Built an enterprise-grade router gateway at home and wanted to see what you guys think.

• Topology: ISP Fiber ONT doing DMZ passthrough straight to a Qualcomm ARMv8 OpenWrt router.
• Performance: Blazing sub-2ms ping to Cloudflare (~1.90 ms), full hardware flow offloading, and zero CGNAT issues on a clean static residential IP.
• Privacy & Security: Encrypted DoH (https-dns-proxy) + AdBlock-Fast blocking ~284k ad/tracking domains network-wide.
• VPN: Self-hosted WireGuard server for remote access, plus outbound Cloudflare WARP via policy routing.

Everything runs at full line speed. How's the architecture look? What should i add any suggestions?

I care about privacy and just wanted learned about homelabs. Sounded cool but I'm not very tech savvy and saw Ubiquiti also allows you to build you own WiFi. Is that going to be secure from ISPs as a self made system?

I have a remote site that only needs to send sensor readings and a heartbeat back to a server in my homelab. Every build thread I find solves it with a full Starlink dish running around the clock, and the power math bothers me.

A Standard dish pulls 40 to 75 W, the Mini still 25 to 40 W. That is roughly 0.6 to 1.5 kWh a day, every day. Off-grid that means a few hundred watts of extra panel, a bigger battery bank to ride through a cloudy week, and a charge controller sized for all of it. All to move a few kilobytes into my lab. It feels like buying a truck to deliver a postcard.

Duty-cycling the dish with a relay helps, but you are still waking a phased-array terminal to say "I'm alive, it's 4°C." Starlink is brilliant when you actually need bandwidth. For telemetry-class traffic it looks like the wrong tool.

So two questions for people who have done this:

1. What are you using for the "few bytes, no grid, no cell" uplink in 2026? LoRa or Meshtastic back to a gateway, a sat IoT modem, NB-IoT, something else?
2. How does it land on the lab side? MQTT broker on the rack, a small VPS relay, a LoRaWAN gateway at home, or something I'm not thinking of?

Edit:

Sorry, I should’ve mentioned the distance up front. The node’s about 30 miles out, behind a ridge with no line of sight to anything, no grid and no cell. Since it’s just a few bytes on a schedule, I’m going with a low-power satellite IoT setup rather than a 24/7 Starlink dish. Thanks all, the “what distance?” calls were fair.

My power was out for about 14 hours on Saturday and the UPS gave me 40 minutes. Which is fine I guess, except Vaultwarden was on the same Proxmox host, so I couldn't log into anything from my phone. That included the power company's outage page.

I have backups but I just couldn't reach them.

How do you all handle this? Do you use a second site? A cheap VPS? Do you trust a provider with the vault, or does that defeat the point of selfhosting?

Lesson learned, but I'd rather only learn it once.

Hello, I have 2x Micron 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz with ECC (model: 9ASF2G72AZ-3G2B1). I've tested them and work on ASRock A520M-HDV and Gigabyte B450 Aerous Elite. Work on both, but lacks the ECC support.

The problem is with an Asus Prime B550M-A Wifi II. One stick works, one doesn't, regardless if single or or dual channel or the slot.

From my researches the stick with the issue might be lower-bin silicone and Asus is more picky about ECC memory.

Any way to fix this without changing the ram or the motherboard ?

File transfers and organisation is doing my head in. I’m literally transferring files in the CLI and permission issues related to the datasets I’ve created is giving me a headache.

I’ve heard proxmox numerous times but just wanted opinions on what everyone’s tried and what operating systems for their homelab storage.

Edit: this may be a question of “how do you manage your files?”

Often I see people who want to access their homelab from outside their home. When asking how to secure OpenSSH such that it's reasonably secure against bots and scanners, 90% of the comments are: "Don't expose ssh to the web, expose a VPN instead and connect through that."

I don't fully understand the reasoning of these people. OpenSSH is an extremely well audited piece of code, which can easily be set up such that internet facing access is secure enough for 99% of users here. It's public key crypto, the same used in HTTPs, and your VPN.

Sure, a VPN "adds" a second layer of authentication (turn on VPN, then log into server with ssh), but Wireguard and OpenVPN use the same public key crypto used by OpenSSH and TLS, and have similar attack surface. An exploit in your VPN daemon can be just as devastating as an exploit in OpenSSH.

Hi everyone!

I’ll be honest: my knowledge here is pretty limited. For the past few weeks I’ve been tinkering with a homelab built out of old phones, all set up with “help” from AI and at zero cost. I also had some spare desktop parts lying around but no power supply. I’ve now managed to get an old 350W PSU, so I could build a PC. I’m just not sure it’s worth it. Here’s how everything looks right now.

