Leveling Up My Homelab(cweagans.net)
cweagans.net
Leveling Up My Homelab
https://cweagans.net/2025/09/leveling-up-my-homelab/
83 comments
I am very much on board with this line of thinking. Because things are still somewhat in flux, it was much easier to plan for excess cabling and have a place for that cabling to live in the rack so that things can be moved if needed. I'll probably re-cable it with cut-to-length cables in the future.
One thing that I haven't found a solution for though: I have a lot of USB and HDMI cable coiled up behind the Beelink boxes (for KVM connectivity). I've found the normal length cables (1', 3', 6', etc), but I haven't been able to find custom length cables for those specific connections. Do you happen to know anywhere I can find those?
One thing that I haven't found a solution for though: I have a lot of USB and HDMI cable coiled up behind the Beelink boxes (for KVM connectivity). I've found the normal length cables (1', 3', 6', etc), but I haven't been able to find custom length cables for those specific connections. Do you happen to know anywhere I can find those?
On the other hand, I did this, cut my cables, and after I needed to reorganise things slightly, it was very difficult, even a centimetre was at luxury. Also, when I need to move a computer for some reason, there’s no room, at all. These days, I’m trying to leave at least some extra cm (usually that’s an inch or two, depending on their location) for that. I’d do very tight cable cut only for situations when I’m super sure nothing will ever move. Again, even then, I’d rather leave some extra inch, just in case.
For those not keeping count, total hardware spend is in the 13k-20k USD ballpark, by my count.
The thing that I like about this post is that it touches on many of the difficulties of running a homelab with many physical hosts. You might not need all or most of this setup, but at least you have an idea of how this particular design (a decent one!) scales after reading this.
- Array of off-the-shell compute servers with console access + networking + power
- ArgoCD + GitOps makes a K8 cluster declarative
- Talos makes the physical hosts that provide the K8 cluster be declarative
- Dedicated machines for storage, Control Plan, and Networking isolate the infrequently-changing stateful parts
This homelab does seem compute focused, which might be right for OP but is normally a mistake that people make when they build their first homelab. I'm wondering what OP's home internet bandwidth is. It seems odd to have so much compute behind a network bottleneck unless OP has high-compute-small-output workloads (ml training, data searching/analysis, NOT video encoding)
A single machine with a lot of CPU and a LOT of memory/storage is typically what people want---so that projects they're setting up are fast and having lots of old/idling projects is fine. My old recommendation was a mini-ITX with 128 GB of ram and a modern AMD cpu should take most people very far. Perhaps a smaller NUC/Beelink computer if you're not storage hungry.
However, keep in mind that a single machine will make it hard to tinker with large parts of the stack. It's harder to play with kernel mod settings if you need to constantly reboot all your projects and possibly nuke your lab. It's harder to test podman vs docker if in involves turning off all your contains. A more complicated home-lab gives you more surface area to tinker with. That's both more fun and makes you a better engineer. Of course, you can get most of this experience for far less money if you budget isn't quite as generous.
I personally prefer a digital nomad aesthetic, so I focus on small & simple on-prem hosts paired with cloud stacks. I'm willing to pay a premium on compute to have less commitment and physical footprint. I've been considering setting up a K8 cluster on Hetzner dedicated machines. In my case, that Mini-ITX box is actually a storage-optimized ATX build for backing up my laptop (daily-driver) and media server.
The thing that I like about this post is that it touches on many of the difficulties of running a homelab with many physical hosts. You might not need all or most of this setup, but at least you have an idea of how this particular design (a decent one!) scales after reading this.
- Array of off-the-shell compute servers with console access + networking + power
- ArgoCD + GitOps makes a K8 cluster declarative
- Talos makes the physical hosts that provide the K8 cluster be declarative
- Dedicated machines for storage, Control Plan, and Networking isolate the infrequently-changing stateful parts
This homelab does seem compute focused, which might be right for OP but is normally a mistake that people make when they build their first homelab. I'm wondering what OP's home internet bandwidth is. It seems odd to have so much compute behind a network bottleneck unless OP has high-compute-small-output workloads (ml training, data searching/analysis, NOT video encoding)
A single machine with a lot of CPU and a LOT of memory/storage is typically what people want---so that projects they're setting up are fast and having lots of old/idling projects is fine. My old recommendation was a mini-ITX with 128 GB of ram and a modern AMD cpu should take most people very far. Perhaps a smaller NUC/Beelink computer if you're not storage hungry.
