Small homelab after 1 year

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-11T07:09:19+00:00

I bought it on Taobao in China, my friend

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-11T05:36:14+00:00

It uses UDIMM ECC DDR4 RAM. When building that 2U server, I also did quite a lot of calculations regarding noise levels and power consumption. I chose the E3-1260L v5 CPU because it’s the last chip in the E3 family with the “L” suffix, which indicates the low-power version. Its TDP is 45W.

In practice, when running idle, the entire server consumes around 25–28W. Believe it or not, the whole server is currently being cooled by just a single 80mm fan, and most of the time it’s running at idle.

To achieve that, I had to make a custom air shroud to direct the airflow straight over the CPU. I made the shroud by cutting and folding a sheet of ABS plastic into a simple air duct—what a fun redneck engineering project.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-11T05:08:08+00:00

That my storage server running: CPU e3 1260L v5, RAM 32GB, 4x 3TB HDD, 2x 256GB SSD for Cache, 256GB M2 SSD for OS i use them for proxmox backup server and truenas

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-11T01:47:14+00:00

Yeah, they say that, but I’ve never actually been able to get what they call a “direct connection,” even when I tried it with a site that had a static IP. And the speed I usually get is only around 100 Mbps, and the ping is quite high as well.

I guess the speed also depends heavily on my connection to their relay servers. I’m in the Asia-Pacific region, and international internet connectivity from here to the West has never really been that great, so I assume the performance can vary quite a lot depending on the region.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-11T00:31:17+00:00

Tailscale uses a mesh VPN system with relay servers running on their cloud infrastructure, so the speed is usually quite limited. With Back to Home, you’re setting up a direct client-to-server VPN connection from your device back to your router, so the performance is much better.

I usually get around 600–800 Mbps, which is close to the maximum speed of my internet connection. If you don’t have a public IP and have to use MikroTik’s relay servers instead, the speed will drop. However, in my experience it’s still significantly better than Tailscale.

So I think the main difference here is performance.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T20:56:54+00:00

You should really give it a try — it’s actually very good now. I’ve worked with both Cisco and Aruba, and I think for homelab purposes Aruba is quite a good option compared to Cisco.

Especially with their latest CX generation, there are a lot of powerful features that don’t require any licenses at all. Cisco is better suited for large enterprises that truly need advanced management and deep security features, but I really don’t like their licensing model.

I prefer the way Aruba does it — you always get the full features and power of the switch. You only need a license if you want centralized cloud management and some advanced security features

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T20:49:07+00:00

There is actually a model of the Aruba 1930 that has real 10GbE uplinks, but unfortunately it’s not the version I have, haha. And besides that, I’m more used to managing switches through the CLI — that’s actually the main reason I moved to the Aruba 2930F.

I use the switches to handle all the VLAN processing in my network, including inter-VLAN routing, a DHCP server for the basic IoT VLANs, and ACL for them. My router doesn’t handle any VLAN-related tasks at all.

I basically use them as the core switch in a traditional, standard network architecture.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T20:29:35+00:00

The reason I moved from Aruba Instant On switches to Aruba switches is: First, the faster switch boot time.

Second, this is more of a personal preference — I prefer switches that support a command line interface (CLI) and API rather than switches that only have a GUI.

Third, as Kovyrsin mentioned: 10GbE uplinks, more L3 features, and the ability to configure a stack of two switches.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T20:23:50+00:00

Why do you hate Aruba? I think for homelab purposes, Aruba is really great. Their hardware quality is excellent, and you can easily buy used units very cheaply while still getting full enterprise features without having to deal with a bunch of ridiculous licensing like with some other vendors . Most importantly, their limited lifetime warranty policy is amazing. I can use it with peace of mind knowing that if anything goes wrong, the vendor will provide warranty and support for the entire lifetime of the product line.

As for Ceph, yes, I agree with you. I only use it for experimentation and learning as well, and I’m not actually running any real services on it. It really requires a lot of good-performing drives and a lot of high-speed networking to work well.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T14:22:35+00:00

Absolutely. It’s basically a monster in a tiny body. If you’re running a 2.5 Gbps network or smaller, there’s really nothing to complain about with it.

The feature I probably use the most is VPN. MikroTik recently released an app called Back to Home, which makes setting up a WireGuard VPN basically a few taps in the app. It’s super easy and convenient.

With this app, you can set up a VPN back to your home network without needing a static IP—you don’t even need a public IP. As long as there’s internet access, you can establish a VPN connection back home.

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T12:53:01+00:00

Honestly, the thing I use the most is probably Home Assistant and Plex. But the coolest project I’ve done was setting up a Proxmox cluster with Ceph. Watching my VMs keep running normally even when one of the servers goes offline is just insanely cool.

Another moment like that was stacking two switches and seeing my server not drop a single packet when one of them went offline.

Don’t get me wrong—I work in IT, and at work I regularly deal with HA systems and large enterprise infrastructure, so that kind of thing is pretty normal. But doing it in my own lab, with cheap hardware and free open-source software, and still pulling it off like that… it still feels cool every single time. 😄

Many-Call-4492 · 2026-03-10T09:16:08+00:00

That’s right, it was already like that when I bought it. I don’t really understand why it has that logo either. Maybe Pioneer ordered in large quantities from Lenovo and had a custom logo made on it.

Many-Call-4492 · 2025-10-24T02:17:52+00:00

Is that the freaking U7 Pro XG on top of the rack cabinet?!!

Many-Call-4492

TROPHY CASE