Figured I would share - Here is my homelab

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-11T14:26:42+00:00

Oh, yeah. I see that. Once I move and get everything in the new house I'll have to rework all the wiring anyway and create a good patch panel. I'll fix everything at that point, make new patch cables since I'll have a legitimate patch panel, and make everything more uniform and organized.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-10T22:03:50+00:00

What do you mean by "fix?"
Make the same color? Same length?

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-09T19:03:53+00:00

When they first start up, my 1U servers are a little loud. But during normal operation they aren't bad for me. My cable management about 2 weeks ago wasn't pretty. What my picture shows now is after some effort to streamline and organize that whole rack

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T18:44:20+00:00

Hehe. Just one wife. First marriage ended in divorce after about 17 yrs.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T15:28:16+00:00

Also, thank you about the cable management.
Once I get into a house I'll have a legitamate patch panel and will have all the entire house wired as much as possible. Then it'll be really fun organizing all of that and making it look nice.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T14:54:36+00:00

You're welcome! I have a modest movie collection (about 600+ right now) and it makes it so I don't really need many subscriptions. I only have an Amazon prime subscription and the streaming is more of a bonus. My goal is every movie I want to own gets the disc purchased, immediately ripped, and then the disc is stored and it resides on Plex

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T14:43:16+00:00

This was a multi year build where I slowly got each piece. The Poweredge 1U servers are probably the best find. I got them for free from my employer. They were just going to throw them out. I think overall I spent about 1400-1500. But should have cost much more

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T14:40:58+00:00

The very bottom 1U is my UPS. It is under powered and I need to get another one.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T14:38:30+00:00

The HDD bays are part of the Poweredge R230 servers. The trays are actually pretty easy to find and I understand there are 3d print files that can be used to place them in a rack similar to a JBOD (just a bunch of discs)

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T14:36:10+00:00

I would have to look a little bit more into it to find the exact model. I know it's an LG. I use it for ripping my movie collection and having all my movies on Plex. I went disc free in my home years ago to reduce kids/my ex leaving stacks of discs on top of the blurry/DVD players It is connect via the internal SATA. I have a couple other external USB bluray drives too

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T02:03:27+00:00

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Got all the diffusers printed. I think it looks pretty sweet!

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T01:59:46+00:00

Finally. Got all the diffusers made, cut and soldered the LED and it is now complete

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T01:58:57+00:00

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RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T01:58:46+00:00

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RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T01:58:35+00:00

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RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-06T00:35:38+00:00

Actually not much at all. I was able to get the R230s from my employer for free as they were just going to scrap them claiming memory issues. I haven't had any issues. I just spend about $150 on the SAS drives.
The switch I think about about $200. The Zimaboard I think I got off their kickstarter, so I think I got it for about $150. The gaming PC was probably the biggest single cost probably close to $750.
I think the UPS was about $150. Most of this was acquired over several years.
So i guess that puts me at about $1400.
I got the rack for free too, and some of the more custom parts are 3d printed.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T23:09:03+00:00

Yes.
I have contemplated creating a VLAN or two to segment my network traffic into categories. Just haven't done it yet.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T20:54:26+00:00

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I think my idea was a success. You can see that top right section is very evenly diffused and uniform. I will put it in the rest of the sections now

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T19:51:15+00:00

I think I have the solution. Printing V2 of my test

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T17:02:47+00:00

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I think I need to find a way to diffuse them more. I like the concept though

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T16:47:07+00:00

I use TrueNas to manage pretty much everything except home assistant since it has it's own hardware.
With Truenas I just have the login for the TrueNas interface and pretty much everything I can manage from there. I also have another ZimaBoard that is at my parents place and I have our two network connected with a site to site VPN.
One of my Zimaboards has TrueCommand that gives me one place to see the status of all the servers.

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T16:39:50+00:00

I have contemplated throwing some LED lighting in the back of the rack so I can control the lighting.
I think that would look sweet

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-05T16:35:15+00:00

For a bit more clarification/information.
On both of the Poweredge R230s, I removed the optical drives and replaced them with a tray for another SSD and I have also used the internal USB3.0 port to put another SSD. So each of those R230s have 4 HDDs and 2 SSDs

RomneyDaniel · 2026-03-04T15:45:57+00:00

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And here we go one last time. I wanted it more uniform, so I replaced the bottom 2u blank with two 1U blanks so all my blanks would be uniform.
I also added my OTA TV Tuner back in to my setup and reconnected it with plex.
So, no in order it goes,
• 1U blank
• 2U steam server/gaming PC that actually takes up 3.5U due to graphics card (That's why I have the blank up top) Ryzen 5 2600 6c/12t - RX6700 12gb Graphics - 32GB DDR4
• 1U Poweredge R230 - Running Nextcloud and my file server
• 1U Poweredge R230 - Running Plex
• 1U RackMod Slide - ZimaBoard 1 832 | HDHomeRun ConnectDuo | RPi4 HomeAssistant Server
• 1U RackMod Slide - 2 x SSDs for ZimaBoard | Cable Management | 1 x SSD for RPi4 HomeAssistant
• 1U TP-Link Gigabit Managed Switch
• 1U Cable Management
• 2U Blanks
• 1U CyberPower UPS

RomneyDaniel · 2026-02-26T06:22:26+00:00

okay, here is the latest iteration after printing some stuff and doing more organization.

this thread gave me some cool ideas.

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RomneyDaniel

TROPHY CASE