Home lab servers…how many is too many?

At some point you have to ask if your hobby has become an addiction right? Well for me I think that I’m far beyond that point with my home lab and in this blog post I’m going to share my current setup and details for how I got here.

Most of the time it seems to start with a small Raspberry Pi or Synology NAS…then it grows until you have a commercial grade HP or Dell servers because they are “cheap” on eBay. I’ve currently got 4 HP servers like this in my home lab (on top of a half dozen RPis) with another being built currently. Like I said…addiction.

When you get a new server in the mail and can’t even wait to get home to check it out…you open it in the trunk

Hardware choices

Your choice of hardware can vary from a simple Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu (v4 supports running VMs and even VMWare ESXi) to a full fledged data center grade server running ESXi. A few year old server can be had on eBay with all the parts needed to be up and running for under a grand. A 7 or 8 year old server can be found on eBay or Craigslist for just a few hundred bucks.

If you need hardware that will need a lot of RAM or computing power then something like a dual CPU HP Gen9 server will be what you are looking for. In my personal setup I run all of my coding projects on a VM hosted on my main server. That way I can be on any low powered laptop and still have all the computing resources I need to accomplish the task at hand (not to mention I can leave something running 24/7 in my home lab if needed).

ESXi 8 main screen showing the server stats

My main server has 2x E5-2650L CPUs (low power) and 192GB of memory. When you compare price points of CPUs and memory its relatively cheap compared to what it would cost in a new desktop (not to mention you are not limited to 4 sticks of RAM like most CPUs. In my case I got CPUs for $50/each and RAM for $40/32G stick.

Dual CPU and 24 sockets for RAM inside the HP Gen9 DL360

Software choices

There are multiple ways to go about getting a server up and running and it all depends on what you will be using it for. Personally I have multiple Raspberry Pis running Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu Server and focus it depending on the need. Raspberry Pis (v3 and v4) are more than capable of handling a variety of software like PiHole (adblocking DNS), Apache (web server) and Home Assistant (smart home front end). Generally a Pi is only able to run a single major application so you may find yourself needing multiple to get what you are looking for in a home lab (for instance I have a set of four rack mounted).

My set of 4 Raspberry Pi’s running off a single PSU board (Home Automation, piHole, a dev server, and a web server)

So like the hardware choices the software you want to run will depend on your desired outcome (as well as the hardware choice you made). Many people love Proxmox which is an open source VM management software and very practical for a first time user. VMWare ESXi is the other major player in the market and with a huge push to enter the homelab market in late 2020 they gave away free licenses for their ESXi 7 software. You can also get free licenses through the OSU student software deals with VMWare (you have to email the COE asking for the link to sign up though).

OK, now that we have a selection for running VMs, what kinds of things are possible to run. Personally I love the awesome_selfhosted repo that has a great list of things you can self host. I mentioned in my previous blog post that I run Wekan on my home server and that repo is where I got the inspiration to do so. Here is my personal list of self hosted software/VMs:

Windows 11

Kubuntu 22.10

MacOS 13 (beta)

Plex Server

Docker (running Wekan, FreshRSS, Firefly iii (personal finance), Changedetection (webpage changemonitoring tool))

NextCloud

ZoneMinder (NVR for network cameras)

piHole

A web file server

GitLab

Conclusion

I hope this post helped inspire some of you to see the possibilities of running your own server at home and hopefully it doesn’t turn into an addiction like it has for me.

My poorly constructed open server rack with paint cans and hockey pucks…