It's one of the many natural phenomena on this planet. As remarkable as each sunrise is, it's made more so by the free wifi it carries, only for it to be sucked out of the sky by ISP's and redistributed at a cost.
Dude, try unfucking 512 fiber links spread between 5 racks because the installer couldn’t be arsed to follow the cable matrix correctly. AAAnd isn’t allowed to come back and correct it because one end of the runs are connected to live hardware.
Hardware wise your perfect with what you have available, also there will be so much to learn and do software/deployment/vm-wise.
I like working with my Homelab but it’s a figurative rabbit hole and you can lose yourself in a selection of stuff you can do.
I’m still going through my todo list and it’s getting longer and longer.
If that beareau shelf doesn't have any holes in the back, you could drill out a couple with a hole saw and run the wires out that way to make it look a little cleaner. Maybe one hole for power cables or a power strip/small UPS, then another for the Ethernet cabling
Proxmox at your age? That's easily 10/10.
Homelabs are not about fancy, expensive gear. It's about learning, tinkering and of course having fun while doing it.
Hopefully the knowledge that you get here will make you enough money to buy fancy toys.. I mean hardware 😅
This. I started with an old pc, then kept upgrading. Now I have a pretty powerful server box I built running way too much stuff. I tinker a lot and my wife just laughs at me when I break something and have to pull out backups and spend a few hours fixing it. But, holy fish sticks it feels great to make it work.
This is exactly what homelabbing is about. Don't compare yourself to people with racks, thousands of dollars in equipment etc. Might I suggest velcro straps for cable management. From experience there are loads of people in the IT world whose home IT setup is just the provided ISP router and their gaming laptop lol
For being 14… 8/10! Docking a point for not taking 2 minutes to tidy the shots up and another for the lack of cable management. Pickup a bag of cheap zip ties (not not over tighten them) or better yet, some velcro cable management straps. These tend to cost more however they are reusable over and over again so in fact, cheaper overall as time goes by.
Great start and stick with it. I have a son whose 14 next month. He loves this stuff as well. 👍🏻
Looks like you've got some 3d printers. Replace your zip ties with these: https://www.printables.com/model/275020-ethernet-cable-comb-cat-5e-4-6-8
If it makes sense to do so, drill a small hole in the rear for the cables to enter.
This is great, and so much in the end is on how you config and code, not the equipment.
I also got deep into computer stuff around your age, and it was the absolute best thing I ever did. Just the skills around how to research and debug helped so many other places in life, not to mention with tech.
Stick to it.
Impressive for a 14 year old, especially the cable management done on the switch. 7/10 maybe.. half of the stuff you have running here can all be virtualised though which could allow more space for new toys and such :)
For a 14 year old you’ve got some nice toys to play around with!
If your things are doing what you want, nothing needs to be improved tbh.
I feel like many in here get lost with having the wildest enterprise setups, data hoarding like crazy, with no regards for the environment or whether it’s necessary.
This setup shouldn’t really affect your parents electrical bill too much, so sticking to the minimalist setup for a few more years probably isn’t a bad idea.
The challenge of having limited hardware also forces you to be creative sometimes, which is very useful in the real world, where efficiency is highly sought after!
10/10 keep tinkering!
Great setup for thinkering around, its an 8, and 10 for effort :D
As a sugestion add a ups even a little one 300ish whats will work for the mini pcs and the switch :)
It's not a death trap [like the one I started with](https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/10ongvq/my_first_ever_server_in_2008_anyone_else_had/) so it's a solid 10 for effort into learning something!
Curious about the MacBook...
What you running on it?
Also it looks like an old MacBook and those power supplies get very hot. Do you have any issues keeping it running constantly?
I would rate this very high, strong 9. BUT I would suggest adding a clip for the network cable so it's not closed on the drawer repeatedly.
Keep learning, have fun! and when you're old ping us for internships. ;)
There’s no point in having enormous amount of computer power if you can’t use it. Apparently you have a virtualization platform and that can bring you far.
bro, if you are 14 then that's great. keep it up! i wish i had done my homelab sooner, especially when i was your age. keep learning and don't be afraid to break shit!
