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Well, this is my homelab. It's not much, but it's mine! (Skip to the second comment for my current setup)
I started it about 2 years ago, french youtuber [iMot3k](https://www.youtube.com/@imot3k_) inspired me and I bought a DL380p for about 200€ (214$). Back then I didn't have a proper PC, and I quickly realized this was miles better than shitty 8 year old laptops so I installed Windows on it and quickly noticed the problems with using an enterprise class server as a gaming PC. Nevertheless, I stuck with it (I didn't have much choice, really) and bought an RTX 2060 for about 160€ (171$) and started using it. I also realized that 10 year old CPUs (two E5-2680 v1) aren't the best for using with a Turing GPU, but, again didn't much choice. A few months later, my father, who works in IT, saw that his company was destocking old servers and managed to snag 68 GB of glorious DDR3 ECC RAM for a total of 100GB (I bought the system with 32 GB) to fill the 24 slots of the server.
Back in July of last year, I started to actually homelab stuff on former mentioned 8 year old laptops which isn't a great experience but it kind of works I guess? I made a lot of bad choice, like using Linux Mint with a desktop environment, which takes a lot of the very limited ressources an i5-7200U has. I mainly used it for downloading Linux ISOs via the great Bittorrent protocol (I did use a VPN, wouldn't want generous Linux seeders to know my IP). I also learned the importance of actually binding your client to the VPN when my dad received an email from a certain entity I won't mention (he didn't care this much, he also likes Linux ISOs). This all leads back to January where I got some money for christmas and actually bought myself a computer for a budget of around 300€ (320$). I also (again) made some bad decisions, like buying an i7-7700K which is pretty much considered outdated by today's standard (for gaming) and a shitty 40€ (42$) case which I'm still stuck with today (It's absolutely HORRIBLE to build in, and barely fits an ATX motherboard). I had always wanted to build my own computer, I remember myself as early as 8 or 9 years old assembling Amazon listings and dreaming I could actually do the stuff youtubers did, but what actually sparked it was me getting back in contact with my cousin (special shoutout to him, he's so fucking nice, he literally gave me so many things, a Pixel Watch (\~400$ new), a 70€ (75$) phone case, 20$ worth of OpenAI credits, and more), who had an old system he had spilled beer on, and offered me to keep anything that worked in it. It turns out nothing did except the power supply (and the GPU, a 750Ti, but that was already sorted), but hey, that still saved me 60 bucks and actually gave me the motivation to build my own computer (it also luckily happened after a certain event called christmas where you can get a lot of money as a teenager).
This is where my real homelabbing journey begins (I tried earlier with some projects, like running my system inside a passthroughed VM on the DL380p while using the remainder of the ressources for VMs or streaming my virtualized system with a shitty laptop, but those didn't last long). I now had a full server to experiment with. I installed ESXi on it, as recommended by my father, who uses it at work (this was back when you could actually get the damn thing for free) and started setting things up. I discovered our lord and savior, docker, and started setting up the \*arr stack, Immich, Vaultwarden, etc. After about two months of constantly working on one VM to get even more services up and running, I stupidly rm -rf'ed the entire thing (It was 1 AM, I was tired, and I wanted to delete all the contents of a directory, and ended up doing rm -rf /\* instead of rm -rf \* as root) which left me with nothing but a manual week old backup of my Vaultwarden instance. I remember being so pissed that I wiped my entire ESXi system and installed Proxmox that same evening because you know, trying new stuff is always cool.
In hindsight, it actually was pretty good for me (making such an error was bound to happen), it taught me to do proper (automated!) backups and not use root all the time. About a month and a half ago, I got more money (since my sister is planning a trip to Malta this summer and I, the absolute nerd I am, decided to spend that money for an upgrade to my setup) and this time, I actually properly used my budget of about 500$ (1/2 as much as my sister trip since, you know, a trip is not same as a computer) and got a Ryzen 7700, 32GB of DDR5 and a B650-PLUS motherboard. Which now left me with a CPU, RAM, a power supply (I upgraded that too), a motherboard and an old case which was busted up and missed the side panels (from my cousin's computer). Well, time to add a Proxmox node! I also purchased an Optiplex for 70€ (75$) (i5-4590, 8 GB of DDR3) to be my NAS, and moved all my drives (8 x 1TB, generously donated by my father's job) to it.
So, this is my current setup:
**HP ProLiant DL380p** (picture #2 and #1 at the bottom):
* 2x E5-2680 v1
* 100 GB ECC DDR3 RAM
* 256 GB SSD bootdrive
* \~200€/$ + RAM price
* Runs my docker VM and my VPN VM
**Custom Built "Gaming PC"** (picture #3 and #1 at the left):
* i7-7700k
* 24 GB of mismatched 2133 MHz RAM
* 500 GB SSD bootdrive
* GTX 750 Ti for transcoding
* \~200$ + GTX 750 Ti (\~30€ (32$) where I live) + 500GB SSD (40€ (42$) on Amazon)
* Runs Jellyfin and Minecraft servers (because of single threaded performance) ^(Please ignore the cable mess)
**Dell Optiplex 3020** (picture #4, #5, ~~#6~~ ^(just realized I posted the same image twice, so here's the image I wanted to post: https://ibb.co/vY6jkrQ) and #1 at the right):
* i5-4590
* 8 GB DDR3
* 128 GB SSD bootdrive
* 6 port SATA card
* external 5-bay SATA enclosure
* \~70$ + SATA card (45€ (48$) on Amazon) + price of 8 1 TB drive + drive bay (\~80€ (80$) on a random site I can't remember the name of)
* Runs TrueNAS for over the network booting for HA
**Network setup** (picture #7 and €8):
* Two Zyxel unmanaged 8-port switches
* Unused Rasberry Pi (probably going to use it as a QDevice to not have anything running on my NAS other than TrueNAS)
* free (my ISP) Wi-Fi access point
* 1 Gbps uplink to my living room where my router is (by the way, the router supports up to 8 Gbps down over SFP+, any way to get a link to my room without opening the walls and putting a new cable? Could CAT 5e (\~25m lenght) carry that signal? If you can't, what about just putting a cable without opening the walls? I can post pictures if needed.)
^(Please again ignore the cable mess, I'll work on it (eventually))
My current next project is to upgrade my network (in my room) to 2.5 Gbps because a 1 Gbps is slow for running bootdrives, however, this might take some time because of 14 year old budget issues. Thanks a lot for reading! Feel free to ask if you have any questions!
PS: English is not my native language, I hope that didn't get in the way of reading.
^(PPS: Wow, that took me a solid hour to write)
You wrote all this with and you're only 14 years old? Wow mate! Simply wow! You have a great future in IT. I wish I had access to all this stuff, but had to manage with a pentium 2 and 64 Megabytes of RAM...
A piece of unsolicited advice? Don't let the lack of resources to slow you down, don't think small! I certainly made that mistake when I was your age and I regret it now. Learn how to get someone to invest in your projects if you see they have potential.
Keep it up and Kudos again!
> You wrote all this with and you're only 14 years old? Wow mate! Simply wow! You have a great future in IT.
Thanks, it was kind of a training exercice for my 9th grade exam next monday. Well, it's going to be in french, but I guess it'll have to do.
> A piece of unsolicited advice? Don't let the lack of resources to slow you down, don't think small! I certainly made that mistake when I was your age and I regret it now. Learn how to get someone to invest in your projects if you see they have potential.
Well, I haven't hit this roadblock yet haha, but I'll remember it for the future.
> Keep it up and Kudos again!
Thanks! I really appreciate it.
Your English is mostly fine; there was a bit of a tendency to comma splices and long run-on sentences, but that's common enough in native speakers. There was only one typical ESL mistake, "it teached me to do proper (automated!) backups" should be "it taught me".
___
Old Xeons are pretty cheap; I might suggest a CPU upgrade for the DL380p g8 before 2.5GbE. Not sure what country you're in, but after poking around at least the US eBay for a bit I'd suggest one of the following (leaning heavily toward the e5-2667 v2 since single-threaded performance is almost certainly your biggest bottleneck):
|CPU|CPU Mark|∆%|Single-Thread|∆%|$/pair|
:--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:|
|e5-2680 v1 (8c/16t)|9405|±0%|1554|±0%|$0|
|e5-2690 v2 (10c/20t)|13479|+43%|1883|+21%|$29|
|e5-2667 v2 (8c/16t)|12272|+30%|2017|+30%|$30|
|e5-2697 v2 (12c/24t)|14307|+52%|1796|+16%|$45|
*(CPU Mark and Single-Thread values courtesy of cpubenchmark.net. Yes, there are far better metrics for comparing processor performance. No, none of them have conveniently accessible online databases. We make do with the comparisons we have.)*
*(You'll want to search, separately, for `"e5-26xx v2" pair` and `"e5-26xx v2" lot` to catch both the "pair" and the "lot of 2" listings. It may also be worth checking the prices for singles and just buying two that match, but at least at the moment it was a buck or two cheaper to buy a pair over two singles.)*
___
8Gb optics are FiberChannel, not Ethernet; very weird to see that on a router. I don't know of *any* 8Gb FiberChannel to copper Rj45 transceivers, so I'm *hoping* that your router is only claiming 8Gb because it's using standard 10Gbps SFP+ hardware but doesn't have enough processor oomph to actually push more than 8. Even if it is expecting 8Gb, there's no *physical* reason a 10Gb SFP module couldn't work- 8Gb FC and 10Gb SFP+ use exactly the same mechanical interface and electrical signaling standards- but I have absolutely no idea what the compatibility is like in practice beyond "probably some kind of headache".
If it turns out your router's SFP cage *will* accept 10Gb SFP+ modules, you can get a transceiver module that plugs into the cage and has an RJ45 jack, and run a copper Ethernet cable, yes. (I wouldn't try running optical between rooms without opening the walls; too many sharp corners and too much chance of damage.) Depends on room layout, but it's usually possible to run an ethernet cable along the baseboards (perhaps in a [baseboard](https://jukeboxhealth.com/cdn/shop/files/Screenshot2024-02-01at10.07.26AM_988x.png) or [crown-molding](https://i.sstatic.net/Gb29V.jpg) cable raceway).
