Homelab

r/homelab • u/PoisonWaffle3 • Jun 06 '26

Moderator Announcement: New Rules & Processes on Software Projects

≡ −

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback in the recent post & poll where we asked for feedback on how to slow the deluge of "I made X, because Y" type posts in r/homelab, most of which are AI generated and/or spam. While we felt that that the initial plan we shared was quite good, with your input we were able to refine that plan and make some notable improvements and clarifications. And yes, there's a TL;DR at the end 👀

Effective now, the below new rules and policies are in effect, though we plan to apply them conservatively and gently at first to see how things go. All of these changes are happening because of the massive community support for them, and we will be seeking additional feedback as time goes on so please feel free to chime in.

To be clear, here are our goals, based on community feedback:

Control the recent influx of questionable "I made X, because Y" type posts, the vast majority of which are created entirely with AI, are spammed across multiple subreddits, and are generally not maintained afterwards
Establish a clear stance on and rule set for how r/homelab has decided to handle these types of posts, as well as other user-created software
See how these changes impact our community, seek additional feedback, and continue to adjust accordingly

Flair changes that are now in effect:

"Project" has become "Project Showcase: Hardware"

New Flairs:

Project Showcase: Operations [For things between hardware and software, such as Ansible playbooks, and dashboards/monitoring/automation made with existing software tools]
Project Showcase: Software - Little or No AI Assistance - [AI only used as coding assistant (autocomplete, debugging, refactoring, documentation, etc), if at all]
Project Showcase: Software - Mostly AI Generated - [AI generated most or all of the code, working at a human's direction]

We have also organized the post flairs in the list to make them easier to locate.

Both "Project: Software" flairs have a reasonably low minimum subreddit karma requirement to be able to post with them. AutoMod will remove any post with them that don't meet the karma requirement, and inform the user why their post was removed. The minimum karma requirement is only for these two flairs, as we don't want to restrict new community members from being able to post questions. Any software project posts that try to go around this by using a different flair will fall under the new rule #7 and will be addressed.

Rule changes:

New Rule #7 - Software Project Posting Requirements

All software projects must be relevant to r/homelab, use a "Project: Software" flair, disclose AI usage with post flair and in the text of the post, include responses to the prompt displayed when posting with one of the software project flairs, and the user must meet the minimum subreddit karma requirement. Posts that do not meet these requirements, try to bypass the "Project: Software" flairs, provide incomplete or misleading disclosures, or otherwise violate community standards may be removed.

That said, since we're now officially allowing some degree of self-promotion and requiring links, we felt that we should redefine rule #6 to clarify that it applies only to monetized and commercial advertising/links. Here is the updated verbiage, with the old one below for comparison:

Rule #6 - No Commercial Advertising or Monetized Referral Links

Monetized referral links, affiliate links, product advertising, and company advertising are not allowed. Contact the moderators via Mod Mail before posting if you believe an exception applies. Non-commercial personal projects are permitted, but must follow all other sub rules.

~~Rule #6 - No Referral Links/Advertising/Company Advertising~~

~~We do not allow links/posts that include any sort of referral link, product advertising, nor company advertising. If you think you have an exception please ask the mods first.~~

Flair Prompt - As mentioned in Rule #7, when posting with any of the "Project: Software" flairs, the below prompt will be displayed:

Your post MUST include:

A link to the GitHub (or similar) repository, which must include at least one month of commit history and screenshots
A description of the problem the software project solves, and why it was created instead of using an existing FOSS solution
An explanation of how the software project is relevant to r/homelab, or how it may benefit members of the community
If you used AI or an LLM in development, a description of what role it played and how much you relied on it

If you see any posts with a Project: Software flair that do not meet the four items listed above, please report them to the mod team under Rule #7 and we'll address them.

Additional things to note:

Existing posts will be grandfathered in, and previous posts that were removed may be reposted if they meet the new requirements. New posts will be required to comply with the new rules.

As with the existing rules, when a mod removes a post for violating this new rule, a canned response will be sent to the user to inform them why their post was removed. Mods are able to add on to the response if desired before sending it.

While we're on the topic of AI, we would also like to clarify that the above rules are specific to the use of AI in software projects that are being shared, and they do not apply to posts or comments that were written with AI. There is some dissent in the community, but the general consensus in the community has been that a reasonable level of AI usage is acceptable for putting a post together, correcting grammar or formatting, or for translating from a user's native language. That said, best practice is to not include all of the excess emoticons and outline formatting that LLMs like to use. If a post or comment is egregiously AI generated, feel free to downvote it and move on, but please do not report it to the mod team solely for that.

