For the last few years (I don’t remember exactly, it was around the COVID19 pandemic era), I’ve been getting into homelabbing. I bought my first switch, turned my old laptop into a router, and got a Raspberry Pi 3B+. It’s grown into an addictive hobby.

my homelab has evolved a lot since then, as the addiction kept growing. it is hard to resist adding more and more gear filling every single empty spot in the rack.

my current homelab
my current homelab

My very first lab

so like i mentioned, before it all started arround 2020, i go through facebook marketplace lookig for a switch, and i found a cheap one, a dumb gigabit switch. i bought it, and that’s where it all began. Why do I need a switch? I don’t exactly remember, but I think it was because I wanted to connect a few of my devices together. Also, the Wi-Fi router from my ISP was pretty bad, so I wanted better throughput. I also transfer files between my devices a lot, so I was looking for a solution for that, since using an external hard drive is pretty inconvenient.

So yeah, I think I can conclude that my very first homelab was just a few devices connected to that switch. It was simple, just a mini PC, an unmanaged switch, and a MikroTik router (RB750Gr3, to be exact). That’s where it all began.

my current homelab
my first homelab

My first rack

As more gear came in, things started to get messy and disorganized real quick.
So I decided to buy my first rack. Technically, it’s an audio rack, not a real server rack, but I wanted to keep it small and simple since my room didn’t have much space left.

my current homelab
my first rack

My first “real” server hardware

After getting that rack, I saw the empty spot inside it… and yeah, my impulsive thought just popped out, “Why not fill it with a real server?”

So I bought my first real server hardware: a Dell PowerEdge R210 II.
I was so happy when it arrived. The seller was even kind enough to include a VGA cable (since I didn’t have one).
You know how rare VGA cables are these days everything’s HDMI now.

my current homelab
dell r210 II

Disappointment

Then came the disappointment.
Before buying the R210 II, I did a bunch of research, watched videos, read forums, even asked around about how loud a 1U server really is. Everyone said this model was “pretty quiet for a 1U.”. But man, when I powered it on for the first time… it screamed.. though After the BIOS screen, the fan did settle down, but it was still nowhere near “quiet.”

Back then, I was living in a tiny 4x4 rent room. My rack was right behind my desk, also right next to where I slept.
So yeah, that server ended up being unused for almost a year. I only powered it on when needed, using WoL (Wake on LAN) for testing.

Guess that was my first lesson: 1U servers are almost always loud.

My first micro PC

After learning my lesson, I started looking for something small, quiet, and power efficient, something that could serve as my remote workspace.
So I bought a Dell OptiPlex 7040 Micro, specs: Intel i7-6700, 32GB RAM, and 250GB SSD.

At first, it had this weird issue, it would randomly go blank, still hot, NIC LED still on, but not actually powered off.
I had to unplug it every time to reset it. Turns out, it was just a BIOS issue. Once I updated the BIOS (yeah, had to use Windows for that part), everything worked fine ever since.

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I bought a 20U rack

A couple months after I moved to a new place, a bigger one, I was just scrolling through Facebook Marketplace (as usual) and saw a few 1U servers sitting there for months. Nobody even bothered to look at them.

And then that wild thought popped into my head again, “I think I need a bigger rack.”

So yeah, I pulled the trigger and bought a 20U open rack. And that’s how it became my current lab ever since.

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List of hardware from top to bottom:

  • TP-Link T1600G-52TS : my core switch
  • MikroTik RB450Gx4 : my main router
  • Dell OptiPlex 7010 USFF : i5-3570, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD
  • Dell OptiPlex 7040 Micro : Intel i7-6700, 32GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD
  • Lenovo ThinkCentre M720Q : i7-8700T, 32GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD
  • 2× Gigabyte : Intel E-2234 / 64GB / SSD 256GB / HDD 4×4TB : my twin server scream machine
  • 2× Dell R210 II : E3-1240 v2 / 32GB / SSD 240GB / HDD 500GB
  • Dell OptiPlex 7010 : i7-3770 / 32GB / 6TB HDD, 4×2TB, 256GB SSD : I recased it into a rackmount case
  • 2U DIY server : E3-1231 v3 / 32GB / 256GB SSD

Other hardware I considered is IoT.

  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 / BCM2835 4x 1.200GHz / 1 GB / 32 GB mmc
  • Orange Pi 3 LTS / 1.800GHz / 2 GB / 32 GB mmc, 8 GB mmc

Moving to new place!!

so a year and half later, I moved to a new place, but unfortunately, the new place didn’t have much space for my lab. so i had to downsize it, turring off few of my machines, only turning on the ones i really need, and the rest of them only turned on when i need them. thank to WoL,

for now my rack live next to my main desk,

my current homelab
My current homelab is still messy, I just needed it to be up and running really quickly.

i will update this post later with more details about my current setup, and maybe some of the projects i’m working on. Thanks for reading!