4 phones, all on Wi-Fi and connected through Tailscale

• Xiaomi Mi A2 (4 GB RAM), running postmarketOS and Docker. This is the main server, with around 20 containers: Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr, qBittorrent, Bazarr and Jellyseerr; Jellyfin and Navidrome; AdGuard Home for DNS; Glance as a dashboard; a Telegram bot and a few custom timers. Everything it downloads ends up imported to my personal PC. The only thing that also stays on the phone is the music I listen to on Navidrome. I keep the battery between 40 and 60% through software so it doesn’t swell. It runs well, but I keep a close eye on RAM, temperature and eMMC wear. Every now and then the charger gets stuck on “Not charging” and I have to replug it.
• Redmi Note 8, Android 11 + Termux. It runs Immich, which takes up about 40 GB. It works, but it’s Termux on Android: the system can kill processes when it runs low on memory (LOW_MEMORY), and I can’t create hard links. Always at 100% and charging.
• Redmi Note 8T, Android 11 + Termux. It runs Uptime Kuma, which alerts me through Telegram, and acts as a backup node: every evening it copies Immich from the Redmi Note 8 and the Mi A2’s config. Always at 100% and charging.
• Galaxy Z Flip4 (broken screen, I only manage it remotely), Termux. It’s my emulation hub with RomM. It also runs an OpenClaw agent with a free OpenRouter account, mostly to send simple commands like restarting a container or a phone. Always at 85% and charging.

Backups work like this: the original Immich library lives on the Redmi Note 8, with one copy on the Redmi Note 8T and another on my Windows PC’s drive. Everything works, but half of my maintenance notes are tricks to stop Android from killing things or to keep the batteries healthy.

The desktop I could build

• Celeron G3900
• 4 GB DDR4-2400
• 120 GB SSD
• An old 350W PSU with only one SATA power connector, so without an adapter I can only connect one drive
• It would run headless: I don’t have a VGA monitor, and the board only has VGA output. I’d install Debian on the SSD from my main PC and then move it over to the desktop.
• I’d need to buy a network switch to use it, around €8.

Possible upgrades:

• Molex to SATA adapter: €3, for a second drive
• 8 GB DDR4: €18, for 12 GB total
• An i5-6500 for €6
• VGA to HDMI adapter: €12, optional, only in case I ever need to get into the BIOS

That’s about €35 without the VGA adapter. I’d pay for it by selling the Redmi Note 8T for around €60.

What’s holding me back

• Power consumption. My estimate is that the phones draw about 4–6 W in total and the desktop about 18–25 W at idle. That’s €20–30 more per year on the electricity bill.
• Putting everything on one machine with an old PSU and old drives, when right now each thing runs on a separate device.

My questions

1. From your experience, is the switch worth it, or should I leave things as they are since they work?
2. Would you trust an old, no-name 350W PSU running 24/7? Is a Molex to SATA adapter safe?
3. Does my power estimate sound realistic for an i5-6500 at idle with an SSD + HDD?
4. Would you swap the G3900 for the i5-6500 for €6, or is the G3900 enough for this?
5. If you stuck with the phones, what would you improve?

As you can tell, money is the main constraint. I’m also still learning about all this and loving it, so maybe I’ll be able to spend a bit more down the line.

Disclaimer: English isn’t my first language, so I used AI to help me write and translate this post

Thanks a lot!

I'm wanting to get into this and have been for a while but really don't know where to start. I've done some reading on here but I'm a complete novice with servers and linux, but I'm willing to put in the time to learn. I've seen a lot about proxmox and ubuntu. I just don't know which one would be better to use for me, or if there's something better out there now. I like the idea of ubuntu because I'd be able to do more with it once I'm more knowledgeable in it but proxmox sounds easier to set up and use. Any insight would be appreciated, and if anyone has some resources for learning all of this that would be awesome

I’ve just started getting into this stuff. I used an old laptop to install a Ubuntu Server, set up a firewall, and get an SSH server running.

But somehow, I’m feeling a bit lost because there’s so much to learn. I’m trying to figure out where to start and how all these things actually work. Installing things is one thing, but I really want to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.

I have some basic knowledge of networking, but I want to improve my skills and learn more.

For now, I want to use my homelab for some basic stuff, but eventually, I’d like to expand it into a self-hosted cloud and a media streaming server once I have the necessary hardware.

Does anyone have any advice on where to start or how to approach learning all of this?

I have a ton of tech stuff I've been wanting to do:

1. I want to build an at home server, to store media (audio and photo) and I want that server to be able to share it with my android device regardless of where i am.
2. I want to get a free AI model for personal use, that I decide what it can and cannot do, no restrictions. no subscriptions
3. I want to own all of my things, instead of having games, photos, videos, music or anything else just needing a $10 subscription. I'm tired of it.

