Rebuilding My Homelab From Scratch

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  • Опубликовано: 23 дек 2024

Комментарии • 335

  • @stuartcastle2814
    @stuartcastle2814 Месяц назад +242

    It’s actually nice to see a RUclipsr with a homelab who doesn’t seem to have five or six figures to spend in one server.

    • @iAlbert180
      @iAlbert180 Месяц назад +22

      realistic builds are way more fun to watch than the six figure ones

    • @stuartcastle2814
      @stuartcastle2814 Месяц назад

      @@iAlbert180 True. My homelab is a cheap mini PC that has a couple of SSDs and 32 gig of ram. It runs Proxmox, and hosts several VMS running various versions of Windows and Linux so I can experiment with things without riskiing breaking a PC I actually need.
      No 10 gig network. No 200TB RAID array. No CPU with dozens of cores.
      That said, if any server manufacturer wants to send me a server with a 200TB RAID, 5102G of RAM and multiple Xeons (or Ryzen Epics) with dozens of cores, I'd be happy to use it.. :)

    • @lVlegabyte
      @lVlegabyte Месяц назад +2

      A Thinkpad T440p $100
      Replace the optical drive with an optical drive to 2.5” hard drive caddy $10
      Slap in 16gb of RAM $20
      Install a 1TB M.2 2242 SATA based SSD as well as a heat sink for it $70
      And two more 2.5” 1TB SSDs from a reputable manufacturer $100
      For $300 you get a server in a tiny footprint, a built in battery backup (with replacement batteries readily available) and a lot of ports for additional attached storage for future use

    • @darekmistrz4364
      @darekmistrz4364 17 дней назад +1

      @@iAlbert180 How can you say that this is realistic build when guys says that most basic homelab needs UPS. When power is out, you kinda dont care about movies and photos at the moment.

    • @TrinomCZ
      @TrinomCZ 8 дней назад

      @@lVlegabyte This is exactly, what I plan to do. Not with Thinkpads, but rather with couple of fairly recent Fujitsu Lifebooks I scored for next to nothing from a polish auction site, including a dock (AKA a free extra network card). The only thing I need to solve is the storage situation, as the laptop doesn't have any eSATA or PCIe connections.

  • @MarcoGPUtuber
    @MarcoGPUtuber Месяц назад +643

    Next episode: Upgrading my rebuilt Homelab

    • @Dr1vrAI
      @Dr1vrAI Месяц назад +26

      Next episode: Moving my homelab to the cloud

    • @rszeee
      @rszeee Месяц назад +17

      Next episode: Rebuilding my house

    • @hateWinVista
      @hateWinVista Месяц назад +21

      Next episode: Build a remote homelab for backup.

    • @Xerimarion
      @Xerimarion Месяц назад +14

      Sounds like an infinite loop. Typical homelab.

    • @dhavidcg
      @dhavidcg Месяц назад

      Here we go again 😂

  • @pendragonscode
    @pendragonscode Месяц назад +365

    My homelab is a phone with a cracked screen running ubuntu with an open source firmware

    • @SkysTrains
      @SkysTrains Месяц назад +54

      that is probably the best homelab i've heard of

    • @electricjuice5627
      @electricjuice5627 Месяц назад +17

      curious, which phone can do that? Thanks.

    • @leangxd
      @leangxd Месяц назад +2

      Sirma homelab 🗿

    • @AlcorSalvador
      @AlcorSalvador Месяц назад +5

      Can we get a Phone Model and guide/link please?

    • @adubs.
      @adubs. Месяц назад

      @@electricjuice5627 any of them if you try hard enough, but my advice would be to check the lineageos supported device list and go from there.

  • @miker13
    @miker13 Месяц назад +65

    I bought a 14TB WD drive directly after watching your recent vid sponsored by Server Part Deals.
    It was a MASSIVE saving over a retail drive and it's working perfectly so far. Was about £127 in total.
    Tip for fellow UK buyers.. Keep the total cost (Inc shipping) under £135 and you will not be charged import duty.

    • @gvasilakis
      @gvasilakis Месяц назад

      Comment I was looking for! How long did they take to come? Also how much was the shipping?

    • @miker13
      @miker13 Месяц назад +3

      @gvasilakis from memory, it was about a week to arrive. I think it shipped from Florida.
      The drive was £106, shipping was £21.

    • @gvasilakis
      @gvasilakis Месяц назад

      @@miker13 Not bad at all, thanks for the info:) - What shipping did you go with?

    • @miker13
      @miker13 Месяц назад

      @@gvasilakis UPS. I think it was the cheapest option.

    • @EJJANS01
      @EJJANS01 5 дней назад

      Is there a discount code to use with them?

  • @TrondClemensen
    @TrondClemensen Месяц назад +98

    My homelab server is a Dell Precision T3500 workstation I quite literally found abandoned outside in a parking lot... I took it home, cleaned it up, put some memory and storage in it, and installed Debian and Docker. It's been running for a year already, without issues. So no, a home lab server does not have to be expensive...

    • @penguin86bitals
      @penguin86bitals Месяц назад +39

      Meanwhile the dude who left his workstation unattended on a parking lot for 5 minutes:

    • @musiclistener9215
      @musiclistener9215 Месяц назад +6

      I’ve got a 5820, and it’s sick. Less than $200 on eBay for it plus 64GB RAM, and it’s got so many PCIe lanes and slots, and 8 RAM slots. Only 4 3.5” bays though, but if I need more I can do a janky jbod I figure.

    • @devonlutz6599
      @devonlutz6599 Месяц назад +2

      T3500s were beastly. A bit of an old platform nowadays but I managed a bunch of them as developer workstations at a software company back in the day. Lots of RAM capacity and expansion with the PCIe slots!

