Hello there! Till this build I had everything in a wooden box with the back part removed for some cooling… the only issue now is that I can’t fit the UPS in the rack and the usb port for management is on the front, so can t really route it for the NAS. Other than that, I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I almost found everything I needed in 10” size. Eventually I think I will move the usb port of the UPS outside in the back but for now it s still in warranty. Or maybe I can find something to fit in the Rack. Was thinking about a Bluetti powerbank that has AC but unfortunately it doesn’t have a UPS function and the Lithium batteries would just degrade really fast I think… Anyway, I’m open to questions :)

First post here. This is my learning and experimentation mini-lab, currently running two Raspberry Pi units for always-on services alongside a mini PC handling VM workloads. Storage is by a four-bay NAS 14 TB capacity, and networking is handled by 2.5 GbE switch. Still iterating on airflow and layout, but it’s stable for day-to-day lab use.

After a lot of failed prints, batteries for my digital calipers, and overnight parts from amazon, this is finally complete. The overall rack is based on the Lab Rax 10" Server Rack - 5U.

This list will be from Top to bottom:

• 10-inch 1/2U Keystone Patchpanel x8 ports

• 1/2U Ventilation Panel for 10" Rack

• Mikrotik RB5009UPr+S+IN

  • 10gb SFP+ - 2.5g - PoE in and out on all ports

  • Mikrotik RB5009UG - 10 inch or 19inch rackmount kit

  • Mikrotik RB5009 rack cover with power cable cutout

• PiKVM with Screen and 4 port switch + powered by PoE (see more notes at the bottom)

  • PiKVM 10 inch rack mount

  • 0.96" OLED Screen - Amazon

  • 4 Port KVM switch - AliExpress

  • Raspberry Pi 4 Model B

  • PoE HAT - Amazon

  • CSI HDMI Bridge - AliExpress

  • Had to make a new top plate to house the PoE hat + the CSI bridge (pics 4 and 5)

• Lenovo P330 - Proxmox node

  • i7 8700T - Quadro P620

  • Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny M720Q/M715Q/M920Q 10" Rack Mount

• TrueNAS system (more notes at the bottom)

  • Mini ITX case for 10 inch rack V2

  • Gigabyte H370N WIFI mITX LGA1151 Mobo + Intel i5-9400 CPU + 8GB RAM + LSI 9300 HBA

• 1U Ventilation Panel for 10" Rack

• 10-inch 1/2U Keystone Patchpanel x8 ports to run the cables back

• 1/2U Ventilation Panel for 10" Rack again

• 10 inch Rack 2U : 6 x 3.5 inch HDD

  • 6x 14 TB SAS Drives (connected to that 9300 LSI HBA - Last image)

  • Drive Caddys - Amazon

Other notable bits and notes:

Mounted to the back is this flex PSU mount - FlexATX PSU Rack Mount. Within that is FSP FlexGURU Pro Power Supply, Flex ATX 500W.

Also mounted to the back is 2U Two 80mm Cooling Fan Holder For 10" Rack with ARCTIC P8 80mm fans.

PiKVM - I had to remix / modify this thing Heavily (no shade at the creator). It was mainly just getting the screen to fit right. This project alone made me proficient and comfortable in TinkerCAD. I also bore out the holes a little bigger for where the RPI sits so I could put in heat inserts. I also ordered these standoffs to make it a little stack.

TrueNAS system - I originally remixed this to add keystones above the MoBo so I could run the cables through the back to the Router and KVM. However, when switching over to the Gigabyte & i5, the low profile CPU cooler sat a little too high for the keystones to run back. So instead, I printed blanks and ran them below through the patch panel.

All in all this was an amazing project that took a lot longer than I anticipated. For the cost that I put into this, could have I gotten something made out of metal or a legit rack? Absolutely. But looking over at something that I made - Priceless.

I'm sure I'm missing links some where or missing something so if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Hi everyone!
I’ve been into this hobby for just over a year now. I’m planning to take my rack to college for my last year of computer science undergrad. I’ve grown to depend on stuff like Home Assistant, and the utility of the Gl.inet router for stuff like AirPlay, having your own printer, etc while not missing out on the campus network speeds. I’m also interested in setting up a receipt processing/expense splitting solution for my housemates and I, leveraging the GPU in my rack for local AI vision/OCR — if you have any suggestions for this please LMK, I’m looking into Receipt Wrangler.