However, keep in mind that a single machine will make it hard to tinker with large parts of the stack. It's harder to play with kernel mod settings if you need to constantly reboot all your projects and possibly nuke your lab. It's harder to test podman vs docker if in involves turning off all your contains. A more complicated home-lab gives you more surface area to tinker with. That's both more fun and makes you a better engineer. Of course, you can get most of this experience for far less money if you budget isn't quite as generous.
I personally prefer a digital nomad aesthetic, so I focus on small & simple on-prem hosts paired with cloud stacks. I'm willing to pay a premium on compute to have less commitment and physical footprint. I've been considering setting up a K8 cluster on Hetzner dedicated machines. In my case, that Mini-ITX box is actually a storage-optimized ATX build for backing up my laptop (daily-driver) and media server.
> This homelab does seem compute focused, which might be right for OP but is normally a mistake that people make when they build their first homelab.
I kept waiting for the description of what it would be used for, but there was only a passing reference to learning how to run AI workloads.
For some people, buying and assembling hardware is the hobby. This gets old fast, especially when you add up how much was spent on hardware that's now sitting idle while it becomes more outdated year over year.
I agree that for typical learning cases the best solution is a single, cheap consumer CPU paired with a lot of RAM. For the $8000 spent on those 8 mini PCs, you could build a 256GB RAM box with 2 or even 3 nVidia 5090 GPUs and be in a different league of performance. It's also much easier to resell big nVidia consumer GPUs and recoup some of your money for the next upgrade.
It does look fun to assemble all of this into a rack and make it all work together. However, it's an extremely expensive means to an end. If you just want to experiment with distributed systems you can pair 128GB of RAM with a 16-core consumer CPU and run dozens or even 100 small VMs without issue. If you want to do GPU work you can even use PCIe passthrough to assign GPUs to VMs.
I kept waiting for the description of what it would be used for, but there was only a passing reference to learning how to run AI workloads.
For some people, buying and assembling hardware is the hobby. This gets old fast, especially when you add up how much was spent on hardware that's now sitting idle while it becomes more outdated year over year.
I agree that for typical learning cases the best solution is a single, cheap consumer CPU paired with a lot of RAM. For the $8000 spent on those 8 mini PCs, you could build a 256GB RAM box with 2 or even 3 nVidia 5090 GPUs and be in a different league of performance. It's also much easier to resell big nVidia consumer GPUs and recoup some of your money for the next upgrade.
It does look fun to assemble all of this into a rack and make it all work together. However, it's an extremely expensive means to an end. If you just want to experiment with distributed systems you can pair 128GB of RAM with a 16-core consumer CPU and run dozens or even 100 small VMs without issue. If you want to do GPU work you can even use PCIe passthrough to assign GPUs to VMs.
> I kept waiting for the description of what it would be used for, but there was only a passing reference to learning how to run AI workloads.
Future posts will address some of this. :)
Future posts will address some of this. :)
> For those not keeping count, total hardware spend is in the 13k-20k USD ballpark, by my count.
Yep! Right around the $13.5k mark.
> This homelab does seem compute focused, which might be right for OP but is normally a mistake that people make when they build their first homelab.
Very compute focused for the specific projects that I intend to work on.
> I'm wondering what OP's home internet bandwidth is. It seems odd to have so much compute behind a network bottleneck unless OP has high-compute-small-output workloads (ml training, data searching/analysis, NOT video encoding)
1gbps symmetric + a failover Starlink connection. Not a ton of large output workloads at the moment.
> However, keep in mind that a single machine will make it hard to tinker with large parts of the stack.
Very much in agreement here. This is one of the reasons I went with multiple machines.
> I'm willing to pay a premium on compute to have less commitment and physical footprint.
I also like this mindset, but my other hobbies are piano (and I'm very sensitive to the way that the keys are weighted, so I prefer playing a real grand piano vs a portable/mini electronic piano) and woodworking (even more bulky equipment), so I'm already pretty committed to putting down roots.
Yep! Right around the $13.5k mark.
> This homelab does seem compute focused, which might be right for OP but is normally a mistake that people make when they build their first homelab.
Very compute focused for the specific projects that I intend to work on.