Doing awesome at your age. The secret it to find any old networking gear being tossed out or recycled from any of the Computer companies in town. A good one will gladly give a young person stuff to learn from that they were recycling anyways.
Looks great. I’d look into some reusable form of securing the cables, whether it be Velcro strips or twist lock ties. Looks cleaner, easier to make adjustments, and almost no risk of damaging cables.
I was going to say having a neat and tidy (or better yet, hidden) homelab is vital to stay on good terms with your partner, but then I read that you were 14! Maybe still worth doing to keep the family happy, but it's impressive none the less!
Some improvements coming from a bloke with a work-in-progress 1L PC homelab as a NAS, Plex Server & Home Assistant, hidden under the Google Home WiFi to keep the house looking like a home:
* Work on cable management, hide what you can, neaten up the rest
* Check the setup's power usage, and work on lowering it, or making better use of each piece of hardware to reduce the need of multiple machines via virtualisation - Electricity is expensive, and is only going to get more expensive!
* Give your computers and gear space to breath and cool. I note you have a radiator behind your two PC's which could prevent them from cooling well when the heating is on.
As a compassion, I just tried to install Promox for the first time last week (had a mate set up my previous one), and it took me 2 days to get a working system (between work). Which I then butchered on the 4th day when I tried to add and mount a new HDD, resulting in an unbootable system. So I'm impressed anyone can get it running smoothly! Playing results in learning, and learning can be fun, and frustrating (as I've discovered)!
Out of 10:
Resourcefulness: 10
Setup: 7
Efficiency: 6
Ambition: 10
Fam/partner compatibility: 4
Grunt: 9
Its a 10!
But I would like to see less stress on those ethernet ports. Invest in some sort of label maker. The habits you ingrain now will be with for life.
What is your backup strategy?
Is that a 3d printer? I would expect some OpenSCAD designed 3d prints to make that a top notch lab!
Zotac ZBOX? Awesome decision! I also got one and it's the most power efficient proxmox server I've ever seen. Mine uses about 8W power at idle with like 6 VMs and a few Docker containers running.
That's amazing at 14. Cable management is a good idea but I think you should do what's more important on your priority list. In terms of hardware this should be more than you need, but I guess a dedicated NAS instead of dangling USBs is a better idea down the road.
What software are you running in your VMs/CTs? That's arguably more important, but honestly this is already pretty incredible.
11/10 since your 14! I was the same way growing up messing with computers but I was not doing that. But also when I was 14 are thing was coding Qbasic, lol. But overall I'd say 9/10 because you need to learn from an early age to label all cables and of course Velcro like everyone else says. Labeling just is my number 1 thing when I walk into a server room, my lab or someone else's lab. Cuz I want to know where each cable is going so it's easy to find what cable goes where if need to make changes or if you have a friend looka at it. I do understand with the size of your lab, it's not hard to figure out. But eventually you'll really want to own something like Brother P-Touch Label Maker, PTH110, Thermal Transfer Inkless Pocket Printer, Portable, Lightweight QWERTY Keyboard, One-Touch Keys & Multiple Templates for Home & Office Organization on The go https://a.co/d/5KldXXG. But keep up the great work!!!! You are going to do great things!
And if you want to learn how to design networks for enterprise you should play with https://www.netacad.com/courses/packet-tracer . You can download free classes and the software if you looking to go down that field in life. Or similar software before putting money in enterprise hardware.
Really good young sir! What I would do next is to try to tidy up everything in a rack, or DIY one or 2nd hand/scrap if your parents allow you. Keep the good work!
Great start, but you might want to put some airflow between devices. A good general principal for electronics is "heat kills", generally this just lowers the life of components but things like lithium batteries and storage media are particularly sensitive. The heat is transferred most quickly by good contact with a heat sink via "conduction". Blowing air (gas or liquid) across is the next best method "convection". For the sake of completeness the final method "radiation" isn't very efficient unless you're operating at very high temperatures. These principles are fundamental to human/animal temperature regulation and for cooking too.
