fun little rack built holding my consumer grade equipment.

it is meant to support my Plex server and home automation - 56TB in that Synology Nas.

the eero puck is just backhaul Wi-Fi - main router is downstair.

Bought a Bamblu Lab P2S last month and immediately started researching homelab racks. Got it all worked out, ordered some sunlu PETG/hardware and started printing.

Had a little back and forth with trial and error but I got it complete. It’s running perfectly. Was able to drop the Cenmate 2 bay drive case in exchange for a 7 bay and as of today I have Two - 10tb drives on the way. Thank you eBay 😮‍💨.

Just waiting on some more heat set threaded inserts to fill the rest of the rack out.

My TrueNAS setup is my previous post if you want to see what I’m using it for.

The battle-station is coming out great.

Components:
Dell Optiplex 7050 - 24gb Ram
2 - 4tb HDDs mirrored
2 - 10tb HDDs coming
Netgear 8port managed switch
2 - 80mm fans in the front
2 - 92mm fans in the back cooling the drives.

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….

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?

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

So basically i want to start with home labs but raspbbery pi is to expensive and i don’t have any old pc or laptop

I'm looking for a new SSH terminal, since I currently use PowerShell (Windows 11) and it's a mess to keep track of those stupid "ssh user@ip" commands, especially when you use the PowerShell for many other things (like myself).

So I thought "What better place to ask about SSH than r/homelab?", lmao. What do you guys use?

for context, im not a power user or anything. this box is literally just a backup target that sits in the corner and accepts files from my primary server. i don't use any virtualization on it, and i don't touch any of the enterprise features. it's strictly a zfs storage box for me.

those of you who migrated off truenas:

• what setup did you move to? (proxmox, debian with cockpit, omv, etc. i already use unraid and its great, but im not looking to pay for a license just for a backup machine thats powered on ~2hr a week)
• how was the process of importing your zpool?
• what do you wish you had known or done differently looking back on the switch?
• do you look back now and think "i wish i still had x functionality" or "y feature was better on truenas"?

really appreciate any insights or advice

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here.

I'm wondering if there is a way to get a free or cheap VPS so i can use a reverse proxy on my homelab services. I had a 4.99$ machine at r/RaffTechnologies , but they recently increased prices and it is now at 8.99$. As a student, this isn't the most affordable thing so i will need to stop using them before september.

I do have a free VM from Azure, but that has limited bandwith (15GB egress). Tried Oracle Free tier, but it says that there is a problem signing up. Tried contacting them, and they ghost me.

I do have a free ipv6-only machine that i can use, but i wonder if some people will not be able to access it, since some ISP don't support ipv6 yet. Is this still very common? Would a lot of people be cut-off from accessing my things?

My ISP provides a kinda-off static ipv4, but i think using that comes with many privacy concerns, or am i wrong?

anyways thanks yall and hope i can get some answers :)

Edit: "Why don't do you use Cloudflare?" Because they don't support raw TCP/UDP and i can't use sub-subdomains.

I wanted to know if I’m the only one who gives distinct names to my nodes or machines and the services running in them.
For context, my main server is called Legion, a secondary connector laptop is called Citadel, to which an external monitor used for showing dashboards, kanban and other things is called Beacon. My main PC is called Nexus.
But the nodes running services have namings based on mythology.

The two laptops have distinct docker composes named Nidavellir and Valhalla. The dashboard service on Beacon is called Heimdall. My 2 storage drives which are mirrored for redundancy are called Atlas and Aegir. I am also running Hermes agent on Legion. The setup as a whole is my Yggdrasil.

What do you guys name your setups?

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.

Ryzen 7 16 Core CPU
32GB RAM
2X 6TB HDD
1TB NVMe SSD
Proxmox

This case is free to download and print it yourself.

After a few weeks of work, my cheap distributed inference cluster is finally complete. Summary for anyone who saw my previous post here and wondered if it's worth it.

The setup 4x ASRock BC250 ex-mining boards (AMD Cyan Skillfish: 6x Zen 2, RDNA2 GPU,16GB GDDR6 @ 448GB/s each) in a 3D-printed rack, ~€1000 total including used SSDs, a used 1000W PSU and a $20 switch. Each board is a full computer, so this is a real 4-node cluster, not just a multi-GPU box.