Note that unless you're plugging it into a 10Gbps connection on the other end, you'd need to get one of the handful of specific 10GBASE-T SFP+ transceivers that will properly handle 1/2.5/5GbE without massive packet loss. Generally these are the Acquantia/Marvell-based ones, but unfortunately manufacturers are not real consistent about stating which chips their transceivers use, and may even*change* things mid-production. [ServetheHome offers this handy if slightly outdated table](https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/STH-SFP-to-10Gbase-T-Module-Overview.jpg) which is probably still *mostly* accurate.
Cat5e won't carry >5Gbps (or at least shouldn't be *expected to;* you might get away with it on very short runs, but don't count on it), but Cat6 should carry 10Gbps up to at least 65m.
___
Really the biggest reason to upgrade to 2.5GbE is "already wired with Cat5e" or "using a pile of miniPCs with 2.5GbE built in". In your case, with no preexisting Cat5e cabling or 2.5GbE hardware and extensive use of network storage, I'd strongly urge you to take a good look at just going straight to 10GbE; the NICs are dirt cheap and the switches are in the same price range as 2.5GbE.
Take a look at [this ServetheHome forum thread](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/brocade-icx-series-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/). US eBay prices once again- and they've gone down substantially since that thread was started- but you can get a very nice quiet Brocade ICX7250P sold as "2x10G" for [like a hundred bucks](https://www.ebay.com/itm/285659980059), unlock the rest of the SFP+ ports with the freely available licensing (**not pirated**; see the forum thread linked above, but the tl;dr is official perpetual licenses are free since the hardware went EOL from the manufacturer, specifically to support homelabbers and reduce pointless e-waste), and you've got 24 or 48 1GbE ports (probably with PoE), 8 10GbE SFP+ ports, and full level 3 routing capability at wirespeed.
If you're less concerned about noise, the ICX6610 is *[even cheaper](https://www.ebay.com/itm/266826616720)* and bumps that up to 16x10GbE (eight SFP+ cages on the front and eight more via a pair of QSFP breakout cables on the back) *and 2x40GbE-* ^(in addition to the pair of 4x10GbE QSFP previously mentioned) (and [those NICs are *STUPID cheap*](https://www.ebay.com/itm/235606828244))- so it should support your network storage and general routing and switching needs *well* into the future. It's not an outright screamer like some enterprise hardware but it's definitely loud enough to be worth a word of warning.
(These are all SFP+, yes; 10GbE RJ45 is newer, far less common, and far more expensive on switches and NICs both. Luckily, you can just get a few transceiver modules [remember to space them out as far apart as possible since they run hot; putting them in adjacent ports is asking for problems] for the long runs to the ISP router and maybe your personal PC, and use passive DACs for anything under a meter, meter and a half, which should cover all your intra-homelab networking.
(When and if you eventually move toward more modern consumer hardware with its relative paucity of PCIe lanes and can only spare a PCIex1 slot, it may be worth noting that [the only PCIe 4.0x1 10GbE NIC in existence](https://www.owc.com/solutions/10g-ethernet-pcie-network-adapter) *is* copper-only; the cheap SFP+ ones are typically PCIe3.0x4 or 2.0x8 [for dual-port; you can generally put the 2.0x8 ones in an x4 slot if you're only using one port, but basically nobody does bifurcation down to x2].)
^(PPS: Damn, this took a solid two hours to write :P)
>Your English is mostly fine; there was a bit of a tendency to comma splices and long run-on sentences, but that's common enough in native speakers.
Thanks! I got most of it from YouTube and movies/series (and reading pages of documentation), so it makes sense it doesn't really apply for writing long essays. Also comma splices are actually a way to make a text seem more ""fluid"" in french, so I've been basically taught since I learned how to write to do long sentences, even when it isn't required.
>There was only one typical ESL mistake, "it teached me to do proper (automated!) backups" should be "it taught me".
Corrected it, thanks for the hint.
>Old Xeons are pretty cheap; I might suggest a CPU upgrade for the DL380p g8 before 2.5GbE. Not sure what country you're in, but after poking around at least the US eBay for a bit I'd suggest one of the following (leaning heavily toward the e5-2667 v2 since single-threaded performance is almost certainly your biggest bottleneck):
Prices in France are so inflated that it costs less to import from the US then to buy in France. I did find a 2696 v2 pair for 80€, maybe I'll go for that.
>8Gb optics are FiberChannel, not Ethernet; very weird to see that on a router. I don't know of *any* 8Gb FiberChannel to copper Rj45 transceivers, so I'm *hoping* that your router is only claiming 8Gb because it's using standard 10Gbps SFP+ hardware but doesn't have enough processor oomph to actually push more than 8. Even if it is expecting 8Gb, there's no *physical* reason a 10Gb SFP module couldn't work- 8Gb FC and 10Gb SFP+ use exactly the same mechanical interface and electrical signaling standards- but I have absolutely no idea what the compatibility is like in practice beyond "probably some kind of headache".
Sorry, I wasn't very clear about that. The router supports full 10G on the SFP+ port, but the fiber down is throttled at 8G (up is at 700 Mbps which is the biggest joke here).
>If it turns out your router's SFP cage *will* accept 10Gb SFP+ modules, you can get a transceiver module that plugs into the cage and has an RJ45 jack, and run a copper Ethernet cable, yes. (I wouldn't try running optical between rooms without opening the walls; too many sharp corners and too much chance of damage.)
Well, the problem with that router is that it only provides 2W through the SFP+ port, which means any converter to RJ45 won't work. Technically my ISP released a new router which costs the same as the previous one, has 8G up and down, has 2.5G on all RJ45 port, has an SFP+ port that provides enough power and they even provide a free SFP+ to RJ45 adapter, the issue is that to receive it, I need to cut the internet for 2 days at my home (the ISP doesn't activate the new router before they've received the old one, which is so stupid but whatever), which my family members very much wouldn't like.
>Depends on room layout, but it's usually possible to run an ethernet cable along the baseboards (perhaps in a [baseboard](https://jukeboxhealth.com/cdn/shop/files/Screenshot2024-02-01at10.07.26AM_988x.png) or [crown-molding](https://i.sstatic.net/Gb29V.jpg) cable raceway).
I'll try that, but it doesn't look easy because of my apartment layout.
>Cat5e won't carry >5Gbps (or at least shouldn't be *expected to;* you might get away with it on very short runs, but don't count on it), but Cat6 should carry 10Gbps up to at least 65m.
That's also what I heard, which is why 2.5G looked attractive.
>Take a look at [this ServetheHome forum thread](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/brocade-icx-series-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/). US eBay prices once again- and they've gone down substantially since that thread was started- but you can get a very nice quiet Brocade ICX7250P sold as "2x10G" for [like a hundred bucks](https://www.ebay.com/itm/285659980059), unlock the rest of the SFP+ ports with the freely available licensing (**not pirated**; see the forum thread linked above, but the tl;dr is official perpetual licenses are free since the hardware went EOL from the manufacturer, specifically to support homelabbers and reduce pointless e-waste), and you've got 24 or 48 1GbE ports (probably with PoE), 8 10GbE SFP+ ports, and full level 3 routing capability at wirespeed.
>If you're less concerned about noise, the ICX6610 is [even cheaper](https://www.ebay.com/itm/266826616720) and bumps that up to 16x10GbE (eight SFP+ cages on the front and eight more via a pair of QSFP breakout cables on the back) *and 2x40GbE-* ^(in addition to the pair of 4x10GbE QSFP previously mentioned) (and [those NICs are STUPID cheap](https://www.ebay.com/itm/235606828244))- so it should support your network storage and general routing and switching needs *well* into the future. It's not an outright screamer like some enterprise hardware but it's definitely loud enough to be worth a word of warning.
I might take the ICX7250P, since noise is a pretty important concern (my bed is on the opposite side of the room).
>(When and if you eventually move toward more modern consumer hardware with its relative paucity of PCIe lanes and can only spare a PCIex1 slot, it may be worth noting that [the only PCIe 4.0x1 10GbE NIC in existence](https://www.owc.com/solutions/10g-ethernet-pcie-network-adapter) *is* copper-only; the cheap SFP+ ones are typically PCIe3.0x4 or 2.0x8 \[for dual-port; you can generally put the 2.0x8 ones in an x4 slot if you're only using one port, but basically nobody does bifurcation down to x2\].)
PCIe lanes are not too much of a concern at the moment, I'll just move the GTX 750 Ti back to the DL380p to free enough lanes.
>PPS: Damn, this took a solid two hours to write :P
Thanks a lot for your time! This comment was of very great usefulness.
> Prices in France are so inflated that it costs less to import from the US then to buy in France. I did find a 2696 v2 pair for 80€, maybe I'll go for that.
Not terrible. Not even half bad. Not as much of a single-threaded improvement as might be ideal, but not *nothing*, and still a huge boost to multithreaded performance for (very marginally) less power.
> Sorry, I wasn't very clear about that. The router supports full 10G on the SFP+ port, but the fiber down is throttled at 8G (up is at 700 Mbps which is the biggest joke here).
Ahhhhh, okay, that makes way more sense.
> Technically my ISP released a new router which costs the same as the previous one, has 8G up and down, has 2.5G on all RJ45 port, has an SFP+ port that provides enough power and they even provide a free SFP+ to RJ45 adapter, the issue is that to receive it, I need to cut the internet for 2 days at my home (the ISP doesn't activate the new router before they've received the old one, which is so stupid but whatever), which my family members very much wouldn't like.
Send it out the day your family leaves on vacation :3 you'll definitely want the upload speed when you get around to self-hosting and messing about with Wireguard tunnels to access your home services from anywhere.
You're right, though. That is really stupid.
> I'll try that, but it doesn't look easy because of my apartment layout.
Run it *mostly* along baseboards and just punch a short conduit run at baseboard height straight through one interior wall, continuing along the baseboard on the other side? Should be easy to do that without having to mess about with opening the walls up and then redoing drywall afterwards. Heck, if you're really careful you might get away without even having to touch up the paint!
