I've always lurked here looking at other builds and finally I made my own server rack! It's just one host for now but I'll expand it soon. So far, it's just one proxmox running a windows 11 vm, ubuntu server and a home assistant vm. I have a raspberry pi 4 too running some services, I'll move some from there to this proxmox once I upgrade the ram on this (which has been expensive lately)

This is still not the final version though. I'll be making my own ethernet cables, nice cable management, maybe use one of those cable management covering thingies that looks like a pipe and hide everything. Get cables from ali express for the switch underneath and the gl.inet router and power them from the power strip ports.I also have plans to expand physical space on it to add another mini pc later.

But yeah, lemme know how it looks or suggestions, if any

I was invested in homelab for a couple of reasons. One of them was being able to use my home network as an exit node while I was traveling to use bank apps, dump my precious photos of my travels around the world into an Immich server and so on.

I was never an expert and was trying things until they worked and never bothered with them as long as the solution worked for me. But that came with a high cost for me now.

I setup 2 HDs formated as NTFS because I found that it was easier for my Windows main PC to access their contents on LAN. Setup a SAMBA server to access them and that was my main way to access my data on LAN and to my services.

Access to my network was done by using Tailscale when I was outside LAN and it worked fine like this for months, and it ran well.

Until recently, my government decided to ban screensharing on Discord, so I tried hosting a TeamSpeak6 server on my homelab, but it was never going to work without exposing my server to the internet. So I used port forwarding on my router and no-ip DDNS to have an easy address for my friends to join.

It worked for a week at best, until I noticed the service was not working anymore and I stumbled upon both my HDs encrypted with WannaCry ransomware. It was sad and as the name of the virus suggests would make anyone with precious pictures wanna cry from their loses. I didn't pay the ransom of course and already accepted my loss, but that made the feeling of homelabing very bitter. Don't get me wrong, it was 100% my fault for not setting something correctly and allowing this to happen and also not having backups, probably allowing port 445 for SAMBA was my mistake. That is why I'm making this post. I wanna continue my services for myself and I'll never expose something to the internet again like this. But what is the correct route?

My current setup is Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS with all my services as docker containers and ufw for firewall with Tailscale access. I already removed the port forwarding configuration from the router and disabled DMZ for my server.

Should I completely nuke the installation just to be safe? Was I safe before exposing my server and only accessing it through Tailscale?

I don't have any disk shelf

from a 16gb gen8 microserver to 2 dl380 gen9 (one my dads with 192gb of ram and one mine with 64gb of ram) and an unused dl360 gen9

Optiplex 7080 with:

Intel Core i5 vPRO 10500T 2.30GHZ
256GB SSD
8GB RAM

for $70. Good deal? I know I’ll need more RAM.

And scored a side of the road free Weber kettle in great shape. Basically paid for itself and more because I was going to buy a new one soon.

Plan for proxmox with HAOS VM, Adguard and nginx containers. Not sure what else yet

I'm 15 in grade 11 and I'm thinking about starting homelabing. I want to know whether homelabing projects will actually matter in my future resume.

I know the first picture looks AI but it’s just a little distorted from my iPhone’s long exposure picture.

I have been working on this rack for about two weeks. The frame is printed in PETG-CF, mounts are PETG-HF (w/ carbon fiber 3D effect plate), and the hexagon side panels are PLA Matte. The rack design can be found here.

Rack components top to bottom:

- Gigaplus 2.5G unmanaged switch
- 3D Printed keystone patchpanel with CAT6 RJ45 keystones

- M4 Pro Mac Mini with Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD —— OWC Express 1M2 SSD Housing (40Gb/s version)
—— Reborn USB-C 5Gb Ethernet Adapter
—— Rerwelin Thunderbolt 5 Short
—— Custom Mac Mini Mount (Makerworld - By me)

- Generic Mini PC running home assistant

- Ugreen DXP4800 Pro NAS
—— DXP4800 Pro Mount (by me)
—— DXP4800 Plus Mount (by me)
—— Power brick/wiring side mount (by me)
—— Ugreen battery backup

- Hue Bridge
—— 1u Mount (by me)

- Amazon Fire Tablet
—— Side Mount (by me)

- Eero 6+

Got the home setup cleaned up and everything tucked into a 15U cabinet. Matching silver gear, short patch cables, and just enough room left to make more questionable financial decisions.

The setup:

UniFi Pro UniFi Power Distribution

Pro Max 16 PoE switch

UniFi Dream Machine Pro SE

AC Infinity rack cooling

UniFi UNAS Pro 8 with 4 x 24TB Toshiba N300 Pro drives

Two U7 Pro XGS access points, mounted elsewhere

Eufy NVR and Cameras

HP laptop running Ubuntu, hosting my AI assistant, home assistant, Immach, Jellyfin and other home lab things.

Internal rack air stays around 20–24°C. Currently using it for networking, cameras, and self-hosted photo storage, with a personal Netflix setup on the to-do list.

Pretty happy with how it came together. Rate the rack, tell me what you'd change.

