Seven Raspberry Pi 4's and one Pi Zero, mounted on some tile "shelves" inside some IKEA furniture.
What do you do on that many pi's that could not be done easier on 1 x86 box?
They're fanless and low-power, which was the primary draw to going this route. I run a Kubernetes cluster on them, including a few personal websites (Nginx+Python+Django), PostgreSQL, Sonarr, Calibre, SSH (occasionally) and every once in a while, an OpenArena server :-)
I did a 4 node Pi4 kubernetes cluster for about 5 years. The learning experience was priceless. I think most notable was learning to do proper multiarch container builds to support arm and x86_64. That being said, about half a year ago I decided to try condensing it all into two n100 nuc-like clones and keep one pi as the controller. For me and my apps and use cases there was no going back. Performance gains were substantial and in this regard I think I was hobbling myself after the educational aspect plateaued.
My 12u setup On top I have two pi's; home assistant and pihole The ONT for fiber, hue bridge, and hdhomerun.
My dream machine pro
Patch panel
48 port switch i got from coworker
Patch panel
My unraid server
jbod
Battery UPS
Ok, now this is just showing off. Patch cables all the exact required length and everything all nice and neat. I bet you check your backups regularly and do a monthly DR fail over test too.
...Kidding aside, your setup looks really good.
An old HP laptop with Debian hosting Klipper and Home Assistant. Waiting for an OTG cable so I could replace the laptop with a phone for less power and heat
Using phones with a continuous power supply might do nasty things to the battery.
Source: I finally figured out how to open a glass back phone with no tools.
was going through some old pictures and decided I'd post a retro setup. pretty sure I took this picture with my android g1....so 2008ish?
here is a pic of one of my first selfhost setups. I began selfhosting for music and have never stopped. this iteration was stuffed behind a bar that was built in to the basement at my old house
the old fashioned was custom built and was running some flavor of windows server. the one on the floor was the first Linux server I had run to do something useful...torrents and subsonic IIRC. I pieced that server together with random parts, mostly donated from old family PCs. two UPS units were on the bottom rack of that metro shelf to battery back the servers and the tomato router out of frame.
Could I interest you in some diagonal bracing today?
lmao mine looks simple af compared with most people here.
Behold my server :
Hardware:
-
Rasberry pi 5 8GB
-
1TB raid between old drives ( one from PC the other a just a regular external WD hard drive ).
Services
- Wireguard VPN/wg-easy
- AudioBookShelf
- Freshrss
- Vaultwarden
- Navidrome
- Calibre Web
- Actual Budget
- Trilium notes
Everything in containers, if you want to know more check this blogpost.
Runs Debian Bookworm
Hosting:
- DNS server
- DHCP server
- web server (just some internal pages)
- print server
- file server (24TB RAID 5 managed with OMV)
- immich
- jellyfin
Probably some more stuff I'm forgetting. It's basically my everything box.
This is how I started in a tiny room. I am not proud, but maybe good to show between all the shiny things here.
Just a NAS for now. Plan to add PiHole at some point.
Below, a picture of my small rack, which is located in my home office. Due to the selected components, it is virtually silent and still bobs along at only 26 - 28° C.
The hardware is divided into two Proxmox clusters. The first consists of the three Lenovo M920qs shown here and is home to my publicly accessible services and VMs, the second consists of the two Beelink EQ12s and is responsible for the internal services or those accessible via VPN.
Not the greatest or best Homelab, but for me, it fulfils all my needs and at the same time keeps the electricity costs down to an unimaginable level.