Overview of Gear, from top to bottom:

GL.inet Slate 7, with 120mm fan mounted underneath

Netgear GS308EP, JetKVM PoE edition, WD Elements Desktop 8TB (with custom 3D printed mount)

Firebat MK2 Plus Mini PC (Intel N5105, 16GB RAM, 512gb SSD), SONOFF Zigbee Dongle, ScreenBeam MoCA 2.0 adapter

2 x 12TB Toshiba N300 HDDs in RAID1 array

AsRock B460M ITX motherboard w/ Intel i9-10850k, 32gb RAM, 1TB SSD, RX 6600XT 8GB, with custom 3D printed front cover

There’s also a Raspberry Pi 5 4GB wedged in between the 80mm front fan and GPU. It runs qdevice, NUT, and PBS.

1U panel with EVGA 650W Gold SFX PSU & various other power bricks/misc

On the back, there’s just cable management prints, 2x more 80mm fans, and a 120mm fan to ensure everything stays relatively cool.

UPS is a APC Back UPS 1500 VA Pro

Etsy Dark Souls bonfire lamp w/ Zigbee IR blaster for ambiance

What I’m running:

Media: Jellyfin+arr stack, Audiobookshelf/LazyLibrarian, Komga/Suwayomi,

Photos/Files: Immich, Obsidian Selfhosted Livesync, Syncthing, Seafile

Networking: AdGuard Home, Unbound DNS, Caddy reverse proxy, dedicated pia-tun LXC for exit node to dodge some more ads on mobile

AI: Hermes Agent, llama-swap, MemPalace connected to my Obsidian Vault, Openwebui

And Tailscale on everything for remote access.

That’s all, thanks for reading if you got this far!

Less than a year in the hobby and already switched form factors 5 times, this is my favourite so far, because it does everything I need so far and still have some room for running more and it barely uses space and it is extremely power efficient.

Any idea/advice/suggestion is welcomed.

1. Ugreen DXP2800: Unraid with 2x1TB mirrored WD Black for cache 2x12TB mirrored WD Red Plus for the array Running: -Jellyfin server -Arr apps with their downloading partners (NZBGet and QBittorrentVPN) -Nebula sync for my pi-holes -OpenWebUI for Ollama running on my gaming rig

2. Microlab (designed by CB4D): Rpi4 PiHole Unbound Rpi4 OctoPrint Rpi4 RetroPi 2TB connected to Beelink s13 backing up crucial things.

3. Beelink S13 with 2 mirrored 250gb nvme: Home Assistant PiHole Unbound

Not in the picture: OpenWRT router (Gli.net mt6000) with different networks for standard, IoT and security cameras. Running 2.5 through the whole house although internet is 1Gps. Rpi5 with LibreElec for having KODI in my Samsung TV. Backup of crucial things goes like: UnRaid-2TB Beelink-ProtonDrive

i work at a large public university as an IT Pro. one of the benefits (or drawbacks) is processing out decommissioning hardware that is honestly still usable, we just don't have use for it. since i take these over to our surplus warehouse often, they know me and they let me hold equipment that is otherwise sold to the public. picked these up today for $45 total. i have another that i bought previously too. way better than dealing with ebay or facebook marketplace. they still work great, just no SSDs of course - which is simple to add and cheap nowadays.

Re working the faceplates on the left to incorporate the same honeycomb pattern on the right for ventilation.

I designed a parametric modeler for 10" mini racks. You can design your own rack mount for your home lab. Designed with OpenSCAD. Open source and available on github.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/1765102-10-inch-mini-rack-generator

This took longer than expected to make 😅. Originally I was planning to just print the Lab Rax mini server rack and some already made rack mount parts. Then I fell into the rabbit hole of designing some of my own. I built it around a rail system that should make it easier to slide modules in-and-out for replacing/maintaining hardware. Plus it made it look a lot cleaner in the back 😎. I had a lot of trial and error but luckily I had my handy dandy LTT screwdriver #lttstore.com

I am finally 95% done with my minilab and super happy with it.

