# What's in my Homelab Rack? ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Wolfgang's Channel - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfUGKnIp-Q ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfUGKnIp-Q) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) So it’s been a few years since I first showed you guys my homelab rack, and there’s been a few changes since then. So in today’s video, I want to show you guys what I’m running in my homelab We’ll go over my networking setup, my router, my media server, the power consumption, and everything in between. so let’s jump right into it, right after a word from today’s sponsor, Monday. com If you’re currently juggling multiple tools for things like project management, knowledge bases, ticketing and so on All of which have their own workflows and quirks — Monday. com has got your covered It‘s an all in one solution for managing and organizing your business That includes a sleek and polished set of tools which make work easier and more fun every step of the way. their tools are easy to learn, adopt and use, no matter if you run small startup or a huge business. 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First off, how is it that I’m running a rackmount setup, if in the two of my previous “perfect home server” videos, I featured servers that are not rack mounted? Well, that’s because a perfect home server for the majority of people and the perfect home server for me are often two very different things and the home server setup that I built for myself is one that I would personally never recommend to anyone else. I’ll get more into why later on in the video. So the rack itself is the same StarTech 12 unit rack that I featured in my last rack video. It’s a pretty robust open rack with adjustable depth, And it’s okay? I mean, it’s a rack, and it hasn’t fallen apart yet, so i guess it’s good. I’ve put a wooden tabletop on top of it, in order to make it a little bit prettier and more functional I guess since now i can actually use it as a shelf, but i still need to cut it to size. Initially, I sized it for when the rack was deeper, since I had my home server housed in a standard length 3U server from Supermicro, but now I actually have it on the smallest setting, and the table top does look a bit stupid. You’ll also see that the rack is kind of just standing in the middle of the room, and that’s not it’s usual place. Normally, i keep it here, but as you can see it’s a bit of a tight space which is hard to film in, since this space also doubles as my pain cave. And no, the pain cave has nothing to do with BDSM, it’s a lot more boring than that. Like, a lot more boring. But let’s actually start going over what’s installed in this rack. Starting off we have the power strip. It’s an 8-outlet model from Infinitronic, and just like the rack itself – it’s been working just fine nothing to write home about. I’ve mounted a blank plate above the strip, so that I have a bit more space for beefy power bricks, and they don’t get squished by the table top. Just like with the last video though, I am pretty frustrated that some bricks block the adjacent sockets, but not frustrated enough to do something about it. Next, we have my cable modem, FritzBox 6690 Cable. it’s mounted using a rackmount kit from Rackmount. IT, and honestly, it looks pretty cool. It comes with keystones for all the ports that the Fritzbox has, including the Coax port and even the USB port. However, because of its price, I definitely can’t recommend it. The rackmount kit alone costs about as much as the Fritzbox itself, and the only way I could justify it is… well I couldn’t actually, I just bought it because I’m vapid and I like it when things look good in a rack. Now you might be asking, why are you still running the ISP router? Didn’t you mention that you’re running NixOS on your custom router in your last video? Well, since I have a cable Internet, I can’t just connect a cable from the well into my custom router and call it a day. So I run the FritzBox purely as a modem – it’s got port 3 configured in “Bridge” mode, which means that no routing is done on that port, and whatever you connect to it basically just gets the WAN IP assigned to it, with no DHCP, DNS, firewalling, or whatever in between. Now a lot of cable routers here in Germany actually let you configure them in the bridge mode, but Fritzbox also let you only do that for individual ports. This means that if something goes wrong with my DIY router setup, or if I need to do some hardware maintenance. or like now, when I have to take things out to film them, I can temporarily switch to using the Fritzbox itself as a router ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfUGKnIp-Q&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) with no need to log in to the WebUI and change the settings. Just press on this button, which activates the WiFi access point, and that’s it. Apart from the fritzbox itself, I also have this MoCa adapter, which connects to a TP-Link access point downstairs. this is connected to my actual DIY router, and that’s what I normally use for WiFi connectivity. MoCa basically lets you use the coax cabling in your walls to transmit Ethernet signal. I live in a rental, so drilling the walls to run Ethernet between the floors is out of the question. MoCa has been working pretty reliably though, and I’m very happy with it so far. Next we have a 24-port keystone patch panel. I wasn’t really satisfied with the patch panel that I featured in my initial rack setup, because I actually had to patch it myself. Since I’m lazy, I got myself a keystone patch panel, which just has an Ethernet keystone for every port. Now obviously, I don’t need 24 ports, and as you can see, I currently only have like 3 ports occupied. But at the same time, the 12 and 16 port versions weren’t all that much cheaper, so I got this one and it works. Next up i have a cable management thingy, it manages cables. Not much to say here. Next, i have a 1U shelf for miscellaneous small devices that aren’t rackmountable. Here I have a 5-port PoE switch from TP-Link, as well as a 4-port 10 Gigabit SFP+ switch from