> I'm wondering what OP's home internet bandwidth is. It seems odd to have so much compute behind a network bottleneck unless OP has high-compute-small-output workloads (ml training, data searching/analysis, NOT video encoding)
1gbps symmetric + a failover Starlink connection. Not a ton of large output workloads at the moment.
> However, keep in mind that a single machine will make it hard to tinker with large parts of the stack.
Very much in agreement here. This is one of the reasons I went with multiple machines.
> I'm willing to pay a premium on compute to have less commitment and physical footprint.
I also like this mindset, but my other hobbies are piano (and I'm very sensitive to the way that the keys are weighted, so I prefer playing a real grand piano vs a portable/mini electronic piano) and woodworking (even more bulky equipment), so I'm already pretty committed to putting down roots.
Sorry if this is a naive question, but with a bunch of power packed into a single device couldn't you do a lot of experimentation in VM?
In my experience, yes and no. Homelabs seem work because they let you experiment while striving towards goals (normally hosting something). That means that the organic problems that arise are the best teachers, since you're honestly motivated to overcome them.
Getting your homelab to boot up and run containers is an honest problem to solve. Figuring out the kernel modules to let you pass through your GPU or run ZFS on root are actual blockers to hosting a gitlab instance.
Running gitlab on multiple nodes to get high-availability is an honest problem to solve. Trying to do it in multiple VMs just to see how it works might teach you something, but it can feel pointless unless it's serving a real goal. I think that choosing a more complicated setup is good because it is hard, and forces you to learn more to achieve the same goal (and ultimately, some of those skills will hopefully be useful).
Additionally, there used to be some limitations on consumer CPUs around nested virtualization, which made it difficult to run VMs in VMs. When I was hosting apps in VMs on a machine, I would want to play around with the machine's configs, but risked disrupting my hosted apps. If I broke something, I didn't have my hosted apps until I got around to fixing my machine. Having multiple machines ensured that I could tinker with one while relying on the other. The process, by accident, gave me an intuition for planning upgrades to infrastructure. This intuition bubbles back into the design process.
I don't often own infrastructure for multiple upgrade cycles professionally, so it is a good way to earn some wisdom on my own.
Getting your homelab to boot up and run containers is an honest problem to solve. Figuring out the kernel modules to let you pass through your GPU or run ZFS on root are actual blockers to hosting a gitlab instance.
Running gitlab on multiple nodes to get high-availability is an honest problem to solve. Trying to do it in multiple VMs just to see how it works might teach you something, but it can feel pointless unless it's serving a real goal. I think that choosing a more complicated setup is good because it is hard, and forces you to learn more to achieve the same goal (and ultimately, some of those skills will hopefully be useful).
Additionally, there used to be some limitations on consumer CPUs around nested virtualization, which made it difficult to run VMs in VMs. When I was hosting apps in VMs on a machine, I would want to play around with the machine's configs, but risked disrupting my hosted apps. If I broke something, I didn't have my hosted apps until I got around to fixing my machine. Having multiple machines ensured that I could tinker with one while relying on the other. The process, by accident, gave me an intuition for planning upgrades to infrastructure. This intuition bubbles back into the design process.
I don't often own infrastructure for multiple upgrade cycles professionally, so it is a good way to earn some wisdom on my own.
The SER 9 workers in particular feel like they're overly beefy. I run 4-5VMs inside Proxmox in a single equivalent box...
> Storage UniFi UNAS PRO: (replacing the Synology NAS) 7x 8TB Seagate IronWolf
With the way Ubiquity has treated their software stack on the network side in the past years (major bugs, regressions, and updates that had to be reissued multiple times), I wouldn't trust them with all my data. Ubiquiti's QA was outsourced to the customers and a NAS is the last place where I want to risk bad updates, no matter how many backups I have.
With the way Ubiquity has treated their software stack on the network side in the past years (major bugs, regressions, and updates that had to be reissued multiple times), I wouldn't trust them with all my data. Ubiquiti's QA was outsourced to the customers and a NAS is the last place where I want to risk bad updates, no matter how many backups I have.
Same with Synology. I would directly jump to a TrueNAS install, or a BSD/Linux install with all the needed software.
Synology has shady business practices more recently and outdated tech stack since forever but I haven't heard anything particularly bad about reliability. For a NAS the safety of the data is the highest priority. Anything that endangers the data isn't just a drawback, or a "con", it's an instant elimination. Right now I wouldn't trust Ubiquiti NAS to store my recycle bin, I need to see a long track record of reliability and a commitment to quality.
