Nothing special just wanted to share, I’ve been working on it piece by piece for over a year now it started with a few intel nucs now it’s got five dell optiplex micros a raspberry pi and a qnap nas ts251 and a ts251+. I’ve been using it to host virtual machines and to run game servers .
Nice
Great setup. I love that lego minifigure there
What type of software or setup are your optiplex micros running? I’m new to home labbing. Even so not too long ago I bought 4 Lenovo m910q tiny and planned on making a HA k3s cluster but I lack the experience/knowledge of Kubernetes and starting up a sever. Mainly want to figure out how to run a game server then eventually mess around with containerizing and virtualization. Any suggestions on where to start or get something up and running would be a great help!
That’s great you have full-time staff
This is a clean setup, well done! I've been looking for a good rack/shelf setup like that for my "IT Closet" since I live in an apartment and can't get a full server rack.
Do you want the link for the thing I use it’s just a shower basket thing which I’ve melted holes in to route cables through the one only issue is that it warps a little bit from the weight
I'm waiting for my first Optiplex to begin my journey. Cool! Have you thought of buying an enclosure for the Micro pcs?
I have thought about it at some point I wanna get a proper server rack for it but for now I might just keep them as they are
I’m assuming the labels aren’t referring to the OSI model?
My brain went straight to lasagne ;p
nah those are just to make it easier if I need someone to turn on one of my servers when I'm not home so they can easily find what I'm talking about.
Could you use WOL for that?
I could but it’s pretty useless as I would only be using it when I’m not home and my access is so limited to my servers as I can’t do port forwarding as I’m stuck on cgnat
would tailscale maybe help? don’t need to expose ports and could have one source machine on that network with it and send wol from there
That looks really good thanks for the recommendation
Also check CloudFlare tunnels!
I use an OpenVPN/wireguard servers running on a Rpi3 behind the firewall, once inside the network WOL works pretty good.
Layer 8 - humans to push buttons
Most of the difficulties I have in IT are the Layer 7 to Layer 8 interaction.
Always a layer 8 problem!
Or different layers of switch
Lmao that’s a fun thought
So... Where does the cat sleep? :) On top of the QNAPs? Is it warm enough?
These are the little boxes we used as PCs in school computer labs!
Your Router is only Layer 1 Switch? :P
Nice setup. Good job!
Love it!
I'm genuinely envious of your setup mate!
I wish I had this many USFF PCs, looking around for Dell Micros, HP G series mini, Lenovo Tiny... The prices are absurd in the EU: stuff that's 10 years old being sold for 150+ EUR
I'm buying Optiplex 7040s and its been a lot cheaper to buy the low RAM options with and then upgrade it to my chosen configuration (I have them all with identical spec). Been picking them up for around £65 and then paying £40 for 32GiB of RAM so it can definitely be cheap. Considering their power usage and how quiet they are they are pretty good for homelab use. L
I love thise mini desktops. I run 1 Hp Elitedesk mini and a Lenovo and that's it. Does everything I need in 2 devices.
How much is a kwh in your neck of the woods?
I’m not really sure but it’s pretty low
Is the tp link your router?
Looks nice and compact! I've been running a TS-451 for years and it's been really solid with no major hick ups or issues... quite pleased with it.
Very nice and clean setup. Looks great!