Home Lab Beginnings 

It was rather well equipped for a start of nearly 0 cost. 

• 5th gen i5, 16gb RAM, Boot SSD, 2tb HDD

• Windows 10 with Plex, Mullvad VPN, and Python

• Primarily used as a "Media" Server, I quote this as it was not the greatest... dot dot dot

• I ran a ton of scripts off this, specifically Python Webscrapes and automations that I was learning/testing out.

This PC Ultimately became my fathers garage PC where today he uses it to peruse craigslist while smoking Marlboro lights and looking up how-to guides on some random bespoke thing he found on the side of road.

Lessons learned here: As great as the cost to performance was, Windows 10 for a HomeLab is lacking in flexibility (which I learned in the second chapter of this adventure). Separately, the Small Form Factor is the bees knees if you want to limit your power consumption footprint. HOWEVER... keep in mind what Intel CPU/Generation you have, as the iGPU and Quicksync support is significantly impactful for any media server deployment you put into production.

Following the retirement of my old SFF PC to my fathers abode, I found myself content to just let things ride. But as with all wandering minds, I eventually began to revisit what my server was, how it could improve, and frankly got the itch to tinker. Fortunately thru gaming I had upgraded my primary PC (more on that later) and had a collection of unused parts sitting around.

• Retired ASRock B450MAC Cyberpower MB- Flashed to Official ASRock Bios

• Ryzen 2600, Hyper 212 Cooler, 16gb of DDR4 3200mhz Ram

• SSD & 2x Retired HP 4TB Enterprise drives in Raid 0

• Windows 10 Pro

This worked pretty well for a while. It was essentially a clone of the former SFF with more horsepower, storage, and flexibility. The issue was... it sat idle. A lot. It was also pigeonholed with Windows 10 as I had to constantly take the server up and down as I worked thru spontaneous and often inconvenient updates. This spells disaster for the wife approval factor so I felt rather uninspired. It worked.. but only so. From here I eventually shut it down for the last time.

Lessons learned here: Running a "server" with a software (windows) raid 0 configuration works. Now is it ideal? Absolutely not. Not in the slightest. Equally as unideal is the decision to run services on Windows. My primary PC is windows, which works great for gaming and general use. But you give up a ton of resources to run something that doesn't need GUI or the ability to play solitaire

Around the time I decommissioned the large server, I discovered the /r/homelab and /r/selfhosted subreddits which led me down a rabbit hole of possibilities. I fell in love with the small footprint Micro PCs which seemed to do far more than I considered possible.

This led me to adopt a wayward misfit Optiplex 3050 Micro that was in disrepair. After a few tasty beverages and some tinkering, I had it working again. I inevitably tried out a few Linux Distro's on it (Mint, Kali, the like) and ultimately found that while I still liked Linux, I needed something the afforded me more flexibility. This brought me to Proxmox VE.

If you're unfamiliar with Proxmox, it's a hypervisor. A digital nanny of sorts. It manages your resources and allows you to spin up LXC Environments for containers, or VM's for full fledged ISO's. It also can do ZFS Raids if you're into that sort of thing, and a ton of other things that I am less familiar. It's managed via a webGUI, which essentially means you type in an IP into your browser. 

The neat part about Proxmox is you can run your entire homelab in a cluster (different nodes married to each other). If you're unfamiliar with what a Node is, well... a Node is a PC. In the example above, you'll see "pve-demo1, 2, 3". These are all different machines, not just different environments. It provides a ton of flexibility that reduces your overall need to regear your homelab as you add machines or even decommission them.

How exciting, we are nearing the end of our journey, or are we? In all actuality I am in a good place with my HomeLab to this day from the work I put in in '22 

Following the discovery of Micro PC's, I indulged on that desire for a solid 6 months. The Micro Dell has been fleshed out with additional services, namely a remote desktop I use away from my home network, a DNS, Reverse proxy, multiple docker instances with different containers and applications sprinkled about. 

I understood at the end of the Micros development that I was handicapped by a need for localized (large) storage, and a server to inherit the load of Plex transcoding, security cameras, and more. So once more into the breach I dug through my pile of parts. After calling the Coast Guard, I came to the surface with a 10505 i5 CPU in hand, some recycled used MB, 4 4tb HP enterprise drives, a couple sticks of ram, a 1660Ti EVGA GPU, and various other accoutrement. I ran Proxmox VE as the main OS, with TrueNAS Scale as a VM with multiple linux servers running side by side. It was... overkill. 

What I ended up with was an absolute unit of a NAS that far and away exceeded what I needed it to do. I had overshot my shot, and well, my shot was shot. It lasted about a year before I found it just too excessive and decommissioned it for my current machine. 

Lessons learned here: My transcoding needs did not require a 220w GPU, much less an entire tower dedicated to running so many services. Thankfully the "energy crisis" of yesteryears had not happened, but I was becoming power conscious at this point. 

It pains me to review these projects, as I see the financial blackhole that I created for myself. I would take up golf instead but frankly I'd lose a small fortune in golf balls every weekend so I guess this is somehow better. 

Following the monstrosity of early 2023, I decided to build a dedicated NAS for the "last time". I ended up with a very well spec'd, power concious machine: 

• 8 Bay Audheis (Amazon) case

• 11700 i7 with UHD 750 iGPU

• Ebay recycled MB

• 32gb of Ram

• 10gb SFP+ single networking card

• A whole lot of drives

This machine runs TrueNAS Scale baremetal. It runs our Plex, Scrypted NVR for cameras, full -ARR stack, Notes app, Sync apps, and more. It's an absolute unit that does everything we need it too, in a small enough footprint while sipping a fraction of the power of the old tower. 

I paired this with a Mikrotik 24 port switch for the SFP+ abilities, in which I have the router aggregated in dual uplinks to the switch to increase bandwidth. Overall the setup has been great, and I have only considered jumping to a POE switch and a more capable (2.5gb) router since I do have a 2.5 port on my Modem. 

For now, the entire family is served content in and outside of the house. It stores all of our important documents, photos, random widgets and media. Not much more I could ask for here. 

Lessons learned here: I should have done this a long time ago