This is definitely one of the purchasing decisions that I regret. My backups are robust and trustworthy enough that I don't have data loss concerns, but the software is atrocious and the customizability is extremely limited.
e.g. I wanted to serve tftp directly from the NAS. I can log in and `apt install tftpd-hpa`, but that package has to be reinstalled every time the NAS updates.
I'll be replacing this in the medium term, but I'm not buying more hardware for a little while lol
e.g. I wanted to serve tftp directly from the NAS. I can log in and `apt install tftpd-hpa`, but that package has to be reinstalled every time the NAS updates.
I'll be replacing this in the medium term, but I'm not buying more hardware for a little while lol
This exceeds the computing requirements of most IT related companies, by far.
Cool, but nothing a single compute machine wouldn't get done with a bunch of VM's if learning and home workload are the focus.
This thing probably idles at a couple hundred watts.
Cool, but nothing a single compute machine wouldn't get done with a bunch of VM's if learning and home workload are the focus.
This thing probably idles at a couple hundred watts.
Yea, but, like owning a car you soup up in your garage, it isn't about what you _need_, it's about what's fun and what's enough to give you something to do in your free time.
All good, as long as there is self-awareness that it's not built on a "need", but on a "want" basis.
It should be obvious to the reader that this is very much overkill, even for the stated goals of expandability and learning.
It should be obvious to the reader that this is very much overkill, even for the stated goals of expandability and learning.
How do you know if it's overkill without knowing anything about what I am/will be running on it? Certainly, there are projects for which this setup might be appropriately sized, wouldn't you think?
Incidentally, this setup does leave me some significant headroom in terms of compute resources, but that's by design.
Incidentally, this setup does leave me some significant headroom in terms of compute resources, but that's by design.
People don't usually buy this much compute for running a mail server or a media transcoder, so... probably AI? :)
If it's inference, don't expect great performance or cost-effectiveness.
But if you learn a lot during it, I wish you all the best!
If it's inference, don't expect great performance or cost-effectiveness.
But if you learn a lot during it, I wish you all the best!
If we're going with the car analogy, this is like buy 8 Miatas to keep in your driveway instead of combing all of the money into a single much faster car.
If the goal is to have a lot of something so you can play with many different things, this gets the job done. If the goal is high performance and maximum efficiency for learning or compute, a setup with dozens of smaller computers like this is usually not the optimal choice.
If the goal is to have a lot of something so you can play with many different things, this gets the job done. If the goal is high performance and maximum efficiency for learning or compute, a setup with dozens of smaller computers like this is usually not the optimal choice.
I down-leveled my homelab due to energy costs.
It now only consists of a Intel n100 with a big SSD and 32GB RAM running Proxmox. These China TopTon-boxed with their 5x Intel i226-IV network cards are great and can be passively cooled.
Every night the Proxmox makes a backup onto a Raspberry Pi which runs the Proxmox Backup Server.
It now only consists of a Intel n100 with a big SSD and 32GB RAM running Proxmox. These China TopTon-boxed with their 5x Intel i226-IV network cards are great and can be passively cooled.
Every night the Proxmox makes a backup onto a Raspberry Pi which runs the Proxmox Backup Server.
I've read that PBS requires fast (NVME-fast) storage and a decent CPU to handle incremental backups efficiently. What speeds do you get when restoring backups?
Using BTRFS.
Just reading of the logs:
- Backup duration: 3.21GiB in 36s
- Restoring a Snapshot: feels like <<1 minute
Just reading of the logs:
- Backup duration: 3.21GiB in 36s
- Restoring a Snapshot: feels like <<1 minute
HDDs work fine for me with PBS, and I get regular 120mb/s HDD speeds when restoring backups. Honestly how often do you restore backups anyways?
Well you should do that frequently, at least to make sure you have restorable ones.
Yup. Mine rates 80W on idle, but it has _two_ NAS boxes, a pair of N150s, a Ryzen APU Steam server, and a beefy i7 with 128GB RAM and a 3060 (which of course is the one burning the most watts in use). Most of it is running Proxmox and backing up VMs to the Synology (which I've demoted to dumb storage with a few Docker containers since they started burning bridges with their customers).
