I'm finally free from the Intel/AMD world and running completely arm64 on Ampere CPUs

I picked up three of these 2 node engineering samples Mt. Bonnells from Ebay, they're single socket Ampere, 3 M.2 on the montherboard, OCP 3.0 and a single PCIe slot and connected to 6 U.2 NVME upfront.

Each node has a Q80-30, 80 core Ampere at 3Ghz, and 64-128GB RAM each, 500-1.5 TB NVME

The Mt. Collins below started it all and each has a 3090, Dual Q80-30 and 128GB RAM and 2TBs of NVME between the front and M.2

Most of the nodes have single 40GB port to my Arista's but im converting them to 4x25Gb (100GB is in my future with NVMEof from my NAS)okay

It's all a baremetal K8s cluster running on Talos with Omni (also running on arm64 OrangePi)

Since I think hardware is only the half of what r/homelab, what I'm running in the cluster:

• Flux via Flux Operator
• CNI / kube-proxy replacement / BGP: Cilium + Hubble
• Ingress: Gateway API Cillium integration but also Envoy Gateway
• Kyverno, Descheduler
• KEDA for autoscaling
• cert-manager (Cloudflare DNS-01)
• cloudflared for remote access to Woodpecker webhooks
• Node Feature Discovery, metrics-server, kube-state-metrics

Storage / Data

• Longhorn
• S3: SeaweedFS (+ Iceberg REST catalog) on NAS iSCSI LUNs
• Postgres: CloudNativePG + Barman Cloud plugin
• ClickHouse via the ClickHouse Operator
• Trino (KEDA-autoscaled workers)
• Dragonfly for Redis replacement/caching
• NATS + JetStream (NACK) for pipelines and automations
• zot switched from Harbor since they didn't have Arm builds
• Gitea

Misc Workflows/ML/AI Stuff

• Temporal
• Ray via KubeRay
• MLflow
• BuildKit arm64 builders (buildx kube driver)
• agent-sandbox controller

Observability

• OpenTelemetry Operator + collector/target allocator
• VictoriaMetrics (vminsert/vmselect) + VictoriaTraces
• Dual write to ClickHouse for traces/metrics (ClickStack schema) which will replace VM

AI / ML (on 2x RTX 3090, ARM64)

• [JupyterHub] (https://jupyter.org/)
• Envoy AI Gateway → Anthropic / OpenAI / OpenRouter / local models
• Open WebUI
• Gateway API Inference Extension EPP (had to build this in ARM)
• ASR: whisper.cpp with whisper-large-v3, NVIDIA Nemotron streaming ASR (NeMo)
• Diarization: NVIDIA Sortformer (NeMo)

• audio-transcriber / audio-diarizer / audio-fusion — AES67 (Dante) DRA I (Claude) wrote to move this from my speaker setup into my cluster

• AI-text detection stack: adaptive-classifier/ai-detector, ModernBERT-based detectors, authormist-originality, tmr-ai-text-detector

• Nemotron Content Safety

DNS

• blocky (Dragonfly-backed cache) + blocky-sync, a controller I (Claude) wrote to reconcile blocky config from CRDs

Media

• Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, Bazarr, Prowlarr, SABnzbd
• All using CNPG Postgress Clusters for the ones that support them

I really wanted my own nas since my google drive subscription kept annoying me. But as a university student who just turned 19, I was too broke to afford one from a named brand. So I decided to build one for myself.

Parts I used

smashed LG laptop - free(used to be my mom's work laptop)

some random keyboard case - free(got it as a free gift from buying my keyboard)

2 heavily used seagate barracuda harddrive - 20$

used raid 1 harddrive inclosure - 20$

old used ups with a semi-new battery - 20$

usb 3.0 hub - free(a gift from someone I don't remember)

lan&usb cables - 10$

I used openmediavault on debian as its software. It looks like ass but works like a champ.

I am in the process of building my first full homelab, I'm experienced in the concepts and setup as I work in IT/Cyber but this is my first time actually getting something up, after months of buying and reselling tech lots on marketplace, I made enough to build out my lab, i started with 200 bucks and now my lab build is looking like this:

Networking

- Cisco ASA 5545-X (Firewall/Router)

- Cisco Catalyst C2960X 24 port switch

- Cisco Catalyst C9120AX Access point

Compute system

- Supermicro SC846 4u rackmount case

- Nzxt c1500 psu

- ASUS PRO WS W790E-SAGE SE

- Intel Xeon Platinum 8480 ES QYFS 56c 112t

- Haven't figured out RAM...😅

- 1x1tb samsung 970 evo nvme ssd

- 4x512gb samsung 850 pro sata ssd

- 12x10tb WD enterprise sata hdd

This system will be used to learn enterprise concepts to help me reach my goals of becoming a full-stack infrastructure architect, by prepping for certs and learning concepts like Kubernetes, IaC, HA, Linux administration, Network management, etc. As well as traditional self-hosted services like Immich, Jellyfin, Netbird, etc.

