After the red 3-node Lab Rax, I built a second one, this time in blue and with a different goal: something a non-technical person can plug into their router and actually use every day without ever opening a terminal.

What it does:

• Movies & shows on any TV, phone or tablet (Jellyfin, with Intel Quick Sync hardware transcoding)
• Automatic photo & video backup from phones (Immich)
• Shared network drive for the house (Samba)
• Network-wide ad-blocking (AdGuard Home, optional)
• Radarr / Sonarr / Prowlarr / qBittorrent with hardlinks for managing the media library

What's inside:

• Dell OptiPlex 3040 Micro: i5-6500T, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD
• Datto Alto: Celeron 3865U, 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD
• D-Link 5-port Gigabit switch built into the front panel, plus keystone jacks
• 2x 4TB Seagate drives (one for media, one for photos) on SATA-to-USB adapters inside the case
• Top exhaust fan, carry handles, and "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" on the front

Software side:

• Proxmox VE 9 on both, as two standalone hosts (not clustered on purpose, with only two nodes I didn't want to deal with quorum)
• 6 LXC containers: Jellyfin, the media stack, Samba, AdGuard, Immich (Docker) and a small dashboard
• Everything on DHCP with .local names (mDNS), so it works on any home network without changing a single IP
• Custom dashboard at labrax.local: status lights for every service, one-click links to all apps, search & add movies/shows, delete old titles to free up space, and one shared password for all the apps that can be changed from one place (screenshot in the gallery, password hidden). The dashboard and its API were written with AI help.
• Both hosts power back on by themselves after a power outage

Lessons learned: the Datto wouldn't come back after a power cut because its CMOS battery was dead, and it's not a regular coin cell but one with a 2-pin connector, so I had to order a CR2032 with leads. Also, going full DHCP + mDNS instead of static IPs made the whole thing portable, which was the main point of this build.

Happy to answer questions about the case or the setup!

Along with an electrical engineer friend, I am in the early stages of working on an idea for a project I wish existed, but doesn’t (to the best of my knowledge).

Sometimes power outages happen, especially short ones. In order to survive these blips, most people would install a UPS between the wall and the power supply. Unfortunately, most uninterruptible power supplies are bulky, use lead-acid batteries that don’t last very long, and beep once they die.

I have designed a PC expansion card that sits between the existing power supply and the motherboard, GPU, and hard drives, etc. Up to two modular LiFePO4 batteries that fit into unused 3.5” HDD slots can be plugged into the expansion card. The batteries can last around 10 years and the packs can be replaced at the end of their life. 

Essentially, it can turn any mid-tower PC into a sort of laptop with a battery big enough to allow a graceful shutdown or hibernation via a usb jumper to the motherboard.

Improvements over existing UPS’s:

1. Small and lightweight to ship - no need for additional AC->DC->AC Circuitry
2. Completely internal
3. Long battery life
4. Modular and replaceable battery packs
5. No beeping
6. Graceful shutdown or hibernation on mains power-loss
7. Will auto-restart your PC when mains power is restored

What I am not claiming:

1. That you can continue hardcore gaming or intense rendering
2. Surge protection 
3. Backup power for external devices

I am thinking about the casual home server builder who wants to recycle an existing gaming PC chassis into a dedicated server with TrueNAS or Proxmox, not the power user who has a rack mount in their extra closet. Something neatly internal with a high WAF (wife acceptance factor).

I wrote this post to gauge interest in the idea, and to see what features you would like to see in v1. My next step will be to build and test a physical prototype.

Possible extra add on features, depending on interest:

•2.5” SSD-Sized battery pack for smaller form factor PC’s

•Built-in KVM over IP controller with HDMI jumper to GPU or motherboard

•Built-in extra SATA ports

So 3 Questions:

1. Does it interest you?
2. Is it something you would pay for?
3. What haven’t I thought of yet?

Budget : $500-$800
Use-Case: home server - games, movies, photo files, comms app.
Country of purchase - USA
Peripherals needed - none
Any other requirements / preferences:**

I would like to build a small computer(or buy used) to host a game server with possibility for lots of mods (Valheim, arma, minecraft-type games), host a fluxer instance(communication), and have media for movies.

I want this to be accessible to friends (at most 3-5 per game server, fluxer instance) who can also stream movies from a drive.

