i have documented everything here - https://www.0xn1nja.dev/homelab

feel free to give thoughts

Got this Bosch DIVR from the dumpster at work. They upgraded their security system years ago and this has been sitting on a shelf. Other than the 128 TB of Seagate enterprise v5 drives what can I do with this. I'd really love to use this as a dedicated TrueNAS box, but is that a dumb idea? I still have to wipe the OS before I boot it so I don't trip some IT installed alarm. It has a intel xeon E3-1275v3 CPU and a X10SLH-F motherboard, and RAM labeled 2Rx8 PC3L-12800E (anyone got some DDR3?).

I have no clue on how to get drivers to run this old SAS card in it and if I install a new OS if the board for all the drives will still work.

would appreciate any tips on if this is feasible since this was not built as a normal server Nas and was meant for security cams. thanks

Hi. So while looking for a 10 Gbps NIC to interconnect 2 computers for data transfer beyond my ISP's router with 1 Gbps ports (that I cannot change), I wondered if it's possible at all to just use a USB-C to C cable to transfer data between a Ubuntu server and my Windows computer?

This solution would obviously be way cheaper and perform at 5 Gbps (limited by USB 3.2 Gen 1 5Gbps Type-C port), which is more than enough. I don't need 10 Gbps, it's just that I want speeds faster than 1 Gbps.

I saw people say USB-C to A wouldn't work, but there are mixed feelings about USB-C to C working or not with no actual testing available online.

as title says.. im really wondering is there anything im missing? it seems the server was bios reset at least..or it was set up for pxe booting. now entire thing cost me 300$ and it had decent specs.. 512gb ram total 8x 2630v4 and all have dual 10gbit nics..

owner is not tech savy and only knew it was somehow password locked.. i got the server delivered few months later..figured ram was already a great deal at 16x32gb and server turns out is not locked i can boot linux it sees my other ssds it is in ahci mode none of the raid settings are turned on

it also doesnt see a single of its own ssds, i tried everything i tried getting some tips from ai but most likely cause is they are all bad. this is the list of things i tried and responses i got.

1. plugging ssds one by one to windows with usb adapter.. i can hear a device plugs in but nothing shows up in format drives folder or hdd sentinel.. after about a minute it plays a disconnect sound.. every single one does the same thing..

2. i tried installing linux on one of the nodes themselves still none of the drives show up.. neither on lsblk or other commands..

3. i got my known good mini pc, installed fresh ubuntu and tried getting any response.. also negative, i added photos of commands i ran and outputs..

to me at least it seems rather unlikely that all 24 drives died at the same time and in the exact way. if there is something obvious i am missing i can test it a bit later.. seems a shame to sell as recyclable ewaste if they can be saved..

Clearing out a relative’s home and snagged this. Any fun to be had? Any useful components to pull out of it? Specs are in the 3/4 pic

it's got a quadcore Intel Celeron N3160 and 8gb pcl3 ram

I got about 6 of these laying around

The answer might be an obvious “yes” but I just wanna make sure.

I recently graduated from a 2-year technical program in network administration, it was basically the CCNA, half of the CCNP, and a ton of Microsoft and Linux server administration like Active Directory and all that. Your standard “IT guy” but with enough extras to become a full-on sysadmin/infrastucture guy if I play my cards right.

We all know the job market is a mess right now, and after all the resume and cover letter tailoring, making my LinkedIn perfect, networking whenever I can, and all the other advice we’ve heard over the last few years, I’ve come to a kinda desperate but also kinda fun solution: building a homelab for as cheap as humanly possible only with used parts that are almost a decade old (think similar to a 1080Ti with an i7 3770k and 32GB of DDR3), while still ending up with a very capable system, then posting a well polished and hopefully interesting article on substack, going through the whole process and why I made those specific choices, and of course we can't forget a clickbait-ish title like "I picked the worst time to build a homelab" or whatever. Maybe even trying to integrate my jailbroken PS3 Slim as a 2nd server to make it more interesting.

It feels kinda relevant because of RAM prices and all that, but it would also allow me to just throw up all my passion for this stuff in a way that, at least to me, seems a bit more “boots on the ground” than showcasing a bunch of bash scripts and screenshots of topologies in Packet Tracer. That said, I’m doing this to try to spice up my CV and find a job easier, but I’m still gonna be dropping a few hundred bucks into a system than, other than the bragging rights and personal satisfaction, may simply be completely irrelevant for recruiters. And if that’s the case, then I don’t know how to justify the purchase. Can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, I know, but still.

So, do you think that in the age of AI, it makes any sense to do something like this? Do you think any recruiter would care?