  • @TimHunold
    @TimHunold Месяц назад +81

    Homelab budget decoder:
    MAKE DO: just happy to have something as you have FOMO
    WILL DO: spent a few bucks, got something that works, not satisfied
    THAT'LL DO: you spent money, you have capacity
    BILL'S DUE: overkill on the config and the budget, coolest kid on the Discord.

    • @nathan445
      @nathan445 Месяц назад +4

      FUSES BLEW: you tried HA'ing everything and now your 8 redundant servers draw 6000 watts at startup.

  • @cameronfrye5514
    @cameronfrye5514 Месяц назад +15

    The hard part about setting up a home lab is that you really don't know what you need until you start using it. I like your channel and methods in particular because you demonstrate what is possible with low power and repurposed hardware. I'm still on the Supermicro/Gen4 i3 setup you built on the first video of yours I saw, and it remains the backbone of my home lab.

  • @ChrisinOSMS
    @ChrisinOSMS Месяц назад +23

    Windows 11 has made me jump back into looking at alternatives [Windows 8 was the first time I dabbled with Ubunt] and having 3-college kids with full phones is pushing me toward a nas accessible somehow online for them away at school instead of giving Apple more money to hold their cat videos. However, I have no idea what I am doing and your channel is a part of me doing my own research. Thank you for putting out your fantastic content.

  • @toml1652
    @toml1652 Месяц назад +24

    My first larger purchase was a mini pc to use as a router, as I wanted to have a vpn on it, and have an OS that has a more recent than 2015. I am now running tailscale on the router and sharing the subnet, to have easy/safe access from the outside and not needing to put tailscale on any home LAN devices.

    • @carukkurac
      @carukkurac Месяц назад

      Tailscale is amazing, I run mine on qnap to access my home network

  • @nickdonathan
    @nickdonathan Месяц назад +45

    Homelab: “enterprise” environments without enterprise budgets. I’d love to just build homelab environments for others. Kinda defeats the purpose, but it would be fun.

    • @Doesntcompute2k
      @Doesntcompute2k Месяц назад +1

      Not really: It would get that "someone" started by "hitting the ground running," with a working (small) homelab. If you knew what you were doing, it would be built well and correctly. You could tier it up with security, networking (switch/router), etc. It's a good side business for you. Just a thought.

  • @Aruneh
    @Aruneh Месяц назад +87

    The meaning of words can change over time, depending on how people use them. So it is with the word homelab which now pretty much just mean selfhosting services in your own home.
    That said, to me, a homelab is still something you use to tinker and experiment with. As soon as your wife is depending on jellyfin running, your friends on a minecraft server or your lights not working if home assistant goes down, that is no longer a homelab to me, that's a production environment.
    So I don't actually consider my setup to be a homelab. I do have a couple cheap PCs that I use as homeservers, to run the services that I depend on in my daily life. It almost looks like what you describe. A cheap desktop for storage, and a mini pc for compute.
    But I'm not going to argue how other people use the word homelab, it's fine either way.

    • @delipatedape728
      @delipatedape728 Месяц назад +18

      I think this is a good point. I work from home so my networking is now critical network infrastructure so I've been very conservative on what changes I make.

    • @marcogenovesi8570
      @marcogenovesi8570 Месяц назад

      worth noting that a virtualization environment is a place to tinker and experiment with, since you can easily rebuild/snapshot/backup a VM and restore it to go back

  • @lifefromscratch2818
    @lifefromscratch2818 Месяц назад +14

    After building up my own homelab setup, one thing that I've come to the conclusion that I differ from the majority on is running services on a NAS. I really like having my services on a separate physical machine from my NAS that's holding my virtual machine/container backups. As such, I feel it's really hard to beat an SFF machine with a couple drives for a NAS and a separate one or 1L PC running Proxmox for all the services.

    • @timezonewall
      @timezonewall 29 дней назад

      I get you and go back and forth on this. I initially kept services completely separate from the NAS. ATM I have a couple of lite services running on a 2 bay Synology NAS, and most running on a compute server (repurposed i5 SFF business system with 64GB), and a few running on my backup server (a repurposed low power desktop). Then I have a few other systems I power up for experimentation as needed. There isn't any one "right" answer, there are many valid approaches. About the only one I wouldn't consider is to run enterprise rack mounted servers as they are just too noisy and power hungry.

    • @hypnotico7051
      @hypnotico7051 10 дней назад

      That’s an arbitrary line in the sand that you’ve drawn. NAS is just another service. The only real reason not to is if the NAS machine doesn’t have enough resources. Otherwise you’re adding unneeded complexity to your setup.

    • @lifefromscratch2818
      @lifefromscratch2818 10 дней назад

      @@hypnotico7051 I disagree. By having all my backups on a separate machine, restoring something after a failure is very easy. When my backups were on drives passed to a VM the process of recovery was more complicated.

