The Hardware in my Homelab, and the Open Source Software I use to run it all in 2023.

[@maxdiamond55]

Fabulous setup. I'm inspired by the wooden rack setup.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks. One thing I didn't really show is that the shelves have gaps from front to back. This allows cooling to the bottom of the servers as well.

[@codispatch6869]

Your home lab setup looks clean and beautiful 🙂 Thanks for sharing this video 🙏

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

My pleasure. Glad you like it.

[@marshall834]

I'd recommend Storj as offsite storage. It's S3 compatible and integrated into Truenas. Plus its open source and decentralized - I've enjoyed it so far!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Awesome! Adding it to my list of options to look into.

[@Mikesco3]

I like I-drive for cloud storage, they've been awesome for years. They are very generously priced, keep daily snapshots and will mail you the data if you need it in a pinch and can't download it fast enough (you'll pay for shipping and the drives)

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

That is awesome. Added to my list.

[@heeelga]

Nice little setup. I like the self build rack. When upgrading slowly like you do, one can honor the little things more imho. Something I noticed across many of your videos: your microphone sensitivity seems to be set too high, your voice is clipping pretty badly from time to time. Keep it up!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yeah, I almost never use that lapel mic, so sorry about the audio there.

[@johnnyg3606]

Excellent content mate, loving this channel!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks, and glad you're here.

[@rguifa]

Great setup, thanks for sharing!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

My pleasure!

[@pecasuy]

Thank you for your time and knowledge, I loved your rack, I copied your idea, and I suggest that instead of velcro you use small magnets in each corner of the wooden lid, regards

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

What a great idea! Love it.

[@il51diablo]

Sorry about your dad. All my condolences.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I appreciate it. It's never easy to lose someone, but he left me with incredible life lessons, and drive to learn, and be better.

[@il51diablo]

@@AwesomeOpenSource THANKS. This is what I've been trying to do for a long time but I only have people who only take advantage of me and my family...

[@putocargoso]

Loving all your content

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thank you so much!

[@kevinhughes9801]

Amazing setup thank you for sharing and the great vids so helpful

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

My pleasure.

[@sonictech1000]

Proxmox is the best thing since sliced bread. Currently I install it separately on Debian rather than using the official images but I may switch due to easier upgrades. I still use Virtual Box on my laptop.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Love Proxmox. it has been an awesome tool!

[@bluesquadron593]

Only thing I miss is the high availability for essential services

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Indeed. It's one of those things where it can be done, but you need more planning and equipment to really implement it well. You have to consider power outages, internet outages, simple networking issues that arise, and so on. That's the value of things like Digital Ocean, where their infrastructure allows you to spread an application or service across multiple hosts in multipel data centers / locations.

[@andyh3873]

I've got 2x DL360p, a Cisco Nexus 3064PQ and 2x custom built NAS/SAN boxes each running 8x drives linked up to an APC Smart-UPS 1500 with additional battery packs. Gives me around 50 mins continuing runtime of all of those components if the power goes completely..

[@TheAlgonmusic]

I really thought you would have a crazy hacker enormously rack of servers Amazing just a couple of them in a diy enclosure! Good for you ! You are the best What model is your production server ?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

My production server is a Dell R730-XD with 256 GB RAM and 2 CPUs with 12 Cores each.

[@silversword411]

For anyone else looking for that Home Lab Dashboard that was 1/3 of your video. Dashy!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yes, thank you. I do use Dashy! I talked about it in my previous videos on the Open Source software I use everyday.

[@XSpImmaLion]

Let me put up a question here that I think this community will be better able to have a good answer for... So, I did all the cabling for my apartment with Cat 5e cabling, and it was kinda harsh. The apartment came with cable TV coax routed to all rooms, but in a very weird convoluted way... For instance, in order for me to reach the living room TV, which is right next to the entrance door which has the utility box, the cabling basically has to pass all rooms of the apartment in order to reach it. Let's say for instance that the living TV is like some 10 meters from the utility box, I actually had to pass some 50 meters of cabling to there there because it goes all around the apartment before getting there. Not actual numbers, but just to give an idea. It's weird like that. And also, it was almost made to fit, they used very narrow conducts, and I think some of it collapsed or are kinda disconnected because it was hell to pass a guide... I basically had to pull all the coax cable to barely fit through the Cat5e ethernet cable. I've been thinking of upgrading speeds for a while now, but I just know a Cat6 cable will be basically impossible to pass through the conducts... My question is, in terms of pricing and how difficult it is, how feasible is it to wire optical through these days? I'm on fiber already, so I know you can pass things through the building to get here, but I have no idea on how to clamp these things, the different standards, how it behaves routing inside the apartment, and stuff like that. Anything to watch out for? I know there are some pretty reasonably priced routes with fiber optic ports, but I'm not totally sure if using those in a home setting is a great scenario... they are mostly sold for business, right? Thanks!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

What speeds are you looking to get? Wifi 6 is pretty fast, wireless, adn avoids all that cabling. Wired is great, but if it's inhibited, sometimes the wireless approach is better.

