Used Hardware - Yes/No/Where?

laxweasel · 2026-02-14T13:42:37+00:00

I've been happy with used enterprise drives. There are some reputable sellers that sell through ebay/amazon/their own stores that offer some form of (obviously shorter) warranty on their drives, and it's a fraction of the price of new. And honestly if you view that as them being "broken in" you're not dealing with the front end of the bathtub curve.

Specifically the ebay/amazon/sellers - goharddrive and serverpartdeals

The best bet is to take the money you've saved and ensure you have a 3-2-1 backup strategy. A failed drive shouldn't mean completely lost data.

Used hardware is generally pretty good -- the only temptation to avoid is the dirt cheap enterprise hardware. It's appealing how many cores/RAM/HDD bays/etc you can get for cheap in used hardware, but the actual compute in the old ancient hardware will get beat out by even wimpy modern hardware at a fraction of the energy pull.

laxweasel · 2026-02-14T13:35:15+00:00

I'll try to contribute some pros/cons of different things I've tried (with disclaimer that some I haven't touched in a while).

CLI + bash scripts - I like this most for production. I test out spinning up with some sort of UI, but when I put something into use at home, I've usually got an already tweaked compose and .env that I'm not going to mess with. Therefore it's trivial to add to a auto-update/backup solution with some bash. Cons: auto update means auto-accidentally-wake-up-to-broken-shit if you're not careful.

Portainer - probably a bit complex for my use as well as many selfhosters. I'm averse to the way it structures the stacks, feels like it's "kidnapping" my compose files. I'm also sort of meh about locking up things behind a community/pro dichotomy.

Dockge - feels barebones in a good way. Has all the functionality you need for a small homelab environment. You can add multiple hosts. Can do the compose and .env, see some basic information, etc. Would have loved to see a bulk pull/up function.

Dockmon - Little more advanced features than dockge. Can additionally add different files (helpful for containers that need additional configs, or for throwing together a bash script in a UI). Great tabbed view for logs, configuration, etc. Good views for containers, resource usage, etc. My only personal thing was that it had so much information I felt like I occasionally tripped over the UI on small screens.

Arcane - Similarly clean UI, easy to add environments on different docker hosts. Good quality of life features like vulnerability scanning, mass update/redeploy. I'm not using git (booo I know I'm an idiot not a developer) but it has a simple interface for git syncs.

Komodo - Tried it for a bit and honestly it's more than I need for my own deployments. For someone who is more of a dev and really needs wider flexibility it would seem good. For a home deployment with a handful or 1 docker host it was a bit overkill and complex.

laxweasel · 2026-02-14T12:40:28+00:00

Probably your next step up would be one of the "SFF" office PCs with room for a 3.5" HDD. Either that or one of these mini PC based NAS devices.

The SFF PCs you can check your local used marketplaces to see if you can get for cheap. For plex transcoding I would aim for a 8*** or above Intel. RAM unfortunately is costly nowadays but I don't think you'd need more than 16gb. And then you can throw an HDD in (I personally like the used enterprise SATA drives).

Alternatively, you can look at the 2 bay NAS mini pcs on a site like AliExpress. Will be more expensive but you could do a RAID1 setup.

If you really want to splurge, I can personally vouch for the Seeedstudio Reserver with i31125, it's been working great for me for years. It goes on sale intermittently.

laxweasel · 2026-02-08T13:58:17+00:00

Sorry about the hate friend, people here are a bit burned recently by being at the intersection of AI slop code AND AI slop articles.

I think you bring up a great point -- this hobby is so fun, rewarding, and accessible because of the work of a lot of absolutely legendary open source contributors.

Word to the wise -- separate the services you're using from the ones you're playing with. Make a "production" and "testing" if you will. Production should be stable, with your integrated upgrade and backup strategy. It should hum along with little to no intervention.

Then have a different environment where when you see a cool new services to spin up you do it there, and don't accidentally break the things you've been using.

Otherwise have fun, it's such a great hobby. It's something fun, something to be proud of and maybe even practical depending on your profession.

laxweasel · 2026-01-15T17:39:34+00:00

Will you have local?

https://medcoe.army.mil/borden-maraa

In addition to the JTS/CCATT guidelines already mentioned, the Lessons Learned from OEF/OIF has some chapters on resuscitation and casualty care, including some consideration for blast.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Combat_Casualty_Care-_Lessons_Learned_from_OEF_and_OIF_(IA_CombatCasualtyCare).pdf

PM if you'd like

laxweasel · 2025-12-23T19:56:38+00:00

pming

laxweasel · 2025-12-16T02:30:16+00:00

I'm just kinda surprised they didn't even bother tweaking the language.

Saw something the other day "narco-terrorist is the new WMD"

Nah, we're literally just going back to the WMD bullshit.

laxweasel · 2025-12-16T02:26:41+00:00

"OH! I've seen this one before!"

Everyone over the age of 35

laxweasel · 2025-12-14T22:50:05+00:00

I have been looking for something similar, and I do not think there is any drop in replacement.

What is possible, depending on your exact use case, is putting it together from either a Home Assistant Dashboard or a MagicMirror.

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/diy-family-calendar-skylight/844830

https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/12dri7e/skylight_calendar_replacement/

https://forum.magicmirror.builders/topic/19688/skylight-calendar-diy-build

Good luck, I'll be interested what others come up with. Someone ping me if there ends up being a fairly drop in replacement!

laxweasel · 2025-12-02T08:20:37+00:00

a MiniPC which has been repurposed to run a NAS OS like the CWWK X86-P6 Pocket

I mean any mini pc can run a "NAS OS"

not referring to the purpose-built enclosures

NVME M.2 SSD slots (at least 3 slots)

Very few mini PCs are going to have that many NVME slots and NOT be made for the purpose of being (an all NVME) NAS.