  • @damouze
    @damouze Месяц назад +5

    I never thought of my equipment at home as a home lab until recently. When I moved house a couple of years ago I had a general idea what my home office would be: it would be both a place for me to work from home if and when my day job required it and a place for me to simply hang out or chill when I wasn't at work or otherwise engaged.
    I started setting up and hosting services etc. at home long ago; nearly two decades I think. It started out small. And as all hobbies do, it grew and grew and grew... Until it grew out of proportion and I had to stop and think on what I really needed. That resulted in the consolidation of many of the things I had been running on separate systems and my "donating" a bunch of stuff to the local scrapyard (some of which I now regret ;-)). It was brought down to running everything home lab related on four systems: two machines running a hypervisor, one machine running linux as a NAS/SAN and one machine running Linux for backup purposes. While this greatly reduced the number of dust particles being blown around my home office (I still thought of it as an office, not a home office-slash-hobby-space), it was still quite clunky as a setup. However I lived with it until the right before the move, when I decided it was once again time for a change.
    This was the moment that I had both the time and budget (within reason of course) for setting up a proper home office / hobby space. I would have one desk for work / gaming and one desk for my hobbies. And all the things that were at that time spread around the room and fell into the categories of 'servers', 'networking' and such, would be in a 19" rack. So that is what I did.
    The "work" desk and the rack were setup pretty quickly and I would build out the contents of the rack over the course of two years: three proxmox hosts in a cluster, one server with most of the storage and one server running a backup solution, as well as the networking equipment needed to run this. No multigig stuff though, just link aggregation where I need it. And no UPS (yet).
    My hobby space was a different matter. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do with it, but I was only able to finalize it a couple of months ago. That consists of two computers in the 'retro' category, another small rack to put in a KVM switch and some other stuff and a Linux PC to allow for video capture of those retro systems (and the only way to view the video output of these systems, which spared me a monitor). Just before the move I also picked up another hobby: electronic design, for which the hobby space is ideally suited. Push comes to shove I can simply clear out (most of) the desk and have space to tinker with electronics.
    The first thing I ran on one of the retro systems and captured a video of? Well, Second Reality of course!
    I lost track of how much money went into this a while ago (just me; Excel did not ;-)). And it really does not matter. It shows that if you have a goal and you set your mind to it, you can achieve it, even if it takes you over half a decade to get there.

  • @n3cotraf
    @n3cotraf Месяц назад +38

    My goal for my homelab is to be self-sufficient mostly for privacy reasons.
    It is good to see this kind of video when, it seems, everyone is having a 3000W server rack in their living room.
    Thank you for your work.

    • @andreas.grundler
      @andreas.grundler Месяц назад +3

      @WolfgangsChannel recently made a video in which he reacts to his viewers' Homelab setups. None of them had anything like a rack. Many homelabs just where wall-mounted and pretty janky. So I think we all are in good company.

    • @12gark
      @12gark Месяц назад +1

      Don't worry, most people don't have a rack.
      I have an 5yo hp small desktop, and I'm trying to run everything I need on it. I'm about 75% of the way, the system draws 27W (I think I can do better once I replace the old drives I have in it that refuse to spindown) and it's absolutely fun to thinker with.
      Sure, I'd love to be able to afford a full size rack with 57 machines on it, but this is what I can afford and it's absolutely enough for me.

    • @n3cotraf
      @n3cotraf Месяц назад +1

      @@andreas.grundler I think I'm just spending too much time on reddit... :)

    • @marcogenovesi8570
      @marcogenovesi8570 Месяц назад

      Jeff from Craft Computing is catching strays here

  • @wartlme
    @wartlme Месяц назад +13

    I set up a home lab for my mom, who wants it to just work. It has a ReoLink NVR, 5 ReoLink cameras, a SonicWALL firewall, and a cheap TP-Link Wi-Fi router. It just works, and it is straightforward. I have her on my Microsoft 365 family plan, so she has OneDrive to store her files.

    • @zandermcnabb7779
      @zandermcnabb7779 Месяц назад

      Is it a Linux based server or windows based? Also love the 365 plan but I wish I knew how to implement something like that but with google drive

    • @ljsmith197878
      @ljsmith197878 Месяц назад

      @@zandermcnabb7779 google docs?

    • @wartlme
      @wartlme Месяц назад

      @@zandermcnabb7779 The server is the ReoLink NVR. It is an off-the-shelf product, but it works easily and can be checked in on a phone or computer. It is simple to set up.
      I have set up a Proxmox server for several people, not my mom. No one thinks they need a server until you install Home Assistant.
      To set up Google Drive like OneDrive, you can download Google Drive desktop software, which will sync or mirror your local files to Google Drive.

  • @MaxScottTheCoder
    @MaxScottTheCoder Месяц назад +2

    Thanks so much for making this. My current lab is running on an old server that a company was getting rid of for $30. I couldn't believe it! It's nothing too special but it definitely does everything my small business needs it to :)

  • @SPAZBRO
    @SPAZBRO Месяц назад +15

    I just realized you live in the OKC area (I live in Yukon). My ultimate homelab would include a 'solar shed' with some decent battery backup to keep our essentials up and running during the inevitable power outages that happen year-round. My immediate projects are bringing voice control out of the cloud to local servers and tweak a custom LLM and voice model for interaction. Great content, man. Let me know if you ever do a meetup.

    • @SPAZBRO
      @SPAZBRO Месяц назад

      Have you ever done a video on getting the most from your ATT router/modem with passthrough (I'll do a search).

    • @zandermcnabb7779
      @zandermcnabb7779 Месяц назад

      I’ve been considering a solar shed as well! I’ve wanted to grow the “devils lettuce” since it’s legal where I am, and would love to have a system that interfaces with my homelab to run a automated plant maintainer

    • @zandermcnabb7779
      @zandermcnabb7779 Месяц назад +1

      How’s the whole “Local LLM” idea coming along? I’ve considered it as well, just don’t have strong enough hardware (yet)

    • @GyulaTube-du4eg
      @GyulaTube-du4eg Месяц назад

      @@zandermcnabb7779 Well, you can trade the "strength" of your HW for time. That means, you can wait for the answer.
      I did some tests, also bought a Tesla K80 for that, but man, that is a pain in our lower parts to get it work. Actually I could not succeed so far. But on my main PC, with an RTX 2070 and an i7 4770k, it is quite fast, but the answer quality is not the best. I use ollama for now.