[@XSpImmaLion]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Hey Brian, appreciate the channel! :D Hmmm so, it's a bit less about speed, and more about reliability... I've got some interference here, reason why I wired everything. xD Both Wi-fi and Bluetooth are kind of a mess here, I guess too many people using wireless stuff around me. Willing to go through the hassle of passing cables, but I won't mess with the Cat5 cables just yet if the next step either can't go through or is just too expensive to bother... Really, I'm already fine with the speeds I have, it's just a bit of long term thinking since I'm retrofitting an old PC for TrueNAS Scale and changing things around a bit.

[@brainscott]

Restic + Backblaze makes for a solid cloud backup solution

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Looking into Restic as we speak.

[@coletraintechgames2932]

Instead of the cloud, find a buddy that will let you put a server in the basement. Neighbor or parent or whatever. Pay them a small amount for electric, whatever. But that way your data is backed up and cost is cheap and you are in control.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

100% love that concept. I think just having the right software to make it simple and automated is key. For me, this is what Crashplan really did well.

[@thunderslap7390]

Geez mate I am in Australia and I got about $60 000 worth of racks and Servers, even a Sun with 128 Cores and about 1TB of Ram a monster connected via Optic to two old IBM Storage banks and a lot of Servers mostly 1U's I think the the Storage is about 48TB more or less. and even a set of 2 long range 30KM 5g backhaul wifi, the type with the dishes almost like Ubiquity. Anybody with a UTE, Pickup can get then free, no charge. The have been sitting in my shed on the farm for the past 8 years.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Well...if I were about 12,000 miles closer, I might just drop by. Maybe another Aussie will see this as an opportunity. Seriously though, you've got a really awesome set of stuff. What do you, or did you use it all for?

[@jetskisnowboardski]

Thanks for showing your setup! I got a bit curious. Do you ever need to spin up a ova or ovf? Since you only run Proxmox. I understand that you can convert them but it seems a bit cumbersome.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

No, I never use OVA or OVF. But, if I want to make a template in proxmost it's not hard, and can save a ton of time when experimenting.

[@dubas1974]

I just backup to icloud my most important docs and photos but use local USB storage for backups. I have 16tb drives as a backup that I rotate out of a fireproof safe.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Nice. Yeah, I need to slim down what I want to backup tot he cloud for sure, but I'm also thinking I might can use URBackup with a friend in another location to backup my stuff, and they can backup theirs to my system.. kind of what Crashplan offered, but in a fully open source way.

[@jeffherdz]

That's cool ! Question: For running all of that power. What type of battery backup do you have? And how do you cool that rack down?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

My office is kept pretty cool, so the rack itself has no built in cooling. Each server of course has it's own cooling. The fans don't spin much past idle most of the time. Battery Backup is one I got off of Amazon that is just enough to let the servers shutdown nicely, won't keep the servers running, they just use too much power.

[@vectorautomationsystems]

Hi. Great setup! What hardware are you running TrueNAS on?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I believe it's a Dell R710 server with several large HDDs in ZFS Raids.

[@Glatze603]

Hi, please make again a new video about how to install and configure netmaker... Would be great!

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I have 2 videos on doing this today.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Here's the link for one of them kzbin.info/www/bejne/jl6linePpLKSadk

[@2mustange]

Great setup! Is there a reason you chose to use iSpy over ZoneMinder? I know you have covered both (I think?) so wasn't sure if there was a reason

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I found iSpy to be a bit less resource intensive. I didn't realize that the open source part of iSpy was actually in their plugins, and not the software only, but it's working well, so didn't want to mess with my setup at the time. I'm looking at moving back to Frigate, or maybe something else so I may have some update videos this summer.

[@cheebadigga4092]

If Proxmox shows 100% RAM usage of a KVM guest, but the guest itself doesn't, then Proxmox simply allocated that amount of RAM to the guest. Meaning the guest is guaranteed that amount. Nothing to worry about.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Absolutely! My guest shows very little RAM usage in general, but the overhead view from the orchestrator (Proxmox) shows it in full use most of the time.

[@oso2k]

bia (second server) is an R610. It would have Xeon v3 or v4 CPUs if it was an R630 (not the Xeon E5645s that it has).

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks. I couldn’t remember exactly. It runs great still, no matter. Used it for testing on two new videos today. Just solid hardware.

[@oso2k]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Yup I had 6x R610s for a few years before I upgraded.

[@Maleko48]

have you checked out the new Latte Pandas and similar hardware making their way to the markets for low power nodes?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Not yet, but I’ll look them up.

[@Maleko48]

the new LP Sigma model SBC is performant and well rounded considering its size and scope, if not a bit pricey. can't wait for the day they come down in price to something more reasonable or go on holiday fire sale. supposedly roughly equivalent to the newer framework laptops or Intel NUCs that target the 45watt power envelope and afford solid single thread performance 😁 win-win in my book

[@MichaelMcDonald2]

For your cloud backups, have you considered Linode?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I have. I'm thinking about a VPS provider with something like MinIO running the object storage, but just not decided quite yet.

