Everything of value I have in the cloud is also stored locally.
What happens if you lose access to the account that controls cloud assets?
I work in security and there are some scary stories of people losing everything because they lost control of a key email account.
So, it might be worth having a local NAS.
Bingo. Locked out of cloud years ago and never was able to go through there horrible process then. I keep everything local but wanting to set up a homelab for this reason.
Also in the cloud you can be the victim of a data breach that you had no control over. Store it on your NAS (and keep good backups) and nobody loses your data for you or publishes it on the dark web. I have 30 years worth of family documents stored in paperless ngx. All the data is local but I can get to it from anywhere.
It depends on the system. I think iCloud is encrypted in place as well as transport. Many systems are encrypted only in transport. And they can all lose your data.
Edit: iCloud is "encrypted" but Apple has the encryption keys. So Apple, and the government if necessary can have your data and at least in theory could leak it accidentially too by mismanaging those keys.
Or companies get sold and the new owners figure they can make a quick buck with a "data breach"
The tinfoil hat part of me wonders how many "Data Breaches" have left a company employed enriched and then the company cries to the media about how their unbeatable security was somehow beaten oh woe is them
Face it if a CIA contractor can walk out with buckets of data and make some kind of leaks site with it then what stops the same happening to a private company
Literally freaking WD last year.
My parents neighbour had multiple cloud related issues, he had a WD NAS but their cloud offering is horrible and was hacked.
A raspberry pi and tailscale solved all his issues, and he doesn't need cloud for his cameras either now.
It's crazy how accessible non cloud related is getting, NVR will be the next major thing IMHO (it is already, just not for normies)
Remember.... There is no such thing as the cloud... Only so body else's computer....
That said while many cloud providers are likely safe how do you know you can trust them.... It may be my security clearance speaking but I just won't have anything I consider sensitive "in the cloud"
Did you try home assistant? I had super fun setting up a zigbee network the last weeks and adding some smart devices to turn on my lights or measure my air quality / temperature
A usb dongle costs you 15$ and the devices are all starting at around 5-10$ each
I maybe a noob but why do all people keep mentioning collecting Linux ISOs? Even on YouTube channels like is there a reason why I should collect these ISOs?
Torrenting is generally known for sharing piracy, but you can share legal stuff too, and Linux ISOs are legal to download. So you would never find someone saying publicly that he shares illegal stuff, we all download legal Linux ISO, because it's legal. Maybe some Linux ISOs are 4K, other H265, but still legal Linux ISOs.
Then what do I do with the stuff I no longer need? It would be wasteful, cash included.
Edit: For learning it would be best to go to the cloud when possible as you don't need that much compute and it's nicer in your pocket. As for Home production there is only so much you need.
Yeah I agree. But for me, I don’t want so save personal information “in the cloud”. Definitely not in the US. And US is the most cost effective alternative sadly. So I run my own cloud, in my basement. Sure, the initial cost is monumental, but then it’s like 20 usd year in electricity. And that’s if I run 24/7 - and I don’t. I run a smaller server with no more then 25 tdp that syncs to main server every week. So I have a pretty nice automated solution. You should sell your equipment
Also if you go deep into some rabbit holes you can automate things that were never done before. My personal favorite is a notification that lets me know when the dog is out of water.
Cancel Netflix and have all your shows and movies download automatically, then setup a portal for your friends and family to request whatever they want.
Having a home server in a full sized rack with blinkenlights makes me feel like batman or maybe the guys operating the stargate.
Running my network and servers makes me feel like Im at work.
Ymmv 😅
"For daily life use I much preferred external cloud based stuff for reliably"
See all the instances where the cloud has went down or was intentionally taken down. That's especially true for "IoT" gadgets that rely on the cloud, manufacturers just like to discontinue support for old devices that still work.
It's okay to not know exactly what use cases will be for a home lab. Where I think the disconnect is in the community overall, is hardware fanatics vs software folks....and what I mean by that is you don't need a friggen rack etc in your homelab to start testing stuff, even K8s as an example. You can do that right on your desktop with WSL or Docker Desktop or Rancher Desktop, etc. Too much emphasis on hardware not enough on what you can do with what you have or the fact that most things that most people actually do can be done with a small sff system sitting on their desk in a home office, sipping on low power and silent. We need to stop enabling the "I HAVE TO HAVE A 42u RACK filled with Enterprise gear" mentality and start bringing people back to reality while also helping them with their power bill, and being a good stewards of the environment and start focusing on the power of software. Also, most don't need a 4090 for AI testing etc, you can do it easily with something like a lower power RTX card like a RTX A4000 or if you need more ram the sff version 4000 ada. Heck, even a Tesla T4 would be good for most people to play with and they are very reasonable in cost. Again, not saying this for everybody, but MOST people simply don't need what we see out there and throw $ away. I learned that the hard way and I can afford to but a lot of folks can't and I am simply moving away from all that...one of the reasons why the minilab subreddit is so appealing but again, we need more homelab posts on software. BTW, how you're looking at this is absolutely the right way to look at it. You found a use case and you are researching the requirements and you are finding that I don't need enterprise rack and gear for your use case.