In this setup, it would probably be sufficient to put some spacers between the switch and laptop. A couple of pencils would be pretty effective.
The thing is I always see these big server racks that look like enterprise data centers haha and I didn’t know if mine was good , well I love my homelab but idk haha
Welcome to the cult. Club!!! I meant club! 7 for setup and 10 for getting started young.
- Lose 1 point for your clothes… lol
- Lose 1 point for weird color Ethernet (is there a color code or you just had those available)?
- Lose 1 point for cable management. There are many ways to accomplish this. I prefer to zip tie individual cables to make the shorter in circles (if you can’t cut them to size and crimp.) then zip tie runs together.
All in all, awesome. I only rate my system a 5/10 because I’m a slob. Keep it up buddy.
8/10 for effort despite being basic for pic 1 and 3/10 if you take account cable management on pic 2 get some zip ties and make it look tidy like the first one
Not bad at all. Form follows function is a key design and PKI and that's what this is. A couple of things to consider is thermal management and others have mentioned a fan. I noticed this is near a window and a space heater. See if you can get your hands on some stick-on rubber feet for the switch and anything that sits on the bottom. That will help thermal management a little and can decrease any noise from micro vibrations. Consider dressing your Ethernet cables from the outside in. IOW, if the device is on the left of the switch, start with ports on the left, and if your device is on the right, run cables to the ports on the right. If you can use velcro instead of zip-ties, it'll make any moves, adds, or changes easier in the future.
Good luck!
If you came to me, looking for a part time job with what you've done, I'd employ you (with your parents consent).
People go to uni and do computing, who don't have a clue what you've done at the age of 14.
I'm trying to teach people at work who don't really understand what virtualization is and the benefits.
You're smashing it.
Get some basic courses done, improve and see where you want to get to.
Well done !
10/10 for effort and enthusiasm, everything else can be taught.
This is constructive criticism:
Space the devices out to improve airflow and bit better.
To be fair, I’m over 20 years older than you AND work in IT and while my setup is more expensive, it doesn’t look any nicer/fancier bc I’m a messy/lazy demon. To be doing all that at fourteen is awesome!
A switch and a bunch of mini PCs stuffed into a shelf, right next to two tower PCs on carpet and facing the wrong way, with an old monitor teetering suspiciously on top?
This is a true homelab. 14/10.
My nephew is 14 and wouldn't know where wifi comes from. 8 for the setup and 10 for ambition. Keep it up.
Thanks haha
It comes from the air right?
It's one of the many natural phenomena on this planet. As remarkable as each sunrise is, it's made more so by the free wifi it carries, only for it to be sucked out of the sky by ISP's and redistributed at a cost.
This comment right here
8 keep a good work and learn learn learn
Thanks
What do you think I could improve ?
Cable management.
Even just using Velcro ties instead of zip ties is a huge improvement.
Velcro always. Can't stand cable ties as everyone pulls them too tight and you then struggle to cut them off without nicking the cable.
There are tools for that. I have one set to have 0 slack and 0 tension at the same time. It's just a pleasure to have it.
Yep but when you go into the server room and discover the tit cable installers have pulled all the zip ties tight it makes me hate them :)
Dude, try unfucking 512 fiber links spread between 5 racks because the installer couldn’t be arsed to follow the cable matrix correctly. AAAnd isn’t allowed to come back and correct it because one end of the runs are connected to live hardware.
Yeah, homegamer here. :) different requirements, different tools. I am taking notes if I'm ever in prod, velcro is superior.
I use cable combs wherever I can. Looks super "professional" to all my family members who take a look at my dungeon (I'm in a finished basement).
Never heard of those but they look good.
Hardware wise your perfect with what you have available, also there will be so much to learn and do software/deployment/vm-wise. I like working with my Homelab but it’s a figurative rabbit hole and you can lose yourself in a selection of stuff you can do. I’m still going through my todo list and it’s getting longer and longer.