I host the following services on the public Internet:
- Ghost CMS
- Mastodon
- Pixelfed
- PeerTube
- Lemmy
- Rallly
- Nextcloud with Collabora Office
- Rustdesk
- Umami
- Uptime Kuma
- Vaultwarden
- Whoogle
- Minecraft Server (for my son)
Internally, I also provide the following services:
- AdGuard Home (redundant)
- FreshRSS
- Homepage (Dashboard)
- Jellyfin
- the Arr's
- Linkwarden
- WireGuard
- Zoraxy
- ChangeDetection
- Forgejo
- MeTube/AnonymousOverflow/ProxiTok/RedLib/SafeTwitch/LibMedium
- Grafana/InfluxDB/Prometheus
- Homebox
- IT tools
- Mealie
- MiniQR
- Speedtest-Tracker
- Wallos
- Web-Check
Wait so you have like rack mounted server but only run jellyfin? Am I missing something here ?
There's no rack mount server there. I see a UPS, switch (network and Nintendo varieties), PS4 and mini PC
I had the same thought - an entire 8U rack to hold a single raspberry pi with an external drive?
- Old Synology NAS for storage
- Optiplex 7060 running jellyfin, paperless, *arr stack, handbrake, ripper, maybe some other containers.
- NUC5 running nextcloud (nextcloudpi) baremetal and an audiobiokshelf container
Top to Bottom:
- 48port Patch panel
- Cisco 2990 48 port Poe
- 48port Patch panel (future)
- Cisco 2990 48 port Poe (future)
- 24 port patch panel (spare)
- Pfsense 2.5gb eth minipc
- 4u server 20 bay (proxmox)
Bottom area:
- 2 mini pcs (proxmox)
- PiKVM and ezcoo switch connected to all PCs
- Couple of UPS
The access to the crawlspace isn't great so the CrapRack ^tm^ had to be assembled in the crawlspace.
So nobody is going to ask about the rotary phone?
It's a GPO 706, which is a classic British bakelite phone from the '60s. I have it hooked up to a SIP trunk through an OBi 100. Right now it can receive calls but not make them because I haven't gotten around to sorting out a pulse-to-tone dialing converter yet.
Old setup:
Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 that I bought refurbished for ~€130
- i5-6500T (Passmark score 4792)
- 8GB RAM
- 512GB SATA SSD + 128GB SATA SSD (completely used for swap)
- Buffalo DriveStation™ HD-WLU3 that I bought second hand for €10
- 2 × 2TB SATA HDD's in RAID 1
- ~20W
New setup:
Custom build
- ASUS Prime N100I-D D4 (Passmark score 5501) (~€100)
- 16GB RAM - Crucial CT16G4SFRA32A (€28)
- 512GB SATA SSD
- 4 × 4TB SATA HDD's in RAID 5 using mdadm (€160)
- M.2 NVME to SATA 6x (ASM1116 for C-states) (€17)
- 17.8W
(Not the Proliant Microserver Gen8 on top, the device below)
The antennas are from a Sonoff Zigbee dongle and a bluetooth dongle for Home Assistant.
I've mostly focused on power usage, price, and reliability since I'm a student and don't want to spend a month's worth of income on a "home lab".
It's running the following:
- Forgejo
- Grafana
- Home Assistant
- Jellyfin
- Kopia
- Nginx-proxy-manager
- Paperless NGX
- Photoprism
- Syncthing
- TimescaleDB
- Uptime-kuma
- Vaultwarden: As backup
- Watch Your LAN
- Arr stack (currently disabled)
- Homebox: Still up for testing, like it has been for the past couple months. It's a great concept but the execution ain't great (does anyone happen to know an alternative?)
It's using about 10% CPU and is running below 40°.
This is a custom built mini PC, with a mini-ITX motherboard and an Intel N100 CPU. It gets powered by a power supply that I got from an old computer. Also, it needs no active cooling, just a heatsink. It almost never gets above 60°C.
(and yes, it has no case).