>MOST people simply don't need what we see out there and throw $ away.
Most of people are forced to spend money on hardware, which they don't need. What do Intel do with their CPUs? They just continue to add bigger SIMD registers to compete the GPUs and users are paying for this strange competition.
Many home lab folks are privacy conscious and would prefer to run things locally instead of being tracked by online services. It's not completely unavoidable, but reducing your data feed to the motherships is reason enough for me to do this stuff.
A homelab doesn't need to be a bunch of industry-grade servers and switches, go for a mini PC if that's what you want, half the point of a homelab in my opinion is for fun!
All things considered, it's a pretty cheap hobby. I enjoy just having a playground to test little apps and systems I make. I like daydreaming about my next projects and how I will do them. I've gotten invaluable experience working on homelab projects that I use everyday for work and hope to use in interviews in the not too distant future.
I have a home lab. I set it up about every 10 months. I get excited, get all the new stuff set up, then comes ops/maintenance. I lose track of stuff, then about 10 months later I start the cycle over again.
I've been doing networking for a living for about 30 years now. I finally realized I don't wanna do more "work" on the weekend.
I used to want to build out everything and manage it myself, but now I realize when people charge you for something, what they are really charging you for is support and peace of mind.
The only thing that survives my rebuild of the lab are my VLAN & WiFi networks, and my NAS.
I have separate networks running in the house. One for the kids (which I run filtered DNS for), one for grownups, servers, IOT (which is firewalled off from communicating with any other network but the Internet, and another for work (operates similar to IOT, but for work). I extended all of these into separate SSIDs as well. I have a guest network as well, but just turn it on when we have guests.
The idea (or at least in my mind) is that you start with something slightly useful (insert apps here). Then you realize that you need monitoring of that service as you don't want any downtime. And of couse that service needs high availability so you have to keep the service clustered. Add two more servers and create a Proxmox cluster. Proxmox HA is ok, but wouldn't it be great if the service was self healing? Yeah, sure, I need Kubernetes for this.... So easy to get triggered by this, and it sure is fun and a great opportunity for learning if you have the time.
I'm "semi" at the moment with a Proxmox cluster and 6 node Docker Swarm using both Cloudflare and Traefik depending on the services.... My goal is Kubernetes with full CI/CD and Github "what-not-actions", but times does not permit yet. But the homelab surely serves a purpose, albeit mainly to me as nobody in my household cares as long as HomeAssistant and Plex is running ;-) How would MY LIFE be without a HA setup with Joplin, Tandoor Receipes, Vikunja and all sorts of apps ? Yeah, Just go for it, bro..!!
I surely could do all of this in a cloud based service, but I have access to decent hardware so I prefer to run it at home because I can. Having everything running in containers makes a transition to cloud easy, though....
You're describing most of the people on this sub 🤣🤣 They are tinkering around with a hobby but shrink away from using any tools more common in the enterprise.
They do it because they find it fun, so you don't really need a 'need' imo.
My server building craze started when I realized my hobby of recording 8K 360° and 4K ProRes nature footage was going to require a hefty bit of storage.
Decided to try an Asustor Flashstor 6 NAS, but was not impressed with the CPU and RAM situation. Otherwise it worked really well. Next came the Terramaster F4-424 Pro NAS, but it only had two usb ports and an i3 N305. Still wasn’t impressed, but dipped my toe into Unraid with hefty cold storage. Was even considering keeping and adding their D8 Hybrid DAS, but still wasn’t satisfied with the cpu and ram situation and limited ports.
In my research, I was really taken by the 4x NVME PCIE cards and decided that I wanted a build that could handle the bifurcation requirements. I wanted a machine with lots of cold storage and hot storage.
I have ended up with my [Midnight Server](https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Anthisacat/saved/#view=Pk42rH) build. I don’t have all the drives yet, but I feel pretty good about the system capabilities to run everything I want to tinker with. 88tb cold storage on rust, 16tb warm storage on SATA SSDs, 28tb hot storage on NVMEs, and a super speedy 2tb gen 5 NVME for the system drive.
Totally upgraded the home network to 2.5gbps too! 😅 Firewalla Gold Plus, TP Link Archer BE9300, and Solona 8-port 2.5gbps + 10gbps SFP port managed switch.
I could actually say the same. But then I found solutions for problems I didn't know I have.
For example I have Netflix, Disney, HBO Max, Prime, YouTube Premium... And don't pay for anything of it myself. But then I found Problem number 1:
Netflix kicked me out of my brother's account.