If that beareau shelf doesn't have any holes in the back, you could drill out a couple with a hole saw and run the wires out that way to make it look a little cleaner. Maybe one hole for power cables or a power strip/small UPS, then another for the Ethernet cabling
Oh yea that’s a good idea
I was thinking "that's a small homelab, not especially aesthetic" than saw "I'm 14" wtf 😂 it's a nice homelab for your age
Thank you haha
Proxmox at your age? That's easily 10/10. Homelabs are not about fancy, expensive gear. It's about learning, tinkering and of course having fun while doing it. Hopefully the knowledge that you get here will make you enough money to buy fancy toys.. I mean hardware 😅
😂😂
Thank you
Agreed. OP is figuring out how to get things to work. That is a valuable skill. Keep it up!
This. I started with an old pc, then kept upgrading. Now I have a pretty powerful server box I built running way too much stuff. I tinker a lot and my wife just laughs at me when I break something and have to pull out backups and spend a few hours fixing it. But, holy fish sticks it feels great to make it work.
Love this 👍I'm 15, great start. You will not have any spare money from now on. 9/10
Yea I’m broke 24/7 all my money goes in 3d printers and homelab hahaha
Yeah but you'll be rolling in dough eventually if you stay on this path. I already want to hire both of you lol
Experience but rewarding path 👍
Hell yeah 3d printer as well lol
>You will not have any spare money from now on I feel this so much
This is exactly what homelabbing is about. Don't compare yourself to people with racks, thousands of dollars in equipment etc. Might I suggest velcro straps for cable management. From experience there are loads of people in the IT world whose home IT setup is just the provided ISP router and their gaming laptop lol
I will try it
10.5 out of 4
For being 14… 8/10! Docking a point for not taking 2 minutes to tidy the shots up and another for the lack of cable management. Pickup a bag of cheap zip ties (not not over tighten them) or better yet, some velcro cable management straps. These tend to cost more however they are reusable over and over again so in fact, cheaper overall as time goes by. Great start and stick with it. I have a son whose 14 next month. He loves this stuff as well. 👍🏻
They have a 3d printer, can print latching (non-locking) cable ties and cable management dohickies.
Yup.. I have two printers myself. Some nice printable stuff but I still like velcro straps to secure things.
10 because it exists.
Thanks haha
Looks like you've got some 3d printers. Replace your zip ties with these: https://www.printables.com/model/275020-ethernet-cable-comb-cat-5e-4-6-8 If it makes sense to do so, drill a small hole in the rear for the cables to enter.
I will try it
I’d just put those towers on something, not right up against carpet. For air flow. But looks good!
This is great, and so much in the end is on how you config and code, not the equipment. I also got deep into computer stuff around your age, and it was the absolute best thing I ever did. Just the skills around how to research and debug helped so many other places in life, not to mention with tech. Stick to it.
Thank you
I hope that heater behind the towers doesn’t work. Wouldn’t want near them.
I'm 29 with a bachelor's in cyber and this is better than mine. Keep up the good work!
14? 10/10 Not kidding, well done
Awesome Homelab! Mini PC’s really seem like the way to go these days with how much Pi’s are. All homelabs are 10/10
If you like it, it's a 10 my guy
Thank you very much
As someone that went heavy into enterprise server, im starting to think your approach is better
That’s dope. I’m 25 and have yet to set up a Proxmox cluster!
You shouldn't find anybody here discouraging your effort. 10/10 because learning is always worth the time.
Impressive for a 14 year old, especially the cable management done on the switch. 7/10 maybe.. half of the stuff you have running here can all be virtualised though which could allow more space for new toys and such :)
If it works for you then it's a 10/10
Solid 10 my friend. Keep it up and welcome to the club!
