A lot has changed in my Homelab, like a lot….
The end of 2025 i decided to treat myself to some items on my wishlist. So around Black Friday i ordered some new hardware.
In my “shopping spree” i finally ordered myself a new PC, NAS, Network Switch, and some components i needed.
And a week or so later the new items started to trickle in, as they got delivered, part by part. Makes me wonder if the delivery guys started hating me a little, but anyways….
When everything had finally arrived if the following weeks, i had inadvertently robed myself of a lot of free time:
- Building the new PC and moving things over.
- Installing my new 10Gbe capable “Core” switch.
- Full Network overhaul (VLAN’s, SSID’s, Rules, Forwardings, etc.)
- Installing the new NAS, and transfering data.
- Re-using the old PC as my new server.
- Making sloppy mistakes, waisting a lot of time.
- And more, plenty more things to do …
Hardware
Right now my Homelab is housed in a 15U open rack, placed strategically next to my desk in my home office.
This rack consists of the following items:
- Primary host – i9-9900KF, 32GB, Arc A380, 10Gbe
- Secondary host – i7-8700, 16GB, 2,5Gbe
- Primary NAS – 6x 22TB, RAID 6, 10Gbe
- Network stack – 10Gbe capable
- UPS – 1.5kVa
And for my Off-Site backups i use my old NAS with 8TB usable in a RAID 1 configuration
Virtualisation
Both Hosts are running Proxmox VE.
The primary is using 2 SSD’s (512GB) in a ZFS mirror for PVE and templates. And 2 NVMe SSD’s (2TB) in a ZFS mirror for the VM’s and containers.
Th applications are hosted within multiple VLAN’s, some available to the internet, and others that aren’t.
Most applications i host run in Debian LXC Containers instead of Docker or Kubernetes.
These applications consist of:
- Redundant DNS servers
- Multiple Reverse Proxies
- Home Automation
- OAuth Providers
- Documentation apps
- Private Cloud Solutions
- Backup services
- And more…
All the working data is stored on the NAS, just the bare minimum that is needed for the applications is hosted on the Proxmox instances.
Compromises and Future ideas
Since i moved from the HP Z840 to the “new” primary server, i had to make a compromise. The Z840 has 4x16GB and my old PC had 4x8GB, making me half the memory in my primary host.
You might think, why didn’t i move over the 4x16GB sticks to the “new” server. Well i tried, hoping that the system could use the ECC memory, but without ECC functionality (Since the i9 doesn’t support ECC).
And as should have known that this wasn’t possible, but i found out the hard way, so back to 32GB is was.
So when i found out, i could have bought new memory.
But the whole AI craze at the end of 2025, the one that started the memory shortage, made it a financially unwise decision to buy more.
At time of writing, i keep out the hope for the prices to drop back to where they were before the whole inflation.
But I’ve been hoping for a few months now, and it seems there is no improvement in sight.