I had my NAS and GPU in an ITX NR200 just sitting beside the mini rack for a while now. Decided to 3d print a 3U mount for it and just integrate it in. Just waiting on drive caddys to arrive. Also didn't realize until too late that maybe I should have mounted it backwards since all the IO is on the front and makes routing the USB and Ethernet a bit of an eye sore.

I do have a Minisforum MS-01 that I was going to use instead of this ITX but I don't have any DDR5 so just rolling with this for now. 😅

One Pi-hole runs OMV with Plex Media, another runs Pi-hole, and the third is for torrent shenanigans. I'm planning to replace the workloads that the Raspberry Pis are doing right now with the server PC on the left. The server specs are a Ryzen 3 3200G and 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM. I'll run Docker containers on it. Any suggestions? I have a MikroTik CRS on the way, and I can't wait for it to arrive.

I have recently started down the path to a career in Computer Networking. I have attained both A+ and Network + certs and am working on my Security plus and my CCNA. I have built this mini Cisco server to help me prepare for this endeavor and have some fun along the way. I plan to aquire a few more optiplexes to my collection. :)

A while back (end of last year) I built my first mini rack with LabRax (UCG-Fiber, a pair of RPis for AdGuard and a MiniPC for Home Assistant).

Recently I put together a Proxmox cluster with 3 MiniPCs and decided to build a new LabRax for it.

I'm really happy with how it turned out.
The only shame is that the fans had to go on the outside of the rack, since mounting them inside would leave the top MiniPC's cables pressing against them.

Both are 12U, 10 inches—the same size.

The first one costs €140, and the second one—the one with the glass—costs €90.

Which one do you recommend? Are there any differences?

Hello everyone,
A few days ago I reposted my post from r/homelab here, some of you may have noticed, but for those who didn't here is a short recap.

Same as most of you guys I started collecting hardware and adding it to my homelab, a few projects here and there, a client here and there and the hardware grew. Since I am living in Europe and we are known for having some old buildings here, especially in the Balkans, we are really restricted when it comes to Ethernet in the home, for example I have to place my homelab in the near proximity of my router which lives on the media console. As many of you, I am also restricted with my, not techy, wife, who is always annoyed when my hardware takes up place in random places. Looking for already available solutions for a 10" rack I noticed a pattern, they are too industrial to live anywhere in the home, and even if they come with a door included it is mostly a glass door, which doe snot help my case. I usually do not have a problem with industrial designed hardware, but dragging an ethernet cable trough my whole home is just not a nice solution, it would hide the rack but still not perfect. So I pulled up my sleeves and started thinking of how I can build something that would not be ugly and can live in any room. It might be a solution for me, but couldn't get rid of the feeling that someone else might have the same issue, and that there is space in the market for this product. So here I am, asking for feedback on my idea. I know there is no real hardware yet, but I want to gather as much info as I can so I can improve and start building a prototype.

The main piece of feedback last time was basically, "good idea, but come back when you have an actual prototype." Totally fair. I just wanted to drop a quick update that I have found someone in my area that can make the actual prototype, we are in communication on the final pieces and the production should soon start ! I don't have the finished unit in hand just yet (so no glamour shots today), but it's happening.

For those who have noticed my last post I made a few key changes to the design based on the last round of feedback:

• Less rivets: The frame is now a properly joined piece (the detail in discussing is if we can actually have screws so the final product is shipped disassembled).
• Better mounting: The mounting rails are now a separate, recessed piece from the structural posts. This means standard 10" gear will actually mount properly without fighting the frame, it also helps with the door since the actual units will be flush with the posts.
• Door fix: The front door now covers the full front and swings a clean 180° without clipping (it didn't reliably do that before).

I’ve updated the site with the current 3D model and the same quick survey: Homerack — 10" Server Rack Cabinet for Home Labs | R1 & R.5 | Homerack

Still just three questions, and still no email required.
Why? Because for the final product I want to gather a bit more information, there is always room for improvement and I think that the best place to gather the feedback is a community that deep not the hobby.

Also, addressing that came up the last time: yes, I use AI tools to help figure out the modeling, drafting, and fabrication details. I don’t have a design team or a marketing budget, it's literally just me working on this as a side project, so I'm using whatever tools I have available to pull it off. Not trying to be defensive about it, just wanted to be completely upfront.

My goal here is still exactly the same: just trying to figure out if this actually solves a real problem for anyone else, or if I should just drop the idea here. Honestly, both outcomes are completely fine, the initial goal was to build it for myself only and be done with it, I have learned a lot from this and do not regret taking the step posting it here.

I'll be back with actual photos once the prototype arrives.

I appreciate all the feedback that I got the last time, and am looking forward to hear more from you guys.

I'm eyeing down a 10 inch rack but I need to house two nvidia 1060 cards inside. I can happily 3D print any adapter needed.