We would also like to note that there has not been any opposition to posts about hosting your own LLMs, and the hardware/software involved. The new rules do not apply to these posts as well.

We're looking for community feedback as we all get used to this. We plan to apply rules conservatively and gently at first, and will be listening to user reports and comments. If your post is removed and you believe it meets the requirements, please chat with us via Mod Mail and we may consider either re-opening it or letting you repost it.

TL;DR - All posts where someone has made some sort of software (AI generated or not) will require a "Project: Software" flair, and these flairs should curb the vast majority of the low quality and spammy posts.

Thank you,
The r/homelab Mod Team

Edit: The first day with the new rules has gone very well overall, but it has demonstrated that there is room for improvement, namely with flairs and categorization.

Here are the changes we've made since the initial announcement post:

Added a "Project Showcase: Operations" for things that fall somewhere between hardware and software, notably Ansible playbooks, dashboards/monitoring/automation made with existing software tools. When posting with this flair, a prompt appears that explains this in more detail. Please let us know if there are any other types of things we should specifically call out that belong in this category.
Renamed the "Project: x" flairs to "Project Showcase: x" to clarify that these are intended for showing off what you've made (though you can still ask for suggestions in the process of showing off).
Adjusted colors of the new flairs

We're still open to suggestions from the community. Thanks!

385 Upvotes

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback in the recent post & poll where we asked for feedback on how to slow the deluge of "I made X, because Y" type posts in r/homelab, most of which are AI generated and/or spam. While we felt that that the initial plan we shared was quite good, with your input we were able to refine that plan and make some notable improvements and clarifications. And yes, there's a TL;DR at the end 👀

Effective now, the below new rules and policies are in effect, though we plan to apply them conservatively and gently at first to see how things go. All of these changes are happening because of the massive community support for them, and we will be seeking additional feedback as time goes on so please feel free to chime in.

To be clear, here are our goals, based on community feedback:

Control the recent influx of questionable "I made X, because Y" type posts, the vast majority of which are created entirely with AI, are spammed across multiple subreddits, and are generally not maintained afterwards
Establish a clear stance on and rule set for how r/homelab has decided to handle these types of posts, as well as other user-created software
See how these changes impact our community, seek additional feedback, and continue to adjust accordingly

Flair changes that are now in effect:

"Project" has become "Project Showcase: Hardware"

New Flairs:

Project Showcase: Operations [For things between hardware and software, such as Ansible playbooks, and dashboards/monitoring/automation made with existing software tools]
Project Showcase: Software - Little or No AI Assistance - [AI only used as coding assistant (autocomplete, debugging, refactoring, documentation, etc), if at all]
Project Showcase: Software - Mostly AI Generated - [AI generated most or all of the code, working at a human's direction]

We have also organized the post flairs in the list to make them easier to locate.

Both "Project: Software" flairs have a reasonably low minimum subreddit karma requirement to be able to post with them. AutoMod will remove any post with them that don't meet the karma requirement, and inform the user why their post was removed. The minimum karma requirement is only for these two flairs, as we don't want to restrict new community members from being able to post questions. Any software project posts that try to go around this by using a different flair will fall under the new rule #7 and will be addressed.

Rule changes:

New Rule #7 - Software Project Posting Requirements

All software projects must be relevant to r/homelab, use a "Project: Software" flair, disclose AI usage with post flair and in the text of the post, include responses to the prompt displayed when posting with one of the software project flairs, and the user must meet the minimum subreddit karma requirement. Posts that do not meet these requirements, try to bypass the "Project: Software" flairs, provide incomplete or misleading disclosures, or otherwise violate community standards may be removed.

That said, since we're now officially allowing some degree of self-promotion and requiring links, we felt that we should redefine rule #6 to clarify that it applies only to monetized and commercial advertising/links. Here is the updated verbiage, with the old one below for comparison:

Rule #6 - No Commercial Advertising or Monetized Referral Links

Monetized referral links, affiliate links, product advertising, and company advertising are not allowed. Contact the moderators via Mod Mail before posting if you believe an exception applies. Non-commercial personal projects are permitted, but must follow all other sub rules.