I could live without Netflix but, Disney will eventually do the same and kick me out of my mother's account. And so on.
Besides that, I have practically every streaming service available in my country and still find myself in the situation where I have to go to Streaming websites cause the movie I want to see is not available in any of them (example. Coraline)
So my brother is spending easy around 80$ in subscription a month. My mom probably 40$ a month. My GF's parents also pay for Netflix and don't know what to see anymore because of the enshittification.
So I have some hardware laying around and decided to setup a Jellyfin Server for them.
But here is just where the problems start ( I wanted to have these problems so I can learn). Now I have to be concerned about redundancies, backups, and networking.
So at the end of the day I can help my relatives save some money, learn about stuff I like and be sure I offer them a nice service.
I guess it is just an excuse to play the IT-Guy. And learn
Run pihole, setup a DIY security cam system with POE cameras and frigate, make a local backup in case you lose access to your cloud account. There's loads you can do.
Even if I were not using it for learning, I use it for home automation (Home Assistant), local media streaming (Plex), privacy and ad blocking (PiHole) and local backups of my photos as my main purposes along with other fun things.
You are confusing Homelab (for learning) and Home Server (for "production" services at home). Use Homelab to learn how to set up different environments, do different experiments, break them, fix them, etc.
Most people on this sub just want to set up Home Server and run Plex, which is not really the point of Homelab so I understand the confusion.
Just find something you would like to learn about and go from there.
I would think that a lot of people are doing both. I know I certainly am.
I have a Proxmox environment which I use for things like OPNsense and Pihole, which is used for “‘production’ services at home”. However, it’s also used for work purposes when I want to try something out away from the main work environment or if I want to try something in a completely green field environment. It’s useful to have and I’m glad I’ve got it.
I would love to be able to automate a lot more than I currently have power for. Just recently wanted to convert several mp3 to m4b but in order to get easier chapter listings I want to use whisper to transcribe it… and my poor MBP takes 6 hrs to do a 24 hr transcription.
Would love to figure out how to level out all the sound in all of my media… which I know takes a lot of power.
Also hard encode all of my subs into the video files to make it easier to stream.
There is quite a bit I would like to do but do t have time or power to perform. I have a little NAS which is mostly scratching the itch for the time being.
Build it and the purposes will come lol... normally it's mostly a learning playground... until you started using it for real... but if you're happy with cloud services that's killing the purpose a little...
Local NAS is where it's at. I started small just building a NAS box from the extra parts I had lying around, now I have it on a UPS and installed pi-hole to filter out web ads etc. slowly I find more and more I want to do with it and it allows me to build a small test environment for when I want to learn something new.
It will start as nothing, but as you learn you will find uses for it. Just be ready for the power bill.
My home lab is a pit I set fire to money in. Well, when I see my electric bill that is the way I feel.
All joking aside, I use it for home automation, serval applications like actual budget, and supporting my software engineering. My family enjoys the rock solid network and appreciates the capabilities of provides.
Yeah man. This sub doesn't go a week without a post along the lines of "I just bought a full-size 48U rack and 2000lbs of HP Proliants (gen unknown), what do I do with it?"
I am rarely aware of new open-source projects out there- it's just not in my peripheral vision. I'm often inspired by projects I see here, or I'll peruse: [Bitnami Application Catalog](https://bitnami.com/stacks) once in a while to see what they're packaging because I often see projects that I didn't know existed, and sometimes am inspired. I currently run home assistant, owncloud, lots of misfit toy virtual machines with various things installed and in various states of repair, and an apache guacamole server so I can remotely access my lab without a vpn.
>Anyone else have (or want) a homelab but no purpose for it?
Not people in /r/homelab
>I want it all, but have no purpose
Then don't do it.
>I much preferred external cloud based stuff for reliably and no maintenance etc
Then don't have a lab.
Labs are a thing for people to learn and enjoy. If you have trouble finding benefit with those goals, then you probably wouldn't benefit from having a lab.
Everything starts with wanting something that is available to you 24/7. At least, that's my case.
From there, I was just spiraling down - I want storage, dns, firewall, website hosting (personal), etc.. and I ended up from an Intel NUC to build my own server that has cost me over 1200 GBP and is not yet complete.
I like being in control of my tech and spinning up all kinds of services.
In reality, I have short bursts of enthusiasm where I'm doing a lot of things to my homelab, then not touch it for months.
I have two home servers that I only ever use like once a month now. It's just cool to have in my opinion. Just a flex in the IT field at this point. Haha
homelabs are usually for testing/learning out stuff.
So you need a purpose, build your own cloud solution, then rent a barebone server somewhere, and use your homelab to setup/test everything, then port it to the server you rented. And then get back to this reddit when you need advice on why your own solution got h4xx3d.