    • @caedis_
      @caedis_ Месяц назад

      El Reno here

  • @rsisente
    @rsisente Месяц назад +2

    For me, the importance is on the backbone, the network. This is for 2 reasons. Reliability, and protection. Regardless of what I do, I need to be secure, and reliable. So even if I don't put a lot of effort into the server hardware, making my network sound, and secure, to me, is paramount. Good video.

  • @Tiamorg
    @Tiamorg Месяц назад +19

    If i had to remake my homelab now, it would be much, and i mean much simpler, one of the shelf nas, one of the shelf firewall solution, and one nuc-like pc for vm's containers and all the stuff. Scrap all those ancient servers that i hoarded, over years scrap those normal sized pc's that make noise and make my electricity bill big serving one thing at a time, scrap my diy firewall that barely works and the speed is atrocious.
    The big thing is that now, i don't have that much time to tinker with stuff.

  • @abunk8691
    @abunk8691 Месяц назад +2

    I agree with some of the other comments I've seen on this video where your "homelab" isn't really a lab anymore per se as much as it is a self hosted production environment.
    That is becuse your homelab its not a testing ground but instead a setup that if it encounters downtime would cause you or your family issues. I would consider it more of a home server for doing self hosting than a homelab.
    Well that's based on my understanding for the term "homelab" anyway. For me what fits that testing ground environment is my ThinkPad T450 and Dell Optiplex Micro PC where I would test hardware & software on since I could wipe or roll them back if necessary while not being my main system.

  • @deechvogt1589
    @deechvogt1589 Месяц назад +3

    Colton always the minimalist. Enjoyed your take. Cheers.

  • @TwistedMe13
    @TwistedMe13 Месяц назад +2

    11:27 Yes there is plenty wrong both from a security standpoint (you have no say in the firmware on the box or the services that may be run-- like open wifi on a second radio) and the fact that internal services and bandwidth will be lacking in all likelihood (Let's face it unless you pay extra to lease a higher-end box from them you're going to get model that is just good enough to get you up and running).

  • @mailminraj5992
    @mailminraj5992 Месяц назад +1

    Thanks for hardware guide. We love to see your lab setup in beginner friendly environment.

  • @cease70
    @cease70 Месяц назад +1

    This is perfect timing for me! I currently have a fairly robust homelab setup with a rack mount server, switch, patch panel, firewall, etc. but have lately been thinking about what I'd do if I had to start all over knowing shat i know now. I think I'd actually have a much more minimal setup and have a NAS for storage and get 2 or 3 mini PCs to run services on via Proxmox. My next thought was: "I wonder how some of my favorite RUclipsrs would do it?"
    Great content as always!

  • @sunhawk1104
    @sunhawk1104 Месяц назад +3

    When using your own router, you don't necessarily need to buy your own access point. I used my own router for decades now, I plug the WAN port of mine into one of the LAN ports for there crappy router. Depending on what you are running and how your ISP allocates IP addresses you might be able to configure port forwarding to get access to your network from outside, or just use a VPN service. So, basically, I'm using the provided router/modem/whatever from my ISP as noting more than a simple modem.

  • @TrinusSinus
    @TrinusSinus Месяц назад +37

    My homelab still consists of a stack of hard drives. We've all been there I guess

  • @mn9500
    @mn9500 Месяц назад +2

    i used to use dd-wrt in the past but took the plunge into the unifi deep end with a udm pro (which led to a couple u6 lites and a usw 16 poe lite), and now am setting up a second site (family office) with a ucg ultra and its nice when everything in the ecosystem is unifi and all meshes together nicely. ubiquiti is starting to put out good hardware for pretty cheap, not saying the the rackmount poe switches are that cheap, but the plastic body lite switches are good value for money.

  • @Chris_Heath
    @Chris_Heath Месяц назад +5

    looking forward to the OpenWRT video... I just bought that exact router and put OpenWRT on it and I'm in the process of testing before switching over to 'production'

  • @cleanycloth
    @cleanycloth Месяц назад +3

    My homelab is a custom built PC in a new old stock case from 2005 or so. Erying Polestar G613 board with an engineering sample i9 on it, 64GB RAM, 500GB NVMe, 10gig ASUS NIC, and 4x4TB drives in RAIDZ1. Not ideal drive config but it works.
    Runs Proxmox and does everything I need it to and more. I would love to experiment with GPU passthrough and stuff with it but I’m using the x16 slot for the network card.
    Haven’t really found a need to expand it more than that so far!

  • @DIYDaveOK
    @DIYDaveOK Месяц назад +1

    Hey bud you KNOW I'm right there with ya on the tornado business.... that one you had the newsclip for had us up at 1AM. And it reminds me I desperately need to run a backup of my homelab LOL😊. Great content as always, Colten!! BTW, Just found out fiber is coming to my neighborhood next year - 1Gbps symmetric - I am STOKED!!

