Home Lab

I've recently acquired a DS2246 and an EMC KTN-STL3. I have cabled them up and have begun migrating drives from the old ceph cluster to the new shelves.

Should make for a significant reduction in both heat and noise.

Fun times.

This is a video I threw together some years back covering one of my racks. I have since retired the HP units and replaced them with Dell 630s.

I have another smaller, quieter rack in my studio (14u), and also one in my bedroom closet (14u).

All the main data connections are fiber. Storage servers have 4 10GbE bonded NICs, compute servers have 2.

Plans for the future include upgrading the storage array to Dell 730s with external HBAs and disk shelves, adding AI accelerator cards to the compute nodes, and eventually upgrading to SPF28 (once the cost of switching becomes reasonable.)

Just kidding, my apartment is much too small for a proper homelab... maybe someday...

In the meantime, please show off what you're working with!

I've been working on my home lab for quite a few years, and I've reached a size where I am starting to have some issues I never really considered before. Note: I'm in North America.

1. Power - I have a 20A dedicated circuit for my servers, and I'm reaching the limits of that circuit.

2. Heat - Average power use on my server power circuit is about 14A. That's a lot of heat, especially under load.

3. Noise - There is a constant hum of servers everywhere in my home. Even on a different floor on the far side of the house, you can hear the servers doing their thing.

I need more upgrades, but feel I can't due to the items above.

How did you solve your heat/power/noise issues?

I'm considering adding a mini-split AC and a sub-panel, but those things might be overkill for my closet.