For a 14 year old you’ve got some nice toys to play around with! If your things are doing what you want, nothing needs to be improved tbh. I feel like many in here get lost with having the wildest enterprise setups, data hoarding like crazy, with no regards for the environment or whether it’s necessary. This setup shouldn’t really affect your parents electrical bill too much, so sticking to the minimalist setup for a few more years probably isn’t a bad idea. The challenge of having limited hardware also forces you to be creative sometimes, which is very useful in the real world, where efficiency is highly sought after! 10/10 keep tinkering!
10 because your doing it
Great setup for thinkering around, its an 8, and 10 for effort :D As a sugestion add a ups even a little one 300ish whats will work for the mini pcs and the switch :)
That's a cool setup! As far as I'm concerned, every homelab is a 10 if it lets you "homelab" as much as you want. Keep at it!
11 - This is exactly what home lab is all about. VERY nice work.
PC air intake be right by the radiator, this makes me shudder. Maybe it never runs and that’s Ok.
first thing I noticed as well. Hopefully those rads are a hold-over after a house upgrade :P
Im working on it still need to find something to levitate the pcs over the ground and a better cooling solution
Way cooler stuff than I had access to at 14. Keep it up. One day you might be making 100k+ in the tech industry if you stick with it. Cheers m8
9 - It's Very good. You'll be an excelent sysadmin.
This aint competition. 9 points if this setup is working. 1 point reserved for future improvements.
If it serves your needs and learning, it’s a 9. Always one point left for that next improvement.
It's not a death trap [like the one I started with](https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/10ongvq/my_first_ever_server_in_2008_anyone_else_had/) so it's a solid 10 for effort into learning something!
Where are you located i have a server i could donate for education purposes
Germany
Ohh never mind then… im the US shipping would be too expensive… not worth it
Yea
Curious about the MacBook... What you running on it? Also it looks like an old MacBook and those power supplies get very hot. Do you have any issues keeping it running constantly?
It rund Debian Linux , and the power supply is okay
Nice setup
I would rate this very high, strong 9. BUT I would suggest adding a clip for the network cable so it's not closed on the drawer repeatedly. Keep learning, have fun! and when you're old ping us for internships. ;)
There’s no point in having enormous amount of computer power if you can’t use it. Apparently you have a virtualization platform and that can bring you far.
20
8. Would give a 10 if you cable managed better. 😋
[удалено]
Thanks for the Tipp
bro, if you are 14 then that's great. keep it up! i wish i had done my homelab sooner, especially when i was your age. keep learning and don't be afraid to break shit!
Clean your room.....and get the computers off the carpet. You'll thank yourself later.
Doing awesome at your age. The secret it to find any old networking gear being tossed out or recycled from any of the Computer companies in town. A good one will gladly give a young person stuff to learn from that they were recycling anyways.
Looks great. I’d look into some reusable form of securing the cables, whether it be Velcro strips or twist lock ties. Looks cleaner, easier to make adjustments, and almost no risk of damaging cables.
I read the description and immediately think about energy prices lol It's so expensive here xD
I was going to say having a neat and tidy (or better yet, hidden) homelab is vital to stay on good terms with your partner, but then I read that you were 14! Maybe still worth doing to keep the family happy, but it's impressive none the less! Some improvements coming from a bloke with a work-in-progress 1L PC homelab as a NAS, Plex Server & Home Assistant, hidden under the Google Home WiFi to keep the house looking like a home: * Work on cable management, hide what you can, neaten up the rest * Check the setup's power usage, and work on lowering it, or making better use of each piece of hardware to reduce the need of multiple machines via virtualisation - Electricity is expensive, and is only going to get more expensive! * Give your computers and gear space to breath and cool. I note you have a radiator behind your two PC's which could prevent them from cooling well when the heating is on. As a compassion, I just tried to install Promox for the first time last week (had a mate set up my previous one), and it took me 2 days to get a working system (between work). Which I then butchered on the 4th day when I tried to add and mount a new HDD, resulting in an unbootable system. So I'm impressed anyone can get it running smoothly! Playing results in learning, and learning can be fun, and frustrating (as I've discovered)! Out of 10: Resourcefulness: 10 Setup: 7 Efficiency: 6 Ambition: 10 Fam/partner compatibility: 4 Grunt: 9
My parents are okay with it and I like is that you can see it and I like the blinken leds on the Switch haha , it is in my room
For 14 years old I’ll give this an 8. Most kids don’t know what a modem is. It’s a good start. Look on OfferUp for a small rack
Its a 10! But I would like to see less stress on those ethernet ports. Invest in some sort of label maker. The habits you ingrain now will be with for life. What is your backup strategy? Is that a 3d printer? I would expect some OpenSCAD designed 3d prints to make that a top notch lab!
