Personally will be trying to transform my server which is currently in a fractal R5 case, into a small-ish Homelab rack, combined with all my network equipment. Will require complete relocation of all network equipment in the house as well as cables so it will be a bit of a project. Also on the lookout for a good quality rack so let me know if you have any recs. Still unsure if u want to do full width rack or mini. Part of me really want the UDM Pro from Unifi…
What are your goals and thing you want to accomplish during 2025?
docker-ify everything, my nginx, nextcloud, pihole, jellyfin, and basically everything else is a nightmare and I can’t even begin to understand how to modify the shit that
2023 me did2023 chatgpt spat out, so having everything in some neat docker composes is gonna help immenslyalso making the Pi that everything’s hosted on boot of an SSD instead of a cheap chinese SD card, but that requires money and I’m all out
I docker’d all of my systems a few years ago, and I’m so glad I did. So much easier to manage, and when I lost a system I was able to get most of my services back up and running with minimal configuration on a VM same day.
As for hardware, you might check and see if you’ve got a local reseller of retired business equipment. Before I moved, I had a place I went to from my work that accepted shit we were getting rid of that disposed of stuff and resold at a bargain the stuff that was still good. I got more than one hp tower from a few years previous that ran (and still runs) like a champ. Felt like night and day when I upgraded to that from my Pi setup, and they were only like $35 each.
the pi’s serving me very well for now, load average at idle 0.01 and when doing stuff it hovers at around 50, temps under 40°C even under load and an extremely low noise level (not to mention the almost non-existent power draw)
if one day I decide to go full homelab with proxmox and stuff i might buy a dedicated tower but I don’t see the appeal atm