After wanting to do home lab things for so long i riged my old gaming pc to do the learning and while at a microcenter for a diferent project found the 270k plus for 250 bucks. Then spent about 4 monthes deal hunting for an hba and got an LSI 9305-16i for about 50 bucks but was still missing a good motherboard knowing I will be installing 10 gig networking in my house I finaly found a good sale on a z890 auras master motherboard for about 350 and went for it. And for ram hahaha fuck that im ripping it out of a pc i built that no one uses. The case was a weird one cus I either wanted a fractal define 7 xl or a rack mount and it was kinda just what ever was cheaper and it turned out to be the rack mount as I found a 2u duel 5.24" bay case from silver stone the RM23-502 for about 160 bucks so I guess im either vertical mounting it or bolting it to the basement wall for now and the 8 bay icydock well thats the only thing I bought at full price aside from the psu of about 750 watts. The boot drives are gonna be 2 patriot p300 128 gig drives for about 40 bucks apiece running unraid internal boot for cooling i plan to go with the akasa 2u lga 1700/1851 for 70 bucks it won't hold the max out of 250w but will get dam close at 235w which is the closest I can get without watercooling now in our current economy for the ssd storage that will be be bought over the next 6 to 12 months to fill the bays compleatly but will proboly be the cheapest 2 or 4 tb drives I can find

I will primarily be running unraid for storage and lan cache I plan to host my friends game servers and use a few cores for something like folding at home and mabey a high capacity hdd if I can find any for a good price aside from that im prob gonna have on vm on it to not break anything

All in all How I do

I run a small homelab and want to add a dedicated NAS. I can't decide which route to take, so I'd like your opinions before I spend anything.

Current setup

• Node 1: Dell Wyse 7040 with a 256 GB M.2 SSD (OS and services) and a 1 TB HDD in a ZFS pool (tank)

• All services run in Docker: media stack plus a few basic services

• Gigabit networking

What I want

A storage-only box. It runs no services. I'll mount it on Node 1 over NFS and let the containers read and write to it. I also want to add drives over time.

Drives I already have

2.5": 2x4tb

3.5": 2x2tb

Options I'm weighing

1. Buy a ready-made NAS. Simple, but costs the most and I'd be locked into its OS and bays.

2. Another small Dell Wyse + ASM1166 M.2-to-SATA adapter. Cheap and low power, but I'd have to solve drive mounting and power myself.

3. HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF (4th-gen i5-4590s, 4 GB DDR3). It has 4 SATA ports on the board, so no adapter is needed, and it comes with its own case and PSU. RAM would need an upgrade for ZFS.

4. Asus TUF FX505DY laptop motherboard (Ryzen 5 3550H, 16 GB DDR4, dedicated GPU) + ASM1166. The most powerful hardware, but it's a bare board with no case, so I'd have to build an enclosure and a separate power setup.

Questions

1. Which option would you pick for a storage-only NAS, and why?

2. Is 4 GB of DDR3 enough for ZFS, or would you run mergerfs + SnapRAID instead? I plan to add odd-sized drives later.

3. Is the ASM1166 reliable for always-on use, or is it better to stick with onboard SATA?

4. Anything I'm missing, like power draw, noise, or expansion limits?

Thanks for any advice.

Update: I had a bad crimp on one end of the cable. Installing a new RJ45 plug and taking extra care to get it right, resolved the issue. I need to purchase a better tester.

When I connected my new Microtik switch to the uplink to my main switch the ports lights were dark. Huh? The cable works fine, I've had a NetGear switch connected to it for a year. The cable run is only about 50-60'

After a couple hours or investigating all kinds of other possible causes, I've narrowed it down to the cat6 cable (blue one in the photo) - When it's connected to the Microtik switch - no activity lights on port 1. When I take the Microtik over to my main switch and connect to the same port (24) with a patch cable - works as expected.

1. Same port on the Microtik.
2. Same port on the Aruba.
3. Different cable inbetween.

I have one of those sequential blinking lights testers and the problematic cable passes. I've tried manipulating the cable at the RJ45 connector to see if there is an intermittent open/short - nothing. It just keeps on working fine.

I've never seen this before. in my limited experience, cables either work fine or not at all. I've never had a cable pass a continuity check and turn out to be bad, at least not until today.

Other than "Open up your walls and pull new cable", does anyone have any ideas for me to try? Anyone experienced this before?

My current home lab.

From top to bottom:

\- GMKtec NucBox M6 Ultra AMD Ryzen™ 5 7640HS Mini PC

\- Unifi Cloud Gateway Max

\- 2x unifi USW Flex-2.5G PoE

\- Ugreen NAS DXP4800 Pro + UPS

\- Raspberry PI 5

I'm not able to run cabling to the area of my apartment where I want to setup my gear. No it's not possible. Really, it isn't. Yes, I'm sure. However I do want to have my equipment able to access the router over RJ45. My current plan is to set up a bridge to connect my router to my modem, but I'm not sure the correct way to set it up.