A friend of mine has one of these Enterprise CPUs with many many cores. He sends the entire box to sleep after CICD jobs and wakes them up with WoL.
That is exactly what I do with both the GPU and Ryzen boxes (pro tip: Steam Link will do WoL and wake up your gaming box remotely from both Android and iOS clients - works great on Bazzite)
Space and energy costs are a factor for me too. My current Mac Mini SMB is really good but DAS consumes lot of power. Ideally, I would really love Mikrotik's RB5009UPr+S+IN next iteration to have antennas and a 4-Bay Rose Data Server merged. Gateway, Switch, Access Point, PoE for CCTV and NAS - all in one.
this. the energy costs have made me downscale to micro pcs
Is that also running a router like opnsense, or do you have a dedicated box for that? Curious about specs for networking gear...
Shabby 10 year old Fritzbox is my home LAN. It plays DHCP-Server, VDSL-Modem and Firewall.
Next step will be most likekly a VDSL-modem + something from Ubiquiti as the new Fritz! product portfolio is... a weird mess.
Next step will be most likekly a VDSL-modem + something from Ubiquiti as the new Fritz! product portfolio is... a weird mess.
This is awesome and I wish more of this were happening. Hardware home labs are the best way to learn. I gained most of my Linux/FreeBSD skills at home.
It feels with cloud computing a generation of computer scientists kind of missed out on the experience.
It feels with cloud computing a generation of computer scientists kind of missed out on the experience.
Cloud by day, home lab by night.
Enjoyed this. Lots of large homelabs like this are built in order to stream video or local llm models and that usually leaves me feeling a bit left out because I have been building my own, but have no interest in either of those things.
Some services I am interested in are hosting my own RSS feed reader, an ebook library, and a password manager. But I'm always looking for more if there are any suggestions.
Some services I am interested in are hosting my own RSS feed reader, an ebook library, and a password manager. But I'm always looking for more if there are any suggestions.
Well there's loads - Nextcloud/Syncthing to replace Dropbox, Forgejo to replace Github, Joplin on the back of Nextcloud or similar for note taking.... personal wiki, todo list, email with webmail (Roundcube), home video camera management, etc etc
Check out https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
Check out https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
> I am interested in are hosting my own RSS feed reader, an ebook library, and a password manager
You can do that on a Raspberry Pi Zero for $15, and for $12 you can get a 128gb microsd card, plenty of storage. It'll take up minimal power and fit in an Altoid tin.
You can do that on a Raspberry Pi Zero for $15, and for $12 you can get a 128gb microsd card, plenty of storage. It'll take up minimal power and fit in an Altoid tin.
You can host all of that on an N100 mini-PC in oh... around 4GB RAM, based on the equivalent footprint of the Docker/LXC combos I use for those.
I love the astronomical jump in compute. Mac Mini and mini PC not enough? GET 8. Love it!
I’m in the middle of my first homelab journey with just a single mini PC with 8GB of RAM. Excited to one day get to this level.
I’m in the middle of my first homelab journey with just a single mini PC with 8GB of RAM. Excited to one day get to this level.
Yeah, I started with an obsolete PC a decade ago, and now I’m on a Raspberry Pi 2 and a couple of Orange Pis (zero, 1st gen). Weirdly, it’s enough for me now. I self-host not too many things as of now. So I guess I’d grow at least a couple of Mac minis over time too. However, I’m trying to go slowly there. Funny thing is that despite me admitting that I’m more likely to arrive there too, each time I see a superlab, I wonder ‘what do you guys do with all this?!’
I'm curious how much this costs to run. I.e., how much are you paying for electricity?
I'm currently sitting at < 200W, but I expect that to go up with a higher workload. The SER9s idle at 5-7W, but they can run at 50-60W sustained without thermal throttling. Some reviewers have claimed that they can run at 75-80W sustained for 10-15 minutes, but I think that's pretty unlikely.
We have pretty reasonable power rates here (https://www.idahopower.com/accounts-service/understand-your-...), so ~$12-20 per month depending on tier.
We have pretty reasonable power rates here (https://www.idahopower.com/accounts-service/understand-your-...), so ~$12-20 per month depending on tier.
Not sure about this one in specific but assuming most of the time the system is idle at ~200W, you’d be looking at ~$25/mo for most states in the US.
Peak draw could probably be 2kW for a beefy system so electricity costs could really skyrocket depending on usage patterns.