In it I run:
- Jellyfin
- All of the *arr stack
- Pairdrop
- My website
- My personal Lemmy instance
- Immich
- Pi-Hole
- Home Assistant
- Grafana/Prometheus/Node-Exporter stack for monitoring
From top to bottom:
- Patch panel (with artisinal, handmade cables)
- TP-Link managed switch Shelf 1:
- PFSense 4 port firewall
- Lenovo m910q w/Proxmox (cluster node 1) running 2 VMs for docker hosting: Ubuntu for media stuff (arrs, navidrome, jellyfin, calibre, calibre-web, tubesync, syncthing) and Debian for other stuff (paperless-ngx, vikunja, vscodium, redlib, x-pipe webtop, fasten health, linkwarden, alexandrite), 1 Win 10 VM for the very few times I need to use windows, some Red Hat Academy student and instructor RHEL 9 VMs, and an OPNsense VM for testing Shelf 2:
- HP Elitedesk G5 800 SFF w/Proxmox (cluster node 2) with an Nvidia GT 730 passed through to a Debian VM used primarily as a remote desktop via ThinLinc, but also runs a few docker containers (stirling pdf, willow application server, fileflows)
- Shuttle DH110 w/Proxmox (cluster node 3) with 1 VM running Home Assistant OS with an NVME Coral TPU passed through as well as a zooz 800 long range zwave coordinator (the zigbee coordinator is ethernet and in a different room) and two LXCs with grafana and prometheus courtesy of tteck (RIP) Shelf 3:
- WIP Fractal R5 server to replace the ancient Ubuntu file server to the left (outside the rack, sitting on the box of ethernet cable) that is primarily the home of my media drives (3 12 TB Ironwolf drives) and was my first homelab server. The new box will have a Tesla p4 and RX 580 GTX, i7-8700T and 64GB RAM in addition to the drives from the old server. I'll be converting the Ubuntu drive from the old server into an image and will use it to create a Proxmox VM on the new server, with the same drives passed through. Bottom:
- 2 Cyberpower CP1000 UPS with upgraded LiFePO4 batteries. The one on the left is only for servers and only exists to give the servers time to shut down cleanly when the power goes out. The one on the right is only for network devices (firewall, switch and the Ruckus R500 out of shot mounted higher in the closet)
My tech stack:
And my storage NAS:
Bottom NUC: General compute
Top NUC: Proxmox with homeassistant, windows server and debian
Raspberry Pi4 inside N64 case: PiHole
Access Point: Unifi Pro
PC for gaming: R7 7800X3D + Nvidia 3070 inside Fractal North
NAS: Ugreen 4800+ with 4x 15TB drives for a total of RaidZ2 30TB usable storage. Used as NFS storage for proxmox.
How it started: 2 8TB external HDDs connected to my bottom NUC.
Primary applications:
*arr Suite, Jellyfin, several minor apps.
I just got 10 Gbit internet last week so I had a chance to tidy everything up. The ThinkCentre is the 10 Gbit router, the Synology actually hosts everything.
Also finally labeled all the mystery cables. Also replaced the proprietary 20V/12V bricks for the ThinkCentre and 10G Fiber ONU with USB-C adapter cables to keep things tidier.
mostly runs jellyfin for a group of about 30 users (2 or 3 on at most times). runs alpine on bare bones. the box was originally filled with foam cutouts from storing iPads in a school district I worked at. I figure it's 20tbs of storage and 16gb ecc is a welcome upgrade. it stays cool cause I cutout half the side and put an AC fan in there. future upgrades involve the Nvidia k40 card I have, but I need to design an active cooling system for it before it can be installed as that thing gets HOT
Not taking a picture, but here's what I have:
- Ryzen 1700 in a giant case sitting on my desk (desktop PC is on top of that in a mini-ITX case); 2x 8TB HDDs, connected to network over Wi-Fi; hope to cut the size significantly once one of our ITX boxes need an upgrade (both Ryzen 5600s)
- Mikrotik router (5 port) and Ubiquiti AP sitting next to my bed; Mikrotik handles my local static DNS for my public services
Running:
- Jellyfin, as well as Samba and some other NAS stuff
- HomeAssistant (nothing monitored though, but I plan to add my Sensi thermostat soon)
- Actual Budget
- Nextcloud
- Vaultwarden (currently unused, plan to switch soon)
I also have a VPS to get around CGNAT, and I have a Wireguard VPN configured so communication is encrypted.