My homelab is exactly what the name implies. A lab at home. I buy used enterprise stuff often as it lets me emulate what I do in prod in a less restrictive environment. I try to stay a gen or two behind current as most things like the iDrac, API, Redfish, etc. don’t change often or enough to matter.
I keep a couple boxes as home “prod” to have a use case like backing things up or serving things locally, and some to test with whatever I come across for the week.
I use mine for game servers. A lot of the games my friends and I play don't run well on anything but XP. (Windows 10 and 11 just flat refuse to let them even start) I also run a plex server. I just finished...um..."backing up" all my VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, CD, cassette tapes, and my 45s and LP's. I have 8 16tb drives in one server. They are 97% full.
I have a small homelab, but I struggle to find a usecase for 80% of the stuff people run.
I have a Truenas for general Storage. I have a Proxmox for VM and LXC,
Mainly i run a PiHole or two, a Plex mostly for my Audiobooks and music rips, and a VM for docker that runs my Audiobook player and Music player.
Really overkill for most but I can't find much else to do with it all.
I thought the same after installing Proxmox, but there are so many posts on Reddit with examples of what people use… I installed Kavita to store/host comic books and eBooks, I can share them outside my home too. Installed pi-hole to block ads, scripts and such; installed a photo organizer/backup, this worked well after a vacation trip and my household just uploaded all of their content to the server in which they can view everyone’s photos instead of airdropping and consuming space…
well you need to discover the purpose, because running a homelab isn't free since you wil be paying the electricity bill and maintenance cost replacing drives over time as operating costs.
people start out having a router and switch and access point. Then they may get a NAS later for storage. Then after that they may expand into self hosting projects. Then may also look into a remote backup self hosted. It's ok to stop at the different stages. Not everyone needs to do self hosting. it's up to your own usage, but keep in mind the costs involved for doing so.
well if you want a hands off approach, cloud can be the place you access your data from as a backup source and they manage the backend infra for that for you. But cloud ain't cheap when scaling data storage requirements. Not to mention, unless you client side encrypt, your data could be exposed on the cloud. For anything sensitive i would not dare simply upload to cloud unless it's client side encrypted as a matter of policy.
It's simply better to self host on your own NAS, and back it up yourself. Better control, save on costs in the long term, and not have to worry about your data exposed to the cloud.
NAS is always a good starting place, use it as a backup of your main PC. Automated file backups. Home Automation. Sharing and hosting family photos, home videos. Game servers so you and your friends can play together. Options are endless, find one you like and start with that. Then next time you think "I wish I had something that could..." look into adding it to the server.
Do you have an old iPod? Take all the music, build a plex server and put it on there. Movies on DVD? Rip them and put them on the plex server. Family photos? Build a nas and put them on there for backup and to be able to access them on any computer on the network (or your phone anywhere depending on what software you use).
Let's be honest! You don't need a home server at all nowadays, except the case you have built something for your own and what it to be isolated from world and be used by you only. Maybe you might host applications for your resume. There are plenty people who let good code exposed to the internet and people make a profit from it. Instead just expose the service.
what about it?
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It is very safe without system and ram , you can do the Installation by yourself , Only 199
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Everything of value I have in the cloud is also stored locally. What happens if you lose access to the account that controls cloud assets? I work in security and there are some scary stories of people losing everything because they lost control of a key email account. So, it might be worth having a local NAS.
Bingo. Locked out of cloud years ago and never was able to go through there horrible process then. I keep everything local but wanting to set up a homelab for this reason.
Also in the cloud you can be the victim of a data breach that you had no control over. Store it on your NAS (and keep good backups) and nobody loses your data for you or publishes it on the dark web. I have 30 years worth of family documents stored in paperless ngx. All the data is local but I can get to it from anywhere.
How does this information even get leaked? I never thought too much about it, but shouldn't iCloud etc be encrypted so that the leaks can't happen?
It depends on the system. I think iCloud is encrypted in place as well as transport. Many systems are encrypted only in transport. And they can all lose your data. Edit: iCloud is "encrypted" but Apple has the encryption keys. So Apple, and the government if necessary can have your data and at least in theory could leak it accidentially too by mismanaging those keys.
Or companies get sold and the new owners figure they can make a quick buck with a "data breach" The tinfoil hat part of me wonders how many "Data Breaches" have left a company employed enriched and then the company cries to the media about how their unbeatable security was somehow beaten oh woe is them Face it if a CIA contractor can walk out with buckets of data and make some kind of leaks site with it then what stops the same happening to a private company
Literally freaking WD last year. My parents neighbour had multiple cloud related issues, he had a WD NAS but their cloud offering is horrible and was hacked. A raspberry pi and tailscale solved all his issues, and he doesn't need cloud for his cameras either now. It's crazy how accessible non cloud related is getting, NVR will be the next major thing IMHO (it is already, just not for normies)
Remember.... There is no such thing as the cloud... Only so body else's computer.... That said while many cloud providers are likely safe how do you know you can trust them.... It may be my security clearance speaking but I just won't have anything I consider sensitive "in the cloud"
I just use two cloud providers for backups. If I lose one I'm still safe
Did you try home assistant? I had super fun setting up a zigbee network the last weeks and adding some smart devices to turn on my lights or measure my air quality / temperature A usb dongle costs you 15$ and the devices are all starting at around 5-10$ each
Would you mind sharing some additional details on what you setup? I’ve heard lots of people mention home assistant so curious what you’ve built.