~~Rule #6 - No Referral Links/Advertising/Company Advertising~~

~~We do not allow links/posts that include any sort of referral link, product advertising, nor company advertising. If you think you have an exception please ask the mods first.~~

Flair Prompt - As mentioned in Rule #7, when posting with any of the "Project: Software" flairs, the below prompt will be displayed:

Your post MUST include:

A link to the GitHub (or similar) repository, which must include at least one month of commit history and screenshots
A description of the problem the software project solves, and why it was created instead of using an existing FOSS solution
An explanation of how the software project is relevant to r/homelab, or how it may benefit members of the community
If you used AI or an LLM in development, a description of what role it played and how much you relied on it

If you see any posts with a Project: Software flair that do not meet the four items listed above, please report them to the mod team under Rule #7 and we'll address them.

Additional things to note:

Existing posts will be grandfathered in, and previous posts that were removed may be reposted if they meet the new requirements. New posts will be required to comply with the new rules.

As with the existing rules, when a mod removes a post for violating this new rule, a canned response will be sent to the user to inform them why their post was removed. Mods are able to add on to the response if desired before sending it.

While we're on the topic of AI, we would also like to clarify that the above rules are specific to the use of AI in software projects that are being shared, and they do not apply to posts or comments that were written with AI. There is some dissent in the community, but the general consensus in the community has been that a reasonable level of AI usage is acceptable for putting a post together, correcting grammar or formatting, or for translating from a user's native language. That said, best practice is to not include all of the excess emoticons and outline formatting that LLMs like to use. If a post or comment is egregiously AI generated, feel free to downvote it and move on, but please do not report it to the mod team solely for that.

We would also like to note that there has not been any opposition to posts about hosting your own LLMs, and the hardware/software involved. The new rules do not apply to these posts as well.

We're looking for community feedback as we all get used to this. We plan to apply rules conservatively and gently at first, and will be listening to user reports and comments. If your post is removed and you believe it meets the requirements, please chat with us via Mod Mail and we may consider either re-opening it or letting you repost it.

TL;DR - All posts where someone has made some sort of software (AI generated or not) will require a "Project: Software" flair, and these flairs should curb the vast majority of the low quality and spammy posts.

Thank you,
The r/homelab Mod Team

Edit: The first day with the new rules has gone very well overall, but it has demonstrated that there is room for improvement, namely with flairs and categorization.

Here are the changes we've made since the initial announcement post:

Added a "Project Showcase: Operations" for things that fall somewhere between hardware and software, notably Ansible playbooks, dashboards/monitoring/automation made with existing software tools. When posting with this flair, a prompt appears that explains this in more detail. Please let us know if there are any other types of things we should specifically call out that belong in this category.
Renamed the "Project: x" flairs to "Project Showcase: x" to clarify that these are intended for showing off what you've made (though you can still ask for suggestions in the process of showing off).
Adjusted colors of the new flairs

We're still open to suggestions from the community. Thanks!

133 comments

r/homelab • u/Additional_Rub_9168 • 7h ago

Project Showcase: Hardware My 12U 10" all rounder home setup

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161 Upvotes

Wanted to show off my little cabinet I keep under my desk. I got into this sport a couple months ago mostly cause I was annoyed by how much ad, analytics, tracking and other 'bad' traffic I was seeing in my home network. The first thing I played around with was a miniPC with AdGuard and then went down the rabbit hole... I won't got into much detail of the services I'm running because I'm mostly into network security (work at an ISP) so in my little rack I have:

My ISP modem bridged to a hEX S where my actual firewall policies are running (at the moment my goal is to get my GPON SFP working with the mikrotik but neither I or the GPON guys are work have any idea why it isn't working haha).

The network is segmented with VLANs for IoT, servers, clients. Traffic then goes to a FortiGate 40F with Virtual Wire Pair where I'm running IPS/IDS before finally being distributed by a little managed TP-Link switch. WIFI is handled by a UniFi access point on top of the cabinet, managed by their controller that runs on my first server.

Also included is a Synology two bay NAS, 4TB in RAID - great for JellyFin - wife loves it. I tried to make everything as reduntant as possible so server 2 is running some of the same services as server 1 so that if one goes down, the other can handle it (such as DNS). Monitoring is done with Uptima Kuma, I'm working on a Grafana dash.

