HomeLab Hardware Tour! (Late 2023)

[@TechnoTim]

HomeLab Software & Services Tour coming soon!

[@briti1543]

Hi, I'm definitely looking for a in-rack homelab server to use as my "2" in a 3-2-1 backup setup. Currently I just have one on site and one off. And I'm in the twin cities!

[@BrandonCallifornia]

It’s a private cloud ☁️ if you put your server in a collocation

[@YossiSilberhaft]

The Suspense.....!!!! Would love to hear how you are maximizing your use of Proxmox and if you have any media servers

[@saultube44]

What do you work on with your servers, I mean earning💲

[@abe488]

YESS!

[@RaidOwl]

Perfect, time to feel inferior about my lab! *grabs popcorn*

[@TechnoTim]

😂 Not my intention! Hopefully give some inspiration or ideas!

[@Trains-With-Shane]

Should have waited on those wireless AP's. Then everything would have been fine, lol. Love your channel too!

[@TheJam53ice]

Talk about inferior, my home lab is basically a repurposed chromebox 😅 gotta start somewhere

[@avovk1852]

You can feel inferior about your lab if you havent set it up! Or can you..? (VSause music)

[@Tony-mw-533]

@@TheJam53ice definitely😅

[@Jaabaa_Prime]

That is not just a home lab, it is also a WORK OF ART! 😍

[@TechnoTim]

Form AND function for me. Why not both!

[@glepa]

True, it shows that there is a lot of time gone into this, makes me want to go home and clean up my own homelab lol

[@abe488]

Finally! Love it an actual walkthrough tour of a home lab and the uses for said devices! Keep it up! Please do another video just like this again soon! Really got ALOT of new ideas I can start implementing on my homelab as a low-budget newbie THANK YOU!

[@Trains-With-Shane]

Congratulations on another massively successful year, Tim! You got me started in Docker a few years back and it has been one of my most rewarding home lab endeavors and keeps bearing fruit as such. Think i'm going to have to upgrade my home setup to 2.5gbt at some point soon, though. As 1gbt is starting to take just a little too long for the amounts of data i'm moving these days.

[@smalltimer4370]

Absolutely brilliant! You are an inspiration to all home-lab enthusiasts. - thanks so much for taking the time and effort in making and sharing this!

[@techaddressed]

I, for one, would be super interested in a video / series about what goes into colocating systems.

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! Just working out some of the details! Stay tuned!

[@dominick253]

I went from no homelab to a pi 4 openwrt router, two node proxmox cluster with 30 services running on it, a device for quorum. Pretty happy with the setup for now. Maybe upgrade to 2.5 or 5g lan network. 3:57 you got to be kidding me 😂😂😂 One of the cleanest setups I've ever seen and you're saying it's out of control.

[@PolarrCloud]

Very awesome to see, I’m just setting up and diving into my first homelab! Super cool to Learn that your local to MN! Always love learning from your videos!

[@SteveOwensRoswell]

Thanks for the video... love watching the evolution of your homelab.

[@KenTechAdventures]

Great setup! I really enjoyed the tour. I used your NUT tutorial today in my lab. After I figured out the timing intricacies with my HA Proxmox cluster nodes, it is working great!

[@lqqkout8214]

Twin Cities?! Subscribed! My background is in infosec and I've been networking and running various NAS and home automation projets, electronics builds, and other solder-covered geekery for years. My next major project is a DIY smarthome buildout for new a construction home in Mpls based on homeassistant with a ton of integrations. I'm excited to see what you move to for SFF servers and self-hosted cloud services. Thanks for the tour!

[@Taylor-ys2vh]

Nice setup. I can tell you based on my experience with ota, you should pull that antenna out of your attic and affix it outdoors. There is no amount of signal boosting that will correct for rf shadowing from under a roof. They're designed to be outdoors. I had mine outdoors on a gable mast, I believe it was a 5ft pole. So it sat roughly 30-35ft off the ground and survived multiple hurricanes in Fl. I picked up 67-70 channels with it.

[@vex4800]

Wonderful Lab! I recommend maybe switching your rack power to 240v. i’m here in the states and it has massively improved efficiency in the rack! Definitely a fun project

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! That might be in the cards over the next year depending on price!

[@vex4800]

@@TechnoTim Wonderful!! In closing a PDU it was around a 400 dollar upgrade. THE PDU was around 150. it was a used APC model

[@jasonperry6046]

It is a gorgeous spectacle. This is inspirational. My only suggestion is dry ice creating a magical fog at the beginning of the video.