[@drumer2142]

You run all this equipment through just this generic switch ?? Do you have extra network equipment you did not show in the video maybe ?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Oh yes. I have a pfSense firewall, and several APs around my home, but that switch is the switch taking all of those things out to the rest of my network. It's actually been a good little Gigabit switch.

[@drumer2142]

@@AwesomeOpenSource ​ Great Setup. Thank you for sharing.

[@mygamedeveloper]

Is possible to make own personal or business purpose cloud hosting and object storage using Intel NuC mini pc we have 10 + mini pc powerful pc

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Sure, just takes a bit of work, planning, and time. But the tools to do it absolutely exist today.

[@varodaya]

I've a problem in netmaker , I cannot connect all the nodes that I install the VPN on , do you know why ? Route table looks ok ,still I can't ping other servers from this node I installed

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

So, without more detail on how you've set it up it's hard to know for sure.

[@varodaya]

@@AwesomeOpenSource how to send you ?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Go over to my discussion site at discuss.opensourceisawesome.com and post in the #help-me-please channel. Someone, or I will take a look and see if we can help.

[@dimitristsoutsouras2712]

Which VM /CT exactly is eating so much ram? From the names of them I can t figure it out.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

On my Aria Server the VMs will use all of the RAM allocated to them (they reserve that RAM) from the main system. CTs only use what they need, and then will grow up to what is allocated. So on my Ubuntu VM where I allocate 24 GB, it uses 24 GB from the full 256 Available. Inside the VM it shows what's actually in use by the OS.

[@chuxxsss]

I really like your wooden box for your servers. Do you have the diameters for it?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Sure, w x h x l = 27 x 34 x 31 (inches). Not including the casters it's on. That's just the box itself. The shelves are not solid, but have gaps from front to back as well in 4 sections so air can flow under the bottom of the servers as well.

[@chuxxsss]

@@AwesomeOpenSource Thank you.

[@grigoriks]

Hi, what if i need to use Windows for a work with CAD software including 3d graphics? Would it work properly and smooth on the server like yours? Or i need to look for other option? Thanks

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

The VM for Windows isn't the issue, but whether you can allocate a GPU to the VM. Proxmox does allow GPU passthrough, and using something on a Gigabit or better wired network with RDP would likely work fine. Not having the setup to test with, I'm making presumptions about a few things. If RDP isn't fast enough, you could try something like Steam Link (lots of videos on how to use it for Desktop Sharing, not just gaming).

[@plazmax]

hi, How is the power consumption of your server cabinet, have you ever measured it? :)

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I haven't. I'm 100% certain it's a power-pig though. I'm looking forward to better server hardware built on low power stuff like Arm, and better arm support overall. I think it's headed that way, and it's exciting!

[@plazmax]

@@AwesomeOpenSource If you don't mind, can I ask you something from the e-mail address on your channel? Thank you

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Sure thing.

[@seanrikard3163]

You really need to work on your audio. I've notice in several of your videos, including this one, the audio is loud, over modulated, and even distorted at times.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Yep, always working to try and improve it.

[@bogy5259]

Why do you dont have all your server in a cluster?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I was setting them up for different reasons and different testing purposes, and just never went back to re-do them. I like how they run now. I may make a cluster with some different hardware one of these days.

[@dmckrk]

Wood? Hmmm it certainly has some disadvantages when connected with some hot IT components. We all started with some funny ideas, but at some stage it comes out that you need real rack even for pi.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I slotted the shelves, so there are gaps in the shelves that give air flow to the bottom of the servers, but really I don't run the servers hard enough to even spin their fans up beyond idle.

[@RockNLol2009]

No sound in intro?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

I explain in the description. KZbin hit me with a copyright issue on the music I use. It’s Creative Commons music and attributed in every video, but now it’s suddenly an issue and they are taking forever to resolve it. So until I have time to sit and make a custom intro song, I’ll leave it silent. Sorry for the confusion, but thanks KZbin and your not so smart AI stack.

[@mambo7668]

How you made those servers silent ?

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

They aren't silent. I just did some post-processing on the audio so they wouldn't overpower my audio.

[@michaelthomasross3251]

Proton Drive e2ee

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Nice, and the pricing isn't too bad.

[@tokoshiro5]

great, lets see :D ahha

[@alextekks]

Noice

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Thanks.

[@kaspersergej]

I love your content, but if you ever want to grow you need to tackle your bad audio situation.

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Working on it.

[@TheTrulyInsane]

A server has no name

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

Mine do. Their name tags say Dell, but I call them by any name I like. ;-)

[@TheTrulyInsane]

@@AwesomeOpenSource lol it was a loose reference, I know you spell it Aria.. but I was thinking of Arya Stark and the Faceless from Game of Thrones.. 'a Girl has no name'.. if you haven't seen GoT, probably a lost reference 🤷‍♂

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

@@TheTrulyInsane I totally missed that! Hahahaha

[@AB-ns8ix]

Give TarSnap a try, might meet your needs

[@AwesomeOpenSource]

looks interesting. I'll keep digging in. Thank you.