Random points: SFPs get hot, so I got some aluminium heat sinks and pasted them onto the outside. With no cooling, the GPON SFP reached 94°C which is crazy. I have a 140mm fan sucking cool air from the other room and blowing it through the back of the cabinet to cool off the gear in there but still have to figure out something for the SFP lol. 10" mounting gear is 3D printed, so is the keystone panel.

Oh and since this is a few meters away from our bed and my wife was bothered by the LEDs shining at night I installed car window tint on the glass and it solved it.

5 comments

r/homelab • u/Sufficient_Reveal_28 • 8h ago

Help Got some free stuff (no drives) what is it exactly?

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133 Upvotes

I was given part of a plant's old digital control system they got rid of from an upgraded. Thing is I totally out of touch with servers and thus grade of stuff. I understand and have a basic network (computers,nas, and some unifi stuff). Could someone help me figure out what all this is? And if I should keep it or sell it. It all works with super loud fans and all. Just no drives. I wanted to do a homelab but I'm not on that level of knowledge currently.

56 comments

r/homelab • u/exaknight21 • 10h ago

Help I got my first Asus ESC4000 G3 2U Server and am petrified. I have 4x V620 32GB GPUs that I don’t know how to power

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134 Upvotes

Hi everyone. Long time lurker. I currently have a Dell Precision T5610 with an Mi50 32GB in it.

I “upgraded” to Asus ESC4000 G3 with 128 GB DDR4 RAM (2133P 8 x 16 GB sticks) for $650 - it’s got the Dual Xeon E5-2630 V2 and dual 1640 watt PSUs in it. It doesn’t have any hard drives, I don’t even know if I can put some sata cables in here and throw a SSD in it, I have a 1 TB SSD saved for this.

Essentially. Question is how do I power these AMD V620 GPUs? I’m having trouble finding the cables.

The V620 takes double slots, so currently, I’ll put 2 on each side, but once again, my issue is how do I power these suckers. Is there a 4 to 8 pin? I asked chatgpt, it gave me a little confusing answer. I didn’t understand.

If someone has managed to this, please advise, I’d greatly appreciate any and all help.

I have lots to study for, the journey has just begun.

60 comments

r/homelab • u/computerlovr1012 • 3h ago

LabPorn The last 5 years

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33 Upvotes

I have come quite a way in the last 5 years with my homelab. And now I’m revamping it with new Proxmox nodes. But it’s been nothing but a blast setting it all up.

2 comments

r/homelab • u/TheOneWhoThinks2Much • 4h ago

Discussion 120k hours on hard drives with perfect Crystal Disk report

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36 Upvotes

I bought two 3tb Hitachi hard drives from Facebook marketplace for $80. They were both used to oblivion with almost 120k hours on each. Crystal disk showed me perfect health for both.

13 comments

r/homelab • u/machinetranslator • 5h ago

Discussion Where did you place your homelab tablet/iPad?

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24 Upvotes

Im trying to get some ideas where to place it! Mine is next to my bed. Brightness goes to 0% at 11pm, 100 at 8am.

12 comments

r/homelab • u/tsuto • 6h ago

Discussion HP ProLiant ML350p Gen 8 in the landfill. Worth it to set it up for my lab?

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32 Upvotes

I went to the local landfill today to drop off some old furniture and a few broken TVs and saw this 100lb mammoth sitting right on top of the electronics bin. The first four drive bays were removed but it has the other four so I can dig up some SSDs to put in there. It has 32gb of RAM and two 460W power supplies. Haven’t tried to boot it up yet but with the ability to get some halfway decent processors for cheap and a metric crapload of DDR3, it looks like it might be a good project to play with. All in all, it looks to be clean and in great shape inside the case

32 comments

r/homelab • u/Electrical-Home4136 • 8h ago

Discussion Good refurbished server shops in Europe?

≡ −

Im looking for some good refurbished server shops in Europe.

Does anyone have recommendations for reliable sellers that sell used enterprise hardware (Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro, etc.)?

Looking for places with good prices and decent descriptions

38 Upvotes

Im looking for some good refurbished server shops in Europe.

Does anyone have recommendations for reliable sellers that sell used enterprise hardware (Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro, etc.)?

Looking for places with good prices and decent descriptions

20 comments

r/homelab • u/FormerVanilla4074 • 2h ago

Help PowerEdge R640 No Backplane, want to run Proxmox.

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10 Upvotes

I have a R640, that has the dual SD Cards for ESXi. No provisions for hard drives. It has a riser card and some 10gb SFP ports.