[@ronniesunshine1163]

Homelab noob here, how does 240v improve efficiency over 120v?

[@syndaquil4838]

​@@ronniesunshine1163I'm no expert, but I think of it similarly to why the grid runs at higher voltage. Everything requires fewer amps at higher voltages, so there's less loss in the cables and stuff.

[@jgbenik6281]

Twin Cities fan who would love to upgrade my Dell R700 TrueNas and add something newer to my almost empty rack. Thanks for your content, I wish I could support you more, truly great details for a very novice techie!

[@Mardeet]

Do you have a video or more information on Net Server running on your Pi? Curious what all it can monitor ?

[@gregs909]

Hey twin cities neighbor, thanks for the tour. Happy new year! New sub

[@mrfoodarama]

Beautiful setup man, loved the Tour!

[@dylantrisciuzzi9479]

For the cables, have you considered using a vr pully system? Would still allow you to pull the servers out still while pulling the cables to the side when the server is pushed in

[@gustcol1]

Very good and thanks for sharing all parts and components, this is very helpful

[@TechnoTim]

You are welcome

[@kingsisidore]

Always a delight to see your videos... Would be thrilled to receive any of your decommissioned server and hardwares to work with.

[@kingsisidore]

Pretty please 🙏🏽

[@stuartcastle2814]

Bit more impressive than my home lab, which is essentially a PC attached to a netgear switch, running Proxmox, and various virtual machines, some running Linux, some running various flavours of Windows. The VMs are used for essentially experiementation, and so I can learn various aspects of the software installed on the VMs safe in the knowledge that if I break something, I've lost nothing important, and can just restore the VM from a snapshot. While I do have a lot of different services and devices (Internet etc) that *could* go in a server room, unfortunately, I don't have a spare room, or even much space for a rack.

[@mrudowsky2781]

I didn’t see in the description any hardware you used to mount devices to the wall control board. Are the devices easy to move?

[@TechnoTim]

Generally yes, just like any other pegboard you have to get lucky with the alignment of holes and your devices. I used machine screws and wing nuts otherwise zip ties

[@mikenorfleet2235]

Saw another video on YT about the pikvm or blikvm don't remember but summarizing they said that those EDIDs are established when you power up each of the units. There is a particular order to power on the pikvm the hdmi switcher box, and each of the units that sends those EDIDs. TLDR, powering on each box in a specific sequence will make it all work correctly together. (unfortunately I don't remember the correct sequence)

[@TechnicalJello]

Nice video! Have you done any diving into your Nethserver setup? Why do you choose it over other server OSes?

[@theointechs]

This video feels like a christmas gift to me!

[@nickgnjatovic9535]

I got to 30 seconds before I felt compelled to like this video. Well done Tim for such great work and content!

[@theWSt]

Nice home lab, pretty sophisticated, I'm impressed! About the Intel NUCs, you say, they are kinda expensive and kinda discontinued. Nowadays this is no problem anymore, more and more mini PCs hit the market. I recently got into starting a home lab by getting a Trigkey G5 with an Intel N100 for under 300 bucks on Amazon. The N100 is no powerhouse, but extremely power efficient. Running 24/7 in idle costs me less than two bucks a month, under moderate load it is still under 10 bucks. And despite the fact that the Intel N100 spec says it supports only 16 GB of RAM, I run 32 GB without a problem. The mini PC also features two 2.5 Gbit NICs, which makes it pretty versatile also for building clusters. So if you want to extend your NUC cluster, I can recommend getting some cheap power-saving mini PCs. I also recommend these over getting Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny, because these old refurbished machines mostly have only one 1 Gbit NIC. Greetings from the country where Proxmox comes from. 😁

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you! I am thinking of a cluster of n100s soon! Dual 2.5 Gb is LAGG sounds nice!

[@HuyPhamFly]

Awesome to see your homelab! I am kind of using your setup as a reference to gear I would want in the future! I just started my Homelabs here in the Twin-Cities too! I was itching to learn some more about Linux and HyperVisors, I just bought myself a HPE - ProLiant DL380 G9! We are slowly learning proxmox and ILo and like DHCP. its kinda fun lol

[@TechnoTim]

Sounds like a great homelab and you are going to be learning a lot!