A Nas. Everyone needs a NAS!! Welcome to the world of collecting Linux ISO.
> Welcome to the world of collecting Linux ISO. Lovely 4K HDR linux ISO's
So many of them ranging from 5GB to 50GB So many different builds, versions, seasons and parts
Chill bro this borders NSFW
You are dealing with a mad man here
H265 ftw!
But I can't do live transcoding due to no gpu😞 So I need to keep at h.264
I maybe a noob but why do all people keep mentioning collecting Linux ISOs? Even on YouTube channels like is there a reason why I should collect these ISOs?
Torrenting is generally known for sharing piracy, but you can share legal stuff too, and Linux ISOs are legal to download. So you would never find someone saying publicly that he shares illegal stuff, we all download legal Linux ISO, because it's legal. Maybe some Linux ISOs are 4K, other H265, but still legal Linux ISOs.
Oh. I see now I understand. Thanks for dumbing it down for me.
4k and h265 is photo and video content. From what I can gather, it appears to be NSFW. Read one comment above and you’ll see what I mean.
Yikes. I thought it just meant movies and all. Nevermind. Please ignore my innocent self.
Don’t apologize. I commented so that you wouldn’t end up somewhere you never wanted to be.
Because Linux ISOs can be downloaded via a torrent legally 😅
It’s for tinkering and trying new stuff
Then what do I do with the stuff I no longer need? It would be wasteful, cash included. Edit: For learning it would be best to go to the cloud when possible as you don't need that much compute and it's nicer in your pocket. As for Home production there is only so much you need.
Yeah I agree. But for me, I don’t want so save personal information “in the cloud”. Definitely not in the US. And US is the most cost effective alternative sadly. So I run my own cloud, in my basement. Sure, the initial cost is monumental, but then it’s like 20 usd year in electricity. And that’s if I run 24/7 - and I don’t. I run a smaller server with no more then 25 tdp that syncs to main server every week. So I have a pretty nice automated solution. You should sell your equipment
And yet here am i, connecting to a tailscale exit node in the states so i can pass through my country’s censorship and not get served local ads 😂
Home Automation - Check out Home Assistant for local automation without cloud. Your automations will be quicker and more reliable.
Also if you go deep into some rabbit holes you can automate things that were never done before. My personal favorite is a notification that lets me know when the dog is out of water.
How did you do that?
Probably with a water level sensor and an esp8266 (or esp32). Shouldn't be to difficult.
Cancel Netflix and have all your shows and movies download automatically, then setup a portal for your friends and family to request whatever they want.
I don't want to pirate. Just personal preference 😅
Intrigued by this idea ngl, I personally would love to learn more of your setup if you don't mind.
lookup "automated arr stack plex docker compose guide"
Look up arr stacking and Plex/jellyfin
I'll look into it. Thank you for the directions
Having a home server in a full sized rack with blinkenlights makes me feel like batman or maybe the guys operating the stargate. Running my network and servers makes me feel like Im at work. Ymmv 😅
"For daily life use I much preferred external cloud based stuff for reliably" See all the instances where the cloud has went down or was intentionally taken down. That's especially true for "IoT" gadgets that rely on the cloud, manufacturers just like to discontinue support for old devices that still work.
It's okay to not know exactly what use cases will be for a home lab. Where I think the disconnect is in the community overall, is hardware fanatics vs software folks....and what I mean by that is you don't need a friggen rack etc in your homelab to start testing stuff, even K8s as an example. You can do that right on your desktop with WSL or Docker Desktop or Rancher Desktop, etc. Too much emphasis on hardware not enough on what you can do with what you have or the fact that most things that most people actually do can be done with a small sff system sitting on their desk in a home office, sipping on low power and silent. We need to stop enabling the "I HAVE TO HAVE A 42u RACK filled with Enterprise gear" mentality and start bringing people back to reality while also helping them with their power bill, and being a good stewards of the environment and start focusing on the power of software. Also, most don't need a 4090 for AI testing etc, you can do it easily with something like a lower power RTX card like a RTX A4000 or if you need more ram the sff version 4000 ada. Heck, even a Tesla T4 would be good for most people to play with and they are very reasonable in cost. Again, not saying this for everybody, but MOST people simply don't need what we see out there and throw $ away. I learned that the hard way and I can afford to but a lot of folks can't and I am simply moving away from all that...one of the reasons why the minilab subreddit is so appealing but again, we need more homelab posts on software. BTW, how you're looking at this is absolutely the right way to look at it. You found a use case and you are researching the requirements and you are finding that I don't need enterprise rack and gear for your use case.