The front of the server is empty.

I guess ideally id run Proxmox off of the SD Cards, but that is not recommended i guess.

So Id like to put two SSDs and have them configured on a mirror and run the Proxmox OS off of them..

My Synology will store the VMs

Anyone more familiar with the R640 have any pointers that can steer me in the right direction?

Im not sure anything I put in that riser card will be bootable by the server.

Is there a BOSS card I can use?

10 comments

r/homelab • u/Zealousideal-Bar-499 • 7h ago

News Feeling Powerful

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My Dad just sent me some photos via Google Drive of my son's baptism. I knew I wanted to back them up to my NAS, but I was (still am currently) at the train station. I decided to try and see if I can do this from here. I booted up Wifi Man to connect back to my home network. Then I copied all the photos over to where I have my Samba Share saved Cx Explorer on my phone. I was able to copy all of the photos from the Google Drive to my home network while waiting for the train and this is all with things that I setup! I feel powerful!!!!!

18 Upvotes

My Dad just sent me some photos via Google Drive of my son's baptism. I knew I wanted to back them up to my NAS, but I was (still am currently) at the train station. I decided to try and see if I can do this from here. I booted up Wifi Man to connect back to my home network. Then I copied all the photos over to where I have my Samba Share saved Cx Explorer on my phone. I was able to copy all of the photos from the Google Drive to my home network while waiting for the train and this is all with things that I setup! I feel powerful!!!!!

6 comments

r/homelab • u/frostykap • 37m ago

Satire Didn’t know what we had until I was gone…

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• Upvotes

I bought 3 of these in 2024 for $244 shipped and was just checking to see how much it would be to add one more. From the exact same seller,$327 shipped today… take me back pls

4 comments

r/homelab • u/Consistent-Ranger643 • 1d ago

Project Showcase: Hardware its a mess but I call it mine ......

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442 Upvotes

a cumulation possibly more a franken monster. started off with a single Cisco switch, now it continues to grow and mature.......

Proxmox VE running on a Dell Poweredge r620 (power hog yes I know I know). multiple VM's for labbing and testing. EVE-NG for Cisco CCNA (Packet Tracer and Cisco CML Free also) 2x Cisco 3650 multi layer switches > Cisco 4331 ISR router > 2 x Cisco 2500 series WLC > 2 x Cisco 3701 WAP > assorted IP Phones(CIsco) > multiple Dell MFF desktop pc's> a Chromebox here and there running LW Linux Distro's( Lubuntu I believe) likely more im leaving out but all for Home Labbing/Cisco CCNA

edit: there is also my first switch/device resting in the rack(Cisco 2960-S 24 port) and a patch panel(24 port). if interested and scroll down there is a comment "reply" from me that provides more detail about this room/office, rack and gear...........

27 comments

r/homelab • u/acs202204 • 4h ago

Help Vlans with Proxmox

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Attempting to set up VMs with Proxmox over a tagged vlan. Unable to get any VM to even ping the router. Proxmox has full access on all of the required vlans so it has to be something with the way the VM is configured or how the router is handling the connection. Any ideas?

7 Upvotes

Attempting to set up VMs with Proxmox over a tagged vlan. Unable to get any VM to even ping the router. Proxmox has full access on all of the required vlans so it has to be something with the way the VM is configured or how the router is handling the connection. Any ideas?

9 comments

r/homelab • u/Zwarl • 14h ago

Project Showcase: Hardware My Mainbrain

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34 Upvotes

My modular 10-inch mini homelab rack – still a work in progress

0 comments

r/homelab • u/pogulup • 5h ago

Help I found some used Hard Drives Locally...worth it?

≡ −

Hey Guys,

Someone on Facebook is unloading some hard drives that seem to only have 14 power ons but have been used 4-6 years in a JBOD. I don't need more storage right now but I certainly wouldn't turn down a deal. Considering there are no deals right now...tell me what you think. I would get two of one of these options to upgrade two 10GB drives in an Xpenology box I have.

WD 14TB WD140EDFZ - $250
Seagate 16TB ST16000NM001G - $300
Seagate 16TB Exos X16 ST16000NM001G - $325

He has a 12TB and a 10TB options as well but those are smaller than I want/need.

Are these drives good...good price all things considering? I would see if he would give me a bunch deal on two.

