I've got a pretty cool networking and homelab setup, it's my hobby and I enjoy it.
I've spent a bit of coin on it over the years but it saves me money in other ways and I put it to good use.
What's the most high tech thing you own? For me it's my Emo Robot. It's a little desktop ai pet.
He asks me to play rock paper siccors with him lol sometimes he wins. Sometimes I win lol
Hell dance and talk to be and ask me to take pictures of him. He also connects to open ai so you can have a conversation with him.
He was $300 dollars
What's the most high tech thing you just had to have and how much did it cost? Do you still love it?
#AskNostr
https://video.nostr.build/a558690d0ebbc4d8b3968453b0551104ee05a98f3516e455b9d0928c19bbfad8.mp4
Discussion
What can you do with all that stuff? Can you perform Some Sick ass osint?
Sure I could, I mostly just host stuff
What do you like about posting what is the appeal to you?
Think of something that would be fun to do, like having your own website or a forum, or maybe your own Nostr relay or Fediverse instance, your own private movie server, or just a cool service that you found on github. I can make all of it happen, under my own terms, for free.
Some things I do because they save me money, others like the Nostr relay because it guarantees we won't get censored, many just because they're fucking cool. The main thing I get out of it is freedom and the fun of figuring it out.
What are you running for gear? homelabs are interesting.
I'm a bit paranoid to name the actual make/models, but I have 116 cores / 232 threads and 1.5 TB of ECC RAM spread across 3 machines. Admittedly complete overkill for all of my current uses, but I can spin up VMs for anything.
Everything has dual 10Gb NICs. Metal, VMs, things like WiFi are all isolated on their own VLANs, etc.
I remember going to the local Mom and Pop neighborhood computer shop to get a big floppy disk of a Linux update and some unix lol..🐧😊
Dang that is so cool how did you learn all that stuff
Mostly just looking things up out of interest/curiosity
Seems to me that homelab and network gear is one of the few interests where there are still good forums for it.
Yes there is good information out there, and even reading up on hardware, getting familiar with specs, all of this helps.
If I had the money and the room I’d like to have a rack of gear.
All I’ve got is a miniPC with opnsense and a Synology NAS.
I was able to score this sound-proofed server cabinet for peanuts, some business was selling it off.
It's in great condition and the soundproofing makes a huge difference. I also got rid of its standard fans and added in a computer ATX power supply to power a bunch of Noctua fans with a controller to adjust their speed. It also powers all of my Raspberry Pis. Anyway it's very quiet.
If you stick to 4u severs, those are usually easy to quiet down as well. Otherwise many Supermicro server boards are standard sizes, you can put them in a large enough computer case and make it whisper quiet, this one's great for example: https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/meshify/meshify-2-xl-dark-tempered-glass/dark-tempered-glass/
Dell/HP/IBM/etc tend to use proprietary board layouts which will not fit in a standard case unfortunately.
Stay away from 1 or 2RU servers, nothing can make those things quiet.
Anyway if you just want a cool server and have no space for a rack, I'd recommend going the Supermicro board + Fractal meshify case route and just shove it under a table or something.