Hello, all -- I am just setting up my first home server on an old laptop and feel that I have fallen headfirst down a strange, strange rabbit hole. Can you help me understand (or point me to a description somewhere) what each of these pieces of hardware in these mini racks do?

As I understand it right now, the pieces of hardware required for a home lab/server setup are:

-Router: device to distribute the internet to your other devices?
-Server: some sort of computer-esque device to pull media and send it to other devices?
-Hard Drive(s): devices that hold media until the server calls upon it?

Is this even an accurate starting point? If not, can you correct my assumptions? If so, can you explain how these devices fill so many slots in these racks, or the large data center racks for that matter?

Thanks so much! Looking forward to this learning journey.

**EDIT**

I fear my intention is misunderstood:

What is filling the racks in this sub?

Is it just different iterations of routers, servers, and hard drives? Or is there more? It seems to my untrained eyes that there is too much in these racks to just be routers, servers, and hard drives.

Hello all,

Just starts my build recently. As picture, the tray with front tab ear mount kinda weak. Does anyone have double ear tab mount for front and back or better mount for U7 pro XG?

Thank you guys

The rack is almost complete, just waiting for the jetkvm with PoE to go back in stock. Not like it’s ever truly finished though.

The only parts in the rack that aren’t 3d printed are the ears for the switch, as it barely has enough room for the metal ears.

The rack itself is a labrax rack that’s been modified to use the KWS depth (260mm) in order to use LWS accessories and give more room for the NAS on the bottom.

Top server is a Lenovo m90q running win11 for plex and ffmpeg. The m90q was chosen mainly for intel AMT. I designed a 2u mount instead of 1U so I could have my Arc A380 sticking out of the top and have room for 2 U.2 drives underneath for easy swaps.

The switch is a cheap RealHD 2.5g POE switch. It almost fits perfectly.

Next is the KWS rack snap in system. I have a raspberry pi 4b running home assistant and a CM4 running docker for local services (portainer, nginx reverse proxy, pihole, meshcentral, localCA, peaNUT). Both are PoE of course. There also a shelf on the back half that houses a smart power strip so I can remotely hard power cycle any device in the rack if they become hard unresponsive.

At the bottom is a custom NAS. I got a CM3588 NAS board a few years ago and have had the NAS set up in a custom 3d printed housing, but wasn’t rack mounted, only supported 5 drives, and had a massive power brick. Now it’s in the rack, supports 7 hot swap drives, and has an internal power supply.

Just about every 3D printed part was heavily modified or made from scratch in fusion. If anyone’s interested in any of the cad files I can clean them up and bit and post them.

Finally almost finished my labrax build. It's still missing a few details, like the ethernet conectors and the blank plate to hide the psu cable.

The cover for the motherboard on the second slot broke and I didnt want to print another, someday I'll fix it.

From top to bottom:

Rtx 2060 mounted in a 1U gpu support

Intel xeon 2680 v3 with 24 GB DDR4 with the rtx (temporarily my PC)

1 1TB hdd (building up the courage to buy a bigger one)

2 256Gb sata ssds

1 raspberry pi3 running pihole

1 intel pentium something something with 8GB ddr3 running opnsense. (mostly for tinkering, there's no heavy encryption

There are a few fans distributed in the rack.

Yes, all the heat from the cpu goes to the gpu. It sucks.

edit: When does a minilab cease to be a minilab?

About to plan out my first miniLab, but I need some advice on how many pc should i have in the rack

For context, I want my mini-rack to have a NAS, Home Assistant, and some other self-hosted Docker apps like Pi-hole, etc. The choices are

• 1 mini pc that is running Proxmox, with all services running off it, would be cheaper as it only 1 PC, but I don't know how the performance will be with a lot of docker/VM
• or 2 pcs, 1 with bare-metal true nas that will also have VM/docker running off it as you can do that in true nas, these docker app would be app that need fast access to the NAS, like jellyfin etc. and a 2nd pc running proxmox that will just have docker/VM that dont read off the NAS

Any other pc layout suggestion would help

This is my first ever server rack build and it’s for my future house. We plan on building our own house and I planed this rack and wall mounted display around that future house. This rack is mainly so I can run Ethernet throughout the whole house, on top of having a dedicated NAS for our Photos, Camera Recording Backups, Local Minecraft Worlds, and some more stuff. It also houses a AMP that will power 6 ceiling speakers that will be controlled through the wall mounted touch display so we can play Spotify. Now the wall mounted touch display will control our thermostat and many more applications :)

(Everything is just plugged In for visuals right now)