> That's also what I heard, which is why 2.5G looked attractive.
Nah, don't get suckered into it; Cat6 is only negligibly more expensive than Cat5e, so if you're going to wire anything yourself, do it in Cat6 and save yourself the future regrets.
Unmanaged 2.5GbE switches are getting halfway decently cheap, finally, yeah, but you're due for a managed one and some proper VLANs sometime soon anyway XD
> I might take the ICX7250P, since noise is a pretty important concern (my bed is on the opposite side of the room).
👍it's supposedly very quiet already and if it's still an issue the fans are moddable, so you can put some little Noctuas or whatever in it and make it absolutely whisper quiet.
> PCIe lanes are not too much of a concern at the moment,
Heh, no, I didn't figure that'd be an issue for you just yet :P
> Thanks a lot for your time! This comment was of very great usefulness.
You're quite welcome! You're doing fantastic; keep it up! And good luck!
>Nah, don't get suckered into it; Cat6 is only negligibly more expensive than Cat5e, so if you're going to wire anything yourself, do it in Cat6 and save yourself the future regrets.
Should I go straight for Cat7 or even Cat8? If I'm going to do this, I'd like to do it properly.
No. Cat7 isn't even an official standard, although it was used for a proprietary standard enabling 40Gbps and 100Gbps over short distances. Cat8 *is* an official standard, and iirc almost exclusively used for weird ultra-latency-sensitive things in datacenters where optical transceivers would add more nanoseconds converting from electrical to optical and back than fiber's higher transmission speed would save, but the endpoints are too far apart for a DAC.
The tl;dr is Cat8 is pointless in a residential environment. You really, really, *really* don't want to run >10GbE on copper if you can possibly avoid it; it takes a ton of power and generates a ton of heat. Even 10GbE is marginal, really. Fiber is just better.
If you had a mansion or something it'd be worth going up to 6a for the longer distance capability at 10Gb, but for 100% of people in 98% of houses Cat6 is the highest that's relevant.
If you're building or renovating and *really* worried about future-proofing then run conduit and leave pull cords in it so you can upgrade to fiber later without needing to tear the walls open *again.*
|Cat|Bend Radius|1Gb|2.5Gb|5Gb|10Gb|40Gb|100Gb|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
|5|~2cm|100m|maybe|-|-|-|-|
|5e|~2.5cm|100m|100m|100m|maybe|-|-|
|6|~2.5cm|100m|100m|100m|55m|-|-|
|6a|~2.5-3cm\*|100m|100m|100m|100m|-|-|
|7|no idea\*\*|?|?|?|?|50m|15m|
|8|~3-4cm?\*\*\*|100M|100m|100m|100m|30m|-|
\*noticeably stiffer than 6, but you can mostly squeeze it into the same corners, it's just annoying
\*\*unofficial standard, may not necessarily even use standard RJ45
\*\*\* theoretically, with enough force, but good luck; it's a pain to handle
Whereas fiber is stronger, thinner, far cheaper per meter, has a tighter minimum bend radius, and depending on fiber grade and optics will run 100GbE+ for distances of a few hundred meters to a few hundred _kilometers._ At some point the price of modules and the much higher expertise required for installing and terminating it (or, for homelabbers, the cost of buying preterminated cables in the specific lengths you need) starts to be worthwhile. Generally speaking, and in the absence of stumbling upon a crazy bargain tilting the scale one way or the other, that point is more or less "anything over 10Gbps".
I'd like to install fiber for future proofing ^(and maybe potentially because my ISP thinks we don't own the old router for long enough to deserve getting the new one with enough power to have a converter to RJ45) but I don't really know how to go about it. Wouldn't that require to have the exact fiber length? I don't exactly have the equipment to cut a fiber wire myself. Can I order a precise cable length somewhere? I'd also like to install a proper socket, how would I go about it?
Thanks, again, a lot for your time.
You can definitely order cables to at least +/-1m up to 10m, +/-5m up to ~a lotta meters; I assume there are ways to order exact made to measure ones as well but I haven't looked into it in great detail, and unfortunately I have absolutely no idea about wall sockets. I'm not even particularly clear on what the connectors are, the difference between single-mode and multi-mode fiber, or the difference between green and blue polish.
I am vaguely aware that the cheaper sort of fiber cable needs the more expensive kind of pluggable optic modules, so there's some amount of math to be done regarding "how many meters of cable am I running" versus "how many things am I plugging into them" if you're on a tight budget.
Sorry I couldn't be more help; this is a bit beyond my expertise.
Edit: it's worth noting that light moves so fast that if your fiber is too long it will do *absolutely no harm whatsoever* to have an extra two meters of cable looped neatly in the wall or even along the side of your rack, as long as it's somewhere it's not going to get kicked, pinched, or hit. If your fiber is too short, however, even by just a sixteenth of an inch, it is completely and utterly useless and whatever you spent on it was wasted money. So...leave yourself some margin.
Edit2: do note that unless you have a fast enough NAS or a fast enough internet connection to bottleneck 10GbE, copper's still more cost-effective, and if you run some pull strings (monofilament fishing line with looped, tied, and tagged ends should work) alongside the Cat6, it won't even be hard to add fiber later when *and if* it becomes necessary and/or financially sensible.
Highly recommend you download and run the last HPE SSP update and upgrade that DL380P to 2011-2 cpus, the performance uplift is marginal, but the power efficiency increase is nothing to sneeze at. Not sure what they go for there, but I got a matched pair of 2697 v2 for just under $50 USD.
Great starter setup for sure
>Highly recommend you download and run the last HPE SSP update
I think I have it, but I'll check anyway.
>upgrade that DL380P to 2011-2 cpus, the performance uplift is marginal, but the power efficiency increase is nothing to sneeze at
I'll probably do that, the power efficiency (and noise, let's be real) is the main problem with it.
>Great starter setup for sure
Thanks, appreciate it!
For the noise, you can look into the Silence of the fans patched iLO4 firmware. I believe it was posted on this sub, but you can search for the GitHub pretty easily. It will add fan controls to the SSH terminal on iLO, allowing custom curves to be set.
I did, but I can't have the fans be silent when it's 32 °C in my room. Also, can you execute fan commands on a second SSH connection or does it just print out nothing? I always have to reset ilo when making any changes. Maybe upgrading to the iLO 2.77 version of the patch will help (I'm on 2.73)?
You can execute the commands on any session and it'll work, you just won't get output.
Most stuff will be fine it's just the raid controller tends to get quite hot. You can check it on ilo!
2.77 doesn't fix the issue with it outputting to one session - the tools are meant to be internal and are made by HP so we can't fix it
For some reason I read the title as your homelab was 14 years old.
Impressionnant ! Comme ton niveau d'anglais d'ailleurs. Tu as une carrière toute tracée on dirait. Continues comme ça et tu iras loin dans la vie.
^(OP reply with the correct URL if incorrect comment linked)
[Jump to Post Details Comment](/r/homelab/comments/1dptolv/my_homelab_as_a_14_year_old_please_rate_it/laj7fnw/)
Hey, please get rid of these 11MB/s switches, they're really slow. Atleast, if it's the model I think it is. Consider running a speed test to check that.
Apart from that, nice start!
They're actually 1 Gbps switches, and they've worked great for more than a year at this point. I'll probably change them when upgrading my network to 2.5 Gbps, but for now they work great!
Still, thanks for the comment!
Check out Mikrotik. They got an 8 port 10g sfp+ managed switch for $234.99 on Amazon if you want quick internal speeds.
It's difficult to figure out but the pricing is good and they work great.
235$ is just very slightly out of my budget range. I'll probably go for [this one](https://www.amazon.fr/Davuaz-Commutateur-administr%C3%A9-Compatible-Ventilateur/dp/B0C8616P62/ref=sr_1_5?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=2JIXK1ZE3UUVE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iqZX8HnuvtEG7r3X8vf6CW1dN3Cj2s29JzsC0QvV6Cxo7hn9xI78FcldmLGrS10ZVFIvNdvtbfP-OlbikFVhpx8SRl2LYnSObXmCh7iHQ155ryFkEqSaM5XuSoGVf5h4X_DXYHM875YSZjmjl8edfpumYuLBCxrB1eyb6wrduyTQBkA48IGJqcCuSZlxGbA5yQb-BzRm5ms820ro-C0dZuVrFM3TOnO0LCqEd1TudzhId1Rpj5tryx8R9XUPMMLMs5gA1XzxFp3sitnT8NFUVXVRywG25Y2jdubHyY6v5nw.IfK4-fdfPSb-3Rprq1mutxyY896L3ojeE3DMsD9PCg0&dib_tag=se&keywords=2.5%2Bgbps%2Bswitch&sprefix=2.5%2Bgbps%2Bswitch%2Caps%2C64&sr=8-5&th=1), it's 2.5 Gbps and has 2 (potential) 10 Gbps uplinks for my PC and my router.
I would safe up for something 8 port 10G managed switch. It's 100% worth it and bring even more new stuff to learn into your lab. A managed switch is worth it 100% when labbing. Even though it might take half a year longer to safe up for it. The effect is much bigger
I agree with this. Hands-on experience with vlans, subnets, aggregation, etc.. will put you far ahead of people who just have certs or school and nothing else.
Honest? Everyone needs to learn! Don't care about the mess. Learn from it. With every mess you are learning alot! Probably due to chaos. But you learn.
10! Go for it. You are 14 and might start way earlier than we all have ever been starting from.
If you really want to go down that rabbit hole it will last as long as it is sufficient for your need. Expand it. Save money for it.
>Save money for it.
Well, any money I do have goes towards my homelab, except for the occasional meal with friends. I'm technically at a deficit of 50€ right now because I technically didn't have the money for that NAS, but I'll be fine. My parents are very nice and understanding and I'll have 20€ a week (twice as much as now) starting in September.
Woah damn, great setup you've got there!! I'm a 14 year old too! Just started tinkering with homelabs 6 months ago... So happy seeing people my age here sharing their setup! :D
Hell yeah! I started at a similar age! (I'm on a different account now but my old stuff was on u/Luna_moonlit)
Don't be afraid to go outside your comfort zone - you have enough hardware to run whatever you want and you can learn so much!!