Peak draw could probably be 2kW for a beefy system so electricity costs could really skyrocket depending on usage patterns.
Peak draw for the entire cabinet with everything running full bore cannot/will not exceed 1800W (by design).
This year I redid my whole lab as well and prioritized declarative everything so it'd be easy to go from scratch if needed. So I've got nix to create RKE2 images with cloud-init for XCP-ng templates, Terraform with XenOrchestra provider, and ArgoCD for the K8s cluster.
I've got two R640's so I can live migrate, and an R720XD with TrueNAS (democratic-csi for K8s persistence). QSFP (40Gb) for TrueNAS / R720XD, and SFP+ (10Gb) for R640's linked to a Brocade ICX 6610.
So I can update the hosts, and K8 nodes with 0 downtime. Do I need it? No, but I learned a lot and had / have fun deploying and maintaining it.
I've got two R640's so I can live migrate, and an R720XD with TrueNAS (democratic-csi for K8s persistence). QSFP (40Gb) for TrueNAS / R720XD, and SFP+ (10Gb) for R640's linked to a Brocade ICX 6610.
So I can update the hosts, and K8 nodes with 0 downtime. Do I need it? No, but I learned a lot and had / have fun deploying and maintaining it.
I'd like to replicate this (a smaller version) but with ECC RAM. It is hard to find mini PCs (or laptops) with ECC RAM support.
Serious question: why would you need one for a home usage? I mean, you can easily reboot it nightly, and nobody will ever notice. Unless your personal server is used by people across the continents, of course. But even then, my SBC reboots within 20 seconds or something. Not really noticeable.
HP and Lenovo have SFF or UCFF workstations with ECC support like the Z2 Mini G9 or P3 Ultra SFF.
Oh hai Cameron!
I'm rebuilding my homelab [1] too, actually, but deprioritizing it while I stave off a wee spot o' burnout.
I'm excited to see that you're building on Talos; I am too! I used to use CoreOS back in the day, like 8-9 years ago or smth, on PXE-booted VMWare VMs, and I've always missed that cleanliness.
That's a large part of why I'm rebuilding right now - I based everything around Ansible + Terraform, and that's workable of course but working iteratively on a homelab leaves so much cruft around, can lead to incidental complexity, etc etc etc.
Anyway, I'm pumped to keep reading!
[1] https://clog.goldentooth.net/
I'm rebuilding my homelab [1] too, actually, but deprioritizing it while I stave off a wee spot o' burnout.
I'm excited to see that you're building on Talos; I am too! I used to use CoreOS back in the day, like 8-9 years ago or smth, on PXE-booted VMWare VMs, and I've always missed that cleanliness.
That's a large part of why I'm rebuilding right now - I based everything around Ansible + Terraform, and that's workable of course but working iteratively on a homelab leaves so much cruft around, can lead to incidental complexity, etc etc etc.
Anyway, I'm pumped to keep reading!
[1] https://clog.goldentooth.net/
I too am preparing for an entire rebuild of my home lab so the posting of this information is greatly appreciated at this time.
My home lab has been rebuilt 3 times in the last 20 years and the continuous mention of energy usage within this post is a main driver and one of several primary objectives towards my effort. My 36U rack as configured now with Dell Servers having Intel Xeons E chips has served me well for all the tech stuff that interests me both in hobby and profession. My entire setup now with all devices running draws 200 watts continuously and my existing home energy renewables generation and battery storage system will greatly benefit from this home lab rebuild as I am targeting energy use and floor area recovery outright while learning many new things as well. This rebuild is also a lead into my fourth tech company I'm starting so my motivation is strongly tied to many factors not discussed.
Looking forward to the future posts, Stay Healthy!
My home lab has been rebuilt 3 times in the last 20 years and the continuous mention of energy usage within this post is a main driver and one of several primary objectives towards my effort. My 36U rack as configured now with Dell Servers having Intel Xeons E chips has served me well for all the tech stuff that interests me both in hobby and profession. My entire setup now with all devices running draws 200 watts continuously and my existing home energy renewables generation and battery storage system will greatly benefit from this home lab rebuild as I am targeting energy use and floor area recovery outright while learning many new things as well. This rebuild is also a lead into my fourth tech company I'm starting so my motivation is strongly tied to many factors not discussed.
Looking forward to the future posts, Stay Healthy!