[@tmushy]

Thanks for the great video. Regarding the pikvm. I had the same issues. I also had an older model that doesnt support 60hz. I got fed up with the all the edid issues and setup a Decimator MD-HX that I had around (Im a video engineer). Solved all my issues. I get its an expensive fix but it works 100%. I saw some cheap scalers from crestron for sale on ebay that might work out. I had this so I just used it

[@LexGoyle]

And here I am just having bought a 27U sysracks cabinet for learning to build up a home lab. Definitely wouldn’t mind entering for a chance at that server :D

[@stevemccluskey7102]

Hey Tim! I live near Powderhorn park and I'll totally take that server off your hands and buy you a beer!

[@comp20B]

Tim, is your rack the 35" depth? Do you find it deep enough? I see sysracks has some with 39" depth.

[@phillipvarao]

I remember watching last year's 2022 video. Love these!!!

[@rangefreewords]

Great setup! I have an APC Power supply that I bought as well, ran a TV and a laptop and it ended having an internal load fault that I could clear, but, after 3 months it was inop. I'm not sure if I'd want a Phillips hue or subscription service for household lighting, etc. Love the Pi packet and controller.

[@rangefreewords]

That hybrid server sounds great. You could easily merge that on a small rack with the powered down older server.

[@BrianSez]

Hi Tim, I'm looking to set up a server and networking room in my basement and was wondering if you had to dedicate a circuit for your server room. I'm looking to have my basement re-wired and was wondering how many amps I would expect to need for a server room.

[@khuzad12]

Didn't know you were in the Twin Cities. Let's hope our winter isn't too horrible this year.

[@LovelGeorge]

Hi tim can you show how u run your nextcloud and how connect truenas as the storage for it..

[@wiebowesterhof]

Nice setup. One detail. The Enterprise switches do 2.5G, but not PoE++, only PoE+ - you will spot that when you look at the decomissioned switch. Usually not a big deal, but some devices pull more power than the Enterprise one can provide. Keep up the good work :)

[@TechnoTim]

Good call! I forgot about that!

[@firestar4430]

How do you handle your patch panel in between your udm and switch? I have a similar setup, and adding a new connection really sucks with only 1U of room to maneuver lol. Do you just unmount the patch panel, or do you have a smarter way?

[@procheeseburger_2]

I really like the idea of giving away old gear its what I’ve always done as well! Great tour.

[@jasonmehlhoff8877]

Very nice and informative! Thank you for always having very thorough videos. I was just talking to my buddy about getting my first "real" server instead of mini pcs! Haha. I like small things but also have s soft spot for raw power! Haha. Cheers, Jason M

[@TheDillio187]

Hello from a fellow Twin City home labber and network dork. 500 watts, whew, I was mad when mine broke 150 watts 🤣. Xcel energy hates me.

[@rkymtnrsx]

Does your WAN support 2.5 Gig? I just added the UDM Pro to my setup so I can now get 1.4GB from my ISP to my router with the RJ45 SFP+ adapter. Before I was only able to pull down a max of 850 Mbps with my old Dream Machine R2D2 router.

[@dleer_defi]

I lost it when I saw the signal booster 😂

[@camerong5750]

Thank you for the video I’m gonna start a build from your video. Just gotta start getting some components to start. What version “u” of sysracks are you using?

[@paul3151]

Hi Tim, Which speeds are you reaching with that Setup? I measured with iperf but usually i don't geht over 5gbits

[@wontmk]

Hi, fairly new the the channel. Love what your share, thanks for the content. Did I hear you say Twin Cites? MPLS/St.Paul? I'm looking for a server =)

[@FamilyFunTimeTV]

Love your videos. Quick question how to do keep the throughput on your UniFi screens all the time

[@jamestiller]

Hey Tim : If I am going to run k3s at home, can I run it with 1 single fairly OP server and not have to use multiple separate machines? My thought is telling me to try Harvester to see if that gives everything needed. Which is some storage, tons of VMs and dockers/containers. I am quite comfy with Proxmox, would that be the better option to go with the Max then deploy kubernetes or being with kubernetes with harvester/rancher ?

[@IMABIGKIDNOWW]

is the unifi pdu just a pdu or does it have surge protection too? And if it does have surge protection, do you notice any weird issues with it being plugged into your ups? e.g. incorrect run time estimates. thanks!