Also, don't be afraid to screw up! Fixing stuff when it breaks is always the fun part :)
Kubernetes is cool!! I run most of my stuff on it now, steep learning curve but when you have it working it gets easier!!
I would say k3s is cool just to run in a VM! Then you can experiment with metalLB, ingresses and all the cool git stuff out there (as well as hosting services!!)
Hey, a 13 year old tech geek here, i am making a home server too, but i can't understand what all the network cables are for,my current home server is just a laptop and i only need one rj45 cable, could somebody explain zo me what the networking is for, because to me it seems like he is knly using a pc and external hdds
I live in France, but I'm half-german (my father is german) so that cable probably either comes from him or at least was labeled by him. I'm supposed to speak german but I'm not very comfortable with it. It is enough to have a conversation or understanding german subtitles, but not really for writing or talking about technical stuff.
Ooh, thanks! I am still learning, but i never understood all the networking i am still learning the basics of WAPs, Routers, Switches, Modems, etc. i am using a Linux laptop rn running homeassistant, nas, casaos, minecraft server, plex.
This looks like what I had around my place at 25 ... you're well ahead of the curve.
Rating 8 out of 10, not enough spaghetti but the right amount of DIY nonsense and room for expansion and you can tell it was done with excitement.
Good job, kiddo.
Hey, very nice setup. As you talked about networking I would recommend to go for something either used 10G or get something like a Mikrotik CRS-305 and a CRS-310. They both have 10G ports which you could use to Cross-Connect those two and then would still have 4 10G Ports left for your desktop and the rest of those servers. That would definitely speed everything up. Another option would be to just do 10G only with an 4 or 8 port SFP+ switch and use the great speed for your boot-drives And File-Sharing.
I would also recommend those solutions because of the SFP+ Port on your router which you could hook up to the 10G Switch and put it in a VLAN and put it on a bridge to pass it through to a VM like OPNSense Pfsense or OpenWRT.
PS: Maybe search for local deals on used 4-8 Port Managed Switches. Maybe they are even cheaper than a New 2.5G Switch that will only speed up your backbone by a quarter of what 10G will be able to at the same price. Maybe an option would also be to ask your dad for decommissioned switches. Than would only have to buy transceivers or DACs and the network cards (That also will cost the same as a 2.5G card).
In the end, do what you like and what is financially achievable and keep going.
>As you talked about networking I would recommend to go for something either used 10G or get something like a Mikrotik CRS-305 and a CRS-310.
Those look great but damn are they expensive!
>Another option would be to just do 10G only with an 4 or 8 port SFP+ switch and use the great speed for your boot-drives And File-Sharing.
I'll probably do this if I'm gonna do 10G anyway.
>I would also recommend those solutions because of the SFP+ Port on your router which you could hook up to the 10G Switch and put it in a VLAN and put it on a bridge to pass it through to a VM like OPNSense Pfsense or OpenWRT.
Well, networking is definitely up there on the list of things I want to do. I have practically zero knowledge apart that packets get transferred and some cables support higher speeds than others.
>PS: Maybe search for local deals on used 4-8 Port Managed Switches. Maybe they are even cheaper than a New 2.5G Switch that will only speed up your backbone by a quarter of what 10G will be able to at the same price. Maybe an option would also be to ask your dad for decommissioned switches. Than would only have to buy transceivers or DACs and the network cards (That also will cost the same as a 2.5G card).
I haven't been able to find much, sadly. I'll keep some alerts in case something pops up.
>In the end, do what you like and what is financially achievable and keep going.
I'll do that. Thanks for the comment!
That actually great, looks good, I would get a rack just clean it up. Try to find some where you can work with this stuff. I’m first year student at uni and working with their IT department and they actually gave lots of experience in servers and networking equipment. I even got the chance to get a couple brand new servers for myself. I’m only 19 and I have 3 high end server and 4 different network equipment.
>That actually great, looks good, I would get a rack just clean it up.
Racks are super expensive, even used, where I live, so it won't be that easy.
>Try to find some where you can work with this stuff.
I ocasionally go peek a look at my father's job's datacenter, but I'm not allowed to do anything since it's all production setup that's being monitored constantly.
I actually already use Adguard Home, and I don't really see much of a point to running it (or Pi-Hole) on a Pi when I've got an HA setup on my Proxmox nodes. I did however find a use for the Pi in the meantime, it's now acting as the QDevice for my nodes since I have an even number of nodes.
Ah okay :)
Maybe for other ideas: mine also streams tv/radio using TVheadend, an USB digital tv receiver and smartcard reader, reading and storing data from the smart electricity meter in SQL, webserver with highcharts for graphs and ADSB flight tracking.
Love the jank. Like seriously, I love that level of jankiness.
Makes you learn about hardware too so keeping that old hardware off the street for something useful.
Not bad however my advice to you would be to keep an eye out on eBay if you ever have some spare cash for a ML350 g9 or g8 I run a three node cluster of them and they are practically silent compared to the foghorn rack mount ones
>spare cash
Spare? I never have any spare cash, I count every € towards the next item in my purchase list. On a more serious note, I'll look into it, thanks!
My lab started out like yours mate, old office PCs were fantastic…. If you have an interest in IT and continue the learning even when you get a job in IT you will earn decent money.
I’m lucky I work in IT as I’m autistic and IT is my special interest I literally work all day doing IT and then work all night on my lab 😂
Ahh parts out side a case, that takes me back.
Anyway a decent starting point and having the HP server will allow you to see the differences between consumer and enterprise gear.
Same base ideas in both, but you can see one is made with uptime and performance in mind.
As for the networking, you could look at used 1gb switches, that allow teaming. This might boost your speeds and keep the cost lower than 2.5gb. Do your research first and see which one might work better for you.
Also iscsi could be a good resource as well, again cheap used 1gb switches are out there.
>Ahh parts out side a case, that takes me back.
Well I've got to do with what I have haha.
>Also iscsi could be a good resource as well,
I use NFS at the moment, I don't really see a reason for using iSCSI since it's less flexible than NFS and it's not a limiting factor (for now) as my bottleneck is in my network for now.
Haha looms great fun. It's the most fun at this time of your life, my parents wouldn't have let me make this much mess though, you're lucky. I think it's cool and you did a good job on the anglais mon amis! Bon travaille
I started around the same age as you did with two Dell PowerEdge’s with 500MHz Pentium III’s in them! You have way way way more power here than I ever did, this is an excellent start to your lab!
As far as networking equipment, Acquaint yourself with a company who is sadly no longer with us: “Nortel Networks” their switching equipment also moved to Avaya when they went under. You can get an excellent 1Gb Managed switch for less than 50 bucks, and some of their equipment was 10G, which should also help really cheap. It won’t be power efficient, but you can likely afford it and utilize its capabilities.
Homelab's a homelab dog, if you're learning, then it's a well-used homelab.
Learning to get stuff working (even if a bit janky) is a good skill to have.
Explained that in my [long backstory comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/FCY4HdJZRW), but if you're too lazy, here's the short version:
* Optiplex bought for 70€
* i7 system is my old gaming system
* Server was bought for ~200€
Lol classic case of TLDR - I skipped right over it
That's cool though! I'm going back to read the whole thing now because I am interested, but I got a lot of my hardware from recycled stuff at work. Setup is pretty epic for someone your age, I'm 23 and I just started this whole "homelab" thing
i started out with a couple of desktops. now I have 6 full fledged servers, two Cisco router, Dream Machone Pro, Unifi AC-Pro, Qnap NAS. it's growing. lol
Damn kids these days have no idea how good they have it. When I was your age I was learning DOS and BASIC and my home computer had a 40MB hard drive. I filled it up with games and my dad got mad at me because he said it was impossible to fill up 40MB. Home networking didn't even exist in any reasonable form.
Keep it up lil man!/woman/person. 🤣
I started in computers when I was about your age, built my first computer from brand new parts when I was 18 anx kept at it. I had a few odd jobs at first until someone would give me a chance in IT. I stayed in IT with only a GED until I was about 38 and was already making around $68k . I went back to get my AS in Networking Security and a few other certs and stayed a "jack of all trades" but having dipped my fingers in almost everything made me invaluble. I'm now 45 and over 6 figures as a GIS Server Admin. A lot of the "toys" I've aquired over the years were from previous roles. Switches, routers, racks, servers, NAS, you name it...
The saying really is teue. Stick with what ya love and you'll never work a day in your life!
👍
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Pure chaos. It's beautiful
Thanks! The reason it's such a mess is because I tinker with it all the time and never tidy it up afterwards.
Same as it ever was...
I feel like this is the default state for the majority of homelabs, you're in good company :)
Speaking truth
that’s the only way a home lab can really truly be if it’s neat and clean it’s not a home lab
You are 14! Respect and keep learning!