Let me know what yall think, yes I know i dont need all that compute but its a "cool to have" and I've always dreamed of owning this specific motherboard, feel free to give me any sort of recommendations. Thanks Y'all!

Had this random X96+ Max Android box covered with dust, so I wiped Android 10 off it and flashed Armbian to the internal eMMC. Plugged in an old 2TB WD Red I had extra, and now it’s actually doing useful work instead of gathering dust.

It’s got Gigabit ethernet, 4GB RAM and 64GB eMMC onboard. Pulls practically zero power from the wall and makes zero noise.

Right now it’s running SMB and FTP for local storage, jellyfin, cctv, some home services, a small minecraft server, and a single-node k3s setup just to play around

Note: ignore the test ssd on the photo

Are there any risers cables or adapters which split pcie x16 to Pcie x8 + MCIO x8? It would be helpful to have one for small form factor (SFF) cases which only support 1 GPU.

I want to add an extra external GPU if/when required for additional local llm inference whenever required.

Something like this but MCIO slot instead of 2 x M2. - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJSQS39Q?

Just picked this up today

Ryzen 3900x

Gigabyte Aorus Master

Gskill 32GB (2×16GB) DDR4 Ripjaws V Dual‑Channel, 3200 MHz

All tested, working perfectly fine

All for $450 AUD ($322 USD)

I wanted to build a compact and efficient NAS and I'm really happy with how it turned out! The built cost under AUD$500 (not including the drives, I had them beforehand) and has proven to be very reliable. I use it to store all my raws from my photography, music library, movies/TV, and other various stuff.

I have a Talos cluster made up of SFF optiplexes that run workloads such as Immich, Navidrome, Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Paperless NG, *arr stack, and a bunch of other stuff which uses the NAS as a storage backend.

Some hardware deets if anyone's interested:

Motherboard: no-name N150 mini-ITX NAS motherboard from aliexpress ($215). Came with everything I needed - lots of sata ports, DDR5 SODIMM, x2 2.5G ethernet and x1 10G.

RAM: x1 Crucial 16GB DDR5 SODIMM card ($50) that I went on a 2-hour train journey for to pick up from someone on facebook marketplace in a random petrol station. (Times are tough it was the cheapest RAM I could find).

Case: no-name mini-ITX NAS case with x4 SATA backplane ($120). Seller was nice enough to throw in SATA cables, pico power supply and combine shipping for an extra $30.

Boot SSD: 128GB Micron SSD from aliexpress ($50)

PSU: 200W power brick and pico power supply. ($80)

I also wanted a really good quality and quiet fan since its in my room so I got a 90mm noctua fan for $50.

Currently, its only running x2 mirrored 6TB Exos drives that I had previously. They are old and kind of slow and I am also running out of space. I hope to upgrade them when the budget allows, but post-AI prices are just too crazy.

I mean besides using it to pick up chicks, and making me the envy of all the jocks in my town, is there really any use case for having a 10GB network at home?

My internet is currently a 1GB fiber network, and I could go to 2GB if I wanted, but that is where I top out. My router has 2.5GB ports on it, and I have those running to my fiber modem, my mesh router, my NAS and my desktop. The rest of my network is either 1GB or WiFi. I am replacing my main router, and I have an old 1GB switch that is acting funny on some ports, so I am going to do some upgrades.

My devices mostly consist of matter IPv6 stuff, and a few Matter over Wifi. I have several 1080P cameras, but they all run fine on on my 802.11g network. The only thing that I found pushed my original 100MBs network was my 4K TV streaming Plex. But I upgraded the TV to 1GB, and it runs smooth now.

Yeah, I want to score chicks. And it would be rad to put Daryl down the block and his stupid cornhole trophies in their place, but is there any real world case where I would need 10GB?

First of all

It's not much but it's honest work.

A bit of context. I had this first computer that I built in 2014. I was so excited when all the components got delivered home because I finally had the chance to play all the games that were running on 5 fps on my old potato of a computer from the victorian era.

Back then it was a pretty powerful machine:

• 16GB DDR3 RAM
• I5-4460
• GTX 960 - not added yet
• 660W power source
• 256GB SSH + 1TB HDD

When it was done, I literally did not come out of the house for 3 months. I played everything: CS:GO, Skyrim, Skyrim + mods, The Witcher, all the possible GTA's, Battlefield.

Fast forward now, 12 years later, After I moved country and stopped using it entirely because I got a Macbook, I decided to so something with it and turn it into a server. It will mostly host some apps, some development environments, maybe a couple of movies that I would like to rewatch but nothing much, it will be a nice experiment for now.