Mikrotik. There are probably actual rackmountable switches out there that feature both PoE and SFP+ ports, but I’ve had these ones since forever, and honestly, I see no real reason to upgrade to a single switch apart from like, rackmountability and a cleaner setup. "I just bought it because I'm vapid and I like when things look good in a rack" the PoE switch is connected to a PiKVM unit that’s inside my media server, the MoCa adapter, the 10 gig switch and the Latte Panda Sigma. now I’ve already made a video about Latte Panda Sigma, and if you actually need a small miniPC for your homelab, there are definitely options out there that are better value. But, I got this one for free from LattePanda, so I can’t complain. I use this miniPC as a playground for experiments and like, actual “homelabbing”. For example now, it’s running Proxmox and two OPNSense instances, which I’m using to learn about high availability and automation in OPNSense. The PC itself is pretty small, sips power, and has two 2. 5 Gig ethernet ports, which makes it perfect for these kinds of experiments. Next up, we have our custom router. It’s housed in a cheap 1U enclosure from Inter-Tech, which I got used for 50 bucks off of eBay. Inside, we’ve got the miniITX NAS board from AliExpress, which was featured in my “Perfect Home Server 2023” video. it’s based on a Pentium N6005, and has four 2. 5 Gbit ethernet ports, which makes it perfect to use as a router. What doesn’t make it perfect is the JMicron JMB585 SATA controller, which is used to manage 5 of the 6 SATA ports on this motherboard. This SATA chip is very power hungry, and doesn’t support PCIe power management. and since I don’t need the 5 SATA ports for router use, I’ve simply disabled the JMB585 in the BIOS, and now this little machine consumes 10 to 11W on average. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this exact motherboard for router use, and I’m only using it because that’s what I had lying around. As for other specs, I’ve installed 32 gigs of RAM in this thing, as well as two 250 gig SSDs which are setup as a ZFS mirror. Cooling wise, we’ve got a couple of 40mm Noctua fans, which are setup at a fairly low RPM. They’re pretty quiet for their size, but definitely not as quiet as some bigger fans. The whole thing is powered with a PicoPSU which is connected to a random laptop power brick that I had lying around. and in the spirit of jank, the power brick is mounted using double sided tape. As for the software part, it’s running NixOS as the operating system, and yes, I do know that it’s a pretty unorthodox setup, compared to something like OPNSense, VyOS or OpenWRT. It’s also not something I would recommend to anyone else, unless you like tinkering with stuff and want to learn more about NixOS. Every aspect of your router, so stuff like firewall, NAT, port forwarding, DNS and DHCP, has to be configured using the Nix programming language, which is definitely nearing on masochism. which seems to be a common topic for this video. Still, this setup lets me define my networks as a part of my infrastructure as code, and use things like subnets and mac addresses as variables in other places in my code, things like reverse proxy configurations, whitelists, and so on. If you want to know more about how it’s all setup, I’m gonna have a link to a Github repository with all of my infrastructure as code down in the video description Last but not leaast, we’ve got our main home server slash NAS slash media server slash whatever. and as you can see, It’s actually installed on real big boy rack rails, which makes taking it out of the rack and doing hardware maintenance a lot easier. ### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfUGKnIp-Q&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) and now that it’s out of the rack, let’s dive into the hardware. as you can see, there’s a lot to unpack here. but let’s start with the enclosure itself. It’s a short depth 2U rackmount case from Inter-Tech, which features four hot swap 3. 5 inch hard drive cages, suports microATX motherboards, and can fit a full-size ATX power supply. I got it for 145 euros new, and for that price, I only have one complaint – cooling. out of the box, this case only has three mounts for 40mm fans up here. there are no fan mounts near drive cages, which is… really unfortunate. now, while unboxing the case, I noticed that the front grill actually has holes to mount… 50mm-ish fans. So I 3d-printed some 50mm to 40mm adapters, and mounted three 40mm noctua fans to cool my drive. The drives I’m using don’t get that hot to begin with, so this setup has been working pretty great so far, even in summer. But your mileage may vary. Now let’s move on to the hardware itself. at the heart of this server is the MiniITX Intel board from Asrock Industrial, the IMB-X1231. It’s based on the Intel 13th gen Raptor Lake architecture, has 8 SATA ports in its current configuration, supports unregistered ECC memory, yes, even for non Xeon CPUs, and has 3 M. 2 slots. I’ve already made a video about it and there are a few reasons why I’m using this board instead of, for example, the AMD-based Gigabyte board that I featured in my last “Perfect home server video”. First and foremost, this board has the trifecta of features which makes it perfect for a storage slash media server: support for ECC memory low power consumption and a pretty beefy iGPU for hardware video transcoding and also, I got this board for free from Asrock Industrial for a video. It’s not sold to individual customers, and you can only buy it through B2B channels. there are some resellers on Aliexpress, which have the motherboard listed for anywhere between 570 and 840 euros, but for that price, there are a lot better and less janky options. Why is it janky, you might ask? Well, in order to get PCIe power management working properly on this motherboard, I had to contact Asrock Industrial and have them send me a few special BIOSes. Now obviously, huge props to the team working on this, and investing time into modifying the firmware for customers, but unfortunately, even after all the custom BIOSes, if I plug anything into the PCIe port, the motherboard does not go into lower C-States. I’ve seen this behavior on some other 13th gen boards, where ASPM only works on PCIe ports that are connected to the CPU through the chipset, and not directly. And since this motherboard only has one PCIe port, it’s obviously connected directly. So the way I solved it was by using this M. 2 to PCIe adapter. Because somehow, the PCIe power management works just fine on M. 2 ports. But the jank doesn’t end here. Let’s talk about… whatever this is. see, this rack case actually fits a full-size ATX power supply, which is nice, but it doesn’t have any way to mount four 2. 