  • @MrSousuke87
    @MrSousuke87 Месяц назад +4

    Currently I've got an elitedesk 800 sff to run 3 18 tb drives with a Truenas bare metal with jellyfin, homeassistant and Immich. A little lenovo m910q with proxmox for tinkering, pihole, arr stuff, a little secondary nas for my family and a few spare pcs without a use (for now) other than the gaming one.
    Edit: a lot or these things are hardware haven's fault. 😂

  • @vlavrynovych
    @vlavrynovych Месяц назад +1

    Hi, my current homelab consists of two physical locations connected via site-to-site vpn. In the house I have a cameras, NAS, SIP phones, smart home (home assistant) and mini server with N100 chip - it’s a “prod” env. In my apartment I have a Fujitsu Futro S920 where I play all the time and only if tested all I need I am moving services/devices to the “prod”.
    I really like the style and spirit of your videos. I’m an old boy and remember the smell of dust on the old hardware - I really like repurposing old devices.
    Today I have the only one issue in my homelab - I need a powerful enough and power efficient server to host local LLMs which I will need for the HA Voice Assistant (to replace ChatGPT).
    Videos from your channel don’t cover this problem but they give me an inspiration for my own researches 😎

  • @MattiasBengtsson
    @MattiasBengtsson Месяц назад +3

    I think a home lab fundamentally is a "lab". So it's a test bed for stuff you want to experiment with.
    What you're talking about is self hosting I think.
    Homelab is such a good and useful word. It's a bit sad that like many other good words it's semantics change over time.

  • @Nadimprodutions
    @Nadimprodutions 4 дня назад

    Completely unrelated, but you’re the first person that’s actually explained what odoo is for me. No other sponsor video made any sense lol

  • @TheAdminFromHell
    @TheAdminFromHell 16 дней назад

    10" Rack:
    Use 3030 or 3060 aluminum extrusions to build a sturdy, custom rack. These extrusions are perfect for mounting servers or network equipment because they align well with the rack ears.
    Combination Rack (10" and 19"):
    Build the rack to be 19” tall and whatever width you need for your 10” and 19” gear. Extrusions allow for easy mounting of both sizes.

  • @TazzSmk
    @TazzSmk Месяц назад +1

    for me, time to start with homelab was when I had multiple computers/laptops with multiple various systems I needed centralized storage, that time it was a LAN-only setup (terribly slow internet), so I started with a 4-bay Synology NAS (918+), it's a flawless device+DSM basically "set and forget",
    then since new ISP provided about 100x faster internet (seriously), I slowly started looking at better routers (to serve more devices), got WiFi 6 ASUS router (AX86S), set up own VPN too, it's a "set and forget" too,
    then I realized a potential of proper Proxmox rig for VMs/Docker would be better done separate and found some old SFF PC (4th gen i7, 32GB ram) to use, mainly testing Windows updates and examining OpnSense networking,
    now I'm experimenting with AI stuff, deciding between used Apple Silicon rig or used nVidia RTX rig, and also whether to use Docker or not - but that would be all just for tinkering...

  • @15fakeaccount
    @15fakeaccount Месяц назад +5

    If you want to shave cost of external KVM, you could try pick up vPro variants of these office PCs.

  • @playeronthebeat
    @playeronthebeat Месяц назад +1

    I started out with Raspberries I had lying around. Now, I'm acquiring these cool Lenovo M715q, I think. With the Ryzen 5. Two of three are existing. Slowly being upgraded. An old Mobo+CPU combo with 64 GB RAM is hosting my NAS with TrueNAS, here I plan to upgrade my networking (specifically to my PC).
    Currently, I'm hosting a couple of game servers for me and my friends and I'm hosting - of course - Home Assistant, Jellyfin, immich, paperless... You name it. :D
    Ubiquiti Equipment with their self hosted controller.
    Next step overall will be a router build. I'm still deciding on what type of router I would want to have since I'm interested in tinkering but I also just have 1 gig... Not like it needs that much power overall. If my main gaming Mobo + CPU are replaced, I will definitely repurpose them, too :D
    (As you can already read: I'm really on the tinkering side with Homelabs... :D)

  • @joemccall8991
    @joemccall8991 Месяц назад

    Nine Nine! So, replace all of the nicely-thought out NAS, SFF, and PC/servers with a bunch of RPi's and the router with a used Netgear running FreshTomato and that's basically my cut-rate, low-powered homelab. I do use an UPS (a splurge) but I'm probably in $600 total with storage and it just works. Does it works amazingly well? Fast? Expandable? Well, no. But it does meet my current requirements. That said, I used to have a rack loaded with gear and that cost $600 every few months in electricity alone and the spouse was not happy about the electric bill, the noise, or the heat. Happy spouse: Priceless.

  • @markmonroe7330
    @markmonroe7330 Месяц назад

    Excellent presentation. Thank you. I think something that a lot of people overlook is that even if you’re willing to pay for the electricity and watts, the heat the stuff puts out can really make a difference on your HVAC system. I think noise is my second biggest issue. If you could put everything in a basement or attic, fair enough, but otherwise it’s going to room and that can be an issue that you need to consider. That all said, 10g networking is a minimum.

  • @Martin42944
    @Martin42944 Месяц назад +1

    My homelab is a $20 office surplus hp prodesk 600 g1 (4th gen i7) with a couple of 4tb iron wolf, and an ssd, with an apc ups on a crappy isp router.
    It doesn’t have to be fancy. I am planning on swapping it to a better case and eventually upgrading the internals, but for now it works for home assistant, small media library, nas, and backup

  • @imtiredtoday
    @imtiredtoday 29 дней назад +1

    I would probably like something like this:
    a cluster of 2/3 mini (RYZEN) PC's for VM's (and/or containers) using something like Proxmox or XCP-NG, an extra mini PC with a HDD box attached for backups, one of those small weak fanless mini PC's with a few network ports as firewall
    Cheap switch and a Ubiquiti access point (with the control software running on a VM/LXC container) and keeping the switching a 1Gbit

  • @NickBartzeliotis
    @NickBartzeliotis Месяц назад

    I've been running a Dell Optiplex 3050 SFF for more than a year now and it's been perfect. Self hosting a couple websites, home assistant, blue iris, radio streaming server, SMB share for file share across the home network, batocera for some retro gaming, amongst some other VMs running docker for testing and tinkering. Cost me less than £100 to get started (second hand from eBay) and it's perfectly upgradable as you mentioned. It's crazy to think that this machine was at some point 'limited' by only running windows when it's now running all sorts of things and it has plenty of resources left.

