My Journey with Homelabbing

As long as I can remember, I have always had a server available to me. These were always servers from some hosting company (of which I picked terrible specs and got terrible prices). This is what first initially started my whole idea of having a servers.

I have never touched anything on the web though. I only stuck to whatever the employee installed for me; opening.. many.. support tickets. What initially pushed me to start trying more was one of my techy friends named Alex, or Citrin, as I call him.

I bought a server from a hosting company, and it was my first time ever having a real dedicated server. I used it for Pterodactyl (a management program for game servers) and was about to pay another company to host my website. This is before Alex told me me off for being insane. He said that the server I already had could do that.

So I let him do that. I found it insanely cool that my websites were running on one of my servers that was also just running Minecraft. I started getting more interested but never got out of my comfort zone.

There was a problem with the server I was using though; it was in the United Kingdom, and some people do not have the best internet speeds. This was causing most of my players, mainly friends, to lag during game nights. Alex then convinced me that I should get a server and host in my house.

In Christmas of 2021, I was surprised with a shiny Dell r720 from newegg for a whopping $700. My friend picked out the specs and to this day I make fun of him for picking horrible CPUs.

I thought you wouldn't use it (Alex)

I now had to swap out its CPUs for newer and better ones (thanks Alex). I remember when I had to swap out the CPUs, I was terrified. I was so worried about bending a pin, or completely rendering the entire server worthless. I was on a call with Alex the entire time. It was scary to remove a screw.

My passion for this hobby started growing immensely. I started wanting to jump into so many things; espically after watching Linus Tech Tips videos. I also just played around with docker and installed some random stuff. A few times every day, I always just went and stared at the server for a good 15-30 minutes.

Every single day I spent looking at every online sellers looking for good deals on servers or new parts. I got a lot of new parts for this current server, but one thing that stuck out to me was a 48u server rack for $75. Now, I wanted this thing badly. I couldn't drive yet (nor could I legally rent a car that could haul this gigantic thing) so I asked my dad. After a bit of back and forth, he said yes.

We drove for two hours roundtrip to pick it up. Total costs come around to ~$200 with the cargo van rental. The trip was honestly extremely fun. The seller was extremely nice and was actually a freelance IT guy, so thanks David! I remember me telling him how I only had one server and he laughed. It wouldn't stay like that for long, though.

Now, having this server was fun and all, but I really wanted a NAS for backups and also just to use for storage. I used some Christmas money I got from returns on items and purchased a Dell r510 I named "Selenium." This server is power inefficent, but it was the best I could do at the time.

Just thought I would say, Selenium is very loud. When I first booted this thing it literally sounded like an airplane, not kidding. I believe I have a video of it booting for the first time somewhere. It has gotten quieter since TrueNAS has told it to calm down. I do plan on replacing Selenium for a more power efficient server.

I was pretty satisfied with my lab at the time, but some problems started arising which needed to be fixed. I am going to skim through these things quickly for time reasons. I wired dedicated power to the room, which is now offically called the server room. I also wired Cat 6a to my room (which you can see with the orange cable). Selenium was also extremely slow so I had to shell out at least $200 on new 10GB networking; although it isn't in the upcoming photos yet.

I host a few games, and one of them is a custom Minecraft minigames server. The server was extremely struggling on loading chunks and basic games. I assumed it was the HDDs and got 3x 500GB NVMe SSDs just for it. It improved, but not much. I eventually figured out it was struggling on sharing its CPU with other applications like the web server.

This meant it was time for another server... :)

I actually stumbled into this one by accident. I never really had a goal for getting one, if one came up though, I would take it. I didn't wanna spend more than $160 on a new top tier server. I ended up finding a guy on Reddit. He ended up selling me a 16 bay Dell r720 for $140 with sliding rails and a bezel! This was an absolute steal, compared to the $700 for the orginal price.

One of the reasons why It was so cheap was because I already had the ram and CPUs for it. I remember how me and my family had to go eat dinner, but I had to sign for the server. We waited an additional 3 hours for UPS to deliver it.

The performance server now has like 128gb of ram with 1.5tb of NVMe storage. It has really good CPUs for its time being 2x E5-2667v2. I was a bit disappointed when it arrived with a broken RAM clip, but honestly it's not that much of a problem. It's just less secure. I do plan on upgrading the entire server for a custom build, but that'll come way in the future.

My old router was literally struggling with all of this traffic. I don't have any pictures of when I first got it, but I got a Dell r210 II for an absolute steal of a price. It now runs pfSense and acts as my router. My access point is my old router, which honestly is doing a terrible job. I just don't wanna spend money on a new one.

I didn't really mention it until now, but I also have a media server. I used to use Plex and run it on the NAS before I realized how terrible plex was. I switched to Jellyfin, but because of my server's old hardware, it couldn't handle more than 1 person at the same time. It literally crashed when one of my friends was on it.

Being "smart," I went to go and look for a GPU when the prices were pretty high because of cryptominers. I ended up getting a used GTX 1060 (I made sure it wasn't used for mining and fully checked the card, so do not worry) for a good price. The only problem was it didn't fit into any of my current servers. I think you know where this is heading.

I had to use a 10gb connection to this thing and honestly I don't know if it needs one. I first tried using an Cat 6a cable, but it was pretty slow so I went to fiber. It's working and I don't really need that 10gb port, so it's fine for now.

This is honestly it for as far as I have been. I couldn't include much in this story because it would simply be too long, but if you have any questions you can contact me of course.

I will say one thing though, I really recommend this hobby. I didn't know anything when I first got into it. My first server (and real hands-on experience with servers) was that first picture of the r720. I was absolutely terrified to power it on when I first got it. I have now gotten to the point where I have literally pulled the plug while a server was booting, but don't worry I am a "professional."

I will now post some photos, but honestly thank you for reading this far. I really do hope you enjoyed. I should also say thank you to my friend Alex for getting me into this hobby as right now this is the best thing that has happened to me for a long time.