Surprised author didn't mention https://labgopher.com/ for finding used enterprise hardware at low cost on ebay. This hardware is cheap and typically out-of-service for enterprise, but great for home labs.
Home Lab Beginners guide
31–40 of 400 posts
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#32The whole home lab scene is great. Everyone has some set of goals... low power, interesting processors, data ownership, HA, UPS/whole home UPS... and the home is the only common intersection of all these overlapping interests, and bits of software. Even more fascinating is the types of people it attracts, from professionals playing to people far outside the industry. I have really taken the plunge and it recaptures s…
The community is absolutely amazing. It's incredibly active on Reddit and Lemmy. People are always quick to help you find solutions and give you advice on setting things up using best practices. It's an absolute gem if learning this stuff is interesting to you.
The home lab community is a very leaky abstraction ;)
Serve the home, and level 1 on YouTube...
It intersects with proxmox community, home assistant community, all the NAS distros...
The spread out and over lapping nature of these groups really adds to the early internet vibe!
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#33I'm older than 30 so I just call this having a home network and more than one computer. Why do I have a home network? Like many here, I develop network applications. I'm not a network technician, but being able to truly understand how the various components of the internet work, like TCP/IP, DNS etc., is really useful and sets me apart from many developers. I also just like being in control and having the flexibility…
I built my home server with a 4RU case filled with desktop components. Thankfully 4RU seems tall enough to get fans large enough to be quite quiet. *Actual^ rack mounted equipment though? I highly recommend that anyone even remotely thinking of bringing this stuff home find some way to hear how bloody loud it is beforehand. I couldn’t imagine living with that.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#34The article is good, but it is intimidating buy its size and scope. A homelab could be a single NUC on a desk. I have one with 64GB RAM and it could fit so so many things. NUCs are very efficient to run 24/7, but become noisy with sustained CPU load. For that one could grow the setup with OptiPlex or Precision Tower (can haz ECC) SFF from eBay. These Dell SFFs are very good, quite small yet proper desktops/servers wi…
I've been thinking about upgrading my current "homelab" (just an old PC), and I've been waiting for a small form factor with an integrated power supply and a bunch of NVMe slots. Does that exist yet?
I think you could DIY that, but I found getting a few little PCs can be stuffed in a drawers with some holes drilled in the back. Haven't complained about suffocation yet! I bought some Bee-Link mini PCs with pretty impressive specs. No idea if I am now being spied on by China.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#35The article is good, but it is intimidating buy its size and scope. A homelab could be a single NUC on a desk. I have one with 64GB RAM and it could fit so so many things. NUCs are very efficient to run 24/7, but become noisy with sustained CPU load. For that one could grow the setup with OptiPlex or Precision Tower (can haz ECC) SFF from eBay. These Dell SFFs are very good, quite small yet proper desktops/servers wi…
I've been thinking about upgrading my current "homelab" (just an old PC), and I've been waiting for a small form factor with an integrated power supply and a bunch of NVMe slots. Does that exist yet?
> …I've been waiting for a small form factor with an integrated power supply and a bunch of NVMe slots. Does that exist yet?
Have you considered using a NAS as your homelab? I run a few containers (no VMs yet, although I can) and just do that on my QNAP.
The TBS-h574TX (https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tbs-h574tx) has five E1.S/M.2 slots. The HS-453DX-8G has two SATA 3.5-inch drive bays and two M.2 2280 SATA SSD slots (https://www.qnap.com/en/product/hs-453dx), and the TBS-h574TX. Or you can just throw SATA SSDs into any NAS.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#36Can we stop with all the "homelab in living room = divorce", "one less closet = unhappy wife" etc jokes?
Reminds me of all the "so simple your could use it" comments on older tech product advertising.
Just smells of yet more boys club humour that adds to the difficulty of including women in the hobby + industry. It's the small jokes that we're supposed to just quietly smile along with, as well as the big, that cause problems.
Otherwise, nice post! I've had my homelab for years now and have been looking at expanding, definitely some things there I'll be looking at.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#37Rack mount equioment is often more expensive. Also noisy.
I have mostly consumer (non-rack) equipment in a small Ikea closet. Looks less nerdy, which also improves the WAF.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking about upgrading my current "homelab" (just an old PC), and I've been waiting for a small form factor with an integrated power supply and a bunch of NVMe slots. Does that exist yet?
> …I've been waiting for a small form factor with an integrated power supply and a bunch of NVMe slots. Does that exist yet? Have you considered using a NAS as your homelab? I run a few containers (no VMs yet, although I can) and just do that on my QNAP. The TBS-h574TX ( https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/tbs-h574tx ) has five E1.S/M.2 slots. The HS-453DX-8G has two SATA 3.5-inch drive bays and two M.2 2280 SATA SSD…
It's easier to turn an OptiPlex into NAS. Actually you could pass-through entire SATA stack as a PCI device into TruNAS running in Proxmox VM so it sees SATA ports natively, with all goodies such as SMART.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#39The article is good, but it is intimidating buy its size and scope. A homelab could be a single NUC on a desk. I have one with 64GB RAM and it could fit so so many things. NUCs are very efficient to run 24/7, but become noisy with sustained CPU load. For that one could grow the setup with OptiPlex or Precision Tower (can haz ECC) SFF from eBay. These Dell SFFs are very good, quite small yet proper desktops/servers wi…
In addition to that, I don't think people should overthink the rack as an essential component. I like racks as much as the next guy and homelab racks look really cool but for usability and learning, just go with whatever you like.
I personally have 4 boxes stacked in a corner that are connected to a "rack", which is just two rack side panels bolted to the back of a workbench that I screw components into, connected to NAS and multiple Raspberry Pi's on a shelf and I really like the mess and have learned a lot.
Just use what you have and expand as you need. Racks are cool once you're into the hobby enough to care about style points.
Re: Home Lab Beginners guide
#40how/where can a complete noob learn all these skills to set something like this at home?