5” SSDs, which is not nice. So I designed a custom 3D-printed monstrosity which houses a laptop power brick, five SSDs, and an 80mm Noctua fan. And all of this, at the same footprint, and with the same mounting holes, as a standard ATX power supply. This actually worked out surprisingly well, and looks pretty clean once installed into the case. as for powering the server, I’m using a 156W power supply from Leicke, as well as a 160W PicoPSU. and 156W is well in spec for this hardware. Most of the time, this machine draws around 22W, and when powering on, it peaks at around 90W. Coming back to the motherboard – the CPU i’ve got installed in here is Intel i5-13500. It’s the cheapest CPU in Intel’s 13th gen lineup that actually supports ECC, so that’s why I went with it. For the RAM, I’ve got 64 gigs of Kingston’s ECC DDR4 laptop RAM. Yes, for some reason, there is SODIMM memory that supports ECC, and yes, 64 gigs is completely overkill for what I’m running on this machine. which, if you’re curious about the software part of this setup, check out this video. For the storage, we’ve got four 2TB WD Red SSDs for “fast” storage, and three 16TB Seagate Exos X18 drives for “slow” storage. Having a relatively fast array of SSDs lets me set up my storage so that most of the files get written to the SSD storage first, and then get transferred to the hard drive array once a week. This way, I can spin down my drives and keep them spun down most of the time, unless I access some files on them while, for instance, watching a movie or a series ### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRfUGKnIp-Q&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 18:00) or copying over some older footage from my YouTube videos. Networking-wise, I have a 10 gig Intel X710 NIC installed in here, and as I mentioned before, this one is connected via an M. 2 to PCIe adapter because of the ASPM shenanigans. The reason I need 10 gig networking is because I often use the SSD storage on this server for video editing. Yes, 10 gigabit, or 1. 25 gigabyte per second, is way overkill for SATA SSDs, but 2. 5 gig would be too slow, and back when I built my 10 gigabit network, 5 Gbit gear wasn’t really a thing. Finally, in order to be able to access this machine remotely, as well as do things like press the power button or restart when I’m not at home, I’ve got this BliKVM PCIe card installed in here. I’ve already made a video about this card, and it’s basically a PiKVM that can be mounted directly into your machine using a PCIe slot. Now the PCIe slot itself is actually purely decorative, it’s not used for data transfer, so technically, you can mount it into any empty PCIe slot in your case. which is what i did. So yeah, as you can see, it’s a very janky setup, that is also full of parts that I got for free because of my status as an elite tech influencer slash beauty blogger. It works for me, but as you can imagine, there’s no way I would recommend it as “the perfect setup” for anyone else. So hopefully that answers the questions like “what happened with the perfect home server”. or “why aren’t you running this server anymore” As a sidenote, I have one more networking device that’s not in the rack, and that is this 24-port switch from Mikrotik. it’s connected to the rack via this very long fiber optic SFP+ cable, and I basically use it whenever I need LAN access for my hardware experiments, be that home server builds, OS reinstalls, and so on. As I already mentioned, my rack is usually placed all the way there, so being able to plug devices into my network right at my work table, without having to temporarily run an extra long LAN cable across the whole room is honestly pretty great. Now once again, I don’t actually need 24 ports here at my desk, and if you’re looking for a switch that fulfils the same purpose for you, there are probably cheaper and better value options out there. But, this is what I had on hand, so that’s what I used. So now that we’ve covered everything that I have installed in this rack, how much power does this whole setup consume? Well, I’ve plugged this whole rack into a smart power plug, which will show us the power consumption at the wall for all the hardware that’s installed in it. And the total power draw is …. 74W. now considering that this includes things that you would need to run regardless of whether you even do homelabbing, such as the ISP router, i think 64W is pretty good. Now granted, my networking setup is very modest. I don’t have a ton of Unifi switches, WiFi access points and whatnot, but I also don’t need any of that, because I live in a relatively small two floor rental apartment, and my whole home network has like 20 devices, that’s if we include the quote on quote smart home stuff. Now, as for potential improvements to this setup, there are obviously a ton. I guess if you live in a place with frequent brownouts or unstable electricity in general, I would definitely invest into a UPS. Personally, after 10 years of living in Germany, I haven’t witnessed a single blackout, brownout or like a voltage spike. And I also don’t run any full on production ready services in my homelab, that other people outside of my house depend on. So if my servers go down for a second, it’s not a big deal. One day, I will also design a 3D-printed mount for my 1U shelf, the one with the switches and the latte Panda Sigma, but definitely not today. So yeah, there you have it guys. I hope you enjoyed this video, and as usual, I would like to thank my Patrons --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/23212*