[@fixplizz]

Came across your channel and liked the videos. very high quality content. It just so happens that there is a cluster of proxmox servers of different configurations at hand. No separate storage. Can you tell me if you have any articles or videos on how to unite different hardware into one convenient interface? How to properly distribute storage and virtual machine management. Thanks in advance!

[@hyperprotagonist]

I love the colour theme. It just works. Love it. Having a hard time locating my jaw.

[@morneauh]

Your weakest point is the APC battery backup on the wall. I had 2 of those and they both failed the same way at the same time. When the battery inside goes bad (3 to 5 years after install), they just shutoff when there is an outage and stay off even when the power come back.

[@emteiks]

would be great to see the 'frontend" of this setup as i wonder what kind of stuff you plug into this monster

[@markhammond6338]

Your homelab is just beautiful, and it gives me something to aspire to! I'm in the Twin Cities, if you're serious about giving away your old backup server😊

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you, and I am! Look for it on twitter! That's usually where I give away my old gear!

[@kanemorganv]

What is that metal mounting board that you have all of your IoT things on?

[@TempusStar]

How are you not killing your breaker, simply curious because im planning on a similar setup

[@devjwhy]

2024 GOALS!!! keep it up!

[@aricbrown3683]

I bought about 15 Thinkcntr ultra small form factor PCs at an auction, Put m.2 and 16 or 32g memory and 3d printed rackmounts and use them as a proxmox cluster only have 5 installed Thats a good alternative to the NUCS

[@prongATO]

The Ubiquiti rush panels are super nice.

[@jasonperry6046]

One question, the longer a piece of co-ax cable is, the greater the loss in. Have you thought of putting the receiver closer to the antenna?

[@wpoole10]

Hello, just started building my TrueNAS server it will have 8 spinning disk in a raidz2. I want that to be my main storage for plex media. I want to have faster storage for everything else (family photos/videos, documents, etc). I also want to buy a Flex 10 GbE for the TrueNAS, TrueNAS backup, and my computer. My question is do I go with four 2TB SSDs in a raid10 or two 4TB NVME drives in a mirror? If the is a waste do I save some more and do four 4TB NVMEs in a raid10?

[@mircea8342]

Tons of homelabs with unifi. After configure unifi most of them they think they are network engineer😁. I want to see full mikrotik homelab

[@zoiks6631]

That would be because Ubiquiti gives these clowns free hardware in exchange for signing an agreement where Ubiquiti gets to review all videos containing their products and stipulate changes to the videos before they can be published. If you see a KZbinr using Ubiquiti products that they didn’t pay for with their own money, that’s a sure sign that they’re a shill. There are only a few KZbinrs that actually review network hardware in an unbiased way. None of them ever show Ubiquiti equipment due to their required contract.

[@CruzMonrreal]

Nice setup, but some advice. As much as I love Wall Control, I steer away from it because the massive sheets of metal wreck HAVOC on wireless signals. Imagine your APs as light bulbs, and those pegboards as walls, and it gets the idea across. It wouldn't surprise me if those panels were attenuating the LTE antenna as well

[@aliazimi91]

How are the temps for your rack and the room? Do you have any cooling solutions?

[@stevenPounder-p4b]

Cabinet color and led color is simple but just pops together

[@TheMchip]

Thank you tim and i must say al love watcing your videos! Rack videos are totally awsome! :D

[@JohnWeland]

Nice tour my dude. If you want to co-locate, I am about 3 -3.5 hours from you, SW Minnesota. I have a 42u rack with 500/500 fiber; I have 2G/2G available. running 2 Dell r620s at the moment running proxmox, thinking of adding a 3rd and maybe run CEPH on them? Maybe then run a kube cluster like you do on your NUCs. The 42u rack is an older one, in the basement. I am considering moving to a 37u or 32u rack and then gifting the 42u to someone who is starting their homelab journey. 42u works but is a bit much for my space.

[@krakenbinary2051]

excited to see the evolution! Also excited to see similar things to what I am getting!

[@0xTevan]

Awesome video, super nice rack! Did you end up giving away your old desktop server?

[@taylorkosiba1452]

I'm in the Twin Cities area, and would love a rackmount server to get my homelab going

[@glepa]

hi, what kind of 10g sfp+ gbic are you using with the cat5e cables?

[@HM3al]

Nice setup. I'm jealous of the hl-15.i want one so bad, but they're expensive

[@gowinfanless]

Nice video,do we have a chance to be here with R86S-N305C 25G version as a strong homelab hardware,a firewall router and server!