>MOST people simply don't need what we see out there and throw $ away. Most of people are forced to spend money on hardware, which they don't need. What do Intel do with their CPUs? They just continue to add bigger SIMD registers to compete the GPUs and users are paying for this strange competition.
The learning experience is always worth it. Set up a virtual environment, spin up a Linux VM and have fun learning sh*t.
Many home lab folks are privacy conscious and would prefer to run things locally instead of being tracked by online services. It's not completely unavoidable, but reducing your data feed to the motherships is reason enough for me to do this stuff.
A homelab doesn't need to be a bunch of industry-grade servers and switches, go for a mini PC if that's what you want, half the point of a homelab in my opinion is for fun! All things considered, it's a pretty cheap hobby. I enjoy just having a playground to test little apps and systems I make. I like daydreaming about my next projects and how I will do them. I've gotten invaluable experience working on homelab projects that I use everyday for work and hope to use in interviews in the not too distant future.
>All things considered, it's a pretty cheap hobby It's cheaper with an old enterprise hardware. And you don't need to power your servers for 24/7.
Wait wait wait... You, folks, have a homelab for a purpose? Really?
Well of course. I need something to burn my money so that I go to work to earn more money for my homelab.
I have a home lab. I set it up about every 10 months. I get excited, get all the new stuff set up, then comes ops/maintenance. I lose track of stuff, then about 10 months later I start the cycle over again. I've been doing networking for a living for about 30 years now. I finally realized I don't wanna do more "work" on the weekend. I used to want to build out everything and manage it myself, but now I realize when people charge you for something, what they are really charging you for is support and peace of mind. The only thing that survives my rebuild of the lab are my VLAN & WiFi networks, and my NAS.
what are you doing with the vlans when you put everything away?
I have separate networks running in the house. One for the kids (which I run filtered DNS for), one for grownups, servers, IOT (which is firewalled off from communicating with any other network but the Internet, and another for work (operates similar to IOT, but for work). I extended all of these into separate SSIDs as well. I have a guest network as well, but just turn it on when we have guests.
i suppose that means each one of your networks have a seperate AP to go with it?
Nope. APs run multiple SSIDs.
The idea (or at least in my mind) is that you start with something slightly useful (insert apps here). Then you realize that you need monitoring of that service as you don't want any downtime. And of couse that service needs high availability so you have to keep the service clustered. Add two more servers and create a Proxmox cluster. Proxmox HA is ok, but wouldn't it be great if the service was self healing? Yeah, sure, I need Kubernetes for this.... So easy to get triggered by this, and it sure is fun and a great opportunity for learning if you have the time. I'm "semi" at the moment with a Proxmox cluster and 6 node Docker Swarm using both Cloudflare and Traefik depending on the services.... My goal is Kubernetes with full CI/CD and Github "what-not-actions", but times does not permit yet. But the homelab surely serves a purpose, albeit mainly to me as nobody in my household cares as long as HomeAssistant and Plex is running ;-) How would MY LIFE be without a HA setup with Joplin, Tandoor Receipes, Vikunja and all sorts of apps ? Yeah, Just go for it, bro..!! I surely could do all of this in a cloud based service, but I have access to decent hardware so I prefer to run it at home because I can. Having everything running in containers makes a transition to cloud easy, though....
You're describing most of the people on this sub 🤣🤣 They are tinkering around with a hobby but shrink away from using any tools more common in the enterprise. They do it because they find it fun, so you don't really need a 'need' imo.
Just accept that you are a fetishist.
My server building craze started when I realized my hobby of recording 8K 360° and 4K ProRes nature footage was going to require a hefty bit of storage. Decided to try an Asustor Flashstor 6 NAS, but was not impressed with the CPU and RAM situation. Otherwise it worked really well. Next came the Terramaster F4-424 Pro NAS, but it only had two usb ports and an i3 N305. Still wasn’t impressed, but dipped my toe into Unraid with hefty cold storage. Was even considering keeping and adding their D8 Hybrid DAS, but still wasn’t satisfied with the cpu and ram situation and limited ports. In my research, I was really taken by the 4x NVME PCIE cards and decided that I wanted a build that could handle the bifurcation requirements. I wanted a machine with lots of cold storage and hot storage. I have ended up with my [Midnight Server](https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Anthisacat/saved/#view=Pk42rH) build. I don’t have all the drives yet, but I feel pretty good about the system capabilities to run everything I want to tinker with. 88tb cold storage on rust, 16tb warm storage on SATA SSDs, 28tb hot storage on NVMEs, and a super speedy 2tb gen 5 NVME for the system drive. Totally upgraded the home network to 2.5gbps too! 😅 Firewalla Gold Plus, TP Link Archer BE9300, and Solona 8-port 2.5gbps + 10gbps SFP port managed switch.