  • @Gnomleif
    @Gnomleif 29 дней назад +1

    My homelab consist of my old PC, that I repurposed into a backup PC/server after I built a new PC for gaming. I also have an old AsRockRACK ITX server board that my boss gave to me for free, so I put it in a Fractal R5 I got a good price on, and I'm in the process of turning that into a NAS. Only lack the drives, and since you mentioned serverpartdeals I'm definitely going to take a look there and see if I can't find something that fits my budget.

  • @EryNoX
    @EryNoX Месяц назад +1

    What is he using a 3:58 to manage his Minecraft server/instance ?

  • @LDRTHM
    @LDRTHM 26 дней назад +1

    2:04 lol thats how we lost our first homelab in 2011, we lived in Alabama back then.

  • @vicolin6126
    @vicolin6126 Месяц назад +1

    You can also do a combo and run Pfsense/OPNsense and buy an off-the-shelf router that you then set in AP-mode. The bonus with this is that if your main router ever dies, you can easily set up the "AP" to be be the router while you sort things out.

  • @electricjuice5627
    @electricjuice5627 Месяц назад +1

    This video was a reminder you don't need to transform your house into a data center. Take it slow, tinker and grow with your interests. Thanks HH

  • @lobalt
    @lobalt Месяц назад

    Love seeing all these fellow Okies in the comments. I'm a transplant, but I love it all the same.
    As far as a homelab, I don't think anyone does it for just one reason. I love being able to provide services to my family, but also it's very useful to practice and test things for my work.

  • @Spreadie
    @Spreadie Месяц назад +2

    I bought the i5 MS-01 - seems pretty damned good so far. Also bought a 4000 SFF and ordered a single slot cooler for it from N3rdware, because want trumps need. Also in the middle of upgrading a Gen7 Microserver with a 12450H MoDT ITX board, to make a monster 8 bay SFF NAS server.

    • @matthisscheil
      @matthisscheil Месяц назад +1

      I also bought the ms-01 i5 in April. A few days ago it just died after a simple shutdown. Won't turn on again. Seems to be a manufacturing fault with a lot, if not all units, that kills it once the CMOS battery dies.
      Wouldn't recommend it to anyone because of this huge flaw. You should research ms-01 CMOS battery, read the bad Amazon reviews and check your backups.
      Would love to see a video about this underreported flaw. MS-01 is way overhyped, at least that's what I learned the hard way...

  • @JamieBainbridge
    @JamieBainbridge Месяц назад

    Man 3D printing your own NAS is frightfully appealing. I had never considered that.

  • @wofwof007
    @wofwof007 Месяц назад

    I would be interested in seeing/learning about how you would make the backup server startup, do its work, and shut down on a schedule.

  • @noxcdev
    @noxcdev Месяц назад +2

    These tiny HP EliteDesks are really nice, I have two in Proxmox high availability cluster that run HA and PiHole. And each was like $80 on Ebay. Then just an old desktop tower with another Proxmox on it for tinkering and experiments. The only thing I changed from old PC is MB so it supports 128GB of RAM and added couple SSDs for a ZFS.

  • @levygaming3133
    @levygaming3133 Месяц назад +1

    “This video is a bit darker than I thought it was going to be”
    I was worried that you might’ve been hit by one of the many hurricanes recently, so I actually found it a lot lighter than I was expecting.

  • @husamrabie8816
    @husamrabie8816 Месяц назад

    Sure, it's ideal as it works for what you need .. you just made my day 😅 Tnx for this awesome content
    Greetings from Tripoli, Libya

  • @cheeseisgreat24
    @cheeseisgreat24 Месяц назад +1

    This is pretty much what my homelab is about to look like, except I am purpose building the main NAS box myself with new parts for (hopefully) longevity/reliability, and then using a repurposed desktop recycled from my work as my backup, and then everything else is gonna be just stuff I tinker with as I acquire it.

  • @jaapkamstra9343
    @jaapkamstra9343 Месяц назад

    Great video! Thanks for sharing your though process. I'm actually in the process of renewing most of my homelab. Most of my stuff is currently quite noisy, big and powerhungry. And not that fast. So yeah: I'm gonna renew quite some stuff.

  •  Месяц назад

    Can you point to the video (url) with the Optiplex from minute 8:00 ? Thanks!

  • @rzxxxxxxx
    @rzxxxxxxx Месяц назад +1

    My homelab almost looked like this. Then the cost to operate was increasing as well all just for one user, me. Turns out all I really needed was a personal home server. So I just scaled up my one Thinkcentre M70q Tiny and put all I need there. Containers, VMs, and shares. Just focus now on a robust and diligent backup.

  • @Dave102693
    @Dave102693 22 дня назад

    Off topic, I wanna know if a old smartphone could be reprogrammed to be used as a stream deck (not the gaming one, but a pad used for shortcuts for productivity)?

  • @GenericPeter
    @GenericPeter Месяц назад

    Where do you find the model for a 3D printer drive? Have a old Optiplex similar to one featured in the video, but don't have enough drive bays. Hope you can share! Thanks!

  • @FrankMather
    @FrankMather Месяц назад

    I enjoy your videos, helped me out this year and good inspiration. I started over on my homelab.