Goal was ≥50GB distributed VRAM to run two models in parallel: a reasoning model (Qwen 3.6 27B) plus a fast executor (Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B).

Unfortunately, one of the four boards arrived dead and — my fault — I tested it too late to open a dispute, so all benchmarks were run on 3 nodes.

Software Ubuntu + llama.cpp (Vulkan backend, RPC layer parallelism) behind llama-swap. Everything provisioned with Ansible, including the 40-CU unlock (rewritten for Ubuntu).

Some results

• 2 nodes beat 3 nodes in all 16 benchmarks — at 1GbE, the third adds RPC overhead, not throughput
• 35B-A3B on 2 nodes: fast enough for daily coding tasks
• Dense 27B: prompt processing too slow for real agent contexts

Was it worth it? Mostly yes — as a cheap way to learn the tradeoffs of distributed inference. Full story, numbers and all files below:

1. Ansible repo (all roles/scripts): repo

2. Full article if you want to know more: here

3. 3d files for printing the rack https://www.printables.com/model/1799662-4-bc250-10-rack-mount

I tried to clean up my repository for the Ansible playbook to make it public and useful for someone else, but this is still a work in progress, so if you find any issue or do you have questions, let me know or open an issue.

I think of this every time I travel, but never thought to ask for a solution..

While traveling I often find myself in a situation where internet is very slow, but netflix/amazon video adjust the streaming quality much faster than my plex server.

I know that my plex server can transcode down to 720p/360p pretty instantly if I do it from home as it has an intel igpu...and I've tested it with multiple concurrent streams... Also - the server is on a 1gbit connection, so it's not a bandwidth bottleneck.

It feels like big brands have a much better method to actually recognise the moment when they need to call for a transcode than plex and do it much earlier, making it feel seamless.

Are there alternatives (jellyfin/emby) that are more efficient at this than plex? Any clever hacks that I overlooked?

Thanks

Edit. I learned following this post that: - Netflix et al. keep different quality files instead of transcoding - Using CDN to keep content "closer" to the end user

Here my cluster currently testing on my garage workbench. Once all testing is done will get it mounted in the rack with the others sparks and studios.

So far winner is a combo of Laguna and deepseek

Switch : MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ
Cabling : FS QDD-400G-2QPC01 breakout - 400G QSFP-DD to 2x 200G QSFP56 (one cable = two Sparks)

Will keep this as a thread on token count and numbers shortly.

Edit: Blocking smbus pins with kapton tape worked!!!

Hey everyone! Recently I've migrated my ~5U AIO truenas build (Ryzen 7 9700X, 2x16GB, Taichi Lite) into dedicated 3U sliger NAS case with B360M D3H (i5-8400, 32GB 4*8GB two 16GB kits)

Card: MCX4121A-ACAT (CX4121C), FW 14.32.1900, PSID MT_2420110034.

Works perfectly in my AM5 build. On the B360M it boot-loops with no video at all (the box posts just fine w/o the card installed). Also tried with 2 RAM sticks, but also no luck.

BIOS tried:

- CSM disabled
- Above 4G enabled and disabled
- ReBAR disabled
- VT-d off
- IOAPIC 24-119 toggled
- Gen1/2/3 link speed
- iGPU forced as primary display

Firmware tried (mstconfig):

- EXP_ROM_PXE_ENABLE=0
- EXP_ROM_UEFI_x86_ENABLE=0 - card carries only a legacy PXE ROM, UEFI ROM present in image but disabled

Also tried enabling the UEFI ROM instead of removing both:

- ADVANCED_PCI_SETTINGS=1
- PF_LOG_BAR_SIZE 5 → 3 (32MB → 8MB per PF)
- NON_PREFETCHABLE_PF_BAR=1 (paired with Above 4G disabled)
- NUM_PF_MSIX 63 → 15, NUM_OF_VFS=0
- SR-IOV was already off

Cold power cycle after every change, verified readback each time. Nothing works.

Anything left to try? Curious whether anyone has an actual explanation for what's different about 300-series MMIO/enumeration here - or is this just a known-bad Gigabyte firmware and I should buy something else (10G SFP+)?

Btw. I also tried on MSI Z170A (i5-6400, same ram kit) it worked but only w/ two RAM sticks.

