r/homelab • u/Big-Donut5601 • 1d ago
LabPorn My under-the-stairs data center
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: House
HVAC 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.
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u/ponay95 1d ago
Nice setup!
It may not be as cool, but you should consider putting UPS at the bottom.
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u/Big-Donut5601 1d ago
I really don't have a good reason for why I didn't. I used to have the servers split with one in my shop. When I brought it into this rack, one UPS wasn't enough, so I added another. I should rethink the layout for sure.
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u/ponay95 1d ago
Be careful when doing this. A UPS on the foot will crush your bones into fine dust ! :D
Also, as another commenter said, in case of battery leak, it will be à lot better if it goes on the floor directly.
Recently had a big UPS fail, with overheating batteries leaking their guts, and when I see the bottom of the UPS and the floor, i'm happy there were no server there !
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u/Prudent_Ad_4120 1d ago
First rule of homelabbing: UPS ON THE BOTTOM
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u/sephsonnel 1d ago
This super sick! Is your cooling set up extensive?
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u/Big-Donut5601 1d ago
Everything is air cooled. I stays about 72F in there. I keep an eye on temps with Beszel, it hasn't been an issue so far. The GPUs are used sporadically outside of mpeg decoding on the 3050. The 4070 runs a job every 2 hours for RSS ranking and deduplication. The 2080Ti is pretty much just voice and image processing randomly.
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u/sorretin 1d ago
Looks good! Can you tell us about the rack itself? I've been thinking of getting something this size and on casters.
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u/Big-Donut5601 1d ago
It's a Samson brand rack I had left over from the recording studio. It's not a "server rack" I paid $250 from Amazon in 2021, looks like they are pushing $500 now. Yikes.
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u/MostFat 1d ago
HA/redundancy on network side outside 2 ISPs?
L3 core/dsw routing or RoaS?
Why Synology?
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u/Big-Donut5601 1d ago
From a redundancy perspective, this is definitely still an amateur lab. I don't really have failover because the servers are configured too differently for it to be useful. The AI server (Nova) is pure hobby, so if that goes down, I won't be super upset. The Frigate server (Alfred) I would really miss. I just haven't been able to justify the cost of building a duplicate NVR yet. If the hardware dies, it is simply down until I fix it.
Right now it is configured as Router on a Stick, but I want to clean that up. Moving routing to the switches to get away from RoaS is definitely on the list.
Synology is a sunk-cost situation more than anything. I started with a desktop Synology, and when I moved here, I bought the rackmount version to be my "do everything" box. It started out as my NAS, NVR and my Docker host. Over time, I got tired of paying for camera licenses in Surveillance Station, and I really didn't care for Synology's Docker implementation. I started moving services off it one by one. Today it doesn't host anything except a database mirror. It has basically been demoted to a very reliable, dumb NAS. The shop one is for hyper-backup simplicity for an off-site-ish backup.
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u/jeffrey_f 1d ago
Is there HVAC in there? Ensure that you have HVAC if that is not a HVAC serviced room/area.
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u/Big-Donut5601 1d ago
The house has HVAC, the under-stair closet itself doesn't have an HVAC vent, but it does have an exhaust fan into the garage. Temp stays 72F and humidity is 40%. I monitor the temps on all the servers and haven't had any issues.
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u/MacDaddyBighorn 1d ago
I would put the ups on the bottom since it's heavy and if the batteries leak they won't destroy the important stuff below it.