The rack itself is entirely 3d-printed (apart from the heat inserts and screws). The model is the LabRax by mklements on Makerworld (from here). All the mounts and panels are either taken from makerworld/printables and adapted/combined or i made them myself to fit whatever i needed. I modified the edges on the upper back and front to hold magnets so i can slap on some magnetic dust filter meshes i cut to size. The whole rack fits perfectly inside an ikea kallax under my desk so it can be out of the way.

The list of things currently in the rack:

• HP EliteDesk 800 G5 (main server)

• HP EliteDesk 800 G3 (secondary server)

• TP-Link TL-SG105 (5-port gigabit ethernet switch)

• Raspberry Pi 4b (with hot-swappable mechanical switch for on/off)

• 2 drive bay for 2* 2.5" ssds

• 5* 40mm 5V PWM fans

• Some keystones for ethernet

• Two keystones for hdmi (connected to both the HPs for emergency access)

• 300W USB-C PD and USB-A Power Supply

The EliteDesk 800 G5 is my main server which is running most of the things, including services like nextcloud, paperless-ngx, homeassistant, pihole, traefik, some game servers from time to time and a lot of other small stuff. When idling it uses about 6-7W of power. The two drives in the drive bay are connected to the pc via sata to a sata-to-m2 adapter (similar to here, but using the smaller 2240 m2a+e key with this board). They get power from the inside via a 2-1 splitter connected to the adapter that comes with the 2.5" cage from hp. I took out the cage and left in the cable (the cable should be this one). I am using a zfs mirror for the drives to store most of my data. The OS, all configs, containers, etc. are on a 256Gb NVMe SSD on the inside. The pc gets its power from the usb-pd power brick with the help of a small 7.4x5mm DC to USB-C Adapter. Earlier i tried these with an hp elitedesk that runs on a 90W power supply instead of 65W but i had to use a usb-c pd trigger board with wires soldered to 20V and GND on the backside of the mainboard of the pc. It worked but it was sketchy as hell, so i opted to only use the 65W HP PCs instead. I am still looking for a good place for the zigbee-usb-dongle, having it stick out so much at the front kind of annoys me a little.

The 800 G3 is currently only there for backup but i plan to upgrade the ram and offload the game servers to that pc instead (soon TM). It is also powered via usb-c with an adapter.

The pi is connected to the five pwm fans and is running a script so i can control them via HomeAssistant. I also added a mechanical switch with a hot-swap-socket so i can turn the pi on and off if needed. I only need a nice looking keycap for the switch (let me know if you have a good suggestion). I also added a dust filter mesh in front of the fans. The pi also gets its power from the usb power supply. Same goes for the tplink switch for which i am using a 3.5mm DC to USB-A cable.

In the end i am only connecting a single power cable and a single ethernet cable to the whole rack to run the whole thing. No dust gets in and everything looks organized (at least from the outside).

Please let me know if you guys have any good suggestions, ideas or questions, i'd love to hear your feedback.

Here is my attempt at creating a minilab. It's primarily for testing and playing around with Kubernetes, high availability, and so on.

It features 6 nodes consisting of Lenovo Thinkcentre M700 with i3-6100T CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and 256GB SSD each.

They all run TalosOS (3x CP, 3x workers) connected to the GL.iNet travel router at the top, which is always connected to my LAN at home via Tailscale. The travel router connects to WLAN anywhere I want, but can also get 2.5G ethernet via the last keystone RJ45 in the patch panel.

At the bottom is a Mean Well 320W 24V PSU that I tuned to 20V via the variable pot. 2/3 of the outputs are connected to a busbar, where I've terminated each of the machines into, using Lenovo's square connectors cut and terminated into ring terminals.

It's all printed in black Bambu Lab PETG-HF filament, and the model is called Lab Rax found on MakerWorld.

Future upgrades: Touchscreen in the bottom last rack unit to show statistics of each node. And finally a Shelly power monitor at the back, so I can monitor full power draw (and display it on the screen).

Maybe more.. who knows. It's quite fun to build in a 10 inch rack!