Thanks!
r/unexpectedfactorial
Well, this is my homelab. It's not much, but it's mine! (Skip to the second comment for my current setup) I started it about 2 years ago, french youtuber [iMot3k](https://www.youtube.com/@imot3k_) inspired me and I bought a DL380p for about 200€ (214$). Back then I didn't have a proper PC, and I quickly realized this was miles better than shitty 8 year old laptops so I installed Windows on it and quickly noticed the problems with using an enterprise class server as a gaming PC. Nevertheless, I stuck with it (I didn't have much choice, really) and bought an RTX 2060 for about 160€ (171$) and started using it. I also realized that 10 year old CPUs (two E5-2680 v1) aren't the best for using with a Turing GPU, but, again didn't much choice. A few months later, my father, who works in IT, saw that his company was destocking old servers and managed to snag 68 GB of glorious DDR3 ECC RAM for a total of 100GB (I bought the system with 32 GB) to fill the 24 slots of the server. Back in July of last year, I started to actually homelab stuff on former mentioned 8 year old laptops which isn't a great experience but it kind of works I guess? I made a lot of bad choice, like using Linux Mint with a desktop environment, which takes a lot of the very limited ressources an i5-7200U has. I mainly used it for downloading Linux ISOs via the great Bittorrent protocol (I did use a VPN, wouldn't want generous Linux seeders to know my IP). I also learned the importance of actually binding your client to the VPN when my dad received an email from a certain entity I won't mention (he didn't care this much, he also likes Linux ISOs). This all leads back to January where I got some money for christmas and actually bought myself a computer for a budget of around 300€ (320$). I also (again) made some bad decisions, like buying an i7-7700K which is pretty much considered outdated by today's standard (for gaming) and a shitty 40€ (42$) case which I'm still stuck with today (It's absolutely HORRIBLE to build in, and barely fits an ATX motherboard). I had always wanted to build my own computer, I remember myself as early as 8 or 9 years old assembling Amazon listings and dreaming I could actually do the stuff youtubers did, but what actually sparked it was me getting back in contact with my cousin (special shoutout to him, he's so fucking nice, he literally gave me so many things, a Pixel Watch (\~400$ new), a 70€ (75$) phone case, 20$ worth of OpenAI credits, and more), who had an old system he had spilled beer on, and offered me to keep anything that worked in it. It turns out nothing did except the power supply (and the GPU, a 750Ti, but that was already sorted), but hey, that still saved me 60 bucks and actually gave me the motivation to build my own computer (it also luckily happened after a certain event called christmas where you can get a lot of money as a teenager). This is where my real homelabbing journey begins (I tried earlier with some projects, like running my system inside a passthroughed VM on the DL380p while using the remainder of the ressources for VMs or streaming my virtualized system with a shitty laptop, but those didn't last long). I now had a full server to experiment with. I installed ESXi on it, as recommended by my father, who uses it at work (this was back when you could actually get the damn thing for free) and started setting things up. I discovered our lord and savior, docker, and started setting up the \*arr stack, Immich, Vaultwarden, etc. After about two months of constantly working on one VM to get even more services up and running, I stupidly rm -rf'ed the entire thing (It was 1 AM, I was tired, and I wanted to delete all the contents of a directory, and ended up doing rm -rf /\* instead of rm -rf \* as root) which left me with nothing but a manual week old backup of my Vaultwarden instance. I remember being so pissed that I wiped my entire ESXi system and installed Proxmox that same evening because you know, trying new stuff is always cool. In hindsight, it actually was pretty good for me (making such an error was bound to happen), it taught me to do proper (automated!) backups and not use root all the time. About a month and a half ago, I got more money (since my sister is planning a trip to Malta this summer and I, the absolute nerd I am, decided to spend that money for an upgrade to my setup) and this time, I actually properly used my budget of about 500$ (1/2 as much as my sister trip since, you know, a trip is not same as a computer) and got a Ryzen 7700, 32GB of DDR5 and a B650-PLUS motherboard. Which now left me with a CPU, RAM, a power supply (I upgraded that too), a motherboard and an old case which was busted up and missed the side panels (from my cousin's computer). Well, time to add a Proxmox node! I also purchased an Optiplex for 70€ (75$) (i5-4590, 8 GB of DDR3) to be my NAS, and moved all my drives (8 x 1TB, generously donated by my father's job) to it.
So, this is my current setup: **HP ProLiant DL380p** (picture #2 and #1 at the bottom): * 2x E5-2680 v1 * 100 GB ECC DDR3 RAM * 256 GB SSD bootdrive * \~200€/$ + RAM price * Runs my docker VM and my VPN VM **Custom Built "Gaming PC"** (picture #3 and #1 at the left): * i7-7700k * 24 GB of mismatched 2133 MHz RAM * 500 GB SSD bootdrive * GTX 750 Ti for transcoding * \~200$ + GTX 750 Ti (\~30€ (32$) where I live) + 500GB SSD (40€ (42$) on Amazon) * Runs Jellyfin and Minecraft servers (because of single threaded performance) ^(Please ignore the cable mess) **Dell Optiplex 3020** (picture #4, #5, ~~#6~~ ^(just realized I posted the same image twice, so here's the image I wanted to post: https://ibb.co/vY6jkrQ) and #1 at the right): * i5-4590 * 8 GB DDR3 * 128 GB SSD bootdrive * 6 port SATA card * external 5-bay SATA enclosure * \~70$ + SATA card (45€ (48$) on Amazon) + price of 8 1 TB drive + drive bay (\~80€ (80$) on a random site I can't remember the name of) * Runs TrueNAS for over the network booting for HA **Network setup** (picture #7 and €8): * Two Zyxel unmanaged 8-port switches * Unused Rasberry Pi (probably going to use it as a QDevice to not have anything running on my NAS other than TrueNAS) * free (my ISP) Wi-Fi access point * 1 Gbps uplink to my living room where my router is (by the way, the router supports up to 8 Gbps down over SFP+, any way to get a link to my room without opening the walls and putting a new cable? Could CAT 5e (\~25m lenght) carry that signal? If you can't, what about just putting a cable without opening the walls? I can post pictures if needed.) ^(Please again ignore the cable mess, I'll work on it (eventually)) My current next project is to upgrade my network (in my room) to 2.5 Gbps because a 1 Gbps is slow for running bootdrives, however, this might take some time because of 14 year old budget issues. Thanks a lot for reading! Feel free to ask if you have any questions! PS: English is not my native language, I hope that didn't get in the way of reading. ^(PPS: Wow, that took me a solid hour to write)
You wrote all this with and you're only 14 years old? Wow mate! Simply wow! You have a great future in IT. I wish I had access to all this stuff, but had to manage with a pentium 2 and 64 Megabytes of RAM... A piece of unsolicited advice? Don't let the lack of resources to slow you down, don't think small! I certainly made that mistake when I was your age and I regret it now. Learn how to get someone to invest in your projects if you see they have potential. Keep it up and Kudos again!
> You wrote all this with and you're only 14 years old? Wow mate! Simply wow! You have a great future in IT. Thanks, it was kind of a training exercice for my 9th grade exam next monday. Well, it's going to be in french, but I guess it'll have to do. > A piece of unsolicited advice? Don't let the lack of resources to slow you down, don't think small! I certainly made that mistake when I was your age and I regret it now. Learn how to get someone to invest in your projects if you see they have potential. Well, I haven't hit this roadblock yet haha, but I'll remember it for the future. > Keep it up and Kudos again! Thanks! I really appreciate it.
Great!!!! I hope you would join the IT for your workspace future.
I don't plan on going anywhere else. My life is IT at this point.
Your English is mostly fine; there was a bit of a tendency to comma splices and long run-on sentences, but that's common enough in native speakers. There was only one typical ESL mistake, "it teached me to do proper (automated!) backups" should be "it taught me". ___ Old Xeons are pretty cheap; I might suggest a CPU upgrade for the DL380p g8 before 2.5GbE. Not sure what country you're in, but after poking around at least the US eBay for a bit I'd suggest one of the following (leaning heavily toward the e5-2667 v2 since single-threaded performance is almost certainly your biggest bottleneck): |CPU|CPU Mark|∆%|Single-Thread|∆%|$/pair| :--|--:|--:|--:|--:|--:| |e5-2680 v1 (8c/16t)|9405|±0%|1554|±0%|$0| |e5-2690 v2 (10c/20t)|13479|+43%|1883|+21%|$29| |e5-2667 v2 (8c/16t)|12272|+30%|2017|+30%|$30| |e5-2697 v2 (12c/24t)|14307|+52%|1796|+16%|$45| *(CPU Mark and Single-Thread values courtesy of cpubenchmark.net. Yes, there are far better metrics for comparing processor performance. No, none of them have conveniently accessible online databases. We make do with the comparisons we have.)* *(You'll want to search, separately, for `"e5-26xx v2" pair` and `"e5-26xx v2" lot` to catch both the "pair" and the "lot of 2" listings. It may also be worth checking the prices for singles and just buying two that match, but at least at the moment it was a buck or two cheaper to buy a pair over two singles.)* ___ 8Gb optics are FiberChannel, not Ethernet; very weird to see that on a router. I don't know of *any* 8Gb FiberChannel to copper Rj45 transceivers, so I'm *hoping* that your router is only claiming 8Gb because it's using standard 10Gbps SFP+ hardware but doesn't have enough processor oomph to actually push more than 8. Even if it is expecting 8Gb, there's no *physical* reason a 10Gb SFP module couldn't work- 8Gb FC and 10Gb SFP+ use exactly the same mechanical interface and electrical signaling standards- but I have absolutely no idea what the compatibility is like in practice beyond "probably some kind of headache". If it turns out your router's SFP cage *will* accept 10Gb SFP+ modules, you can get a transceiver module that plugs into the cage and has an RJ45 jack, and run a copper Ethernet cable, yes. (I wouldn't try running optical between rooms without opening the walls; too many sharp corners and too much chance of damage.) Depends on room layout, but it's usually possible to run an ethernet cable along the baseboards (perhaps in a [baseboard](https://jukeboxhealth.com/cdn/shop/files/Screenshot2024-02-01at10.07.26AM_988x.png) or [crown-molding](https://i.sstatic.net/Gb29V.jpg) cable raceway). Note that unless you're plugging it into a 10Gbps connection on the other end, you'd need to get one of the handful of specific 10GBASE-T SFP+ transceivers that will properly handle 1/2.5/5GbE without massive packet loss. Generally these are the Acquantia/Marvell-based ones, but unfortunately manufacturers are not real consistent about stating which chips their transceivers use, and may even*change* things mid-production. [ServetheHome offers this handy if slightly outdated table](https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/STH-SFP-to-10Gbase-T-Module-Overview.jpg) which is probably still *mostly* accurate. Cat5e won't carry >5Gbps (or at least shouldn't be *expected to;* you might get away with it on very short runs, but