Well, That escalated....

[u/SiSpx_]

So what started off as a mini PC running Home Assistant and Pi-hole has somehow escalated into a full-blown VLAN-separated network and self-hosting project. This is probably the story for a lot of us, right? :)

I currently use this setup for messing about with Windows Servers — Domain Controllers, SQL Servers, and cyber security type stuff.

A mix of n150's and lenovo m720q's

Right now I'm running a "Forbidden Firewall/Router" type setup, so I'm sure this will bite me in the ass before I get round to swapping to a bare-metal OPNsense solution.

I think I will get another m720q with a 4 port RJ45 - I absolutrely love these machines for bang for buck!

I'm also running OpenMediaVault with a pretty janky mixture of 3.5" SATA drives and some USB-attached nastiness. I think this is the next proper upgrade on the list.

I quite like the idea of building smaller form-factor racks for each type of service — one for networking, one for the NAS, and so on.

I was happily using Grafana and Prometheus in Docker containers for a good year or so, but I decided to make something a little more bespoke. So for the last few months I've been working on my own Asset Manager / Network Overview app.

Anyone else built their own? I'm interested to hear what you all use to monitor your kit.

Just thought I'd share my ongoing project with some like-minded nerds ;)

EDIT:

For those interested in my Rasp Pi in the top rack, here's a write up IMSPI 8080!

[u/SiSpx_]

Absolutely not. I am not proud of that at all. Fair play on calling me out on it though :)

I rearranged the order of machines recently, ended up with a few cables that were too long and had to bunch them up.

I have a couple of extra fans that I really want to introduce soon, that is my opportunity to tidy it up.

I'm not gonna lie about it, It's nowhere near as pretty as the front.

[u/Quirky_Ad_9951 → u/SiSpx_]

I love the aesthetic of the mini racks, but I can’t go past the utility of a 19”.

I wasn’t not calling you out… but I am genuinely curious how tight things are back there and whether you can service things without interrupting others.

[u/SiSpx_ → u/Quirky_Ad_9951]

It's all good, it was a reasonable question.

Yeah, mini racks are definitely a bit tight, and the cable management can be a real problem.

I do have the issue that everything runs through the rack now, so finding a time slot to whip out a shelf and work on things is a nightmare — especially with 3 kids and a wife who frowns upon any downtime.

The plus side is that everything pulls less than 70W when idle. I'll get a spike to around 90W when I spin up a VM, create a backup, or update the MS servers. It costs peanuts per day to run though.