I haven't had a huge issue with power draw, but I live in a place where electricity is really cheap. I had 3x Dell R720s, an R210ii, and an Aruba 48-port PoE switch and felt like I had way more power than I knew what to do with, but it still didn't seem to have a substantial impact on my power bill. Maybe I lucked out with some components. Or maybe the overall power draw in my house is so pants-on-head stupid that I just don't have realistic expectations anymore.
Hey hey! Good to see you here!
Talos is absolutely incredible. There's a learning curve to it, but it's not as steep as it seems.
I started with Ansible, but found myself getting really annoyed at the amount of YAML I was shoveling around for basic things, so I ended up writing a series of bash scripts that rsync files out to where they need to go, run actions when a particular file changes, etc. Provisioning scripts are bundled up and piped to the remote machine over SSH. It's been pretty nice. I'm thinking about building that out into a separate project somewhere.
I'd love to check out what you're working on! The link seems to be broken though.
Talos is absolutely incredible. There's a learning curve to it, but it's not as steep as it seems.
I started with Ansible, but found myself getting really annoyed at the amount of YAML I was shoveling around for basic things, so I ended up writing a series of bash scripts that rsync files out to where they need to go, run actions when a particular file changes, etc. Provisioning scripts are bundled up and piped to the remote machine over SSH. It's been pretty nice. I'm thinking about building that out into a separate project somewhere.
I'd love to check out what you're working on! The link seems to be broken though.
Talos (and Talhelper) seem pretty reasonable so far. Digging Sops too for managing secrets. I was using Ansible Vault before which worked but was weirdly cumbersome to automate (go figure), and Sops seems to Just Work™.
> The link seems to be broken though.
Yeah, I'm a world-class infra engineer. smdh. Changed how the DNS record was created but didn't push my changes so they were reverted by a scheduled job facepalm
Think it's back now...
> The link seems to be broken though.
Yeah, I'm a world-class infra engineer. smdh. Changed how the DNS record was created but didn't push my changes so they were reverted by a scheduled job facepalm
Think it's back now...
> Digging Sops too for managing secrets. I was using Ansible Vault before which worked but was weirdly cumbersome to automate (go figure), and Sops seems to Just Work™.
I considered both of those and ended up using the External Secrets Operator + 1Password for my secrets. Maybe not the _best_ solution, but it saved a fair amount of effort on my part.
> Think it's back now...
It's back! Looking forward to reading!
I considered both of those and ended up using the External Secrets Operator + 1Password for my secrets. Maybe not the _best_ solution, but it saved a fair amount of effort on my part.
> Think it's back now...
It's back! Looking forward to reading!
Oh, that's super cool! I somehow missed that ESO and 1Password would work together. I set up a 1Password Connect Server at one point but ended up not doing much with it. Hmm...
Don’t even need connect! You can use a service account token. Retries if 1pass is down or whatever too!
It might be fun to have so many machines, but in reality it's simpler and cheaper to virtualize everything on two or three powerful hosts. Considering that you're using a soundproof rack already you might as well go with used rack servers with lots of memory and compute. Those also come with goodies like BMCs, dual PSUs, and ECC.
Personally I have two Xeon rack servers running in a Proxmox cluster with a SBC Qdevice. It has more than enough memory and compute for my needs and it also serves as my virtualized router and NAS. The whole setup only takes up 4U of space (servers + switch + modem/qdevice) with a single UPS on the floor, and idle power is around 150W.
Personally I have two Xeon rack servers running in a Proxmox cluster with a SBC Qdevice. It has more than enough memory and compute for my needs and it also serves as my virtualized router and NAS. The whole setup only takes up 4U of space (servers + switch + modem/qdevice) with a single UPS on the floor, and idle power is around 150W.
We may be optimizing for different needs. For instance, while I was able to get a significant amount of extra height, I didn't have a lot of cabinet depth to work with, which is somewhat limiting for traditional server hardware. There are short-depth options out there, but I also wanted at lease some GPU capability. The integrated GPUs in the SER9s are not top of the line by any means, but they're more than capable for what I want to be working on.
If you ask me, this is not a Homelab anymore.
It’s always fun to see how people build their home labs but I went exactly the opposite route.
I focused on energy consumption, because of cost and - gasp - wanting to be mindful about it given the current predicament.
Anything that needs to be on 24/7 is on a Pi, and anything that consumes more power is turned off by default (remote poweron possible).