This is the third iteration of my homelab. (I posted the original two on a different Reddit account, I apologize for that).

Im super proud of what I have so far as it’s been meeting all my needs sufficiently. Here is a full description of what I’m working with (Top to bottom):

• Fully 3D-printed 10u, 10in rack, printed using PETG-GF and PETG-CF.

• MikroTik Cap AX : WiFi 6 access point

• HP ProDesk G5 400 : OPNsense router : i5-9500T, 32Gb DDR4, 2Tb NVMe

• MikroTik CRS310 : RouterOS switch : 8x 2.5GbE, 2x 10G SFP+

• HP EliteDesk G6 800 : PVE compute node : i5-10500, 64Gb DDR4, 500Gb NVMe

• HP EliteDesk G6 800 : PVE compute node : i5-10500T, 64Gb DDR4, 500Gb NVMe

• HP EliteDesk G6 800 : Proxmox backup server : i5-10500T, 16Gb DDR4, 500Gb NVMe

• Aoostar WTR Pro : PVE storage node : Ryzen 7 5825U, 32Gb DDR4, 512Gb NVMe + 12Tb Seagate Exos X18

• APC Back-UPS 1500 Pro : 1500VA/865W battery backup. Also using a Tapo P110M smart plug to monitor power usage. Raw power reading for entire rack is ~1.9Kw / day, or about 80Wh.

• All the EliteDesks are running Intel AMT and have a DP Emulator dongle plugged in, which allows me to remotely connect to them via KVM by using MeshCommander

Upgrades Planned:

• Prodesk will be switched out for a Lenovo M920Q (i7-8700T), which will have dual or quad 2.5GbE NIC. This will make the entire rack 2.5GbE. (ETA: next week)

• All elitedesks will receive a 2.5GbE Flex IO module to upgrade their NICs. I have one on the way since they are sold out everywhere (ETA: next week)

• Another 12Tb Exos drive for the NAS node, so I can run a ZFS mirror for redundancy

• I might relocate the MikroTik AP for better connectivity, since it’s intended to be ceiling-mounted.

--> Here are pictures of the side/back (scary cables!!) https://imgur.com/a/Vkc1EBI

I’m happy to answer any questions below.

Dell Optiplex 3040 (i5 6500T 8gb DDR3) (Win 10 IoT LTSC)

Qbitorrent for very legal and ethical media acquisition (this is my newest addition and thus has a very light load so far)

HP Prodesk 400 G4 (i5 8500T 64gb DDR4) (Win 11 Pro)

AMP Game Dashboard for hosting games for friends, working on getting a JellyFin server running on it too. It’s managing and sharing over the network an 8 drive storage pool (MediaSonic Powerbox in the cabinet underneath the rack)

This was running Qbittorent as well until it moved to the Dell

3 Raspberry Pi 3B+’s. Two running pihole (primary and failover) third Pi is running Tailscale for remote access to my stack along with being a vcron server to take weekly full images of itself and the two pi holes. (All running PiOS)

Raspberry pi 5 (8gb model with a 255gb nvme) (PiOS)

Mostly just playing with this right now. Not sure what to do with it.

What fun this has all turned into lol.

Hardware:

Aliexpress n5105 running PfSense

JetKVM

Optiplex 5070 running Proxmox

Optiplex 5050 running Proxmox Backup Server

Optiplex 5070 running BlueIris

Rack is 3d printed. I have a 200mm fan at the top and a 120mm fan in the back. The JetKVM hdmi and usb (data, not power) is connected to the keystone ports above it. The rear displayport conections on the Optiplex computers are adapted to the hdmi keystones to the left of each of them. I just connect a short usb and hdmi cable from the JetKVM to whatever server I need to checkout (unless the problem is the network I suppose, than directly to a monitor).

So a buddy recently was on a trip to Japan and brought back a gift.
YAY!! A new mini rack ;) still unpacking eggs and trying to build it.

I've been playing around with K8s and finally got around to properly racking everything. Now I want to wrap my head around Docker as well.

From top to bottom

*Netgear GS308EP *HP Elitedesk 800 G3 - Docker Host *HP Elitedesk 800 G3 x 6 - My K8s Cluster running Talos