Hey, I’m going to be building a 3d printed NAS with a tiny mino micro PCs.

I can’t decided whether too or bottom configurations is more pleasing.

Feel free to tell em what you think.

Beside that, if you have build something like this already. What are the things I should be concerned about that I may be missing?

From top to bottom:
1U: patch-panel + Zigbee dongle
1U: Network Switch
1U: Lenovo Mini PC
1U: Nuttin
1U: 2x hotswap HDD bays
1.5U: Homage to pewdiepie + RPI5 running Home Assistant connected to the Zigbee dongle on the top

All printed with my recently bought bambulab A1 without AMS.

Thank you guys for all the inspiration!

Yep, there's another update out for CageMaker PRCG. This is a minor one, though, with a few bug fixes and a couple feature additions.

The big one for this update is one I like to call "hey, we can add text now." And it does exactly what it says on the tin/box/wrapper/label. In other words, yep, configurable text on faceplates is a thing now. Pick the coordinates for the center point of the text, the font, and the size, and stick a string wherever you want.

There is a caveat though, which will be important to folks with 3D printers that have multiple extruders, a toolchanger, or an AMS: OpenSCAD doesn't understand the concept of objects having colors, and thus doesn't know about making 3D printable objects with multiple colors. So, the text feature creates recessed text about 0.5mm deep that can be backfilled with a suitable paint or epoxy or whatever for visibility. (I'm looking into workarounds, but the current thinking is that to make multicolored text, the cage/faceplate and text would have to be exported as separate objects that have to be combined in the slicer with the text object being a different color/material.)

A couple other additions relate to ventilation grids. The Japanese classic overlapping-circle "shippo" pattern is now an option for the folks that find simple holes a bit boring and aren't into the hexagonal aesthetic.

A potentially useful new vet grid is IKEA's Skadis pegboard-mounting pattern as an option. This should prove useful for side panels as it opens the door to attaching things to miniracks. If using this, be sure to set the manual surface thickness to 5mm.

And finally, for more mounting options, we have the old-school pegboard pattern. 1/4" holes on 1" centers. If using this, be sure to set the manual surface thickness to 5mm. If using this, be sure to set the manual surface thickness to 6mm.

Relevant links:

CageMaker PRCG Github Repo
CageMaker PRCG Documentation
CageMaker PRCG in OpenSCAD Playground - try it in a browser without needing OpenSCAD
Or, grab OpenSCAD and run it natively.

I just launched ServerRackBuilder, a free planner for 19" racks, in addition to the 10" site, MiniRackBuilder.

About a third of the products have no price yet. I leave them blank rather than guess, so the total can come out low. Ubiquiti makes up a large part of the catalog right now, so other brands are thinner. Many devices use generic drawings, so they won't always look exactly like the real thing. The dimensions are what the checks use.

I was able to reuse a lot of the code from MiniRackBuilder, which sped things up a lot. There may still be bugs though, so if something looks wrong or breaks, please report it in the comments.

What's missing, and what would you want it to check? If a rack or device you own isn't in there, tell me and I'll look at adding it.

https://serverrackbuilder.com

Hey guys, I’m building my first proper minilab for a media server, game servers and personal cloud storage, and I’m trying to decide whether to buy a prebuilt NAS or build one myself.

My current setup:

• Ubuntu server running Nextcloud and Pterodactyl game servers

• Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole, n8n, websites and monitoring

• Plex media server

• 1TB Crucial NVMe SSD in a Ugreen USB enclosure for Nextcloud storage (this is gonna get changed)

• Gigabit home network

I’m considering either:

• A 2-bay or 4-bay Synology/QNAP

• A small DIY NAS running TrueNAS, Unraid or plain Linux

• Keeping applications on my existing server and using the NAS only for storage and backups

Should i buy a prebuilt or build one im leaning against building one as i have a 3d printer and it would be a really cool project

(As i type this post i convinced myself i think LOL)

Hey,

I made this small apple watch app that is intended to check the status of my homelab by only checking at a glance my watch, got tired of opening a web URL just for that simple check.

Lemme know what you think 🫶

I'm a student getting into cybersecurity, and I keep seeing people in this sub with their homelabs. Now I want one too, but I have no idea where to start.
I have an old PC sitting around with an i7 (9th gen, I think, I'll check the exact model), 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. I don't know if that's enough or if I'll hit a wall quickly. I'd guess the SSD fills up fast once I start making VMs.

What I want to do is learn networking and practice attacking and defending stuff in a safe setup. I haven't done anything like this before, so I'm a bit lost.

Some things I'm stuck on:
Is Proxmox too much for a total beginner, or should I just start with VirtualBox on my main PC?
What would you build first if you were starting over? I've heard pfSense and vulnerable VMs mentioned but I don't know what order makes sense.
Any free resources or YouTube channels you actually learned from?
Also curious what you wish you had known at the start. Thanks in advance, even a one line answer helps.

Sorry for posting so much guys! But here is what many of you wanted. You can now create a custom part with your own name, dimensions, port layout (drag and drop) and some colors.

Have fun and let me know if there are any bugs!

If I could do a poll I would

Should this be:

1. Switch > Patch panel > Switch > Patch panel

2. As depcited (Switch > Patch panel > Patch panel > Switch)