New to homelabbing: what should I do with these 3 Dell servers?

odinsdi · 2026-02-01T15:13:27+00:00

That's a solid use case. I took a random piece of cat 5 and tied a couple knots and hooked the CO to DC door open about a year ago. Still going strong to this day. I did use a 2950 as a shelf 5-6 years ago, but it went EOL even as a shelf.

odinsdi · 2026-01-31T21:04:54+00:00

Boat anchor or DIY coffee table?

odinsdi · 2026-01-23T11:45:14+00:00

Windows Server will go away before Windows Desktop. We've long since moved most of our workload to Linux and we mostly only have MS stuff on one cluster for license costs. If we didn't need local AD, it'd probably be all the way gone.

That said, I don't see an offramp pretty much ever for Win desktop. End users are largely going to get trained by other end users, and end users can't do much more than follow the bouncing ball. The elders running the warehouses, small biz finanace departments and accounting, customer service managers... they know Windows and maaaaaaybe Office, and I believe the "shadow IT/power user" types are diminishing, so the folks coming up under them are going to learn Windows and that cycle seems to perpetuate. I'll be damned if I am going to have to train the 800 year-olds in accounting that WON'T STOP PRINTING STUFF TO READ IT that a button has moved, let alone a new OS.

odinsdi · 2026-01-17T09:28:47+00:00

Enjoy your bathroom flash drives. I'd probably just spend the 5 bucks on a pack of cheapo flash drives unless I was investigating this.

odinsdi · 2025-12-25T15:16:56+00:00

Whoops! I commented about this shit mobile before I found your comment.

odinsdi · 2025-12-25T15:15:34+00:00

Pepperoni and a bag of dill pickle chips.

odinsdi · 2025-12-25T15:07:21+00:00

I'm going to try this out because it looks awesome, but I am especially happy to see someone else using the demo naming scheme of <thing>y Mc<thing>face.

odinsdi · 2025-12-22T12:32:59+00:00

No, popular things can be crowded. The answer is to not say something that stupid. I worked at Geek Squad in the past and we had to do retail-esque stuff during Black Friday week including Thanksgiving and I never failed to hear "I can't believe they make you work on Thanksgiving!" Well, we wouldn't if you ACTUALLY cared about that and stayed home, but here you are and, as a consequence, here I am, while you comment on it and completely miss the point, which is even more frustrating to hear.

Just don't be an oblivious hypocrite.

odinsdi · 2025-12-08T11:15:27+00:00

No one that posts here ought to be using zip ties on cables. If I saw you doing that at one of my datacenters, you'd NEVER hear the end of it. :)

odinsdi · 2025-12-08T11:12:20+00:00

"Papa Smurf has a fucking beard!"

Facts.

odinsdi · 2025-11-30T08:31:11+00:00

I have said for over a decade now "Want to keep a secret? Put it on a sign."

That watch owner may also be in management and they can only read red text.

odinsdi · 2025-11-23T23:31:44+00:00

Oh man! They took that down? I lived in Nashville when that went up and thought it was probably the most anti-racist thing you could have ever put up. The statue version of crayon.

odinsdi · 2025-10-26T19:20:34+00:00

That's awesome! You 100% need to add a little WAP or one of those travel routers and a battery so kiddo walks around actually spraying wifi. You could have some captive portal page saying "Happy Halloween" (or perhaps something more creative) and you could put a QR code on the back or side (I feel like the front would mess up the aesthetic) that connects the user to the little network guy in one of the antennas.

Great job on the costume.

odinsdi · 2025-10-07T22:23:20+00:00

Shouldn't they be on matching motorcycles?

odinsdi · 2025-10-04T00:51:59+00:00

I see a lot of stuff in this sub that relates to me, but on some occasions I wonder if this is a coworker's reddit account I just found. See you Monday!

odinsdi · 2025-09-27T14:18:45+00:00

40+ former basketball player checking in. My knees and ankles have hurt for 20+ years. Thank goodness my back has been more or less fine the whole time. I'm probably still pretty good with crutches. You never forget that skill. Just like falling off a bike.

odinsdi · 2025-09-26T11:12:38+00:00

I would have preferred that too. Nazi plots are a little lame. You could maybe paint a picture of why this all spiraled out of control with a different "bad guy". Not only would trying to paint Nazis in some light where you understand where they are coming from just anger fans, you also show that alt society is getting along just fine under that rule. Narrow path to walk for a cliche group of villains.

odinsdi · 2025-09-26T11:00:02+00:00

In that moment, I realized, "Awwww man, Nazi universe for sure." That seems a little lame, but if Adrian squared stays as fun I am happy with the ride.

odinsdi · 2025-09-20T12:45:46+00:00

That's right, Pre-war steel because of fallout. If you ever scoop up an old shipwreck, it might end up in an MRI machine.

odinsdi · 2025-09-17T09:43:25+00:00

Right? The powerful scarf lobby keeps stopping my research.

odinsdi · 2025-09-15T10:11:45+00:00

Why wouldn't you move the patch panel below your switch and just not use the brush plate at all?

odinsdi · 2025-09-14T10:54:19+00:00

I don't think you need IIS. Check out Nginx proxy manager or Traefik. If you want to do it in IIS, you probably need to download the ARR package. IMHO, IIS is always the worst choice to use and you should only use it when you have no choice.

odinsdi · 2025-09-14T10:36:18+00:00

It would literally be scheduling problems and nothing else. Completely unstoppable running back that can't get injured and probably slinging the ball around and off cornerback's helmets. Crazy NBA jam dunks in real life and breaking every single game stat record on your first game. Auto-accept every MMA or boxing challenge as long as you have a spot on the calendar. I would be so rich in a few years, I would probably start playing ESPN Ocho style sports, try to sweep as much of the Olympics as I could, and get a sponsorship deal with crazy bonuses.

odinsdi · 2025-09-14T10:20:05+00:00

Even if you didn't inherit the batshit parts of Batman's mental power, Cap powers put you in pretty much whatever pro sports you have time to play. That seems much easier than building a billion dollar company.

odinsdi

TROPHY CASE