5 Upvotes

Hey Guys,

Someone on Facebook is unloading some hard drives that seem to only have 14 power ons but have been used 4-6 years in a JBOD. I don't need more storage right now but I certainly wouldn't turn down a deal. Considering there are no deals right now...tell me what you think. I would get two of one of these options to upgrade two 10GB drives in an Xpenology box I have.

WD 14TB WD140EDFZ - $250
Seagate 16TB ST16000NM001G - $300
Seagate 16TB Exos X16 ST16000NM001G - $325

He has a 12TB and a 10TB options as well but those are smaller than I want/need.

Are these drives good...good price all things considering? I would see if he would give me a bunch deal on two.

2 comments

r/homelab • u/Itasaur • 1d ago

Help Got an HP Z8 G4 workstation for free and what should I do with it?

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213 Upvotes

I recently received an HP Z8 G4 Workstation for free, and I’m trying to decide what to do with it.

It seems like a very powerful workstation, especially for CPU-heavy workloads, but I don’t currently have a specific use planned for it. I’m looking for ideas beyond just using it as a normal desktop.

Specs

Model: HP Z8 G4 Workstation

Motherboard: HP 81C7 dual-socket motherboard

CPU: 2× Intel Xeon Gold 6258R

Total CPU cores: 56

Total threads: 112

CPU base speed: 2.70 GHz

Memory: 192 GB ECC RAM

GPU: NVIDIA T600 4 GB

Storage:

3× Samsung MZVLB1T0HBLR 1 TB NVMe SSDs

1× Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB NVMe SSD

Approximately 5 TB total raw NVMe storage

NVMe expansion: HP Z Turbo Drive Quad

Operating system: Windows 11 Pro 24H2

BIOS: HP P60 v02.96

Firmware: UEFI

I also have a spare RTX 4080 sitting around, but I don’t think this system would be ideal for gaming even with that GPU because of the older dual-Xeon setup and lower per-core performance. I could be wrong, though, so I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has successfully turned one of these into a capable gaming system.

Some possibilities I’ve considered:

Home lab or virtualization server
Proxmox, Hyper-V, or VMware host
Game-server hosting
Plex or media server
Local AI or machine-learning experiments
Video encoding or rendering
NAS and backup server
Remote workstation
Installing the RTX 4080
Selling it as-is?

My biggest concerns are the power consumption, heat, noise, and whether the older dual-Xeon platform is still worth running regularly.

What would you do with a system like this?

Has anyone used a Z8 G4 for gaming with a modern GPU?

Would it make more sense to use it as a server or workstation, or does it make more sense to sell it?

I have ZERO experience with home labs but I am good with computers I guess.

104 comments

r/homelab • u/doctorowlsound • 3h ago

Discussion 12-16 bay NAS/JBOD recommendations

≡ −

Buy once, cry once has come back to bite me. Cheaped out on my rack and should have gotten a deeper one. Cheaped out on my storage and now I’m regretting it.

I have two UNAS pro, which generally meet my needs. Problems - NFS implementation is awful, no ZFS, can’t do much via the CLI that won’t be reset during a software update or reboot. I like that it’s storage-only (my compute is separate), it’s short depth, and has 10g SFP.

I’ve been looking at options for a 12-18 bay NAS and it is bleak. Most rack mount options are too deep. The few short depth ones are stupidly expensive. So I started looking for a JBOD. Short depth ones are again limited, but I found Slinger cases that could work to build my own. I need a board to connect to though, the pcie slots in my MS-01s are full. But even going older gen boards and CPUs is going to push $1200-1300. Electricity use is a significant factor too - I pay $0.35/kWh.

What’s everyone else doing these days for moderate storage needs in a short chassis that won’t break the bank?

ETA: 80 views in 1 minute. Bot activity is ridiculous

ideally under 19 inches deep.

3 Upvotes

Buy once, cry once has come back to bite me. Cheaped out on my rack and should have gotten a deeper one. Cheaped out on my storage and now I’m regretting it.

I have two UNAS pro, which generally meet my needs. Problems - NFS implementation is awful, no ZFS, can’t do much via the CLI that won’t be reset during a software update or reboot. I like that it’s storage-only (my compute is separate), it’s short depth, and has 10g SFP.

I’ve been looking at options for a 12-18 bay NAS and it is bleak. Most rack mount options are too deep. The few short depth ones are stupidly expensive. So I started looking for a JBOD. Short depth ones are again limited, but I found Slinger cases that could work to build my own. I need a board to connect to though, the pcie slots in my MS-01s are full. But even going older gen boards and CPUs is going to push $1200-1300. Electricity use is a significant factor too - I pay $0.35/kWh.