For me at home there is zero need for redundancy and I use a cluster of four tini-mini-micro 1L PCs for my lab work. There are also turned off by default and are also low-power.
I focused on energy consumption, because of cost and - gasp - wanting to be mindful about it given the current predicament.
Anything that needs to be on 24/7 is on a Pi, and anything that consumes more power is turned off by default (remote poweron possible).
For me at home there is zero need for redundancy and I use a cluster of four tini-mini-micro 1L PCs for my lab work. There are also turned off by default and are also low-power.
That's what I want to do as well, Pis running a vpn and some wake-on-lan scripts for a couple of old boxes (I will probably run SmartOS on those). Anything to share about your setup ? (blogs/gits that you wrote or followed)
I also got some cloud credits from my employer, but a bit paranoïd about putting my data there (although most of it isn't sensitive).
I also got some cloud credits from my employer, but a bit paranoïd about putting my data there (although most of it isn't sensitive).
No links but it’s just a Pi5 as a Linux router and three Pi4s for grafana (iot stuff), jellyfin and hosting my blog on solar power.
If you’re thinking about rpi5, reconsider an n100 minipc. Rpi5 is surprisingly expensive, both upfront and tco.
I wrote a HN hit about something similar
https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a...
https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a...
It's funny, I started with rPis for the same reason, but I'm about to replace them. I bought 20 rPi 4Bs for my homelab, and I just couldn't get them to do what I needed. I was looking to run a home k8s cluster and the Pis were just not suited to it at all (don't use sd storage for k8s 'cause it'll burn out the card w/writes, booting off usb was unstable even with powered usb hubs, netboot turned into an enormous pain in the neck).
If you have another machine with a SSD or at least a fast-ish HDD and want to give it another go, you could try running k3s with an external datastore (e.g. postgres).
That's the setup I've been using on 3 x rPi since 2021 and I'm super happy with it as I can host all my own personal projects, some OSS ones (changedetection, n8n, etc), even longhorn for distributed storage and still have capacity left -- and this with just microSDs (to be fair, A1s, but still).
That's the setup I've been using on 3 x rPi since 2021 and I'm super happy with it as I can host all my own personal projects, some OSS ones (changedetection, n8n, etc), even longhorn for distributed storage and still have capacity left -- and this with just microSDs (to be fair, A1s, but still).
Yes, I moved to 1L PCs for lab work.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40697831
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40697831
What do people do with homelabs? I’ve always wondered. Is it anything of consequence or is it just like making a roadster in your garage?
I have two machines and NAS. Running around 50 docker containers. Including home assistant, adguard, wireguard, Vscode server, rss reader, change detection, romm, metube,vaultwarden, immich, caldav carddav server and bunch of custom applications I am working on. (Also hosting some websites).
It’s so much fun and helps me to own my data.
It’s so much fun and helps me to own my data.
I run a home server but it is a single post-lease Dell mini PC I got for $50. The only times it goes above 5% CPU/GPU usage is when I'm building a project to deploy or transcode video.
I'm sure nobody needs this much compute for personal use (24/7), so roadster in a garage is a good analogy.
I'm sure nobody needs this much compute for personal use (24/7), so roadster in a garage is a good analogy.
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Did i read one control plane node and 8x workers for the K8s cluster? What happens when the control plane flakes?
I run 4 thin clients and only one of them is a worker. The rest are untainted control plane nodes in HA.
I run 4 thin clients and only one of them is a worker. The rest are untainted control plane nodes in HA.
You read that right. Currently, the DR plan is "replace/repair the machine and bring everything back up from a backup". It's not a good plan, but it's also only the short term plan. Longer term, I'll likely add another control plane node or two.
Run three. Helps with quorum.
How are you approaching heat management inside the soundproof closet?
Wow, a beast. Looking forward to the next post!
That looks and sounds great. Good for you!
Honestly, I have had 'has a homelab' as one of my mental checkboxes for great hires for a long time.
If something is going to be considered permanent, cut that cable down to length. Either buy shorter moulded cables, or learn to wire cables yourself. Too often have I left a cable long "just in case" only for it to get in the way for years to come.
For patch cables it's easiest and best to buy moulded cables that fit your rack. For things like power cables (extension leads etc.) it's easiest to wire them yourself (at least, in the UK where our plugs are designed to be wired by anyone).