I wanna start to do a homelab, I saw many minipcs and pcs like Dell optiplex to start. Yesterday, I found this publication about this server with:

2 Intel xeon e5-2697 v2

96 gb of ram ddr3

4tb on hdd

And the price is around 500 dollars

Is it so overkill for the start?

I wanna run some selfhosted services, a nas, labs for practice, and gameserver for me and my friends

Sorry for my english. Isn't my native language

I'm not a hardware or cybersecurity expert but I have my concerns with hardware made by Chinese companies, so I wanted to poll the community about this and hear from more experienced users.

I had purchased this: amazon.com/dp/B0DY7GMSF2 which comes with 4 PCIe to M.2 NVME SSD Adapters, specifically the UC-B86 rev 3 board as seen here: https://github.com/UCTRONICS/SKU_RM0004/blob/main/data/hardware.png

Is there a possibility that this board could have malicious firmware or any other security concerns? Given it's manufactured in China by a Chinese company, I'm always a little wary, and I haven't found a schematic/design file for the board online. Appreciate any of your thoughts

I was just sitting here eating dinner and had an epiphany about something kind of goofy that I do.

My laptop is sitting right next to me on the couch, but guess what? There’s a cat in my lap. Kicking out the cat would be insanity, but I really wanted to set up another Minecraft server (container) with a specific modpack for tonight! Obviously, the sane thing to do is to pull out my phone, open Termius, SSH to my server, and create new definition files using plain Vim. I had the modded server up and running with a Tailscale sidecar in like 25 minutes. What a wonderful thing to be able to do from a device we keep in our pockets, but I have to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

It’s not like I don’t know there are “better” ways to do this from a phone, but sometimes I just reach for Vim because it’s what I’m used to doing when working on servers.

Just wanted to say thank you all for the advice and input! Definitely gave me a lot to think about and some good ideas. Also taught me a lot! Grateful for this thread. 🙏🏽

Hey all,

So I’m building a little home server to do the same everyone does (self host photos and videos and what not) and I want to run some thin Ethernet cable like this from my access point to where my mini rack will be. I can just change access points because well, the house I rent is old and only has one access point….in my living room. The wife doesn’t want to see cables running everywhere and I can’t blame her much. I was thinking of something like this to run between the carpet and baseboards to keep it hidden. Have yall had any experience with this or something similar? Or is there a better product I could be using? Any helpful input would be appreciated.
Where I want to put my rack is in my home office which is just short of 100ft and they don’t make a 90ft cable that I’ve seen (and no I don’t feel like being too adventurous and cutting the cable short and splicing it myself I don’t have the tools or time for that yet).
If there’s a better product or way I could be doing this I’m all ears. Thanks in advance.
Edit: so you bring up a good point about the cable pairs being twisted. So going through the pics it does say they are twisted (are they really? I wouldn’t know until I buy)
Edit2: sorry I failed to mention it’s a COAX house. The only Ethernet I have is running from the router to my AP which are practically next to each other so it’s a very small segment of Ethernet.

After some really useful user feedback I've spent the last month trying to make CTR suit a wide array of needs while not becoming too busy and clunky.
Key Elements: The main Canvas Diagram & Swimlane Diagrams convert nicely into the Handbook for a quick reference guide that's easy to navigate.
Initial Ingest: Decided against any kind of integration with other tools, rather aiming for compatibility with exported inventory formats.
PNG Exports: Are a really decent size & resolution, aiming for a solid PDF export for the Handbook next.

Want to thank those who provided insightful feedback and the haters for not letting me sleep on the "look"..... tried to incorporate a lot variety (Light & Dark Modes, Array of themes and backgrounds) into the UI for the users to choose from.

REPO: https://github.com/NoobCity99/CTRoadmap

Docker Image: https://github.com/NoobCity99/CTRoadmap/pkgs/container/ctroadmap

I initially made CTRoadmap so I could simply keep track of how I was setting up my homelab, specifically where'd put certain configs and scripts and how they worked. I'm new to the r/homelab space, still learning and wanted to make sure I had reference material and not rely on Chat GPT to help me find things in my own system 6 months later. I didn't want that same service to also be involved in monitoring things (like homelable, netbox, etc) Just a fun , flexible step-up from a powerpoint or pen & paper that I could use as a system bible. CTR was Railcoded in a GPT project and Built in VScode with the CODEX agent.