If anyone can help me on how to build a server for those needs, how to get an AI model for personal use and where it should go (Main PC, Server, get a new one). How I should get all my music onto my server to start, any help would be appreciated

Hello everyone, recently I bought a vps with 1 core and 2 Gb of ram. I have one small question, can this VPS run and normally use Remnawave panel?

Here is the url for the project(and I know that, in docs "min. requirements" 2+ cores and 2+Gb ram.

I don't have a lot of money(((

Hi all.

Looking for some advice here.

I picked up about half a dozen Quadro P2200's a Quadro 5000 RTX, and a 1080p - these were pulls from working devices. All were destined for e-waste.

Part of my homelab is Plex and TDARR. I want to get some HW transcoding going, but not sure which of these fine specimens would be best for the purpose. My mind says the 5000 - but the P2200 doesn't require extra power...so less power (maybe?) Would the performance be close?

Ask questions if I am being too vague - I dont' wanna splatter this post with worthless info.

Thanks in advance!

Hey r/homelab,

Repo: https://github.com/sablierapp/sablier (since October 2020)
Docs: https://sablierapp.dev

The problem

My server is a Raspberry Pi 4 (4 GB) running 30 containers on an SSD and a 6 TB HDD. On a box this small, every service is everyone's neighbor: when Paperless runs OCR while the *arr stack is busy, Home Assistant and Pi-hole get sluggish too. Most of these services sit idle most of the day, still taking RAM, CPU and disk.

What Sablier does

It starts a container when you open it through your reverse proxy, and stops it when nobody uses it. You get a waiting page while it boots. On my Pi, Transmission, Memos, Portainer and Speedtest only run when I use them.

If stopping is too blunt, it can instead throttle an idle service's CPU, memory or disk I/O, and restore them the moment you open it.

It works with Docker, Podman, Proxmox LXC, systemd, Kubernetes and Nomad, behind Traefik, Caddy, Nginx and others.

Why not an existing tool

Nothing like it existed when I started in 2020. ContainerNursery and Lazytainer came a year later. Compared to them, Sablier plugs into your existing reverse proxy and can throttle instead of stop.

Why it's relevant here

Most of us run more services than our hardware comfortably holds. Sablier lets idle ones step aside for the ones you're using.

AI disclosure

Written by hand from 2020 to early 2026. Since May 2026, I've used AI coding agents (mostly Claude Code) for features, tests, docs and bug hunting. I design the features and review every change. About 43% of this year's commits are AI co-authored. This post was also written with Claude's help.

I'm looking at putting together a homelab, and I'm getting a Dell R7910 rack. My issue is, DDR4 ECC ram seems to be absurdly priced? Refurbished DDR4 ecc ram is going for $6-7/gb on most sites, sometimes much more. I won't spill any secrets so if you want to dm me I'll keep it to myself.

I'm just trying to find a more reasonable $2-3/gb price if possible, I'm trying to get about 384gb of ram and would be nice to keep costs around $1000.

How are the bulk sites getting their hands on cheap RAM? Can I just call up local datacenters and ask if they have DDR4 ram they intend to get rid of soon? Any tricks of the trade you can share, via comment or DM? This is old ram now, it's not like I'm asking for cheap DDR5 ram or cheap vram.

Everyone on FB marketplace seems to know the market value of their RAM, so I can't seem to find any deals anywhere. Ebay has ok-ish prices, I must admit. But where do the guys on ebay get their ram to sell at those prices?

Thanks.

Looking at these listings and wanted to know if there's anything i should look for when on a budget? I know computer prices have been really bad so I don't wanna get something and overpay. Im also low on space to put something in(had a big optiplex before) and would be open to upgrading in the future

New to the community, first time post. I'm interested in building a home lab and I thought silently browsing the sub might give me insight on where to start with hardware/skill training. I think that assessment was wrong. I'm definitely out of my depth and have no clue how to start. Apologies if this is the wrong sub for reaching out, but if someone could point me to the beginner's corner I'd be very appreciative.

Edit: thank you all for your replies, they were very helpful. I now see a clearer path to the goal I have in mind thanks to the insight you've shared. Cheers.

I love my homelab, but I'm lazy. So I built a dockerized web-app that connects via Pangolin API to surface all of my defined resources, and then make tiles for them.

I should note that half of these are home-made (Hub, Lanthorn, Time, Orbit, Debrief, Warden, Access), while others are standard apps. I do security consulting / engineering on the side so I make apps to suit my needs instead of paying for solutions that work part-way.

Feel free to reach out and ask questions, just wanted to share. Happy to chat about my workflow and everything. I was using Homarr, but got tired of having to manually make everything.

My flow: Pangolin -> Authentik SSO -> my homelab services, for reference.

repo: https://github.com/vitafortis/Atrium

I know I need to work on the image repo logic, but it's a work in progress. You can add customized logos / icons, but these are the ones by default included.