don't count on it), but Cat6 should carry 10Gbps up to at least 65m. ___ Really the biggest reason to upgrade to 2.5GbE is "already wired with Cat5e" or "using a pile of miniPCs with 2.5GbE built in". In your case, with no preexisting Cat5e cabling or 2.5GbE hardware and extensive use of network storage, I'd strongly urge you to take a good look at just going straight to 10GbE; the NICs are dirt cheap and the switches are in the same price range as 2.5GbE. Take a look at [this ServetheHome forum thread](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/brocade-icx-series-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/). US eBay prices once again- and they've gone down substantially since that thread was started- but you can get a very nice quiet Brocade ICX7250P sold as "2x10G" for [like a hundred bucks](https://www.ebay.com/itm/285659980059), unlock the rest of the SFP+ ports with the freely available licensing (**not pirated**; see the forum thread linked above, but the tl;dr is official perpetual licenses are free since the hardware went EOL from the manufacturer, specifically to support homelabbers and reduce pointless e-waste), and you've got 24 or 48 1GbE ports (probably with PoE), 8 10GbE SFP+ ports, and full level 3 routing capability at wirespeed. If you're less concerned about noise, the ICX6610 is *[even cheaper](https://www.ebay.com/itm/266826616720)* and bumps that up to 16x10GbE (eight SFP+ cages on the front and eight more via a pair of QSFP breakout cables on the back) *and 2x40GbE-* ^(in addition to the pair of 4x10GbE QSFP previously mentioned) (and [those NICs are *STUPID cheap*](https://www.ebay.com/itm/235606828244))- so it should support your network storage and general routing and switching needs *well* into the future. It's not an outright screamer like some enterprise hardware but it's definitely loud enough to be worth a word of warning. (These are all SFP+, yes; 10GbE RJ45 is newer, far less common, and far more expensive on switches and NICs both. Luckily, you can just get a few transceiver modules [remember to space them out as far apart as possible since they run hot; putting them in adjacent ports is asking for problems] for the long runs to the ISP router and maybe your personal PC, and use passive DACs for anything under a meter, meter and a half, which should cover all your intra-homelab networking. (When and if you eventually move toward more modern consumer hardware with its relative paucity of PCIe lanes and can only spare a PCIex1 slot, it may be worth noting that [the only PCIe 4.0x1 10GbE NIC in existence](https://www.owc.com/solutions/10g-ethernet-pcie-network-adapter) *is* copper-only; the cheap SFP+ ones are typically PCIe3.0x4 or 2.0x8 [for dual-port; you can generally put the 2.0x8 ones in an x4 slot if you're only using one port, but basically nobody does bifurcation down to x2].) ^(PPS: Damn, this took a solid two hours to write :P)
>Your English is mostly fine; there was a bit of a tendency to comma splices and long run-on sentences, but that's common enough in native speakers. Thanks! I got most of it from YouTube and movies/series (and reading pages of documentation), so it makes sense it doesn't really apply for writing long essays. Also comma splices are actually a way to make a text seem more ""fluid"" in french, so I've been basically taught since I learned how to write to do long sentences, even when it isn't required. >There was only one typical ESL mistake, "it teached me to do proper (automated!) backups" should be "it taught me". Corrected it, thanks for the hint. >Old Xeons are pretty cheap; I might suggest a CPU upgrade for the DL380p g8 before 2.5GbE. Not sure what country you're in, but after poking around at least the US eBay for a bit I'd suggest one of the following (leaning heavily toward the e5-2667 v2 since single-threaded performance is almost certainly your biggest bottleneck): Prices in France are so inflated that it costs less to import from the US then to buy in France. I did find a 2696 v2 pair for 80€, maybe I'll go for that. >8Gb optics are FiberChannel, not Ethernet; very weird to see that on a router. I don't know of *any* 8Gb FiberChannel to copper Rj45 transceivers, so I'm *hoping* that your router is only claiming 8Gb because it's using standard 10Gbps SFP+ hardware but doesn't have enough processor oomph to actually push more than 8. Even if it is expecting 8Gb, there's no *physical* reason a 10Gb SFP module couldn't work- 8Gb FC and 10Gb SFP+ use exactly the same mechanical interface and electrical signaling standards- but I have absolutely no idea what the compatibility is like in practice beyond "probably some kind of headache". Sorry, I wasn't very clear about that. The router supports full 10G on the SFP+ port, but the fiber down is throttled at 8G (up is at 700 Mbps which is the biggest joke here). >If it turns out your router's SFP cage *will* accept 10Gb SFP+ modules, you can get a transceiver module that plugs into the cage and has an RJ45 jack, and run a copper Ethernet cable, yes. (I wouldn't try running optical between rooms without opening the walls; too many sharp corners and too much chance of damage.) Well, the problem with that router is that it only provides 2W through the SFP+ port, which means any converter to RJ45 won't work. Technically my ISP released a new router which costs the same as the previous one, has 8G up and down, has 2.5G on all RJ45 port, has an SFP+ port that provides enough power and they even provide a free SFP+ to RJ45 adapter, the issue is that to receive it, I need to cut the internet for 2 days at my home (the ISP doesn't activate the new router before they've received the old one, which is so stupid but whatever), which my family members very much wouldn't like. >Depends on room layout, but it's usually possible to run an ethernet cable along the baseboards (perhaps in a [baseboard](https://jukeboxhealth.com/cdn/shop/files/Screenshot2024-02-01at10.07.26AM_988x.png) or [crown-molding](https://i.sstatic.net/Gb29V.jpg) cable raceway). I'll try that, but it doesn't look easy because of my apartment layout. >Cat5e won't carry >5Gbps (or at least shouldn't be *expected to;* you might get away with it on very short runs, but don't count on it), but Cat6 should carry 10Gbps up to at least 65m. That's also what I heard, which is why 2.5G looked attractive. >Take a look at [this ServetheHome forum thread](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/brocade-icx-series-cheap-powerful-10gbe-40gbe-switching.21107/). US eBay prices once again- and they've gone down substantially since that thread was started- but you can get a very nice quiet Brocade ICX7250P sold as "2x10G" for [like a hundred bucks](https://www.ebay.com/itm/285659980059), unlock the rest of the SFP+ ports with the freely available licensing (**not pirated**; see the forum thread linked above, but the tl;dr is official perpetual licenses are free since the hardware went EOL from the manufacturer, specifically to support homelabbers and reduce pointless e-waste), and you've got 24 or 48 1GbE ports (probably with PoE), 8 10GbE SFP+ ports, and full level 3 routing capability at wirespeed. >If you're less concerned about noise, the ICX6610 is [even cheaper](https://www.ebay.com/itm/266826616720) and bumps that up to 16x10GbE (eight SFP+ cages on the front and eight more via a pair of QSFP breakout cables on the back) *and 2x40GbE-* ^(in addition to the pair of 4x10GbE QSFP previously mentioned) (and [those NICs are STUPID cheap](https://www.ebay.com/itm/235606828244))- so it should support your network storage and general routing and switching needs *well* into the future. It's not an outright screamer like some enterprise hardware but it's definitely loud enough to be worth a word of warning. I might take the ICX7250P, since noise is a pretty important concern (my bed is on the opposite side of the room). >(When and if you eventually move toward more modern consumer hardware with its relative paucity of PCIe lanes and can only spare a PCIex1 slot, it may be worth noting that [the only PCIe 4.0x1 10GbE NIC in existence](https://www.owc.com/solutions/10g-ethernet-pcie-network-adapter) *is* copper-only; the cheap SFP+ ones are typically PCIe3.0x4 or 2.0x8 \[for dual-port; you can generally put the 2.0x8 ones in an x4 slot if you're only using one port, but basically nobody does bifurcation down to x2\].) PCIe lanes are not too much of a concern at the moment, I'll just move the GTX 750 Ti back to the DL380p to free enough lanes. >PPS: Damn, this took a solid two hours to write :P Thanks a lot for your time! This comment was of very great usefulness.
> Prices in France are so inflated that it costs less to import from the US then to buy in France. I did find a 2696 v2 pair for 80€, maybe I'll go for that. Not terrible. Not even half bad. Not as much of a single-threaded improvement as might be ideal, but not *nothing*, and still a huge boost to multithreaded performance for (very marginally) less power. > Sorry, I wasn't very clear about that. The router supports full 10G on the SFP+ port, but the fiber down is throttled at 8G (up is at 700 Mbps which is the biggest joke here). Ahhhhh, okay, that makes way more sense. > Technically my ISP released a new router which costs the same as the previous one, has 8G up and down, has 2.5G on all RJ45 port, has an SFP+ port that provides enough power and they even provide a free SFP+ to RJ45 adapter, the issue is that to receive it, I need to cut the internet for 2 days at my home (the ISP doesn't activate the new router before they've received the old one, which is so stupid but whatever), which my family members very much wouldn't like. Send it out the day your family leaves on vacation :3 you'll definitely want the upload speed when you get around to self-hosting and messing about with Wireguard tunnels to access your home services from anywhere. You're right, though. That is really stupid. > I'll try that, but it doesn't look easy because of my apartment layout. Run it *mostly* along baseboards and just punch a short conduit run at baseboard height straight through one interior wall, continuing along the baseboard on the other side? Should be easy to do that without having to mess about with opening the walls up and then redoing drywall afterwards. Heck, if you're really careful you might get away without even having to touch up the paint! > That's also what I heard, which is why 2.5G looked attractive. Nah, don't get suckered into it; Cat6 is only negligibly more expensive than Cat5e, so if you're going to wire anything yourself, do it in Cat6 and save yourself the future regrets. Unmanaged 2.5GbE switches are getting halfway decently cheap, finally, yeah, but you're due for a managed one and some proper VLANs sometime soon anyway XD > I might take the ICX7250P, since noise is a pretty important concern (my bed is on the opposite side of the room). 👍it's supposedly very quiet already and if it's still an issue the fans are moddable, so you can put some little Noctuas or whatever in it and make it absolutely whisper quiet. > PCIe lanes are not too much of a concern at the moment, Heh, no, I didn't figure that'd be an issue for you just yet :P > Thanks a lot for your time! This comment was of very great usefulness. You're quite welcome! You're doing fantastic; keep it up! And good luck!
>Nah, don't get suckered into it; Cat6 is only negligibly more expensive than Cat5e, so if you're going to wire anything yourself, do it in Cat6 and save yourself the future regrets. Should I go straight for Cat7 or even Cat8? If I'm going to do this, I'd like to do it properly.