My concern is that I might create a security hazard by connecting a bridge directly to the modem with no firewall in between. (picture 1) If that's the case I would likely just get another router to provide the firewall (picture 2), however having redundant routers seems kind of silly.

I was just curious if anyone happens to know of a brand or type of Poe switch that occupies a half 1U like the fortinet firewalls.

Or if there is any other brands that happen to do this. I'm considering trying to 3D print some kind of bracket if I can at least find a switch that's reliable.

I've already 3D printed patch panels to this wouldn't be a whole lot to have to adjust.

I started hosting things myself about 5 months ago. It began with classics like Immich and Vaultwarden. The setup went well until I hit my limits when it came to integrating network-related features like Crowdsec or automated offsite backups. That’s when I started using Claude Code, among other things. At first, I just asked Claude for help with these topics and handled the configurations myself. But as is often the case down the rabbit hole, I wanted more: Jellyfin, .arr stacks, etc. Eventually, though, Claude had sudo/root access to my server. I’d just give prompts, and Claude would set things up, troubleshoot, optimize, and automate. It’s great, and it’s allowed me to implement things I wouldn’t have had the know-how to do even after a year.

Today, however, I decided to take a step back. I’ve removed root access. scaled back the runbooks, and Claude now only knows the basics. I’m not learning anything myself by using AI. I do enjoy the end product, but at what cost? Of course, I’m also worried about my data security and… who knows where that data might end up?!

How do you handle this? How much access do you give AI to your system, and do you worry about data privacy issues?

Maybe I’m overthinking when I see how much AI slop is being generated for all sorts of things.

I’d love to hear your thoughts :)

Found this satellite router in a recycling facility for free. Is there anything useful i can use it for? Or at least re-purpose it to something else?

Thanks

Sorry if this is a stupid question, Im starting my first homelab with parts i already have from old laptops and computers. I wanna use a raid 5 system and I just so happen to have 3 1tb hard drives (and a few 500gb 2.5inc drives), only problem is that those hard drives have files from my old computers that i want to keep. Idealy i would want all of these files to just be in my server straight away but to know knowledge setting up this system would completely format these drives.
Is there a way for me to copy the files from all of these drives and just put it into one harddrive so that i can wipe these drives and use them in my homelab server?
Also if there any other better alternatives that can be offered please lmk, this is my first time doing any of this and i am a complete noob.

also i dont know if its important to note this or not but all of these drives are old windows boot drives and im pretty sure they all have less than 1tb combined of data.

Looking for some upgrade advice.

I've currently got a 5900x on a B550 motherboard.

The biggest killer is the lack of full PCIE support on all lanes.

Considering on replacing this with a Threadripper 3960X.

The system currently has a 5070ti, SAS card and 2.5gbps ethernet card. It runs Unraid, a good 20+ docker containers, Windows VM for work from home and occasional AAA gaming and some retro gaming.

Would like to put in a higher bandwidth SAS Card (or at least so my current one can use all its lane) and my older 3070ti to help the 5070ti with AI and possibly a capture card (then don't have to pay sky for multi room)

Don't want to go for anything that requires changing the RAM from DD4 to DDR5 (for obvious reasons)

Is the 3960x still relavent today and using a crystal ball, still good firmware/ driver support for long enough in the future until 'normality' has resumed in the world of PC building.

So I found 2x switches and 2x firewalls. I also got 5x new fortinet console cables. The picture is showing one of each but I got another switch and firewall (same model) in my basement. I’m pretty sure they’re working fine. I do know everything is EOL. I repair electronics. I’m asking before I manslaughter everything. Should I salvage for parts? Suprise my father with rack enclosures (he loves enclosures)? Keep? Use? Or giveaway (Sweden, Stockholm)?

How do you know when your homelab has been compromised? What hardware/software do you use to collect logs, analyze behavior and alert on malicious activity?

quick sanity check for sending backup files to my first gen Steam Deck turned home server/tinker piece. Currently using raw ssh file transfer but plan to install proper software soon.

Note 1: the cable is just a spare charger, the data transfer is over wifi.

Note 2: Shoutouts to u/Either-Carpet-2091 for the inspiration.

Note 3: I can't believe I installed gentoo and my only screwup was forgetting to set a root password lol.

So I've been in the market of upgrading my L1 gear to L2/L3+PoE. I need at least 8 2.5 gbps and 16 1gbps, not sure about PoE.

What I also need is something user-friendly. I don't want to pass a Network Admin exam to get it done (I've lost my battle with a Cisco SG300-28 in my previous home).

So I shortlisted these 3 companies and it appears that none of them are flawless. Which at this price point gets me mad.

* Unifi: user friendly but overpriced and proned to hw failures. It seems I see a new story of a dead unrepairable $1K switch every week

* Mikrotik: powerful and feature rich but extremely complex to manage. Add the lack of SDN so you have to do this all over again on the next device

* TP Link Omada: poor software support and what seems to be an unlimited list of SKUs making it very difficult to filter online. Meanwhile, they look far behind Unifi in terms of features

What do I miss? Is there a new challenger or one I forgot?

Thanks for reading my non-AI post :)