  • @afrokai
    @afrokai 11 дней назад

    This was a good video in that it helps to figure out home lab scale. Thank you!

  • @zeilstar
    @zeilstar Месяц назад +1

    OpenWRT should be able to mount external storage if a router's storage isn't enough for things like AdGuard.

  • @kenhutchinson8309
    @kenhutchinson8309 Месяц назад +1

    Regarding the mini PCs you mentioned at the end, I got a few on ebay that have a full size PCIE expansion slot on the outside! The model is Acer Veriton N4640G, and I don't know if they *all* come with the slots but when I saw them I just had to get some. Planning on using them for a few projects because that's *crazy* expandeable. There are some caveats like the internal m.2 slot is sata only and not nvme. BUT! they can be modded to support up to 9th Gen Intel CPUs (they ship with 6th Gen) which is just absolutely wild to me

  • @PitFighter2007
    @PitFighter2007 Месяц назад +2

    His wife told him to cleanup his tech shit. 😂

  • @johnpham4847
    @johnpham4847 Месяц назад

    I'm currently rebuilding my homelab, similar to what you've done, and I have a question. I'm planning to purchase a Chinese X540-T2 card (like the one you used when upgrading to 10Gb). Could you share some feedback on its stability, temperature, speed, power consumption, and any other relevant details? Also, does it support SR-IOV?

  • @defect0
    @defect0 Месяц назад

    Any chance you have an STL file for that 2.5GB adapter bracket? Recently picked up one of them EliteDesks and was going to try the same upgrade but don't really want it dangling out the back. Cheers!

  • @kilian935
    @kilian935 Месяц назад

    My homelab is mostly running on an old MacBook from like 2017 I wasn't using anymore. Going the Laptop route is pretty nice for the fact that it has a built in battery in case of power loss. Also if the Intel CPU is not super old, it can do pretty efficient media encoding using Intel QuickSync in Jellyfin. Also for backup you can use any sort of cloud storage you might have anyway. I got a Proton subscription and it comes with Cloud storage although I did not want that. Now I am using that with rsync to backup important folders from my homelab (Documents, Pictures, Home Assistant config etc.)

  • @notapplicable709
    @notapplicable709 Месяц назад

    What is the motivation to run your router with a virtualized pfsense as opposed to bare metal?
    I remember Wendell discussing this but only doing it because he was already running a server and didn't want to create a new physical device to manage.

  • @helvettefaensatan
    @helvettefaensatan 8 дней назад

    Seeing as this is a good introductionary video, explaining acronyms and what each program does would be ideal.
    TrueNAS and UN-RAID, for example. And why you would run them (to manage X, or to access Y).
    My main obstacle with getting started is knowing what one system could get me, and when getting multiple pieces of hardware would be better.

  • @krisaore
    @krisaore Месяц назад

    Is that CyberPower UPS compatible with Unraid? I have my homelab on an old Optiplex with Unraid and was looking for a compatible UPS which Unraid could integrate with and start the shutdown procedure in case of power outage.

  • @blahblahblah1787
    @blahblahblah1787 Месяц назад

    The MS-01 is a great value for what it is. I have the i9-12900K version powering a 120tb jbod via hba in the pcie slot. I was able to pass through the Unraid usb and hba within Proxmox no problem. The one downside is that only one of the m.2 slots is gen4 x 4; the other two are gen3 x 4 and gen3 x2.

  • @win7best
    @win7best 14 дней назад

    My definition of a homelab is a bunch of devices or one that host stuff. Also running 20 Minecraft servers is very relatable

  • @nathanaelmoyer6993
    @nathanaelmoyer6993 Месяц назад

    I bought a used Dell R720XD as my first home lab computer when I was starting out. It's still running today after a number of modifications. Maybe a bit overkill to start but for about the same price as some of the mini pcs out there it could be worse. There are definitely down sides (the noise, size, and power usage of these things) otherwise it was a no brainer for me. If you don't have a good place to put your home lab where you can't hear it then I wouldn't recommend it.

  • @pvtpy1e
    @pvtpy1e Месяц назад

    So, when I started working from home due to health issues, my homelab got a major upgrade. I'm running Two Dell Precision 3420 SFF running XCP-NG virtualizing, home assistant, Ubuntu as a samba fileserver, xen orchestra, omada sdn, pufferpanel for Minecraft server, Debian 12 for docker and I just added a windows server vm. I've got a knock off rpi running pi hole, and OMV and a couple of real raspberry pi's built up to be pikvms. A fan-less n100 pfsense router, a managed switch and a couple of WIFI APs all managed by the SDN. All of this is sitting in a 9u rack. The rack just makes everything neater and organized plus my cats like it and everything put together runs quieter then my air filter.

  • @lyon9315
    @lyon9315 Месяц назад

    Just wanted to say thanks for making these videos between you and Raid Owl i recently just started getting into the hobby. I’ve always loved tinkering with computer stuff but never really knew where to go.
    I recently found someone selling an old i3 6th gen gaming PC for $30 that i turned into my NAS. Dual 6tb mirrored drives on TrueNAS for a simple Jellyfin and Photo backup.
    Looking at upgrading the cpu to 7th gen for hardware transcoding and will likely pick up something smaller like that 1L elite desk or something to play around with some virtualization and other stuff using Proxmox

  • @virusbcn6472
    @virusbcn6472 Месяц назад

    Where can i buy adapter to have 2 LANs in my HP mini ???