I would like to make it a minipc or at least smaller than atx tower.

I have a personal computer that dual boots win11 and linux(cachyos), but I don't want to keep it on all the time. So I would play/watch from my main computer through the newly built server in the same house, but want friends to be able to access as well.

I just built my main computer and OUCH $$$ so I am looking to buy used or built modestly. Probably under $500-$800. I am trying to understand what level of computer build I need for the above uses and if it's possible to do all three on one server computer.

If adding $50 here and there to get a build that can do all this comfortably and a the same time(?), I dont mind that. I would prefer a better experience for me and friends in game/watching movies via jellyfin.

I've watched some videos about doing each of these things but am unsure if one comp can do all three. This server build would sit in a closet connected wired to gigabit internet.

Im ok at computer stuff and only just started learning linux via cachyos, so if there are products like AMP, tailscale, proxmox that people think are good I'd prefer paying a little over having to look up every single issue at every step.

Do I need a separate copy of each game I will be hosting on the server comp?

Drive for OS and server would likely be a 500gb or 1tb ssd nvme or sata. Movie bluray files are large so probably a 2tb drive for that. Is it worth getting an ssd over a Hdd for movie streaming to work well for friends accessing outside of my home?

If the server build is linux only can I sync my current ntfs movie drive on win11 to that server linux drive that would brtfs?

Thanks.

Already had a suggestion from another thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1xfgd6t/building_small_server_for_hosting_game/19ro96l0t1hpd/

The model (Whistle by Cactus Compute) is
16.9 MB, which is too big for the board. I cut the decoder from 8 layers to 4, bringing it to
14.5 MB with about 11.5% word error rate. I wrote the inference engine from scratch in C, using 2-bit weights, the S3's vector instructions and both CPU cores.
Check my detail blog on this: https://amal.vs.binarybit.in/blog/6adf1f677027b216982a9889

Hi,
Looking for some advice to setup a Home media server, I can google the setup info & take it from there, just unsure about the best route to take given limitations of older hardware listed below.
Will be using for Movies, TV shows and Music (all in 2 channel only)

QNAP TS-251+-2G 2 Bay, Intel Celeron 2.0 GHz Quad Core Processor, (2 x 4 GB) DDR3 RAM, 2 x Seagate IronWolf Pro 6 TB 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive 7200 RPM, 256 MB Cache.

Apple Mac Mini 2012, 2.5 GHz Intel i5 dual core, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Hello guys,

I want to have a computer with home assitance and something to downloads torrents or something like this and see it on some tvs.

Which infraestructure do you think is needed?

I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 Tiny Desktop with an i5 and 16gb ram that i want to use.

can i get a linux and something to get both systems? or just home assitance OS with an add on?

Thanks for all the help you could give me !

I’ll do my best to keep this short and to the point.
I have a dell optiplex 3060 with a core I5-8500T, 16gb ddr4, a 128gb SATA M.2 and a 1TB SATA 2.5 drive inside of the machine and an assortment of 1-4tb HDD’s that I intend to build an enclosure for once they become useful.

My equipment: aside from what’s shown in the images I have a main windows pc, a 3d printer (10 inch rack is fully printed) and a variety of cables and whatnot.

My main goal is to run plex for my family, have some nas style storage (not a priority at all) and to run game servers (satisfactory and maybe Minecraft)

Currently I have Ubuntu desktop running as Ubuntu server gave me some issues relating to probing the drives.

I’m happy to switch OS and anything else needed to make it work

(I do intend to get a few more mini PC’s in the coming months so I can have a cluster with each task having a dedicated node).

If anyone has a guide or knows of a guide then please do share :)

Using an old laptop with a grossly underpowered cpu but its up! Was wondering though about when I change out my laptop to something better, will my hard drives have to be formatted or am I wrong. Couldn't really find good info on it.

I'm using ZimaOS for my server. No Linux or windows.

Hi, can someone by change provide good pictures of the optional JSEN1 temperature sensor that is used for multiple supermicro boards?

I've only found this one here and I'm currently trying to figure out if and how adding additional sensors to the board works. It can't be as simple as just hooking I2C sensors up to that bus, can it?

