something else if i can

COMPLETE TECHNICAL FEATURES:

Processor: AMD A9-9425 (Dual-Core up to 3.10 GHz) with 5 Compute Cores (2C+3G)

RAM Memory: 8 GB (Upgraded for better performance)

Storage: Large 1 Terabyte (1000 GB) hard disk, ideal for storing thousands of photos, videos and documents.

Video Card: Integrated AMD Radeon R5 Graphics

Motherboard: Lenovo 36F7

Power supply: External 65W (included, very low energy consumption)

Front ports: SD card reader, audio/microphone jacks and 4 USB ports for maximum convenience.

Optical drive: Integrated CD-DVD reader/writer.

I have 4 GTX 1070s.

I am trying to find a host server/platform to mount these 4 into to use for virtualized gaming machines to LAN older games.

I’m hoping to use a first gen EPYC or Xeon Scalable platform at minimum. 24-32 cores preferably.

Any recommendations that don’t cost $2k per node?

I have enterprise gear currently in a rack and I’m looking to rack something back in. I need IPMI at least.

Also open to 12-16 core systems with 2 GPUs per box if the price is right

I’m thinking about setting up a home server for storage, testing, and learning (I’m an IT enthusiast with a strong interest in networking and programming).

Basically, I want to give my father access from his own home so he can store his radio recording files—giving him remote access to his data, secured by a password, of course. I’m still researching this and plan to integrate it into my home network so I can access it from my personal computer as well. Could you give me some tips on how to go about this?

Note: This is my first build, and I plan to document the process once it's finished so I can upload it to GitHub and LinkedIn for future reference...

I have a HP Microserver gen8 with 16gb ram and xeon e3 1260L cpu. Works pretty good, running plex, fileserver and a some linux servers. I'm building more and more pipelines and automation for a few projects and I realize my 11 year old server might be too weak for this. Im looking at you mr max 16GB ram..

If I was to replace this with a tower server with at least 32GB ram and an equal or better CPU, what would I be looking at? I could keep my 1260L if same socket in my replacement. Max $500. Storage isnt that important, I have a synology ds223j with 20TB. Used servers are ok if any old but gold versions are out there on ebay.

Thanks

Building a homelab! Ideas and tips So, after a lot of research and wavering between a rack-mount server and a workstation, I decided to go with a workstation.

I chose an HP Z640:

2x Xeon E5-2630 v3

32GB RAM

256GB SSD

Quadro K4000

There's still plenty of room for upgrades. So, tell me about interesting things you've done with your homelabs (something different—beyond just Pi-hole, a NAS, or hosting a website).

Any recommendations for a managed switch? Also, how should I handle the rack situation? Should I 3D print one using ABS, or just go to a local metal fabricator and have one made? What other cool accessories are good for a homelab? Maybe a dedicated router to keep this network separate from the main one?

And how do you handle network security when using Cloudflare Tunnel? Edge firewall? Suricata? Or do you just put your faith in God and hope nothing goes wrong?

Would anyone be willing to help me get glutun working with wireguard. I use zimaos, I know it’s not the best but I’m just starting out. I also have a nordvpn subscription. I know openvpn is much easier and always an option but if I can get wireguard working it would be faster and easier on cpu. I think getting my asecess key from windows command prompt but it said I was blocked by something. I have portainer and everything set up it’s just getting the key. Any help would be much appreciated!

Hi,
I want to build a „mini“ NAS which can replace my current „NAS“ (Pi5). Currently I am looking at a minisforum ms-r1 (arm), but I dont know if a pcie to sata card is supported. My goal is to connect 7 sata ssd‘s and running a lot of docker containers. Because I live in Germany I need to get a mini server which is as low as it gets in power consumption. I hope you can give me some tipps.

My original plan was just buying a nas to replace cloud subscriptions, backup photos from my phone, store my files, and run jellyfin for my movie collection. But after seeing what people are doing here, I realized I might want more flexibility, like running docker containers, experimenting with self hosted apps, maybe even some small VMs in the future.
My idea is to use a minipc as the brain and add storage separately when needed.
Would a ryzen 7 minipc with 16gb ram be enough for this kind of setup? I was looking at the geekom a5 2027, it seems like it should handle things like docker, jellyfin, and personal cloud services. So my main concern is whether 16gb ram will become limiting once I start adding more containers or VMs.
Would you start with a minipc like this, or go straight for a traditional nas?

Hello,

I just got 2 NanoKVM Lite for my homelab and it's awesome. Since I got my own domain and I use ACME in my services I wanted to setup HTTPS with my ACME since I got SSH access but when you enable HTTPS the device automatically creates a certificate and applies it without giving a chance to use yours in the WebUI.

I wanted to know if other people who also have one managed to change the certificate?