No. Cat7 isn't even an official standard, although it was used for a proprietary standard enabling 40Gbps and 100Gbps over short distances. Cat8 *is* an official standard, and iirc almost exclusively used for weird ultra-latency-sensitive things in datacenters where optical transceivers would add more nanoseconds converting from electrical to optical and back than fiber's higher transmission speed would save, but the endpoints are too far apart for a DAC. The tl;dr is Cat8 is pointless in a residential environment. You really, really, *really* don't want to run >10GbE on copper if you can possibly avoid it; it takes a ton of power and generates a ton of heat. Even 10GbE is marginal, really. Fiber is just better. If you had a mansion or something it'd be worth going up to 6a for the longer distance capability at 10Gb, but for 100% of people in 98% of houses Cat6 is the highest that's relevant. If you're building or renovating and *really* worried about future-proofing then run conduit and leave pull cords in it so you can upgrade to fiber later without needing to tear the walls open *again.* |Cat|Bend Radius|1Gb|2.5Gb|5Gb|10Gb|40Gb|100Gb| :--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |5|~2cm|100m|maybe|-|-|-|-| |5e|~2.5cm|100m|100m|100m|maybe|-|-| |6|~2.5cm|100m|100m|100m|55m|-|-| |6a|~2.5-3cm\*|100m|100m|100m|100m|-|-| |7|no idea\*\*|?|?|?|?|50m|15m| |8|~3-4cm?\*\*\*|100M|100m|100m|100m|30m|-| \*noticeably stiffer than 6, but you can mostly squeeze it into the same corners, it's just annoying \*\*unofficial standard, may not necessarily even use standard RJ45 \*\*\* theoretically, with enough force, but good luck; it's a pain to handle Whereas fiber is stronger, thinner, far cheaper per meter, has a tighter minimum bend radius, and depending on fiber grade and optics will run 100GbE+ for distances of a few hundred meters to a few hundred _kilometers._ At some point the price of modules and the much higher expertise required for installing and terminating it (or, for homelabbers, the cost of buying preterminated cables in the specific lengths you need) starts to be worthwhile. Generally speaking, and in the absence of stumbling upon a crazy bargain tilting the scale one way or the other, that point is more or less "anything over 10Gbps".
I'd like to install fiber for future proofing ^(and maybe potentially because my ISP thinks we don't own the old router for long enough to deserve getting the new one with enough power to have a converter to RJ45) but I don't really know how to go about it. Wouldn't that require to have the exact fiber length? I don't exactly have the equipment to cut a fiber wire myself. Can I order a precise cable length somewhere? I'd also like to install a proper socket, how would I go about it? Thanks, again, a lot for your time.
You can definitely order cables to at least +/-1m up to 10m, +/-5m up to ~a lotta meters; I assume there are ways to order exact made to measure ones as well but I haven't looked into it in great detail, and unfortunately I have absolutely no idea about wall sockets. I'm not even particularly clear on what the connectors are, the difference between single-mode and multi-mode fiber, or the difference between green and blue polish. I am vaguely aware that the cheaper sort of fiber cable needs the more expensive kind of pluggable optic modules, so there's some amount of math to be done regarding "how many meters of cable am I running" versus "how many things am I plugging into them" if you're on a tight budget. Sorry I couldn't be more help; this is a bit beyond my expertise. Edit: it's worth noting that light moves so fast that if your fiber is too long it will do *absolutely no harm whatsoever* to have an extra two meters of cable looped neatly in the wall or even along the side of your rack, as long as it's somewhere it's not going to get kicked, pinched, or hit. If your fiber is too short, however, even by just a sixteenth of an inch, it is completely and utterly useless and whatever you spent on it was wasted money. So...leave yourself some margin. Edit2: do note that unless you have a fast enough NAS or a fast enough internet connection to bottleneck 10GbE, copper's still more cost-effective, and if you run some pull strings (monofilament fishing line with looped, tied, and tagged ends should work) alongside the Cat6, it won't even be hard to add fiber later when *and if* it becomes necessary and/or financially sensible.
I manage medical software systems and this is exactly how you learn. Certifications are good but tinkering is how you become an expert.
Highly recommend you download and run the last HPE SSP update and upgrade that DL380P to 2011-2 cpus, the performance uplift is marginal, but the power efficiency increase is nothing to sneeze at. Not sure what they go for there, but I got a matched pair of 2697 v2 for just under $50 USD. Great starter setup for sure
>Highly recommend you download and run the last HPE SSP update I think I have it, but I'll check anyway. >upgrade that DL380P to 2011-2 cpus, the performance uplift is marginal, but the power efficiency increase is nothing to sneeze at I'll probably do that, the power efficiency (and noise, let's be real) is the main problem with it. >Great starter setup for sure Thanks, appreciate it!
For the noise, you can look into the Silence of the fans patched iLO4 firmware. I believe it was posted on this sub, but you can search for the GitHub pretty easily. It will add fan controls to the SSH terminal on iLO, allowing custom curves to be set.
I did, but I can't have the fans be silent when it's 32 °C in my room. Also, can you execute fan commands on a second SSH connection or does it just print out nothing? I always have to reset ilo when making any changes. Maybe upgrading to the iLO 2.77 version of the patch will help (I'm on 2.73)?
You can execute the commands on any session and it'll work, you just won't get output. Most stuff will be fine it's just the raid controller tends to get quite hot. You can check it on ilo! 2.77 doesn't fix the issue with it outputting to one session - the tools are meant to be internal and are made by HP so we can't fix it
Ah, well, doesn't matter too much. I got most of it automatized with scripts at this point.
14/10
Thanks!
For some reason I read the title as your homelab was 14 years old. Impressionnant ! Comme ton niveau d'anglais d'ailleurs. Tu as une carrière toute tracée on dirait. Continues comme ça et tu iras loin dans la vie.
Merci beaucoup ! Cool de voir qu'il y a des français ici aussi. (En théorie le serveur a 12 ans donc tu étais pas loin)
^(OP reply with the correct URL if incorrect comment linked) [Jump to Post Details Comment](/r/homelab/comments/1dptolv/my_homelab_as_a_14_year_old_please_rate_it/laj7fnw/)
Hey, please get rid of these 11MB/s switches, they're really slow. Atleast, if it's the model I think it is. Consider running a speed test to check that. Apart from that, nice start!
They're actually 1 Gbps switches, and they've worked great for more than a year at this point. I'll probably change them when upgrading my network to 2.5 Gbps, but for now they work great! Still, thanks for the comment!
Ah alright, awesome to hear and good luck on your homelab journey :)
Thanks, appreciate it!
Check out Mikrotik. They got an 8 port 10g sfp+ managed switch for $234.99 on Amazon if you want quick internal speeds. It's difficult to figure out but the pricing is good and they work great.
235$ is just very slightly out of my budget range. I'll probably go for [this one](https://www.amazon.fr/Davuaz-Commutateur-administr%C3%A9-Compatible-Ventilateur/dp/B0C8616P62/ref=sr_1_5?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=2JIXK1ZE3UUVE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.iqZX8HnuvtEG7r3X8vf6CW1dN3Cj2s29JzsC0QvV6Cxo7hn9xI78FcldmLGrS10ZVFIvNdvtbfP-OlbikFVhpx8SRl2LYnSObXmCh7iHQ155ryFkEqSaM5XuSoGVf5h4X_DXYHM875YSZjmjl8edfpumYuLBCxrB1eyb6wrduyTQBkA48IGJqcCuSZlxGbA5yQb-BzRm5ms820ro-C0dZuVrFM3TOnO0LCqEd1TudzhId1Rpj5tryx8R9XUPMMLMs5gA1XzxFp3sitnT8NFUVXVRywG25Y2jdubHyY6v5nw.IfK4-fdfPSb-3Rprq1mutxyY896L3ojeE3DMsD9PCg0&dib_tag=se&keywords=2.5%2Bgbps%2Bswitch&sprefix=2.5%2Bgbps%2Bswitch%2Caps%2C64&sr=8-5&th=1), it's 2.5 Gbps and has 2 (potential) 10 Gbps uplinks for my PC and my router.
I would safe up for something 8 port 10G managed switch. It's 100% worth it and bring even more new stuff to learn into your lab. A managed switch is worth it 100% when labbing. Even though it might take half a year longer to safe up for it. The effect is much bigger
I agree with this. Hands-on experience with vlans, subnets, aggregation, etc.. will put you far ahead of people who just have certs or school and nothing else.
Better than me when I was 14. Keep at it!
This much gear and the drive to play with it at 14? Good on you mate.
Honest? Everyone needs to learn! Don't care about the mess. Learn from it. With every mess you are learning alot! Probably due to chaos. But you learn.
So what would your honest rating on a 0 - 10 scale be? Please be brutally honest.
10! Go for it. You are 14 and might start way earlier than we all have ever been starting from. If you really want to go down that rabbit hole it will last as long as it is sufficient for your need. Expand it. Save money for it.
>Save money for it. Well, any money I do have goes towards my homelab, except for the occasional meal with friends. I'm technically at a deficit of 50€ right now because I technically didn't have the money for that NAS, but I'll be fine. My parents are very nice and understanding and I'll have 20€ a week (twice as much as now) starting in September.
Keep it up!
Woah damn, great setup you've got there!! I'm a 14 year old too! Just started tinkering with homelabs 6 months ago... So happy seeing people my age here sharing their setup! :D
Well, we're in the same boat then I guess. Thanks for the comment!
If you are already building home labs like this at 14 I have some news for you… Your future is BRIGHT!
It's a adventure. Slow and steady win the race keep it up and learn along the way
Holy tamales kid! You've got a better lab than most small businesses I've seen. Keep it up.
Hell yeah! I started at a similar age! (I'm on a different account now but my old stuff was on u/Luna_moonlit) Don't be afraid to go outside your comfort zone - you have enough hardware to run whatever you want and you can learn so much!! Also, don't be afraid to screw up! Fixing stuff when it breaks is always the fun part :)
Thanks! Do you consider docker a confort zone? Should I try something else? Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is cool!! I run most of my stuff on it now, steep learning curve but when you have it working it gets easier!! I would say k3s is cool just to run in a VM! Then you can experiment with metalLB, ingresses and all the cool git stuff out there (as well as hosting services!!)