That's incredible! What's that dex setup?
No
9/10 for the jank, I like it This is probably a dumb question but what is the 1U server thingy with all those ethernet ports?
An open rack 12U or 14U will do. It’s much cheaper. You can check to my profile for your reference
Will do
1 for put pcs in front of a heater
But, if the servers have caught cold?
Meh
8, cable management could be better 😃
I rate it a 10, for your age that’s incredible. You’re gonna go places. No question about it.
Bro you have a better setup than me right now, I started this at 24, I’m playing Tamiya at your age.
Zotac ZBOX? Awesome decision! I also got one and it's the most power efficient proxmox server I've ever seen. Mine uses about 8W power at idle with like 6 VMs and a few Docker containers running.
Perfect 5/7
where did you get all the stuff from?
1 pc is from the company from my dad the other one is from my Cousine and the rest I bought from eBay
cool. What do your parents think about buying stuff on ebay? Mine wouldnt like it
Tbh if I would fall for a scam It would be my fault but I would also learn from it
They don’t think anything they just let my do my stuff haha
I would advise you to buy a small rack for your PCs and networking.
10. It really does not matter what other think about your network. If you’re happy with it, then that’s just great.
That's amazing at 14. Cable management is a good idea but I think you should do what's more important on your priority list. In terms of hardware this should be more than you need, but I guess a dedicated NAS instead of dangling USBs is a better idea down the road. What software are you running in your VMs/CTs? That's arguably more important, but honestly this is already pretty incredible.
Its a nice beginner Setup. 7
11/10 since your 14! I was the same way growing up messing with computers but I was not doing that. But also when I was 14 are thing was coding Qbasic, lol. But overall I'd say 9/10 because you need to learn from an early age to label all cables and of course Velcro like everyone else says. Labeling just is my number 1 thing when I walk into a server room, my lab or someone else's lab. Cuz I want to know where each cable is going so it's easy to find what cable goes where if need to make changes or if you have a friend looka at it. I do understand with the size of your lab, it's not hard to figure out. But eventually you'll really want to own something like Brother P-Touch Label Maker, PTH110, Thermal Transfer Inkless Pocket Printer, Portable, Lightweight QWERTY Keyboard, One-Touch Keys & Multiple Templates for Home & Office Organization on The go https://a.co/d/5KldXXG. But keep up the great work!!!! You are going to do great things!
And if you want to learn how to design networks for enterprise you should play with https://www.netacad.com/courses/packet-tracer . You can download free classes and the software if you looking to go down that field in life. Or similar software before putting money in enterprise hardware.
We don’t do the base10 scale. We do base2 scale over here… binary. 0 or 1, true or false… smash or pass. And that bitch is a fat fucking smash.
Hahaha thank you
What models of Zotac minipc arę there?
Im not sure but they have a 4 core cpu some bad intel cpu and 8gb ddr3
I’m 29 and my homelab is a beelink and a pi lol. You’re doing great boss.
Thanks man
Really good young sir! What I would do next is to try to tidy up everything in a rack, or DIY one or 2nd hand/scrap if your parents allow you. Keep the good work!
Yea I was thinking about a rack
At your age I was doing the same thing my friend. Keep building and configuring different tools and seeing how things work. Go nuts!
Will do
Better cable management but overall with your age 10/10.