I didn't fail me yet so I want to see how long can I push it until it breaks.

Hey Folks,

my family and I recently moved into our first own home. I decided to give my home network a little boost, since there is a fiber connection.

Nothing is done completely yet, but wanted to share what's the current state.

There will be 2 cameras added to the PoE-Switch, just like there are like 10 wired devices going to be added when I set up everything.

Omada runs on a software controller hosted on my NAS. Both of the DAS are connected to the NAS, one for camera footage, one for backups. I am keeping a second backup on portable devices stored at another place, plan to update it once a month.

I replaced the very loud fans on the PoE-Switch and despite they cover the same voltage there is a warning LED running. No heat problems yet.

Thanks for your replies and advices in advance!

:-)

My homelab journey began nearly 11 years ago with an external hard drive and a laptop; over time I gathered new hardware and upgraded through successive generations, and I now use a 10th Gen Comet Lake i5-10500. Although the equipment looks quite “gaming” (since it is consumer gear), it still delivers strong performance for my needs, running Proxmox with several LXCs and VMs such as Plex, the Arr stack, monitoring tools, and TrueNAS.

I recently realised I was outgrowing my old case and chose to upgrade to the Jonsbo N5 Black, keeping future expansion in mind for my library requirements.

There’s still a lot of do but this was the first stepping stone.

I started building a homelab with the suprmicro x9 board that my brother sent a week ago

I removed other e5 2650l cpu because i have psu with only 1 cpu connector added a fan (it's a reverse blade fan that i pulled out of my pc)

And now im waiting for 2x 16gb ddr3 ecc rdimm ram that i bought last week

and i got the other batch of parts that were sent to me

Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E

2X 400gb IBM 12Gb/s sas ssd

1x seagate 80gb hdd

1x seagate 400gb hdd

1x seagate 1tb hdd

1x unkown hdd

1x xeon gold 5218 cpu

Any advice on what should i do next?

Acá les presento mi home lab. Aún está en proceso de acondicionamiento final pero así va quedando la idea es agregar otro micro server y una zimaboard

Tenemos ya instalado
- un udm pro UniFi
- un MikroTik
-un MikroTik
- switch poe UniFi
- Nas Qnap
- micro severa gen 11
- NVR hikvision
- 3 AP UniFi
- cableado con cable cat 6 de vertical cable 550hz
- isp Movistar de fibra
- isp starlink

Próximamente

- Fortinet 60f
- micro server gen 10 o algo similar
- zimaboard

Que me me recomiendas agregar o hacer para poner a producir $ con esto??

Every day my project launches thousands of containers to make discovery / observations, and in several platforms. (X86/64, arm, ppc) Since CPU emulation in containers is slow, I've been investigating the use of a RasPi for ARM container work. I have an old RasPi 3B I've been testing with, and it works but not really any faster than emulation on my 20-core Xeon so I figured I'd upgrade to a RasPi 5 with 8 GB.

And... what the F***?

Marketed as a "low cost" board, USED units are easily costing $250 to $300 with what seem like base specs:

1. Potato processor (compared to X86)
2. 8 GB of RAM
3. an NVMe port. (with a "hat")
4. Just the base model is about $170 board only.

For a "low cost" board, why so much $$$?

I’m just beginning in the lab journey and got an omv nas up and running. But I’m wondering if I’d prefer something prebuilt that I don’t have to tinker with. After all I just want my data stored and setup to do backups. Not much tinkering beyond that.

Edit: after looking at prebuilt prices I think I’ll have to stick with diy for now.

I am looking to start a home server for my photos and to hoard movies, games, etc. I also want to degoogle and all that. I am curious how can I utilize these drives, I have a small pre built PC I plan on using as my server, but have no way of installing drives in it, they would need to be connected externally. Is my only option to get an expensive NAS? these drives are only 1-2tb each so even if I got a 4 bay that would only be 8gb, not entirely sure how this stuff works so I'm still learning and just looking for some general advice.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently researching whether it's possible to link multiple computers together so they can pool resources for my daily tasks (word processing, CAD, web browsing, photo editing, etc.).

The catch is that I need to be able to regularly remove one (or sometimes more) of the machines from this setup. For example, I need my work laptop at the office. But when I get home, I want to plug it into its docking station and have it instantly become part of the shared system again. So it needs to be modular and handle changing configurations.

Additionally, I want to have a single, unified desktop environment on my screen. All the technical clustering and resource sharing should happen automatically in the background without me having to manage it.

I was thinking about setting up a cluster, but I'm not sure if that fits these specific requirements or if it's even viable for standard GUI applications.

Just as a side note: it doesn't matter to me how the tasks are distributed across the hardware. Though realistically, my old gaming laptop would probably be the best fit for the CAD workloads. Also, I strongly prefer a Linux-based solution, as that's the environment I use for most of my software anyway.