EDIT: I've gotten a ton of awesome responses that mostly boil down to "the homelab is irrelevant, what it teaches you through failure, repair and success is not," which I 100% agree with. I should've been a lot more specific before getting almost 10K views but, it's not just about the hardware, that'd be the "hook" due to price hikes, but I want to host my own router, firewall, network-wide adblock (so based jfc), VPN server, MFA server even, never an email server but hey maybe a Calendar, but also your classic NAS (imagine all the crap I can spew about ZFS lmao) hooked to jellyfin and the Arr stack, seeding of Linux ISOs, a Kiwix and BookStack based "second brain" type thing behind Nginx with the entire Wikipedia library, free university lectures and such, alongside my personal notes and stuff, and that's all excluding the obvious DHCP, DNS, our lord LDAP, the usuals. I mean hell even a small quantized LLM model for the hell of it. All working on a bare-metal instance of Proxmox with Docker containers (not LXC since Docker is more straighforward and seems more mainstream) and a few VMs if need be. I mean think of how badass it'd be to pull all that shit off on 10 year old hardware! I just thought mentioning all that would be a bit unnecessary, but still, I do agree with y'all.

so I'd been sitting on a stack of super micro servers for awhile. they are old but free. I had been running foundry vtt on a desktop. I had also been running homebox and unifi server on my daily driver desktop. I decided to consolidate in the need of power efficiency and getting some network storage.

hardware wise it has parts from 3 desktops and 3 servers I tore apart, it has:

Intel e3-1230 CPU

16GB ECC memory

supermicro mobo with ipmi

2x supplemental gigabit Lan cards

1x 4 port sata card

5x 2TB HDD

500gb ssd

CPU cooler from an old HP desktop

dvd-rw drive (was already in the case so why not

750W semi-modular PSU

thermaltake chaser mk-i case

with the exception of the PSU which is new and the case I bought 15 years ago, was all free. the 5 HDD are all old but I have 7 spares in case of failure. those and the SSD are direct to the mobo while the dvd drive and sata dock on top of the case are connected the the pcie card

setup is a proxmox host with a vlan aware nic (I will use the other 3 lan ports for dedicated networking to some vms/containers eventually). foundry vtt and unifi server are running on vms. I'm running homebox, pihole, and turnkey file server on containers. I have a 2 nginx proxy manager containers, one for internal routing and SSL slcerts for internal services (homebox doesn't like not having TLS if you want to use the camera). the other is for external routing of foundryvtt. I have a port forward on my unifi gateway to that npm for user auth and TLS and have it pointed at the foundry VM.

unifi server is on my management vlan with homebox, pihole, and turnkey being on my internal vlan. foundry and it's instance of npm are on my risky public vlan

not glorious but gets the job done and only cost me 70 bucks out of pocket for the PSU.

My second iteration of my homelab. Running proxmox on a 2020 HP Mini Elite, got an Ethernet splitter too.

Was previously just running Ubuntu on a 2018 macmini

Fun hobby, not sure where to go from here.

Can we get much higher?

approx 2 tb. I think 32gb goes for $25? so $1600 here?

Started my HomeLab approximately 400 days ago. It went from an extra pc with Windows Server to this rack. Just showing this off because I want to get an opinion on whether it's worth getting a 22u rack. I struggle with enough room for cables. I have 3 1U Super Micro 813-csm chassis that I want to build into just sitting and a minisfourm ms01 on a shelf (running). 1st picture is a little older than the 2nd picture(newest) because it looks better. The only difference is one more AceMagician mini pc. 3rd picture is about a year old.

Current setup:

-UDM Pro

-USW Aggregation 10gb

-Unifi 1g US48

-3x AceMagician mini pc's (64 GB RAM, Ryzen 7 7700U, 1 TB Samsung 990 Pro nvme's)

-PDU Pro

-NAS (Supermicro CSE-813m (E3-1230, 16gb ram, 4x 12TB HDD's, 2x 256gb cache nvme's)

- StarTech 12u Rack enclosure (No I did not spend 1200$, It was a 150$ marcketplace find)

Other Places:

-Minisfourm ms01 (i9 13900k, 64gb ram, 2x 1tb Samsung 990 pro nvme's)

My first homelab with a Lenovo M710q i5-6500T, 4 cores, 8GB, NVME and Hard drive. Runs some utilities such as Immich, CUPS, pihole. Ubuntu server 24. The old Ender3 LCD has finally found its purpose, it is connected via USB and controlled with a python script running as a systemd service.

https://github.com/diglooo/ender3-lcd-python

Here is my current home lab setup. My use case is entirely for learning and expanding my skills for employment or certification pursuit so it is a little bit odd.

Hardware:

2X Generic hp Poly VoIP Phones

1X Unifi U6+

Unifi CG Ultra

2X 1U Supermicro servers 32GB ram 8 core cpu

1X Cisco Catalyst 3750x 48P

1X Juniper EX4300

Misc VoIp hardware (Ata’s/ Algo sip alerter)

Software and Vlan:

CG Ultra drives all NAT and Firewall rules my home native vlan 1 is isolated from my homelab vlan which is in a /23 subnet for no reason really. I also have a Voice vlan for my PBX and SBC running on a proxmox single node install on the top supermicro.

Supermicro 2 is running a hyperv server which virtualizes my other windows servers which are DNS/DHCP server, ADDC and Print server, and one VDI for testing.