[@andresvanvliet3413]

Nice home lab! Nicer than most of my offices (ok, all of them). But that umbilical really needs some ladder rack. If you figure out how to cap the resolution on you KVM please post. My kvm passes on the resolution from what ever monitor is plugged in, but freaks out over 1400x900. Thanks for the inspiration!

[@mistakek]

Really nice setup. Always take some ideas from you. Looking forward to the software tour.

[@404thtrooper]

I'm not a renewable energy nut but just curious if you've considered/done the math on solar power at your home?

[@kylesibley5993]

Dude you're in the twin cities? Nice to see another Minnesotan on here :) I volunteer to take that server you mentioned giving away lol

[@eddiezhang6781]

how's the temperation like for those nucs

[@jsclayton]

Soooooo the backup Pi-hole, in case “all this goes down” (Tim gesturing at the rack), is connected to the network via a PoE switch powered from said rack? 🤨 I hope I’m missing something obvious here?

[@blueswitchtech]

From Tanzania, you didi it well brother.

[@JosephChambers]

How large is your server room? I'm building a house and would like a reference.

[@alaricmtb5806]

Heyo, local to the TC area. If you are looking for somewhere to land that PC conversion server I'd be willing to take it off your hands. Let me know!

[@TheJam53ice]

I love videos like this, could we get a software tour? See what vms you're running and why?

[@TechnoTim]

You surely will! I do it ever year, that's coming soon!

[@TheJam53ice]

@@TechnoTim firstly, thanks for the reply! And secondly, I look forward to it!

[@eggman9713]

I'm really looking forward to some videos on colocating bare metal machines for the homelabber. I know there are a couple of small data centers in my area but there seems to be absolutely no information on how much such arrangements would cost or what to even ask as a not-IT-professional. If I lived in Germany, it seems like Hetzner would be a no-brainer for the low cost, but I live in the US, and there just doesn't seem to be much of a market for such small colocation deployments.

[@settlece]

did you add the voice commentary after as canot hear the server's

[@disabledarmyveteran]

A Bluetti with a solar panel connected for an uninterrupted power supply would work much better and it’s designed for pass through power until the wall power is off then the uninterrupted power supply kicks in. A 100 watt or 200 watt solar panel would work great because most uninterrupted power supply batteries don’t allow for solar power integration like Bluetti does.

[@AngryGibberish]

I have to say, your presentation and cadence comes off as very professional. I sincerely doubt I could deliver this information without sounding monotonous.

[@TechnoTim]

Thank you so much! It's taken a lot to get to this point! Still so much room for improvement (in my eyes). Appreciate that!

[@kingalysterianlion5542]

The m1 Mac mini solution will work well. But go with an m2 chip instead it’s totally worth it. Especially for your use case.

[@davidarvay3836]

For the device at 100 half did you try to configure the port to 100/full? If the device is locked at that speed it will need you to manually set 100/full.

[@TechnoTim]

Thanks! I will give it a shot!

[@rebrok3n]

What happened to the Ezcoo KVM? Just not enough ports or the TESmart is better?

[@TechnoTim]

EZcoo works great! I still have it but I wanted something rack mounted to keep it clean!

[@hashbrownfob]

Richfield here, would love to get that server. I've been planning out my network and homelab for awhile. Ready to make it happen!

[@CarlosPedroche]

Hello, I want to build a home server, but I don't know how to manage it, do you know any company that offers this kind of service? thanks.

[@garethcraig8902]

That rack costs more then my house lol

[@drkavnger99]

@technotim if you decide to get rid of that desktop rack mount locally let me know. Would love to relocate and upgrade my old desktop to my server rack on the other side of the wall (desk and rack share a wall in opposing rooms. Could never justify the cost of a rack mount but the 5th gen intel cpu is very long in the tooth now as well

[@yourpcmd]

Have you looked at the issue of ZFS data corruption for TrueNAS, UnRAID, Proxmox, and Ubuntu?

[@owenbearden5769]

I want to learn about this. I have no idea what any of this means but I’m super interested

[@miguelfna]

which panels are those where you using your tech wall?

[@TechnoTim]

They are linked in the description!

[@rickyjenkins12]

Got to ask the really small patch cables in the rack where did you get those from I see all KZbinrs have them but can never seem to find them anywhwer

[@TechnoTim]

Linked in the description! I've been using them for years and love them!