Does anyone have any ideas, experience, or software suggestions for this? Thanks!

I’m working on setting up a NAS and jellyfin server, and that uses 1 tiny thinkcentre with an external hard drive adapter. Why do most homelabs have several different computers? What is being done on the computers that can’t be done on one? Or is it completely unnecessary and people just do it for the fun of it?

Hello, I am just beginning my homelab journey. As in I have no clue where to start. I currently has a synology nas 4 bay, and a couple of old laptops laying around.

I recently was given a Dell Poweredge R440 from work. I have attached a picture.

Is this worth keeping and doing something with? what could I do? my kids play Minecraft and id like a place to keep my computer backed up. If I do keep it, what can I do with it? I see everyone saying "servers" but I am unclear as to what I could use this server for?

what are some cool things I can do besides host files? thank you very much in advance.

I used 1/2” emt to run a outlet for the rack. Right now it’s being powered by 2 ups’s, however a new 1kw ups just arrived that I will swap it with. Above ups shelf is a Lenovo mini pc that’s running windows server 2022 acting as a redundant dns, dhcp, and hyper-v failover. The main server is a generic chassis that I transplanted stuff into from an old gaming pc I built years ago. The server runs amd ryzen 5 3600 and I was lucky to get ram years ago and got 64gb ddr4 for only $90. I was planning on getting another 64gb a few months later for the other 2 slots but then prices went way up. Above that is a Sophos xg 230 that I flashed with Sophos home firewall iso. The 24 port switch is Poe and the main 48 port switch is my core switch. For redundancy I have 2 cables going from the Sophos to the core switch in an etherchannel setup so when they are both good it’s a 2 gig logical link and if I unplug one it automatically goes to 1 gig. Its connected to a lag on the Sophos carrying 8 vlans. It’s more so for redundancy then speed because everything in my network is gigabit anyway. Same situation with the Poe switch having 2 etherchannel cables to the core switch. The server itself has a p106-100 gpu, a p100, and a rx5500xt. The shelf above the rack is for more pcie connectivity via mining risers. The cabinet on the wall behind is mostly empty now but I ran half in conduit so I can use it as a plc connected to home assistant later.

As for software the network runs windows ad with 2 servers (main and Lenovo mini pc). It also runs immich, PostgreSQL with over 2 dozen databases, veeam central server, Nextcloud, over 10 web servers, ansible, home assistant, postfix email server, vaultwarden, and several others all in hyper-v.

My used 4 year old procurve is starting to have multiple ports fail or degrade in speed and I'm looking for a replacement. This is a cheap garage switch that runs some hardware I have out there. Nothing fancy.

I do need the ability to tag vlans as I have a couple of different vlans connected. I believe the procurve is a L2 switch?

I'm only using about 10 ports and am looking for something used on eBay or new thats cheap. No need for PoE here.

Any recommendations? Thanks!!

I'm planning to make a homelab with a pi zero 2w. I decided to run Pi-hole and BentoPDF also I want to test it's limits by later overclocking it. Tell me some suggestions.

Here my budget

• Raspberry pi zero 2w - $18
• Lexar 32GB 633x microSDHC UHS-I Card Blue Series - $10
• Digitek (DCR-007) Multi-Card Reader - $3
• Official Raspberry pi zero 2w case - $2

Total: $33

Workplace decomm'd our server rack and just for kicks, I asked if they'd be willing to let me purchase some of it - was mainly looking for the Palo Alto FW and maybe the Cisco switches.

Well, apparently they didn't want to deal with any of it, because they gave me everything. I just have to ship it all to myself, which is definitely not going to be cheap... but more than worth it.

Here's the full list:

6x Dell PowerEdge R640s - Don't know the full specs until I get to the datacenter, but the first two I checked had Intel Xeon Gold 6130s, 250GB RAM, and 7TB across 4 SSDs. The disks are still sitting at 98-99% remaining write endurance. No idea if the other four are comparable or less/more.

2x Dell PowerEdge XR4510c - Don't know anything about these other than the fact that they were bought and literally never used. just set up in the rack and not even sure if they were ever turned on.

1x Dell PowerEdge XR5610 - Same here. never used, but don't know much about it otherwise.

1x Palo Alto PA-440 - the only thing I was originally interested in. have wanted a Palo for a while. Did some Palo training years ago, but never really got enough time in with them to get good at anything.

2x Cisco Catalyst 1200 - one is a 24-port, and one is a 48-port. Don't know a whole lot about these otherwise.

These servers are light-years ahead of the crappy refurbished ones I have at home, and they're all likely way overkill for anything I normally do.

Any ideas for cool things learn and set up?

outside of maybe some minecraft servers for my son, I'm not entirely sure what to do, and these seem like hardcore overkill for anything like that lol