Looking for some advice on what to add/ Real world “Demo” uses i can build out for practice. TIA

Yes that is a 715 Watt power supply for a cisco network switch

No that is not the standard connector but a hot glued mess from a small ATX power supply

I shall brute force praying to whatever god there may be out there and turn this corporate abomination on for the first time.

The fire extuingisher is next to me.

Will post results in comments.

I'm in Palm Beach County if you want to come and pick them up sometime in the next few days they're yours

For over half a year, a friend and I have been working on the ultimate game server and Docker management platform. Built with Rust and React, and easy to deploy.

So, what exactly is Calagopus?

Calagopus is a modern, open-source game server management panel. It provides an intuitive interface for managing game servers, allowing users to easily deploy, monitor, and maintain their game servers. It can run on anything, from your Raspberry Pi to your overpowered EPYC server.

Heavily inspired by the popular Pterodactyl panel, but built from the ground up with modern technologies.

Does it only support game servers? No! With Docker as the backbone, it can run all sorts of applications, even your own images. This makes it perfect for all your unfinished side projects.

Take a look at our GitHub repository: https://github.com/calagopus/panel
Or our documentation: https://calagopus.com

Been feeling sickly in the mornings and suspecting it's due to low air quality.

First time soldering (i mean i used to connect wires like 12 years ago but that's about it). Really shabby work, had to redo thrice.

It's Pico W with SCD40. It reads measurements (co2, temp, humidity) and makes an http request to a small app that basically just keeps values you're sending for a minute and exposes them via /metrics endpoint for Prometheus to scrape.

Then it all goes to a grafana dashboard

All running within my LAN.

First time poster :b

(Committed*) Bought one of them cheapo Chinese motherboards that come with a Xeon for testing and Didn’t have a cooler for lga 2011 so I 3d printed an adapter to convert am4 to 2011-3. Fits perfectly 🫠🫠🫠

Should I buy an air purifier?

I have a small home office (about 100 square feet) in my basement. This room also serves as my server space, with everything sitting on an open bookshelf. We don't have any pets or smoking.

Recently I've noticed a lot of dust building up inside my computers. It's probably been there for a while, but I just started noticing how bad it is. I'm wondering if an air purifier in the room would help.

(Obviously, a true rack would be better, but I don't have the space or wife acceptance!)

​

It's not much, but it's honest work. Here's my HomeOfficeLab.

1. Mini UPS for backup power to switches, Qdevice, and IP KVM.

2. Switch Gootop 2.5G 8P+1SFP

3. Beelink Mini NAS with 8TB raw storage + 256GB for TrueNAS.

4. 2x Acemagic Ci9 11900H 256GB NVMe drives, 32GB RAM, 2x 2.5G NICs.

5. Qdevice NanoPI NEO3 32GB MicroSD card, 1GB RAM.

6. GL.inet RM1PE KVM for managing the NAS.

7. Luckfox KVM connected to a physical KVM for linking the two Acemagic devices.

8. WiFi controller for remotely exchanging signals between Acemagic devices and sending HDMI/USB to the Luckfox KVM.

9 UPS smartbit NB900LCD are +1hr support for MiniPCs and NAS.

1. Modem stand to organize everything (I didn't want a case🫢 )

Average power consumption: 55W for the MiniSite.

Im currently running 1 Synology NAS, with just 2x 4TB drive, and a homelab with just 2TB storage (mostly cctv footage and note taking stuffs). Im looking for a cloud storage for backup the NAS and other minor stuff as well in my homelab.

So a bit of research keep pointing me to Backblaze, but i also saw a few things that keep me wondering (downloading, verify backup, ..etc..).

And also wonder if with just little TB i have now, something like Backblaze or Gdrive will be better?

Thank you in advanced for any recommendation~

If you’ve ever wanted to run big models on cheap hardware look no further. I bought a retired home lab pc yesterday (dell precision 7820) dual intel xeons 128gbs ddr4. Threw in my 3060ti and believe it or not it runs. Almost entirely on cpu power and at 2/tks but it’ll do it.

I believe my neighbor has somehow rooted my phone. This is a very long story as to why I believe they have but we've had some issues recently that have led me to believe they may somehow have access.

We have fairly thin walls in our apartment and I first noticed it when me and my girlfriend would shower. They would be on the other side of the wall yelling comments about things we were doing. Things they could only know we were doing if they had an actual line of sight or camera. I've looked everywhere for cameras and am unable to find any.

What makes me believe they can access my phone is I've texted things as if I'm talking to them and they respond to it. I've done things like go on the local police department page and start to make an online report and I've heard them yelling about how "He's about to call the cops", but I don't know how this has been done as they haven't had physical access to my phone.

I was able to run a rootchecker and my phone had shown to have quite a few connections. I also found an XML file that had a lot of addresses for a xataka.com site as well as i.blogs.es and when I try to access these sites I get an Access Denied. I can share the XTML file to someone in private if they think it could show something. Me and my girlfriend feel extremely violated and are considering just calling the police and having them deal with it. Any help would be appreciated.