Product number: MCP-280-00033-0N
eBay link: https://www.ebay.de/itm/335379055576

The documentation is kinda sparse on that.

I currently assume that JSEN1, JIPMB1, JSMB, JNVI2C1, and PWRI2C all expose the same I2C bus as the SMBus on the PCIe slots does but with slightly different pinouts each.

After that the question is how to get the sensors to show up in the BMC but one problem after another.

Long story short I wanted a 6TB for cheap; basic media server purposes. Nothing of any material loss should it grenade. I paid slightly over the odds (S.M.A.R.T was provided) but I didn't query the "power on count". A bit of ChatGPT-fu means this bad boy has been switched on and off every 36 minutes for almost 7 years.

What kind of device would do that?

I've given it some punishment the last few days and it seems stable (until it isn't). I am now just curious on the usage recorded, lol.

Trash mac 2013 can or HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9

I need a server that run about 20 docker containers.

Trash mac is 200$ and i need to install ubuntu on it and the HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 is a dedicated server for 35$ monthly from a 3rd party.

Specs:

Apple Mac Pro Late 2013 (Cylinder)

Processor (CPU) Intel Xeon E5, 12-Core

CPU Clock Speed 2.7 GHz

RAM 64GB DDR3 ECC, 1866 MHz (4 × 16GB)

Graphics (GPU) AMD FirePro D700

Video Memory (VRAM) 6GB GDDR5

Storage 500GB Flash SSD

Tested Display Resolution Full HD (1920 × 1080)

Operating System OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks

Design Compact cylindrical aluminum chassis

Release Year 2013

HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9

2x Intel Xeon E5-2620 V4

64GB RAM

4x 300GB SAS 10K

HPE Smart Array P440ar

So I want to make a server but my main issue is that I have 10 1tb hard drives and 2 3tb hard drives. Whats a good way to get all of them in a server because im drawing a blank, or should I just sell them for bigger drives?

I'm getting an Intel NUC but I'm not sure what os I want. I am familiar with using CasaOS on my Raspberry Pi 5. I was thinking either fygo os or zima os. I just want it for my photos backup and a Minecraft server and maybe some other things. I heard fygo os has many more features than zima os. I want something that's user friendly.

6gbs of ram and a network card that's pretty much it. has a 256gb ssd as the boot drive and hard drives for storage it runs great doesn't draw too much power either its pretty quiet.It streams 4k movies no problem even on multiple devices.The external power supppy I installed is for reliability.Its especially great for torrenting I have to use the stupid team viewer on my phone for that but it's fine I just have to select the right folder and it'll show up automatically.if anyone has a better alternative for team viewer please tell me

I have a 2-bay Synology NAS (DS223) and currently have one 12 TB hard drive in there which is full of TV shows and movies (which I sort through Jellyfin, then Infuse)

I'm just realising how much more I could actually use this, and am considering not paying for iCloud storage, just having my music and photos on the NAS instead. If I buy a second external hard drive, I'd ideally like it to be a relatively simple process in that I can have separate folders for music, photos, then eventually TV shows and movies when my first hard drive fills up.

What would be my process?

Do you guys have recommended programs I do this through?

I will occasionally back up my photos and music on my iMac which I don't often use, so no need for a failsafe hard drive on my NAS.

Thank you in advance!

and my question is if im updating linux servers is casa os gonna work?

and what containers do you think i should add(optiplex 7010)

First thanks to anyone taking the time to respond to what will obviously be a very dumb question.

I have a lot of drives and I have MBO with a lot of sata ports and an expansion card to add more as well as homemade case to fit it all as compact as possible. Now i understand i could buy a big powerful psu to power all of the drives and that would work fine. But i do not want to add a big ass PSU that will make my compact build not so compact anymore. Is there a way to power all of the drives plus the MBO and CPU without getting a huge PSU. What i also have is a bunch of picoPSU laying around each of them should be able to power 3-5 drives especially since they would not need to power anything else. Is there a way to make them all power on when i press the power button and off when i tell it to shut down. Is this even a good idea. Are there better options?

Hey everyone,

I ran out of space on my ALL SSD NAS and seriously did not want to spend $280 on a new m2 nvme stick...

So I wanted to share with you all a NAS build I did on top of a $34 HP EliteDesk G3 I got from ebay. The total cost obviously was not $34, but if we exclude the HDD drives which I already had, the build was only $53.

