Built my first homelab.
Top to bottom:
- just a gigabit switch
- thinkcentre running immich and adguard
- hp elitedesk mini with a bunch of cable adapters to attach 6 hdds, the ssd and an nvme m.2 drive
- 2x 3 bay drive enclosures with a sfx power supply. The power supply is turned on by a modified add2psu to be able to trigger it with the sata port of the elitedesk.
The frame is built with some aluminium extrusions to make it more or less mini rack sized
Could use some cleanup. But thats just aesthetics.
ish? that looks quite complete, actually! and you sure can do quite a bunch with this thinkcentre, even if it’s not enterprise grade hardware.
@marximilian
Those wheels look heavier duty than the ones on my Compaq 24u rack, lol.Pretty awesome!
Building it on a cart seems like a great idea so you get access from all angles to build it out or and change things around.
Good access is something my servers really suffer from, so your setup looks like a dream to me!
Cute JetKVM too :)
I ordered some wheels with locks on them, but got the wrong ones delivered. Not sure how good it is for the drives if i drive it around.
The openess makes it nice to build in, but hard to.hide the mess
Sidepanels as per u/mirasu, but with magnets for easy access. Pretty sure those corner braces are zinc plated steel so it should be a breeze (especially if you use mesh). You could even cut it down shorter and put on a top (can always use linear joiners later if you need more in the future, love extrusion, bloody industrial meccano! ) and make it really slick.
That said, it’s great as is.
It only looks sloppy because there’s no method to the madness. You just need some lacing bars and it’ll look AWESOME! I used to build racks for work and cleanliness was my thing. Here’s how to properly use lacing bars:
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Put a lacing bar behind every piece of equipment. Wires should run straight back to it then run left or right, Velcro to the vertical bars, and onto the next lacing bar. The only “floating” wires should be from device to lacing bar, everything else is attached to something
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Pick which side is for power. Power wires are run on that side, everything else goes on the other
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VELCRO STRAPS instead of zip ties. The only acceptable place for zip ties is DC power cords…but do it right by the brick or device, never the middle
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With premade cables, slack can be hidden on the vertical rails. Never the lacing bar or in the air!
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Labels are really nice if you can swing it. I quit that job so I don’t have a label maker anymore
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Looks great!
Kind of amazing to be honest. What did all of that cost?
I wanted to do something similar, but wasn’t even sure where to get started since I haven’t really done any major home serving. Like, how does the rack integrate with everything else?
Hard to say, some stuff i already had, especially the drives i got over a longer period. But the rack itself was about 150 euros. I think some off the shelf racks would have been cheaper. But i also enjoy the building. And then the enclosures, power supply, elitedesk, etc another 200-300 euros.
The thinkcentre has a 1tb nvme ssd in it and runs immich and adguard and serves as a dhcp server.
The elitedesk is running truenas with jellyfin for now. Has a 120gb boot ssd, a 1tb nvme ssd, 4x 4tb drives (with an additional hot spare) for storage and a 12tb drive as a backup.