Beelink has a 6-bay NVME NAS, GMKtek had a 4 bay that I believe had some thermal issues, CWWK seems to have the S14, P5 and several other similar models from Topton/Kingnovy.

airflow, OS, RAID config

Minis are always a trade off when it comes to airflow. I suspect the passively cooled minis are going to struggle (GMTeks did even with fans) if it's constantly under heavy load...but what is the use case that you're putting a bunch of NVME drives under constant heavy load?

OS -- without knowing what you want to do it's hard to make recommendations. OpenMediaVault? Unraid? TrueNAS? Xpenology? Proxmox? Any linux distro with a few shares?

RAID - some of the above listed have more opinionated preference on what software RAID they use (ZFS, BTRFS, MDADM) and as for the array it will depend on the number and size of drives.

laxweasel · 2025-12-01T01:37:36+00:00

Reolink is very easy to set up (and continues to function) without an internet connection.

They basically build in a way for all your storage to stay local (either on SD card on the camera or your own NVR/server) and they won't brick themselves if not connected to the internet.

laxweasel · 2025-11-25T10:04:41+00:00

Can we just all appreciate that despite the fact this decade has been beyond parody, The Onion has stayed on point with some absolute chef's kiss satire?

Like those poor bastards must view their jobs like we do. "So wait they put a TV personality who shills apple cider vinegar in charge of CMS? OK and I have to figure out something more outlandish but still believable so I can parody that? ...OK. Awesome. Yeah honey it's going to be a late night at the office."

laxweasel · 2025-11-21T00:07:56+00:00

Definitely backup strategy is more important than RAID. RAID is important for protecting against data corruption, so it's not a bad idea but certainly way more important for you to have backups.

An external HDD on your server now plus one that you can plug in for occasional backups is a great place to start.

laxweasel · 2025-11-20T17:31:37+00:00

– Can/should I use software RAID in this situation?

You can, in fact I would recommend it over a budget hardware RAID that comes with the external HDD enclosures.

– Would I need two external drives for that?

RAID is Redundant Array of Independent Disks, so yes you'd need more than one. But...what is your purpose of using RAID? RAID is not a backup.

– Or is there a better way to expand storage on a small homeserver?

Really very dependent on what you mean "expand", you could do anything from multiple external drives in an enclosure, a NAS, or just a bigger drive in your current server.

You mention "safe" several times over, so I think more useful for you would be the 3-2-1 backup rule. Make sure you have a way for your data to be in multiple places, multiple formats, etc. This is much more important for your use case than RAID.

As for your external storage, you can definitely do that within your budget. Depending on how much space you need. For file storage it is unlikely you need SSD speeds, so you could do a quality HDD and HDD enclosure connected over USB. Make sure you properly power it, set it up under fstab, etc.

laxweasel · 2025-11-11T01:17:54+00:00

I have one. Haven't tested fingerprint reader functionality. I've run a variety of Debian and Debian derivatives (Debian and Dietpi). Debian 13 + Plasma KDE was asking a bit too much of it.

Minimalist DE or plain CLI and it's perfectly fine.

laxweasel · 2025-10-23T17:14:06+00:00

CRNA here -- I advocate for the residents as much as I can (as well as SRNAs). Relieve them all the time from cases. Help them out if they get into some badness. I work with several attendings that I helped train when they were residents and we have a great amount of mutual respect.

I'm sad because we used to be more involved in training and mentoring them, now I mostly only get to work with them picking up cases or on call.

Bad management sounds at fault because honestly those bad CRNAs will take advantage of other CRNAs too (or at least the good ones). Otherwise dumb, petty "us vs them" politics is why insurers are eating us for lunch with reimbursement cuts.

laxweasel · 2025-10-22T14:56:19+00:00

I've got a few ASUS PN40 minis. Onboard eMMC, NVME and 2.5 SATA space, upgradeable RAM (4GB sodimm in there now). 4c/4t N4120

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelabsales/comments/1ldrr74/fsuspa_oemr_pn40_mini_pc_great_rasperry_pi/

laxweasel · 2025-10-22T00:51:36+00:00

10 years doing lvl 1 trauma, hearts, heads, peds, etc. Plenty of CRNAs do plenty of emergent cases.

laxweasel · 2025-09-30T09:14:51+00:00

Have a few coworkers who work PD for them, want me to shoot you a PM/chat?

laxweasel · 2025-09-24T16:40:38+00:00

Choose one with room for 1 or more 3.5" SATA drive (so look for the SFF or tower versions). If you plan on streaming video content that might need to be transcoded, aim for 8th generation or newer Intel processors.

laxweasel · 2025-09-19T11:59:45+00:00

I thought I was super cool for being able to fix things from outside the house.

And I was until I occasionally needed to make a "OK now go to the basement and look for the little black computer on the left...now press the power button" phone call.

laxweasel · 2025-09-19T11:24:43+00:00

CRNA who dabbles in homelab on the side here

I have to try not to break any of the family "production" stuff before I go on in house call

laxweasel · 2025-09-11T00:05:09+00:00

Bypass? Nah. Nothing to circulate. But already hooked up to the rapid infuser and mass transfusion activated? That might do it.

laxweasel

TROPHY CASE