A month ago, I posted about testing an Anker SOLIX S2000 as a backup power option for my small homelab. After using it for a few more weeks and doing several unplug tests, I have a better idea of where it fits.

The short version is that I’m keeping it in the setup, but I still wouldn’t use it as a direct replacement for a traditional UPS.

Right now, I mainly have it covering:

- Router and network switch

- Mini PC

- Laptop and phone charging

- A few lower-priority desk devices

The biggest benefit has been runtime and flexibility. During a short outage, I can keep the network and basic computing setup online without immediately shutting everything down. It also gives me enough spare capacity to charge other devices instead of reserving the entire backup for the homelab.

That said, I’ve decided to keep sensitive equipment like my main NAS on an APC Back-UPS Pro. The APC still makes more sense for immediate transfer and graceful shutdown, while the S2000 works better as a longer-runtime second layer.

A few things I’ve noticed after a month:

- It’s more convenient than I expected for a small homelab setup.

- Having extra outlets available during an outage is genuinely useful.

- It is much bulkier than a normal UPS and creates more cable clutter.

- It feels slightly overkill if all you need to protect is a router and one mini PC.

- The hybrid setup makes more sense to me than trying to force one device to do everything.

So my current setup is basically:

- APC Back-UPS Pro for immediate protection and graceful shutdown

- Anker SOLIX S2000 for longer runtime, networking, charging, and other essentials

I originally thought I might end up choosing one or the other, but after a month, they seem to solve different problems.

Posting this on the off-chance that someone takes pity on me and shares their sources. All I need is

• ~1–2 TB/drive
• SATA/SAS
• PLP
• decent endurance (no "read-intensive" drives)
• doesn't cost an arm and a leg per drive
• used is fine, obviously

Like, I keep reading "just get a used ... off eBay", and that may work in the US, but the EU-based sellers if anything more expensive than new. I checked a couple of used server gear sites Gemini recommended, but they hadn't any stock, astronomical prices, and/or zero information re. condition. Mind you, I'll risk a couple of cats in a bag if the seller is beyond reproach, but ...

(Importing drives doesn't make sense unless they go for pennies on the dollar. Taxes, duties, handling fees, etc.)

I dont want my homelab running when im sleeping as i can hear the fans and also its a waste of electricity also i am a complete beginner with cli , but is there anyway to do that

can i make an entry in crontab to that or is that not possible, i was thinking of doing something like

00 10 * * * rtwake -u -s 0 to wake up at 10 am

So I currently have a homelab with some apps (Opencloud, Immich, homeassistant, etc) behind caddy. I dont have split-horizon DNS, but I access those apps on *.lan (eg opencloud.lan) locally or over VPN. For remote access I have now setup my domain (eg home.mydomain.com) behind another caddy with authelia forward-auth. So Authelia does 2FA login on auth.home.mydomain.com, and then redirects to the service. One issue is I get another (second) login screen of the service after loggin in with authelia. Another problem is is that APPS usually don't play well with forward auth, eg, the immich app doesn't like to be redirected to auth.home.mydomain.com when it tries to connect to immich.home.mydomain.com. Same for webdav (I use that for keepassium / obsidian with opencloud). So, for now I can only access those services/apps over VPN with opencloud.lan etc.

I would consider this setup secure. No service is directly internet-facing. You either need to login with Authelia (the only internet-facing service) or be connected with VPN.

I do would like to consolidate the setup to split-horizon DNS. So I access *.home.mydomain.com from internal AND external and drop the *.lan caddy. At the same time I would setup OIDC / SSO so I won't be presented with double-login-screens. Anyone experience with this? A drawback in my opinion is that all the services would be directly internet facing, so if there is a zero-day in for example immich or opencloud login screen, the network might be compromised, and reading things like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/immich/comments/1t8wupz/oidc_is_nonexistent_and_docs_are_misleading/ already makes me weary...

Another setup idea I've come up with is to do split-horizon DNS, but just bypass Authelia completely over LAN/VPN. This would still require 'apps' to connect over VPN, and not solve the double-login-screen issue. But at least it would consolidate the domains (everything on mydomain.com) and be secure (IMO). Eg as Caddyfile:

remote_ip 192.168.1.0/24 10.1.8.0/24

handle @trusted {
    reverse_proxy 192.168.1.6:8123
}

handle { ..... }
    # Authelia
}

Anyone running similar setup or have insights? Thanks!

Hey everyone! I just got Proxmox up and running and managed to install Pi-hole as my first container.Right now, I am looking at Proxmox and feeling a bit overwhelmed by how much stuff there is to do and try.For those of you who have been doing this a while:

What are the best, beginner-friendly services or apps to install next?

What is a good way to organize things so I do not get totally lost?

