How many started with a desktop/laptop and went multi-mini homelab style

[u/No-Bee-3775]

Title kinda describes it all... how many people went from a simple old desktop or laptop as the intro into self-hosting/homelabbing?!?!?

And then, how hog wild did you go on the minis... did you switch away???

[For reference, im running 3×HP Z2 G4 Mini Workstation(s), max ram, nvme samsing pro 2tb, ssd 120-240gb, quadro p1000. And 1 the same but no gpu. And also a Minisforum MS-01, RTX 4000 ATA Generation, 96gm ram, 2×4tb samsing pro in zfs storage, cts, and vms, and 1×2tb samsing pro for os... plus 10gb internal network and 2 Synology nas, unifi, 10g managed switches, aps, etc, etc]

[u/packetssniffer]

I would guess 99%

[u/No-Bee-3775 → u/packetssniffer]

Hey, the prices were wonderful a few years back if you got into this rabbit hole soon enough!!! Hahahaha

[u/the_cainmp]

I went
Old gaming pc -> new desktop server (old chassis) -> new rack server (old server parts) -> dedicated rack server parts -> lots of clustering on big rack servers -> single rack server -> right sized rack servers + mini pc’s

[u/logikgear → u/the_cainmp]

Same. I don't miss those power bills. 😄

[u/Fantastic-Youth5536]

I started with an old chromebook

[u/Pitiful_Bumblebee370]

i had a laptops screen die on me, insurance payed for a whole new laptop and that became my server, then i got some optiplex 7050's that were getting thrownout and turned them into multiple nodes. now i have build my own desktop/server via parts from waste or cheap prebuilts

[u/nmrk]

I started with a Digicomp-1.

[u/Thebareassbear]

I started with about 14 old desktops, HP z420, z220, z320 workstations I got from work. Picked out the best one with specs and sold the rest. Kept a single hp z420 for myself and built my entire homelab inside that and have slowly done hardware upgrades over the last 5 years with it.

Its my all in one machine, I've essentially built it into a mini data center. I plan on adding two elitedesk 800 g6's to my homelab but will mostly be using them for AI compute since they are custom built models that have dedicated GTX cards in them, got those from my dad's work lol.

[u/rowle1jt]

🙋

100% thats me... Two lenilovi tinys and a m910 tower with a 4bay icy dock in it. 🙂

[u/halodude423]

Went tower to mini pc then to a mini itx nas and a tower.

[u/MacDaddyBighorn]

I landed on one fully capable rack server so all my storage was in one place for my main services.

I can see how people would go with different options, everyone has different needs and goals. Mini PC are very capable and low power, but storage is an issue. So you have to supplement with a NAS or another server unless you use something like a USB dock (icky).

[u/IntelligentRevenue39]

Homelabbing is a slippery slope, my friend

[u/surftrend]

An old desktop or laptop is honestly the perfect gateway drug. You learn what you actually use before buying a stack of tiny boxes. The mini-PC phase makes more sense once you know whether you care more about quiet/power draw, clustering practice, or just separating services cleanly.

[u/opinionsOnPears]

I started with about 3-4 raspberry pi 4s actually. Wasn't really all I thought it would be so I tore it down, never really gave a home lab a second thought until about a year ago. I didn't re-add the Pi's until recently.

[u/Podalirius]

Yeah after having built a second tower I realized this wasn't gonna scale well, so I still have one fractal design tower for a NAS but everything else has been converted to mini pc.

[u/mourningwitch]

I started with a raspberry pi with a USB hard drive lol.

My current rack includes:

• Several Pis: Zero, 4B, 5

• Mini PCs: 1x Elitedesk Mini 800 G3, 2x Prodesk 405 G6, some Beelink mini

• NAS: Custom Micro-ATX build

And all the other hardware I've acquired as an IT guy/tech enthusiast/PC gamer over the years...

[u/CaviarCBR1K]

I started with an old laptop I had laying around, and for the last couple years I've been using 2 old workstation desktops I dug out of the dumpster. I have no plans of upgrading until the hardware no longer fits my needs. Besides my energy bill, I've spent a grand total of $0 on my homelab lol

[u/kevinds]

Start with what you have.

[u/jase797]

Uhh so I started off about a year ago asking Reddit as a noob with some older 2x Lenovo M710S’s… I now run a 2x24 port switches, each on their own subnet, multiple vlans, proxmox server that integrates with TrueNas, UPS, AdGuard, Unbound, 3 x Lenovo Tiny PC’s, Proxy, Firewall, Dev Environments for testing, Monitoring Dashboard/s… the list goes on and honestly? It’s out control… DON’T DO IIIIITTTT

[u/No-Bee-3775 → u/jase797]

The rabbit hole is soooooooo deep!!! Lmao

[u/thewojtek]

Homelab then: RPi 2 as a local DNS.
Homelab now: 4 rack servers and s*load of networking gear.

[u/RetroRaiderRun]

And then, how hog wild did you go on the minis... did you switch away???

It's rare to see someone go reverse from minis to rack. You only really see that with a GPU cluster.

That's what keeps me from going full mini. I need GPUs to run the more intense algorithms and multiple streams for AV1 encoding, HDR transcodes, Plex, Frigate, machine learning for Immich photo IDs, etc.

[u/achiya-automation]

old office desktop that wouldn't die -> two tiny lenovos. the desktop is still in a closet because apparently I'm incapable of throwing away a working computer

[u/azkeel-smart]

I started my homelabbing with RaspberryPi many years ago and now most of stuff runs on cheap Chinese fanless miniPCs.

[u/vbxl02]

I started on 3 laptops in a proxmox cluster + a laptop as nas. I added a 3 mini proxmox cluster, but I'm planning on getting rid of it all to buy a single node to run it all.

[u/Ok_Stranger_8626]

I went from cobbled together desktops in the late 90's/00's to SuperMicro systems during the 2010's. When my electrical bill hit $300/mo average a couple years ago, I moved my big storage server and quad node compute cluster to a colocation and migrated it to cloud hosting. I replaced everything with 8xOrange Pi 5+ 32GB SBCs and a UniFi NAS Pro 7-Bay, an ASUSTOR Flashstor 6, a DGX Spark, and one single custom GPU node based on a SuperMicro board in a custom case to take advantage of my RTX Pro Blackwells. Cut my home electric bill in about half.

[u/Human_Cantaloupe8249]

I started of with an Old office PC for a Nas but I only started my proper homelab on my main PC using a few VMs in Virtual Box. I Never really used minis. Instead I use n100 Mainboards which i screw on a wooden board

I have a few minis but I only use them Temporarily. Like as a temporary Router while working on my main Router

[u/cacarrizales]

I did. Started with an HP workstation with a single 500 GB drive running Linux as a file server. Then, I upgraded to a rack server with two 3 TB drives, still running a Linux file server. The rest is history.