Plans:
- upgrade NAS to either a mini-ITX motherboard or a mini-PC w/ external USB-C enclosure
- actually run Ethernet - have been putting off for years
- configure my Sensi thermostat in HA and maybe get some other smart home crap
- use Nextcloud more - want to get SO using the notes app so I can finally kill Google Notes for shared shopping lists
- port my PF spreadsheet to LibreOffice and actually learn to use LO Calc (currently using Google Sheets); I use GoogleFinance func for stock quotes, so I need to replace that with some other workflow (mostly rebalancing investments)
- replace our TV or at least have an alternative for Jellyfin - the config disappears whenever our TV WiFi screws up, which is like 2-3x/month; screw you LG...
So yeah, somewhat simple. My family likes Jellyfin, but I haven't really gotten them on board with anything else.
My dusty Intel NUC 10:
With a 2TB USB drive plugged in on the right there.
Runs all these services via Docker like a champ: AudioBookshelf, Dockge, File Browser, Forgejo, FreshRSS, Immich, Jellyfin, LemmySchedule, Memos, Navidrome, Paperless NGX, Pihole, Planka, SideQuests, Syncthing, Wallos
Here's my messy-cabled 9u rack.
It has:
- Fiber gateway out of view on top of the rack.
- Switch, which also powers 2 Ruckus APs and 2 other switches.
- Mikrotik RB5009 router.
- Raspberry Pi x3 all running Debian Bookworm. I have too many pis right now, running Home Assistant, LibreNMS, Log collection, and a read-only NUT server that orchestrates shutdowns and startups on power loss. I need to consolidate these.
- 1L PCs. One is on Debian serving media and files. The other is a test server where I'm trying out Immich on openSUSE. I'm considering moving to that and rootless podman for services. To that end I have another of these 1L boxes on my desk trying other options (MicroOS, Fedora IoT, maybe others).
- HDs. These are backup drives for the 1L server. I keep them powered off except when needed.
- UPS and a managed, switched PDU.
Everything is set up for low energy consumption (~90w), remote admin, and recovery from power loss.
I feel like this should be a quarterly post. Really liking all these setups.
literally one these with loads of RAM and a wifi card, so i can fit all the shenanigans in one box
Ikea shelf instead of a rack, but I used metal shelves for better thermals!
Top to bottom:
- Unifi ac
- Brother printer
- Sunshine streaming machine
- ftth 1 / 2, unifi GW pro
- AVR, UPS, Synology NAS
Used it for Minecraft server for a week then never used it again. Don't know anything it would be good for that my computer can't already do better tbh
Testing an image post from Voyager client...
I only own the gear marked A and B, which lives above the couch I call home.
A is my web services 24/7 Proxmox box, an Intel 8500T; 2 routers; an 8TB HDD; and a Back-UPS Pro so old its ethernet surge protection is rated for 100bT, with a brand new LFP battery in it. The UPS powers both A and B.
B is my personal Proxmox box, an AMD 5750GE, which I use for development and running desktop OSes which I remote into, plus a GL.iNet Slate AX router. These come with me if I stay someplace other than the couch (not pictured). That's why they're on different shelves. Also, there's a USB wifi dongle w/antenna connected to B which I used when some stupid website demands I drop my VPN (all traffic from everything pictured is routed thru 24/7 private VPN endpoints, aka a $2/mo VPS or three).
From top to bottom:
- Allpower Power Station (UPS with around 4 hours of battery)
- Unifi gateway
- Unifi switch
- Unify CloudKey (Surveillance)
- Patch panel
- 1.5U media server
- Arock Mini running stuff like my Lemmy instance and other self hosted software.
I’m planning to move my Lemmy instance to its own 1.5U.
The whole setup uses around 80-100 watts.
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