Share your HomeLabs
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Would be nice to share our homelabs, might interest new users:
I'll begin:
1 pool with 2x Protectli VP6670 (64GB and 96GB RAM) (2x 10G bonded for VM network, 1x 2,5G for management network).
Both with Internal 1TB SSD as local ext4 SR, 1TB nvme for OS and SR.
NFS-SR on QNAP TBS-h574TX (10G connection) and QNAP TVS-h1288X for backups (10G connection, NFS).2 switches:
Mikrotik CRS312-4C+8XG for 10G network
Mikrotik CRS328-24P-4S for 1G and POENetgate 8200 pfsense for firewall
ODROID-N2+ for HomeAssistant, Uptime Kuma moitoring
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Nice lab! Happy with the Protectli units?
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@olivierlambert The units are top notch!
I still have 1 FW6C 2 FW6E's (had them running proxmox before, xcp-ng after that but switched to the VP6670 because of 10G network).
NEVER ever had one single issue with them. Also bios updates are easy.
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Here is mine
HP DL360e Gen 8 for Truenas, 96GB of RAM, more processors than it needs, and 8x500 drives, NFS share for the VMs
3x HP DL360p gen 8 for XCP-NG with 128GB of RAM and 20c40t worth of processors.
10gbps networking to a Mikrotik switch, also an old Cisco 2960s for a second gigabit network (with POE+)
There is also a cheap GPS/GNSS NTP clock at the top of the rack, just too far to show these other items.
I like the spinning lights on the drives, just wish it was a little faster.
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@Greg_E said in Share your HomeLabs:
I like the spinning lights on the drives, just wish it was a little faster.
haha
Nice homelab! What about the noise level?
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@Greg_E Nice one, only issue energy costs??
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Noise for these is not too bad at normal lab use levels, but if a fan goes bad... You know it. They are a double stack fan and if even one in the stack says it is bad, all fans come up to full speed. Then it is really loud. During boot is the other loud spot, when the BMC goes through and checks everything.
The room where they are located also has the rest of my servers, the production Supermicro are at least 2 times louder, which is part of the problem with 1u servers.
All that said, I have never stressed this system enough to know when the fans kick up. I'm mostly working on Windows with active directory things and with my typical lab set up, I'm only ever hitting about 10% on each VM which is about 1-2% host.
I would guess that the gen 9 or gen 10 versions of these might be lower noise, unless you get the high TDP processors in there. All of the processors in mine are the L versions so lower TDP and clock rate.
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@Greg_E said in Share your HomeLabs:
There is also a cheap GPS/GNSS NTP clock at the top of the rack, just too far to show these other items.
What model and how do you have it set up? I've been tempted to add one to my setup but can't justify the cost.
Noise levels are the reason I've avoided rack mounted gear. Pizza boxes are just too loud.
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It is the TF-NTP-LITE with 10meter inside antenna, bought it from ebay. They also have a cheaper model without the LCD display and maybe only a single ethernet connection. So far, so good, replaced my older devices in my production system that were often causing connection errors. I think my older stuff was all NTP v1 and the servers were looking for something newer.
If I do it again, I'll probably look deeper into a PTP server running on a Pi5 since they added the PTP support into this model. Should be able to make a decent PTP server for around $200 USD (or less), I think Jeff Geerling is working on this right now to see how it compares to his Pi4 with a PTP card attached to the top of a CM4 (or something like that).
I should add, I checked through the iLO and each server is drawing 80-100 watts at effectively idle. The storage device was a solid 100 watts with the drives spinning and no VMs attached. That's a lot of power for just idle, I don't even want to look at my production servers, I'd bet an extra 50 watts each.
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@Greg_E Fans and hard drives eat up more power than most people expect.