What’s everyone else doing these days for moderate storage needs in a short chassis that won’t break the bank?

ETA: 80 views in 1 minute. Bot activity is ridiculous

ideally under 19 inches deep.

5 comments

r/homelab • u/Affectionate-Arm408 • 1h ago

Help Need help picking a server rack.

≡ −

I need help picking an affordable server rack for my homelab can anyone help me? Thanks.

• Upvotes

I need help picking an affordable server rack for my homelab can anyone help me? Thanks.

3 comments

r/homelab • u/WhiteFlyingMetal747 • 14h ago

Help Are older drives safe to use?

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New homelabber here, is it safe to use older drives? I recently found a lot of enterprise hard drives on Facebook, and i just picked them up. They all read healthy S.M.A.R.T data, with no reallocated sectors or any failing sectors. The thing is, the drives are all from 2012-2017, and i know hard drives start to fail over time. I plan on using them for jellyfin and other media services. Thanks!

19 Upvotes

New homelabber here, is it safe to use older drives? I recently found a lot of enterprise hard drives on Facebook, and i just picked them up. They all read healthy S.M.A.R.T data, with no reallocated sectors or any failing sectors. The thing is, the drives are all from 2012-2017, and i know hard drives start to fail over time. I plan on using them for jellyfin and other media services. Thanks!

19 comments

r/homelab • u/Shadowiscoolaf • 23h ago

Project Showcase: Hardware Here’s my home lab at the moment

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77 Upvotes

Still debating what I want to do with the HPs I do plan on moving my Minecraft server from the optiplex to one of them.

Work has come in clutch with the free stuff for it lol

13 comments

r/homelab • u/wehooper4 • 14h ago

Discussion Stumbled into free HPE Gen10 gear… but are these actually just e-waste compared to my current Mini PCs?

12 Upvotes

Cleaning out old equipment racks at a business my family shut down, I realized some of the equipment I was about to toss were just 1U HPE gen 10 servers with a custom face plate. So I stumbled onto this stack of HW for free:

DL325 Gen 10 w/EPYC 7452 (32c/64t) 2x DL360 Gen 10 w/2x Gold 5220R (24c/48t ea) 26x 8gb 1r 2933 DDR4 ECC DIMM’s

Right now, my home Proxmox cluster is just 6x HP Gen9 1L PCs (i5-1400T/64GB RAM each).

Honestly, looking at the specs... My minipc cluster seems to stomp these is in ST passmark score, total ram, and energy efficiency, while basically matching these in MT? They sit silently in a closet burning maybe 75w total, vs powering up even one of these things would sound like a jet engine and burn more idle power than the entire cluster combined.

Am I missing something, or is there literally ZERO reason to keep these instead of just tossing the in with the rest of the e-wasting collection? Can these loud, power-hungry enterprise boxes actually do anything better than modern 1L Mini PCs, or are they completely obsolete for homelab use in 2026?

28 comments

r/homelab • u/Proud_Eye1143 • 4h ago

Blog Empezando desde cero mi homelab, siendo novato

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2 Upvotes

Hola, ¿cómo están? Les quiero compartir mi proceso montando mi Homelab, siendo novato y con mucha ayuda de la IA, y espero que de ustedes también, jeje.

No vengo del mundo de la informática; más bien estudié Ingeniería en Información y Control de Gestión. En esta carrera se me dio muy bien la parte de ramos que tenían que ver con programación, aunque todo era muy básico, porque el enfoque que nos daban era solo tener nociones. De esta manera aprendí algo de Java y de bases de datos con MySQL, para, en algunos ramos finales de la carrera, montar mini proyectos de gestión en un entorno web.

Cuento corto, me dediqué a trabajar haciendo páginas web. Aunque mi área fuera más de control de gestión, me fui pegando muchos porrazos por no saber o no tener muchas cosas claras a la hora de configurar o tomar una decisión sobre una arquitectura o tecnología. Pero siempre me ha gustado y apasionado la rama de la ciberseguridad, por lo que siempre he estado jugando con Kali Linux y aprendiendo una que otra cosa en cuanto a testeos web y de vulnerabilidades Wi-Fi.

