Activity
Mon
Wed
Fri
Sun
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
What is this?
Less
More
Memberships
Home Lab Explorers
1k members • Free
9 contributions to Home Lab Explorers
20d •
Black Friday 2025 Home Lab Gear
Below are some links that I have come across that I think are good deals if you want to splurge on some home lab or home lab workstation upgrades. Let me know of other links you run across. Hopefully, we can all share and find the best deals out there. ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB GDDR7 OC Edition Gaming Graphics Card (PCIe 5.0, HDMI/DP 2.1, 3.125-slot, Military-Grade Components, Protective PCB Coating, axial-tech Fans): ASUS https://geni.us/s5xH Samsung SSD 9100 PRO 4TB, PCIe 5.0x4 M.2 2280, Seq. Read Speeds Up to 14,800MB/s, Best for AI Computing, Gaming, and Heavy Duty Workstations (MZ VAP4T0B/AM): SAMSUNG https://geni.us/Ux4FHT Samsung 49" Odyssey OLED (G93SC) Series Curved Gaming Monitor w QD-OLED, 240Hz, 0.03ms, DQHD, G-Sync Compatible, AMD FreeSync Premium Pro,Height Adjustable Stand,3 Yr Warranty,LS49CG932SNXZA: Samsung https://geni.us/n3uL8t KAMRUI AM21 Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS (8C/16T, up to 4.9GHz), 32GB DDR5 5600MHz RAM, 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD, Mini Desktop Computer with Radeon 780M, USB4, Quad Display, Dual LAN, HDMI, WiFi 6 https://geni.us/eIqiw ACEMAGIC M1 Mini PC, Intel Core i9-11900H 32GB DDR4 1TB SSD, Mini Computers (4.9GHz, 8C/16T) PCIe3.0 Type-C/LAN 2.5G/HDMI/DP, 4K Triple Display 11 Pro Mini Desktop PC BT5.2/WiFi6/BT/for Home/Office https://geni.us/kd3P GEEKOM A6 Mini PC with AMD Ryzen 7 6800H, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, Radeon 680M, Compact Aluminium Design Windows 11 Pro Desktop Computer with USB4/8K/Wi-Fi 6E/BT 5.2/SD Slot https://geni.us/4siJ5 Beelink SER3 Mini PC AMD Ryzen 3200U Win 11 Mini Computers, 16G DDR4 500G PCIe3.0 SSD, Dual 4K 60HZ Display, 4xUSB3.2 Home Office Business Entertainment PC https://geni.us/KLNG
1 like • 20d
MINISFORUM MS-02 Ultra. Core Ultra 9 285HX. 24 cores. $1,199 barebones. https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-02-ultra#47295031312629. Add it to your cart but don't check out. Wait a day or so and you might get an email with a $30 off coupon code. US-based shipping. No tariffs. Ordered one this morning. Replacing the Intel NUC 12 Extreme on my desk.
2 likes • 20d
I've been buying RAM here and there for various devices. I thought I had two sticks of 4GB SODIMMs but when I looked it was one stick. The thought was that 8GB would hold me for a little while, until I paid down all the other components. That didn't pan out. I have 64GB kits of DDR4, but this requires DDR5, so I bit the bullet and ordered a 64GB kit. I would have liked to go with either 128GB or double that, but spending $900 or $1800 on RAM for a desktop PC is just crazy. The 64GB kit of DDR5 -- Non-ECC -- was $433. B&H, Payboo card, no tax (saving 8.85% or $38.) To that, I had to add the graphics card, M.2, 3 x fibre transceivers (I have one here already), and two OM4 fibre cables, as I am expanding from one UniFi Pro Aggregation switch to two (a total of eight 25G ports). Now, I am figuring out how to transfer Windows from the old machine to the new, avoiding reinstallation of dozens of apps and three years plus of configuration tuning. Laplink PCMover? Sysprep? Nothing? Just clone the M.2 and hope it boots in the new machine; clean up Windows afterward? In the meantime, I am creating a virtual copy of this PC, to have and play with. It's 11% done and should run all night.