  • @AAAnastasia27
    @AAAnastasia27 26 дней назад

    I have a real hard time getting behind buying referbed HDs. How reliable are they? As a photographer I’m looking for a budget build like this but I can’t afford to lose any images

  • @chromerims
    @chromerims Месяц назад

    We all know you're squirrelling away your acorns to instead buy a Ford Triton V10 F-750 to use as your daily driver / grocery getter 😂
    Great video again 👍. Specifically, I enjoyed listening to you talk about a wide range of usage scenarios mated to a variety of hardware options. Well done.
    Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
    P.S. I thought that this video would be only a shameless money grab with affiliate links. But it wasn't. May you have many great successes.

  • @Sokattash678
    @Sokattash678 Месяц назад

    Oh man! Looking forward to seeing your soho router "jailbreak"!
    You are scratching an itch I've had for thay for a while now.

  • @TheeAbstractHero
    @TheeAbstractHero Месяц назад

    Is 2.5gbe sufficient for editing 4k60? Don’t plan on doing it, just curious.

  • @adubs.
    @adubs. Месяц назад

    The homelab space is an ever moving goal post. The only real hope you can have is that once its set up, you can manage it all with relative ease. I ended up moving a bunch of services to many machines because an unreliable single service would often require rebooting the host and thus taking them all down. I un-consolidated for the reliability. I can say dont make my mistakes with some relative confidence.

  • @TheABOVEAVERAGEGEEK
    @TheABOVEAVERAGEGEEK Месяц назад

    Just curious your video audio sounds flawless what mic do u use to record it doesn’t look like u use a lapel

  • @IanBPPK
    @IanBPPK Месяц назад

    10:00 - I would recommend trying for a UPS at an ecycling facility and replacing the batteries. A lot of organizations just depreciate them out, or otherwise don't know nor care that the batteries can simply be replaced and its good to go again.

  • @balogungift8519
    @balogungift8519 Месяц назад

    Hey Hardware Haven, could you direct me to where i can get a pc case that fits many HDD, like the one you have at 5:56 timeline of your video
    Thanks

  • @rolandleyco573
    @rolandleyco573 Месяц назад

    Hi, you should look in to bypassing your ATT Modem/router. You can plug in your Fiber connection from ATT modem and plug it straight in to a SFP port. I've completely gotten rid of my ATT modem and plugged in the SFP plug to my OPNsense PC and it runs amazing with lower latency.

  • @michaelnyansafo7343
    @michaelnyansafo7343 6 дней назад

    I need advice to make a quick decision  I got Dell Precision T7920 Tower, 2 X Silver 4110 2.1GHz which am planning to use as a NAS drive, is it over kill or I should get some cheap PC to use it for that? thanks in advance. 

  • @marthinus.x
    @marthinus.x Месяц назад

    My ideal setup is quiet, power-efficient, and resilient, ideally in a small footprint. So something like 3 modern mini PCs and a managed switch is all I would need outside of my main computer. I'd spin up a Kubernetes cluster and some replicated block storage and call it a day.

  • @windowsfan95
    @windowsfan95 Месяц назад +1

    My Homelab Server is a Raspberry Pi Model 4b+ running Raspbian and OpenMediaVault. I have 3 external Disks connected to it each in a SMB configuration.
    It’s probably not the best solution, but it works fine for what I use it for.

  • @alanciuch
    @alanciuch Месяц назад

    i watched you from the beggining of your channel. love your content ❤

  • @diabeticnomad
    @diabeticnomad Месяц назад +1

    honestly I’d love to have the 10” rack

  • @hotstovejer
    @hotstovejer Месяц назад

    I've been thinking about this. My homelab is hodgepodge, and i plan on redoing some of it. First, I think you need storage as the base. My thoughts have been to go Epyc and some 40gb networking to direct connect other systems to it.

  • @realJohnJohn
    @realJohnJohn Месяц назад

    any idea if you need wireless wifi to my garage and speed to stream cctv / ip cams

  • @alt3241
    @alt3241 Месяц назад

    Thanks for sharing what you are going through .
    My lab , electronics computer engineering , robotics and automotive machine shop , Beowulf cluster for AI and cad cam , burned down it filled a whole 2 story house .

  • @JeremyMarkel
    @JeremyMarkel Месяц назад

    It makes me feel a bit old knowing that I've had a 'homelab' now for almost 30 years that has evolved as my needs and technology have changed. I'm quite happy, though, that hardware cost and size has come down a lot over the years. Most of my servers are mini pcs these days using network storage which makes it easier to scale out as needed. A far cry from when I had multiple rack mount servers living in closets and other unused spaces over the years consuming lots of power and creating lots of noise.

  • @Baulder13
    @Baulder13 Месяц назад

    The Lenovo P340 Tiny's are great too. You get a full PCIe slot you can find the riser for on EBay for cheap along with the mounting brackets. Little Mini PC with 64GB RAM that can do 10Gig with almost low profile NIC.

  • @TheDamnhook
    @TheDamnhook Месяц назад

    Just a wild guess: a 2 Bay NAS with a N100 will be almost ever enough for reliable home usage and power efficiency. I merged 3 older machines into a n100 NAS with dual 2.5G, two m2 and two 20TB drives. The hardcovers still saturate the 2.5G link and well… homeassistant and backup doesn’t need that much power. Also when hdds spin down, power goes down to 11w and with jellyfin transcode to a merely 20w.

  • @madthane_
    @madthane_ Месяц назад

    10:44 you should still be able to use your ISP's router if it's not hard locked. A double NAT shouldn't be a problem in most cases. Only becomes a problem if you are hosting things that can be reached through the public IP.

  • @SuperCorinn
    @SuperCorinn Месяц назад +1

    For me, a persistent storage , so have Synology nas for the data, the rest a mix what I have or get my hands on 😅😊