• I got an m2 adapter for $10 on amazon
• a small form m2 nvme 128GB on ebay for around $13 (and funilly enough also sold the 240 SSD it came with for $13) just as a boot drive for truenas
• A 10GbE for $9 on AliExpress (Intel X540-T2 ) and yes, they do get a bit hot, but it's been working fine for over a year now. I got two of those, and had them connected peer-to-peer until I saw a switch with 2 10GbE ports for $70 on amazon (which also gets hot lol, but that's 10G though)

The full video of the project is available here: https://youtu.be/ALiHzOHvVIQ?si=4WF13HCyDQ47S4Ra

P.S. this was just a fun project to see what I could do with a cheap old PC, not an enterprise-grade NAS! And yes, if you do not have old HDDs lying around you will have to multiply the $53 by at least 10!! But then again, that is true for any NAS brand you buy!

hey guys, i want to make a home server for self hosting stuff like a media server, photos and videos with immich and backing them up etc. 1st thing is how many drives would i need? i heard running drives under zfs is the go to but i was told id need 6 or 10? for like raid 1/2? idk what to do there im confused, i can buy like 2 4TBs from micro center no prob and maybe another 2 within the next month. 2nd i have an old PC i can flip into the server in question its a intel i5 8400, MB is HD3 B360, 16GBs of RAM DDR4, and a 500w PSU, and was wondering what i could do to lower power draw? and does Virtualization use less power? any help appreciated

Cracking session today. Frustrated by disgustingly slow backups to a rapidly filling SMR external usb drive, I have been gathering kit and ideas to build out a budget NAS. Picked up an unused HP N54L from a great guy on ebay, £50.

Considered the BIOS mod to enliven the optical bay for SSD, got myself tied in knots, then realsied I had overcomplicated things, stepped back and simplified. Tried to install OMV from the internal USB port and ran into repeated partitioning problems. Problem solved through many trial and errors and found a fix utilising one usb as installer and another as the install destination.

I tell you, seeing the OMV web GUI appear that first time after a session of problem solving was awesome! Spent some time formatting 2x 6tb HDDs, then moved the N54L to its headless location and wired it up for more work tomorrow.

Felt great to get a project to fruition after gathering, planning and prepping.

Good fun.

Hey all,

Im in the process of rebuilding my current setup after a failure occurred in my Seagate 4TB external HDD

For context: I have wiped an old 2014 Chromebook and installed a headless Ubuntu that I command over SSH from another laptop. The Chromebook runs the server and has the external drive connected via USB. The drive has become unreadable and it looks like data recovery may be my only option.

Im looking to build a new system thats much more robust and reliable. Im interested in expanding my systems to be capable of homelab tasks as well as increasing storage.

My question is: what is the most reliable setup for a jellyfin server with an eventual 10-20TB library as well as future proofing for homelab capability?

Disclaimer: I'm fairly new to this and on a learning path.

They released a patched version yesterday that takes care of both of the PHP bugs.

Hello all!

I purchased a Poweredge T320 for use in my home lab from Marketplace. the server itself seems to run fine. I've loaded windows server and have been running with one drive for testing... but I have a dilemma.....

I hadn't seen inside a Poweredge Chasis before and didn't realize I twas missing the Drive Cage for the HDDs. In my setup I have the enclosure where the cage should go, but no cage to insert the drives in their sleds.

Does anyone know a part number or where I can find one of these? I found one on eBay that was $65 but that's it. And that seems a little exorbitant to me. Or is that what I should expect for a part such as this?

Any advice is appreciated!

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They claimed a single command solution, but casaos simply will not work correctly

Hi All,

Just about to start my first homelab today and I'm a little bit stuck on the OS. Not looking at running anything crazy, just mostly storage backup, media server, game hosting, ad blocking.

I was leaning towards using ZimaOS since it looks like a really easy way to get started but was thinking of potentially looking into something linux based/proxmox in the future.

Is it possible to start by setting up ZimaOS and then learn something else on a virtual machine (i think?) and make the switch? Or will i just end up giving myself a bigger headache in the long run for no reason?

If it's simple enough to switch afterwards then i'd probably just pick the easiest option to get up and running for now.

Thanks!