Oct 1 •
Do You Trust a Single DNS Server in Your Home Lab?
I'm curious what everyone here is running DNS-wise in the home lab. Do you run multiple servers? I am a big advocate of doing so. Not only do you learn a lot of nifty name resolution tricks, but it is just more resilient: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/10/why-i-run-multiple-dns-servers-in-my-home-lab-and-you-should-too/
1 like • Oct 8
I have two Active Directory domain controllers on the network, each with integrated DNS and DHCP. There are no issues with this setup other than if my main virtualization server (Dell PowerEdge R740 running ESXi 8.0 U3) should go down unexpectedly. With the single ESXi management IP address of that server, I can log in and bootstrap everything else, domain controllers, vCenter, etc.
Sep 8 •
Suggestion for Homelab
Hey guys what do you suggest in place of my Dell R420 servers which is very power hungry current CPU Top of the line E5-2470 v2. But whether is Idle mode or full Load it draws lots of power. Running Proxmox OS which runs VM, Docker just 4 VMs. So I was thinking of some small factors considering the performance should not drop but power load is not much. I will run on Proxmox nodes with mini PCs and learn Kubernetes K3s.Was thinking to get this Minisforum MS-01 120009H with 96GB RAM as my main Proxmox nodes. Let me know your thoughts on this will be appreciated.
2 likes • Sep 15
I had to trim the number of VMs I ran on the MS-01 to, I think, 9. I usually run at least twice that many on the R740. Admittedly, one MS-01 ran what I needed, but some projects, like bringing up a virtualized Nutanix cluster, had to wait until the R740 was back. The R740 uses about 185 watts running whatever load of VMs. I think the two MS-01s drew more. The MS-01s using 4 10G Base-T transceivers between them put out a lot of heat too. The R740 has a cool-running 25G fibre connection and only 1 10G Ethernet connection for redundancy. I was able to experiment with memory tiering under ESXi on the second MS-01 though, so that was a positive. It seemed to work but at this time, I am not using it anywhere.
1 like • Sep 15
Do you still want to run an enterprise server? You can get a beautiful R730xd with room for something like 14 3.5" drives for around $435 on eBay. Beautiful machine. R740 (Skylake) are a few hundred more. R740 Cascade Lake, are a bit more rare still. Anything smaller than a dual processor machine and you're likely going to need more than one of them running clustered, to support the same workload.
Jul 2 •
Anyone going after certs this year? Cloud, on-prem?
Curious how many might be going after certs this year, either on-premises tech or cloud certs?
3 likes • Jul 2
Might pursue VMware Cloud Foundation 9. Maybe.
Jun 18 •
VMware VCF 9 Downloaded!
It wasn't there last night. It sure was this morning. Just got done, after three hours, downloading all the components of VMware Cloud Foundation 9. To say they rebuilt this from scratch is evident. The download for VCF 5.2 is three items. All told, the download (of every last component) of VCF 9 is 72 items. Now, I have to find a machine to deploy it on. I don't know how much disk space I'll need (I saw something somewhere about 9/10 of a terabyte), or how much RAM, assuming, of course, I deploy this is a William Lam consolidated virtualized fashion. I think I'll get an instance of vCenter and a single ESX (no more ESXi) host up. Then worry about the rest of the product. Gonna need lots of cores!
3 likes • Jun 18
I am mildly curious about the whole thing, but I am really curious about vCenter and ESX. It's likely we won't run much more than that, plus some Aria stuff, at work. To even play with the full product, I'm going to have to wait until William Lam boils it down to a scriptable install on a single host. I am not going to touch my "production" hardware for 9.0-anything, so I'll need to find something else for vCenter 9 and ESX 9.
1-9 of 9
@jeff-newman-5012
Systems engineer/architect with a concentration on VMware vSphere and Horizon VDI. 40+ years in IT. Double VMware VCP. linkedin.com/in/jeffnewmannyc
Active 18d ago
Joined Apr 30, 2025
ISTJ
Brooklyn, New York
Powered by