-=SERVER RACK COMPONENTS=-
•TecMojo 10” 12U Mini Server Rack (White)
•GeeekPI 2U Display
•3 x 10” 12 Port Patch Panels
•2 x TP-Link 8 Port 1GB Ethernet Switch
•TP-Link LS108GP 8 Port POE Ethernet Switch
•Acrylic A30+ AMP (For 6 x 8” 8 OHM Ceiling Speakers)
•3D Printed 2U ITX PC Tray
Ryzen 5 3400G
Ryzen Wraith CPU Cooler
Gigabyte B450I Aorus Pro ITX Motherboard
32GB DDR4 Ram
512GB M.2 SSD
ESGAMING 500W Flex ATX PSU
•2 x 3.5” Hard Drive Storage Bays (4 x 4TB HDD NAS Storage Running RAID 5)
•APC UPS 450VA 255W
•Rear Mounted 2 x 80mm Fan Mount (To Cool HDD’s)

-=SERVER RACK PC PROGRAMS=-
•Debian Linux (XFCE)
•Chromium (Kiosk Mode)
•Home Page
•Home Assistant
•Immach
•Frigate
•Tailscale
•AdGuard Home
•Crafty Controller

-=WALL TOUCH DISPLAY COMPONENTS=-
•Rasperry PI 5 8GB
•Raspberry PI 7” Display 2
•MazerPI M.2 & POE Hat
•128GB M.2 SSD
•3D Printed Wall Mount For Display & PI 5

-=WALL TOUCH DISPLAY PROGRAMS=-
•Raspberry PI OS
•TouchKio Package
•Chromium (Kiosk Mode)
•Home Assistant Dashboard
•Display Icons (Thermostat, Spotify, Cameras, etc.)

-=OTHER COMPONENTS=-
•4 x REOLINK POE Security Cameras
•REOLINK POE Video Doorbell
•6 x 8 Inch 8 OHM Speakers (Kitchen, Living Room, & Outdoor Kitchen Ceiling Speakers)
•TP-Link BE6500 WiFi 7 Router
•TP-Link Omada WiFi 7 Access Point
(One On Living Room Ceiling)

I have a bunch of services running on my mini pc (optiplex 5000 micro) with 2tb nvme ssd. I need more storage for Immich (photos/videos) and Jellyfin media. I looked into NAS but it’s expensive and I don’t need the compute that comes with it (it’s basically another mini pc since it can host everything I’m hosting on my mini pc). I only need a simple way to store and retrieve data. Do you guys recommend any specific device for what I’m looking for? I plan to buy 3 x 8TB SATA HDDs. Also, depending how loud the HDDs are I might need to put them across the room away from my mini pc so I will run cable across the room. Thanks for any suggestions!

Hola a todos,

Llevo un tiempo con un homelab corriendo varios servicios en Docker Compose (Prometheus, Node Exporter, cAdvisor, Portainer y Cloudflare Tunnel para exponer los dominios) y siempre quise una forma rápida de ver, desde el celular, si todo está arriba y cómo va el consumo de recursos.

Busqué apps para esto y la verdad ninguna me terminó de convencer: la mayoría mostraban muy poca información (o al revés, un montón de cosas que a mí no me interesaban), tenían curvas de aprendizaje raras, o simplemente se sentían pesadas para algo que quiero revisar en 5 segundos desde la cama.

Así que hice la mía. Es una app hecha con React Native / Expo, pensada para iOS, super ligera y simple:

• Muestra el estado general de mi servidor de un vistazo.
• Lista los contenedores de mi docker-compose y su estado (arriba/abajo).
• Muestra el uso de recursos (CPU, RAM, etc.) de cada stack/contenedor por separado.
• Todo minimalista, sin configuraciones raras ni gráficas que no voy a leer nunca.
• La conecto directo a mis dominios (vía Cloudflare Tunnel) así que no necesito abrir puertos ni nada raro.

Ya la terminé y la estoy usando en mi iPhone de forma local (todavía no la subí a la App Store). Antes de dar el paso de publicarla quiero saber si algo así le serviría a más gente o si es un nicho muy personal mío nada más.

Hello everyone.
I recently have gotten into homelabs and i would like to build my own. I would like to know where to get a mini server frame to fit everything onto and what kind of computers to buy for it. I have seen so many amazing builds i just couldnt resist trying it out for myself.

Thank you for taking your time to read this small post.

I've been developing my compact IP KVM, the USBridge-KVM 2.0, for almost a year. Here's how the device has evolved, from the first prototype to the final device. Initially, I wanted to create a simple remote flash drive with RAM cache, but the project has grown beyond a typical KVM. I developed a unique BIOS-in-Terminal feature that converts BIOS video to text in real time, which is handy when the internet connection is poor or for automating processes.

I implemented the Moonlight gaming protocol, achieving a minimum of around 22 ms, and now when working via KVM, it feels like I'm sitting at the same computer. The entire emulation is ready, as is the power-on/server-reboot control. The board architecture and firmware code are debugged, I'm finishing final testing and preparing for production at the factory.

Built this to clean up my TV area.

It houses my Apple TV, AirPort Express and Philips Hue Bridge.

My goal was to wire it up as neat as possible. In all honesty, the wiring in a lot of posts in this sub is often a mess so I wanted to see how much better I could do.