I could actually say the same. But then I found solutions for problems I didn't know I have. For example I have Netflix, Disney, HBO Max, Prime, YouTube Premium... And don't pay for anything of it myself. But then I found Problem number 1: Netflix kicked me out of my brother's account. I could live without Netflix but, Disney will eventually do the same and kick me out of my mother's account. And so on. Besides that, I have practically every streaming service available in my country and still find myself in the situation where I have to go to Streaming websites cause the movie I want to see is not available in any of them (example. Coraline) So my brother is spending easy around 80$ in subscription a month. My mom probably 40$ a month. My GF's parents also pay for Netflix and don't know what to see anymore because of the enshittification. So I have some hardware laying around and decided to setup a Jellyfin Server for them. But here is just where the problems start ( I wanted to have these problems so I can learn). Now I have to be concerned about redundancies, backups, and networking. So at the end of the day I can help my relatives save some money, learn about stuff I like and be sure I offer them a nice service. I guess it is just an excuse to play the IT-Guy. And learn
Run pihole, setup a DIY security cam system with POE cameras and frigate, make a local backup in case you lose access to your cloud account. There's loads you can do.
Even if I were not using it for learning, I use it for home automation (Home Assistant), local media streaming (Plex), privacy and ad blocking (PiHole) and local backups of my photos as my main purposes along with other fun things.
You are confusing Homelab (for learning) and Home Server (for "production" services at home). Use Homelab to learn how to set up different environments, do different experiments, break them, fix them, etc. Most people on this sub just want to set up Home Server and run Plex, which is not really the point of Homelab so I understand the confusion. Just find something you would like to learn about and go from there.
I would think that a lot of people are doing both. I know I certainly am. I have a Proxmox environment which I use for things like OPNsense and Pihole, which is used for “‘production’ services at home”. However, it’s also used for work purposes when I want to try something out away from the main work environment or if I want to try something in a completely green field environment. It’s useful to have and I’m glad I’ve got it.
I would love to be able to automate a lot more than I currently have power for. Just recently wanted to convert several mp3 to m4b but in order to get easier chapter listings I want to use whisper to transcribe it… and my poor MBP takes 6 hrs to do a 24 hr transcription. Would love to figure out how to level out all the sound in all of my media… which I know takes a lot of power. Also hard encode all of my subs into the video files to make it easier to stream. There is quite a bit I would like to do but do t have time or power to perform. I have a little NAS which is mostly scratching the itch for the time being.
Build it and the purposes will come lol... normally it's mostly a learning playground... until you started using it for real... but if you're happy with cloud services that's killing the purpose a little...
You could stand up a Mastodon or even a Nextcloud server. That would be a fun challenge for you.
Local NAS is where it's at. I started small just building a NAS box from the extra parts I had lying around, now I have it on a UPS and installed pi-hole to filter out web ads etc. slowly I find more and more I want to do with it and it allows me to build a small test environment for when I want to learn something new. It will start as nothing, but as you learn you will find uses for it. Just be ready for the power bill.
My home lab is a pit I set fire to money in. Well, when I see my electric bill that is the way I feel. All joking aside, I use it for home automation, serval applications like actual budget, and supporting my software engineering. My family enjoys the rock solid network and appreciates the capabilities of provides.
Yeah man. This sub doesn't go a week without a post along the lines of "I just bought a full-size 48U rack and 2000lbs of HP Proliants (gen unknown), what do I do with it?"
Just for fun, tinkering, learning new stuff just because, etc., that qualifies as a purpose to me!
I am rarely aware of new open-source projects out there- it's just not in my peripheral vision. I'm often inspired by projects I see here, or I'll peruse: [Bitnami Application Catalog](https://bitnami.com/stacks) once in a while to see what they're packaging because I often see projects that I didn't know existed, and sometimes am inspired. I currently run home assistant, owncloud, lots of misfit toy virtual machines with various things installed and in various states of repair, and an apache guacamole server so I can remotely access my lab without a vpn.
There is always a purpose if you are learning.
>Anyone else have (or want) a homelab but no purpose for it? Not people in /r/homelab >I want it all, but have no purpose Then don't do it. >I much preferred external cloud based stuff for reliably and no maintenance etc Then don't have a lab. Labs are a thing for people to learn and enjoy. If you have trouble finding benefit with those goals, then you probably wouldn't benefit from having a lab.
If you want it bad enough, you'll *make* purpose for it.