I've been building something for the past few months and it's at the stage where I want to share it. It's called Inpherio, a marketplace where people with spare GPUs sell LLM inference to people who want cheap AI calls.

It's live. Uptake has been decent on the operator side and a few consumers have started using it, which is roughly the shape I expected, because it's a bit of a chicken and egg. Buyers show up for the models, and the models only exist if operators bring them. So stage one is all about the operator side. The more hardware and the more variety on the grid, the more interesting it gets for consumers, and that's the loop I'm trying to spin up.

If you're the kind of person who'd be in for the long haul of an early release, this is a good time to get in. The first operators on a marketplace are the ones holding the listings when the buyers arrive, and they set their own prices.
How it works: you run a small connector on your machine, it makes an outbound websocket connection so no port forwarding or firewall holes, and it acts as an allowlist proxy for whatever you already run (Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp). Your node gets benchmarked and gets a public health score built from uptime, tok/s and failover rate. Routing prefers nodes with warm models, so keeping a model loaded in VRAM earns you more traffic.

The bit I want to stress: the connector does not lock you out of your own hardware. From the Inpherio dashboard you can mint an API key that lets you call your own node through the Inpherio API free of charge. While you're calling it, the node drops out of the live pool so you're never competing with yourself, and it automatically returns to the pool after your configured time. Your GPU earns when you're not using it and behaves like a normal local endpoint when you are.
Money side: all new operators get 3 months with no service charge. After that we take 15% to keep the servers alive. No listing fees, nothing else stacked on top.

Obviously due to the nature of the project AI was used along the way. My day job is a developer and like everyone else I use AI to assist me. It didn't build itself but I'm not going to pretend I typed every line either.
One thing worth being blunt about. The node running a prompt has to decrypt it, that's just how inference works, no amount of crypto fixes it. The connector handles prompts in memory only and the ToS bans operators from logging anything, but as a buyer, don't send secrets to random people's GPUs. I'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.

It's at inpherio.co.uk If you've got idle hardware and an opinion I'd genuinely like to hear it, especially what would stop you from joining. The harsh answers are the useful ones at this stage.

Hey everyone, I'm building my first home server and trying to decide between TrueNAS, Unraid, and ZimaOS. OpenMediaVault is also an option I'm willing to consider, but those are my main three choices atm.

My hardware: Intel Core i5-10500 (using QuickSync), ASUS Prime B460M-A, 16 GB Non-ECC DDR4, 3x WD Red 4TB HDDs (WD40EFRX - CMR). I want to start with 1 parity/recovery disk so I get 8TB usable space and possibly add a 4th 4TB drive down the line to expand to 12TB usable.

What I plan to run: Jellyfin (max ~3 simultaneous streams for family/friends), Immich (family photo/video backup), Arr stack (Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, qBittorrent), Nextcloud (maybe down the road).

So here's my questions:

1. Which OS would you recommend?

Which of the options would be the best fit for these workloads, particularly in terms of ease of use, reliability, and long-term maintenance? One important consideration is expandability (but probably with a same size drive). My understanding was that TrueNAS makes this difficult because of how ZFS handles RAIDZ expansion, although I've read that RAIDZ expansion has recently become possible. How practical is it now to start with three drives and add a fourth later? My second preference would be ZimaOS. Is there any disadvantage to it for my use case? Or differences in terms of how safe the data is in case of a drive failure / restoration.

1. Performance and drive longevity

Are there meaningful differences between these options in terms of read/write performance for my use case? I'm also curious about how the storage configurations compare in terms of HDD wear. For example, would a ZFS-based setup put significantly more load on the drives compared to others or is this not important for light home server workload?

Anddd while we're here, also a few unrelated questions:

1. I bought all three WD Red drives used. 2 have 10k power-on hours and 1 ~30k. Before putting them into service, what tests should I run to check their health? Just an extended SMART self-test or something else?

2. Using the server as a VPN: The server will be put in a country where I won't be living permanently. I'd like to route my internet traffic through my home server sometimes so that websites see me as browsing from that country. Can I set up a VPN server on the NAS for this? Is Tailscale the appropriate choice for this?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I want to know if it is ok/stable/makes sense if you have TrueNAS running in a Proxmox VM, and then put a NextCloud App into TrueNAS:

Proxmox -> TrueNAS VM-> NextCloud APP

For example is there a difference in handover between AP, channel setup for each AP, or change settings for all AP at once?

The brand could be Unifi or Omada.

Is it possible to have a local Jellyfin server on hard drives and interface Stremio into Jellyfin, so if I don't have the file locally, it can stream it?

I recently acquired a Dell PowerEdge T440 and struggling to find a full kit to actually mount one in a rack. Has anyone had luck doing this recently with a PowerEdge Tower? I’d love to see photos of their tack as well. I’m debating on selling it and getting a “R” variant.