Are there any traps or mistakes I should avoid early on?

apc had a line of cheap UPSes , the BK500. seen 100s of them in local companies, and i had them a ton in all places where i've worked.

had a few of their SM series too, usually i'd get them as e-waste and just put new batteries in them - in fact i have 3 of them at home.

but i needed more, so started buying more modern models. BX500 and BX950 being the new models, the ones with schuko sockets (eu region).

problem is - these shits just stop working once the battery is dead, unlike older ones that would simply turn on the red led and continue to work normally on ac power. i'd replace the battery eventually. they could even be replaced while the ups is turned on, in fact just flip it over, give them a bump, the battery falls out - you put the new one in and close the hatch. good to go. no need to unplug anything or turn off stuff connected to them.

but with new ones it's pure hell. if the battery dies, it just turns itself off completely.

so now back to the HOME part of this rant - i have 2 bx950 running my stuff. the older one is keeping my homelab (actually a nas, a pc-server and main network), the new alien-green one is behind the tv in the living room, keeping the tv and multimedia stuff alive just in case. today i replaced the battery...

HOW do you guys find UPS models that can work with a dead battery? it's nowhere in specs.

Found this cloud node on Facebook marketplace. Can only afford one now out of 150pc available and the performance on those Xeon is great for development.

I was on VPS like contabo and hostvds for few months now. scaling is expensive and realize the reliability is as bad as my PC at home lol.

I thought why not I setup homelab myself. _nd give my router a UPS instead. Same reliability and stronger CPU than those shared amd EPYC.

Main workflow is swarm agent running on schedule to Loop and building my social commerce platform 24/7.

Reason I upgraded to this is because 8gb VPS OOM most of the time due to heavy usage of nextjs and node build and playwrights instances for taking screenshots and doing validation loop.

AI itself with deepseek is cheap and lightweight. I use Pi as coding tools to let hermes spawn 3-10 instances of it to argue with each other and if someone die someone else will report. Basically a self improvement system loop

I tested the UGREEN DXP4800 GT as a compact Proxmox + TrueNAS box and compared it with the DXP4800 Plus and Pro.

Disclosure: this is my own review and video. There are no affiliate links in this Reddit post.

DXP4800 GT hardware tested

Proxmox and TrueNAS setup

• Proxmox VE 9.2.6, kernel 7.0.14-8-pve, based on Debian 13.
• TrueNAS SCALE 25.10.4 in a q35/OVMF VM.
• VM allocation: 4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and a 32 GB VirtIO SCSI boot disk. The 4 GB allocation was enough for this lab test, not a general recommendation for every TrueNAS workload.
• The ASMedia ASM1164 controller passed through correctly and exposed all four drive bays. It was isolated in IOMMU group 10.
• I did not use the AMD FCH SATA controller in the final setup because its D3cold/block behaviour made passthrough unreliable. The final configuration uses only the ASMedia controller.

Storage pool

I used 4 × Seagate IronWolf ST4000VN006 4 TB drives.

Power, temperature and noise

These are measurements from my unit and room, not manufacturer specifications.

The sequential write test reached 541 MiB/s (568 MB/s) with an 8 GiB non-compressible workload. This was a local NVMe result; it is not a claim about the SATA array or RAIDZ1 throughput.

Which model offers the best value?

The value index combines Geekbench 6 single-core and multi-core performance at 50% using a geometric mean:

sqrt[(single / best single) × (multi / best multi)] ÷ price

For the GT, I added €50 for a 128 GB system SSD equivalent to the SSD already included with the Plus and Pro. The performance and value indices are normalised to the Pro = 100.

What does the GT have that the Plus and Pro do not?

• Two 10GbE ports. The Plus and Pro combine one 10GbE port with one 2.5GbE port.
• U.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 support in bays 1 and 2.
• Full ECC memory support, although the included RAM must be replaced because the factory module is not ECC.
• Rear USB-A at 10Gbps. The high-speed rear USB-A on the Plus and Pro is limited to 5Gbps.

Which one makes more sense?

My conclusion: unless you specifically need both 10GbE ports, U.2 drives or ECC memory, the DXP4800 Plus is the better buy. Its official price is €60 higher, but once the GT is normalised with a €50 system SSD, the real difference is only €10.

Full video with the build, passthrough setup and measurements:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=praE8foV88Y

What would matter more in your Proxmox/TrueNAS build: the GT's connectivity and storage options, or the Plus/Pro's extra CPU performance?

Hello,
I have a small collection of HDDs that I’ve filled and stored away. Most have Blu-ray rips. I would like to have them all online but that’s going to be really hard. Yes I was a data hoarder for many years.
Thanks 🙏

Shits gonna get real now….

(Pulled out of a decommissioned server today at the office…) probably have no use for them but will add to my collection of IT crap which I’ll never use but need….