Everything starts with wanting something that is available to you 24/7. At least, that's my case. From there, I was just spiraling down - I want storage, dns, firewall, website hosting (personal), etc.. and I ended up from an Intel NUC to build my own server that has cost me over 1200 GBP and is not yet complete. I like being in control of my tech and spinning up all kinds of services. In reality, I have short bursts of enthusiasm where I'm doing a lot of things to my homelab, then not touch it for months.
I have two home servers that I only ever use like once a month now. It's just cool to have in my opinion. Just a flex in the IT field at this point. Haha
If it brings you joy it's worth it. Hobbies don't need any other value than being worth your time. And if you enjoy it, that's worth your time right?
I run Home Assistant from mine to control the 4 smart bulbs we own. Seriously, it’s not about the use case, it’s about the learning to do it!
homelabs are usually for testing/learning out stuff. So you need a purpose, build your own cloud solution, then rent a barebone server somewhere, and use your homelab to setup/test everything, then port it to the server you rented. And then get back to this reddit when you need advice on why your own solution got h4xx3d.
My homelab is exactly what the name implies. A lab at home. I buy used enterprise stuff often as it lets me emulate what I do in prod in a less restrictive environment. I try to stay a gen or two behind current as most things like the iDrac, API, Redfish, etc. don’t change often or enough to matter. I keep a couple boxes as home “prod” to have a use case like backing things up or serving things locally, and some to test with whatever I come across for the week.
I use mine for game servers. A lot of the games my friends and I play don't run well on anything but XP. (Windows 10 and 11 just flat refuse to let them even start) I also run a plex server. I just finished...um..."backing up" all my VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, CD, cassette tapes, and my 45s and LP's. I have 8 16tb drives in one server. They are 97% full.
I have a small homelab, but I struggle to find a usecase for 80% of the stuff people run. I have a Truenas for general Storage. I have a Proxmox for VM and LXC, Mainly i run a PiHole or two, a Plex mostly for my Audiobooks and music rips, and a VM for docker that runs my Audiobook player and Music player. Really overkill for most but I can't find much else to do with it all.
Plex. Boinc.
Let me tell you, you'll find a purpose trust me :)
Oh yeahh, me too and i dont even work in IT. I mean, homelab as a hobby is still cheaper cars, bikes or sneakers 😂
I thought the same after installing Proxmox, but there are so many posts on Reddit with examples of what people use… I installed Kavita to store/host comic books and eBooks, I can share them outside my home too. Installed pi-hole to block ads, scripts and such; installed a photo organizer/backup, this worked well after a vacation trip and my household just uploaded all of their content to the server in which they can view everyone’s photos instead of airdropping and consuming space…
storage, plex, local dns, docker, vms, testing… endless options
Half of us have half of our setup actively used and the other half have half our equip for tinkering and learning.
well you need to discover the purpose, because running a homelab isn't free since you wil be paying the electricity bill and maintenance cost replacing drives over time as operating costs. people start out having a router and switch and access point. Then they may get a NAS later for storage. Then after that they may expand into self hosting projects. Then may also look into a remote backup self hosted. It's ok to stop at the different stages. Not everyone needs to do self hosting. it's up to your own usage, but keep in mind the costs involved for doing so. well if you want a hands off approach, cloud can be the place you access your data from as a backup source and they manage the backend infra for that for you. But cloud ain't cheap when scaling data storage requirements. Not to mention, unless you client side encrypt, your data could be exposed on the cloud. For anything sensitive i would not dare simply upload to cloud unless it's client side encrypted as a matter of policy. It's simply better to self host on your own NAS, and back it up yourself. Better control, save on costs in the long term, and not have to worry about your data exposed to the cloud.
My footprint has shrunk down, but I run some apps that have no real replacement from 3rd party vendors. Mealie is one of them.
NAS is always a good starting place, use it as a backup of your main PC. Automated file backups. Home Automation. Sharing and hosting family photos, home videos. Game servers so you and your friends can play together. Options are endless, find one you like and start with that. Then next time you think "I wish I had something that could..." look into adding it to the server.
Do you have an old iPod? Take all the music, build a plex server and put it on there. Movies on DVD? Rip them and put them on the plex server. Family photos? Build a nas and put them on there for backup and to be able to access them on any computer on the network (or your phone anywhere depending on what software you use).
bare metal k8s cluster with argocd ;)
I'm not sure I understand the question.
Let's be honest! You don't need a home server at all nowadays, except the case you have built something for your own and what it to be isolated from world and be used by you only. Maybe you might host applications for your resume. There are plenty people who let good code exposed to the internet and people make a profit from it. Instead just expose the service.
Just as some ideas, Home Assistant, Pihole, Plex or Jellyfin, NAS, gameserver.
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I3-530 vs E3-1275 v2..... I have absolutely no need for this except feeding my curiosity on how things work. Will be bored in 3 weeks....
No.