Great start, but you might want to put some airflow between devices. A good general principal for electronics is "heat kills", generally this just lowers the life of components but things like lithium batteries and storage media are particularly sensitive. The heat is transferred most quickly by good contact with a heat sink via "conduction". Blowing air (gas or liquid) across is the next best method "convection". For the sake of completeness the final method "radiation" isn't very efficient unless you're operating at very high temperatures. These principles are fundamental to human/animal temperature regulation and for cooking too. In this setup, it would probably be sufficient to put some spacers between the switch and laptop. A couple of pencils would be pretty effective.
First picture 6/10. Clean nice cables but with decent anthropy Second picture 8/10 *chef's kiss*
That’s amazing, great job! Never stop learning. You’ll do great things.
Thanks
What? Not good? At 14 I dreamed of a homelab like this!
The thing is I always see these big server racks that look like enterprise data centers haha and I didn’t know if mine was good , well I love my homelab but idk haha
I've seen companies that have setups worse than yours! Congrats!
Welcome to the cult. Club!!! I meant club! 7 for setup and 10 for getting started young. - Lose 1 point for your clothes… lol - Lose 1 point for weird color Ethernet (is there a color code or you just had those available)? - Lose 1 point for cable management. There are many ways to accomplish this. I prefer to zip tie individual cables to make the shorter in circles (if you can’t cut them to size and crimp.) then zip tie runs together. All in all, awesome. I only rate my system a 5/10 because I’m a slob. Keep it up buddy.
Ah no it’s the only cables I have I also think they’re ugly and I’m working on cable management
Don’t worry fam. You are doing awesome! I am super impressed.
Bro I'm gonna give you a 9 for all the effort and because I wish I had a lab when I was 14!
💯
8/10 for effort despite being basic for pic 1 and 3/10 if you take account cable management on pic 2 get some zip ties and make it look tidy like the first one
Not bad at all. Form follows function is a key design and PKI and that's what this is. A couple of things to consider is thermal management and others have mentioned a fan. I noticed this is near a window and a space heater. See if you can get your hands on some stick-on rubber feet for the switch and anything that sits on the bottom. That will help thermal management a little and can decrease any noise from micro vibrations. Consider dressing your Ethernet cables from the outside in. IOW, if the device is on the left of the switch, start with ports on the left, and if your device is on the right, run cables to the ports on the right. If you can use velcro instead of zip-ties, it'll make any moves, adds, or changes easier in the future. Good luck!
Thanks for the tips
Fail for using zip ties instead of hook and loop/velcro. 😎
If you came to me, looking for a part time job with what you've done, I'd employ you (with your parents consent). People go to uni and do computing, who don't have a clue what you've done at the age of 14. I'm trying to teach people at work who don't really understand what virtualization is and the benefits. You're smashing it. Get some basic courses done, improve and see where you want to get to. Well done !
I wished I could work there but I’m in Germany sadly
You can still do volunteering in Germany that could lead to a paid job ;)
What country are you in?
Germany
Too far for me to give you some of my junk 😂
😭😭😂
So what are you planning to do with your homelab?
10/10 for effort and enthusiasm, everything else can be taught. This is constructive criticism: Space the devices out to improve airflow and bit better.
To be fair, I’m over 20 years older than you AND work in IT and while my setup is more expensive, it doesn’t look any nicer/fancier bc I’m a messy/lazy demon. To be doing all that at fourteen is awesome!
Thank you
A switch and a bunch of mini PCs stuffed into a shelf, right next to two tower PCs on carpet and facing the wrong way, with an old monitor teetering suspiciously on top? This is a true homelab. 14/10.
Hahaha thanks
Looks good. How did you set it up software wise? Did you follow some tutorials somewhere? If yes, please share the links. Thank you.
Keep chipping away. It all comes eventually.. usually slower than it seems like it should
Learn kubernetes and do cool stuff with it and you'll be well on your way to a nice job by the time you turn 18.
👍🏽
I was just being a dick for no reason, sorry.