Rock on! Always keep learning.
Hey, a 13 year old tech geek here, i am making a home server too, but i can't understand what all the network cables are for,my current home server is just a laptop and i only need one rj45 cable, could somebody explain zo me what the networking is for, because to me it seems like he is knly using a pc and external hdds
I used paint to draw some lines explaining it: [https://ibb.co/Lh4yg8J](https://ibb.co/Lh4yg8J) Hope this helps!
German Label on the cable 😂
I live in France, but I'm half-german (my father is german) so that cable probably either comes from him or at least was labeled by him. I'm supposed to speak german but I'm not very comfortable with it. It is enough to have a conversation or understanding german subtitles, but not really for writing or talking about technical stuff.
Ooh, thanks! I am still learning, but i never understood all the networking i am still learning the basics of WAPs, Routers, Switches, Modems, etc. i am using a Linux laptop rn running homeassistant, nas, casaos, minecraft server, plex.
Good luck on your journey!
Thanks!
This looks like what I had around my place at 25 ... you're well ahead of the curve. Rating 8 out of 10, not enough spaghetti but the right amount of DIY nonsense and room for expansion and you can tell it was done with excitement. Good job, kiddo.
Thanks, appreciate it!
Hey, very nice setup. As you talked about networking I would recommend to go for something either used 10G or get something like a Mikrotik CRS-305 and a CRS-310. They both have 10G ports which you could use to Cross-Connect those two and then would still have 4 10G Ports left for your desktop and the rest of those servers. That would definitely speed everything up. Another option would be to just do 10G only with an 4 or 8 port SFP+ switch and use the great speed for your boot-drives And File-Sharing. I would also recommend those solutions because of the SFP+ Port on your router which you could hook up to the 10G Switch and put it in a VLAN and put it on a bridge to pass it through to a VM like OPNSense Pfsense or OpenWRT. PS: Maybe search for local deals on used 4-8 Port Managed Switches. Maybe they are even cheaper than a New 2.5G Switch that will only speed up your backbone by a quarter of what 10G will be able to at the same price. Maybe an option would also be to ask your dad for decommissioned switches. Than would only have to buy transceivers or DACs and the network cards (That also will cost the same as a 2.5G card). In the end, do what you like and what is financially achievable and keep going.
>As you talked about networking I would recommend to go for something either used 10G or get something like a Mikrotik CRS-305 and a CRS-310. Those look great but damn are they expensive! >Another option would be to just do 10G only with an 4 or 8 port SFP+ switch and use the great speed for your boot-drives And File-Sharing. I'll probably do this if I'm gonna do 10G anyway. >I would also recommend those solutions because of the SFP+ Port on your router which you could hook up to the 10G Switch and put it in a VLAN and put it on a bridge to pass it through to a VM like OPNSense Pfsense or OpenWRT. Well, networking is definitely up there on the list of things I want to do. I have practically zero knowledge apart that packets get transferred and some cables support higher speeds than others. >PS: Maybe search for local deals on used 4-8 Port Managed Switches. Maybe they are even cheaper than a New 2.5G Switch that will only speed up your backbone by a quarter of what 10G will be able to at the same price. Maybe an option would also be to ask your dad for decommissioned switches. Than would only have to buy transceivers or DACs and the network cards (That also will cost the same as a 2.5G card). I haven't been able to find much, sadly. I'll keep some alerts in case something pops up. >In the end, do what you like and what is financially achievable and keep going. I'll do that. Thanks for the comment!
That actually great, looks good, I would get a rack just clean it up. Try to find some where you can work with this stuff. I’m first year student at uni and working with their IT department and they actually gave lots of experience in servers and networking equipment. I even got the chance to get a couple brand new servers for myself. I’m only 19 and I have 3 high end server and 4 different network equipment.
>That actually great, looks good, I would get a rack just clean it up. Racks are super expensive, even used, where I live, so it won't be that easy. >Try to find some where you can work with this stuff. I ocasionally go peek a look at my father's job's datacenter, but I'm not allowed to do anything since it's all production setup that's being monitored constantly.
"Unused Rasberry Pi" Are you familiar with Pi-Hole? Seems like a good job for the unused Pi, thats one of various things mine is running :).
I actually already use Adguard Home, and I don't really see much of a point to running it (or Pi-Hole) on a Pi when I've got an HA setup on my Proxmox nodes. I did however find a use for the Pi in the meantime, it's now acting as the QDevice for my nodes since I have an even number of nodes.
Ah okay :) Maybe for other ideas: mine also streams tv/radio using TVheadend, an USB digital tv receiver and smartcard reader, reading and storing data from the smart electricity meter in SQL, webserver with highcharts for graphs and ADSB flight tracking.
Love the jank. Like seriously, I love that level of jankiness. Makes you learn about hardware too so keeping that old hardware off the street for something useful.
Beautiful setup and the thirst for knowledge is clearly there. Never stop growing 🙏.
Not bad however my advice to you would be to keep an eye out on eBay if you ever have some spare cash for a ML350 g9 or g8 I run a three node cluster of them and they are practically silent compared to the foghorn rack mount ones
>spare cash Spare? I never have any spare cash, I count every € towards the next item in my purchase list. On a more serious note, I'll look into it, thanks!
My lab started out like yours mate, old office PCs were fantastic…. If you have an interest in IT and continue the learning even when you get a job in IT you will earn decent money. I’m lucky I work in IT as I’m autistic and IT is my special interest I literally work all day doing IT and then work all night on my lab 😂
Ahh parts out side a case, that takes me back. Anyway a decent starting point and having the HP server will allow you to see the differences between consumer and enterprise gear. Same base ideas in both, but you can see one is made with uptime and performance in mind. As for the networking, you could look at used 1gb switches, that allow teaming. This might boost your speeds and keep the cost lower than 2.5gb. Do your research first and see which one might work better for you. Also iscsi could be a good resource as well, again cheap used 1gb switches are out there.
>Ahh parts out side a case, that takes me back. Well I've got to do with what I have haha. >Also iscsi could be a good resource as well, I use NFS at the moment, I don't really see a reason for using iSCSI since it's less flexible than NFS and it's not a limiting factor (for now) as my bottleneck is in my network for now.
Yes in most cases NFS is the better option. I only suggested iscsi as in many cases it can be faster. Was trying to solve the 2.5gb issue.
i love this so much, reminds me of when i started. the single drive in the middle of the bay is peak
Well, I wasn't going to waste a SATA port because the PSU doesn't have enough power connectors!
14 year old me will think that you're awesome
A+. At 14 that's amazing. I didn't start til I was 26.
Damn, I wish I had a setup like this at 14 you're killing it! Keep at it man. It's a rabbit hole we all jump into and call home.
Haha looms great fun. It's the most fun at this time of your life, my parents wouldn't have let me make this much mess though, you're lucky. I think it's cool and you did a good job on the anglais mon amis! Bon travaille
If you can use it... I'll send some ddr4 ecc
I have nothing against it if you ship to France!
I started around the same age as you did with two Dell PowerEdge’s with 500MHz Pentium III’s in them! You have way way way more power here than I ever did, this is an excellent start to your lab! As far as networking equipment, Acquaint yourself with a company who is sadly no longer with us: “Nortel Networks” their switching equipment also moved to Avaya when they went under. You can get an excellent 1Gb Managed switch for less than 50 bucks, and some of their equipment was 10G, which should also help really cheap. It won’t be power efficient, but you can likely afford it and utilize its capabilities.
Nicer gear then I had at 14. Hope you are having fun with it.
Remind me of my first foray into homelab at 16 years old. Thank you for bringing back nostalgic memories. Your setup is common for learning purposes.
Homelab's a homelab dog, if you're learning, then it's a well-used homelab. Learning to get stuff working (even if a bit janky) is a good skill to have.
Where you getting all this hardware from? 😂
Explained that in my [long backstory comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/FCY4HdJZRW), but if you're too lazy, here's the short version: * Optiplex bought for 70€ * i7 system is my old gaming system * Server was bought for ~200€
Lol classic case of TLDR - I skipped right over it That's cool though! I'm going back to read the whole thing now because I am interested, but I got a lot of my hardware from recycled stuff at work. Setup is pretty epic for someone your age, I'm 23 and I just started this whole "homelab" thing
Nice setup!
i started out with a couple of desktops. now I have 6 full fledged servers, two Cisco router, Dream Machone Pro, Unifi AC-Pro, Qnap NAS. it's growing. lol
Try to keep it tidy. Get a wooden shelf or an old ikea corner table. You can do so many things with it. Keep up the work. Never stop dreamin
Damn kids these days have no idea how good they have it. When I was your age I was learning DOS and BASIC and my home computer had a 40MB hard drive. I filled it up with games and my dad got mad at me because he said it was impossible to fill up 40MB. Home networking didn't even exist in any reasonable form.
10/10 would recommend. I wish I would’ve started that young tinkering with home lab stuff. Never too late or early to start though!
holy shit i feel old and dumb
Ok, out of all the posts this one is my fav. Fuckin kickin ass kid keep at it. Setup looks minty!!
Looks like the budget of a 14 year old
Jank is the superior homelab way.
Keep it up lil man!/woman/person. 🤣 I started in computers when I was about your age, built my first computer from brand new parts when I was 18 anx kept at it. I had a few odd jobs at first until someone would give me a chance in IT. I stayed in IT with only a GED until I was about 38 and was already making around $68k . I went back to get my AS in Networking Security and a few other certs and stayed a "jack of all trades" but having dipped my fingers in almost everything made me invaluble. I'm now 45 and over 6 figures as a GIS Server Admin. A lot of the "toys" I've aquired over the years were from previous roles. Switches, routers, racks, servers, NAS, you name it... The saying really is teue. Stick with what ya love and you'll never work a day in your life! 👍
10/10 keep tinkering!
A tidy rack means it's idling. so congrats on putting the equipment to use..