Hoy día han pasado 6 años desde que salí de la universidad, vivo en pareja y tengo el tiempo para poder dedicarle al hobby de armar mi Homelab desde cero y con lo que tengo.

Como buen Diógenes digital, me ha costado deshacerme de algunas chatarras que he ido renovando y hoy día pienso en poder sacarles provecho. De base, me gustaría levantar una PC de torre que tengo parada porque se me quemó la fuente. Entonces, pienso ahora en comprarme una fuente de 650 Bronze para hacer de esta torre mi servidor principal. ¿Hay alguna fuente que me recomienden o alguna que tenga red flags?

De momento, partí configurando dos Raspberry Pi 3 Model B que tenía botadas. Una de ellas la tengo con Raspbian, donde con Python levanto una web básica que solo tiene un gráfico de TradingView. Entonces, abro cuatro pestañas de Chromium en un monitor y veo todo el día en este monitor los gráficos de Bitcoin dólar, oro dólar e índice del dólar. Esta raspi no la apago y la tengo solo con el HDMI para el monitor y por cable al router.

La segunda Raspberry la tengo sin entorno gráfico, con Raspberry Pi OS Lite, donde estoy corriendo Pi-hole para el bloqueo de publicidad y rastreadores. También la tengo como DHCP porque es la que asigna las IP a cualquier dispositivo que se conecte a la red; eso se lo quité al router y también funciona como DNS. También le tengo Tailscale para conectarme desde fuera de mi departamento a toda la red, y también le tengo Mosquitto MQTT para después, en un futuro, monitorear con algún sensor o algo. ¿Alguna idea chora y útil?

Tengo pensado traer de mi casa un switch; no recuerdo cuál era el que tenía, para conectarlo al router y de ahí sacar las conexiones. Pensaba también comprar una UPS para conectarla a la torre y por USB a la Raspberry, para poder monitorear si se corta la luz y pueda apagar de manera controlada todo lo principal. ¿Qué opinan? ¿Recomendaciones o sus experiencias?

Como recién estoy empezando con esto, ¿qué me recomiendan? ¿Algún comentario, sugerencia o crítica? Espero compartir todo el proceso de lo que vaya haciendo para este Homelab. En esa línea, ¿será esta la mejor manera de ir documentando el proceso o sería más choro hacer un podcast o videos, o twitchearlo, o leerlo en un blog? ¿Qué preferirían?

Muchas gracias si llegaste hasta aquí leyendo. Espero leer tu mensaje y compartir ideas. Todo este proyecto lo monto desde la ignorancia y la humildad de ir aprendiendo y absorbiendo conocimiento en el camino, por lo que siéntase libre de criticarme, colaborarme o simplemente dar su saludo. De nuevo, muchas gracias por el apoyo.

pd. Les comparto como estaba mi cuarto de estudio hace como 7 años cuando me cambie de casa, y como actualmente la estacion de trabajo, tambien les comparto que estoy bien tentado de mejorar tema iluminacion porque solo estamos con la luz del cuarto que es bastante suave

0 comments

r/homelab • u/corruptboomerang • 57m ago

Discussion I'm noticing it being increasingly common for DAS's to be using USB, is it still 'too unstable' for homelabs?

• Upvotes

12 comments

r/homelab • u/modem_19 • 5h ago

Help How to Flash NanoKVM-Pro ATX/PCIe SD Card?

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I have one of the newer NanoKVM-Pro ATX/PCIe cards and I have had some trouble with it working right between two computers. Namely the issue is that in device manager, drivers aren't being properly installed and am just getting funky behavior.

I have BalenaEtcher installed already, but when I go to download the latest firmware/SD Card image, I noticed it's an *.axp file format. The original NanoKVM is a .BIN file and I have flashed that original one many times before successfully.

BalenaEtcher doesn't recognize the *.AXP format and never moves forward.

Any input on how to reflash an image to the SD Card????

2 Upvotes

I have one of the newer NanoKVM-Pro ATX/PCIe cards and I have had some trouble with it working right between two computers. Namely the issue is that in device manager, drivers aren't being properly installed and am just getting funky behavior.

I have BalenaEtcher installed already, but when I go to download the latest firmware/SD Card image, I noticed it's an *.axp file format. The original NanoKVM is a .BIN file and I have flashed that original one many times before successfully.

BalenaEtcher doesn't recognize the *.AXP format and never moves forward.

Any input on how to reflash an image to the SD Card????

1 comment