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EOY2024 State of the Homelab

2024 has been a big year for increase in hardware and compute as I have been working on getting my startup off the ground. Both my homelab and the startup's gear are in this roundup. I have had a focus on allowing for remote access and system redundancy. I still need to work on some of this going into Q1 of 2025.

Primary Workstation

Specs: - Intel i5-12600K - ASUS PRIME Z690-P D4-CSM - 64 GB DDR4 - 2 TB WD - MSI RTX 3090 Suprim X

This PC has seen several GPU's this year. It began the year with a GTX 1080Ti, but I was constantly maxing it out both in games and when training machine learning models. In April, I upgraded to a Gigabyte RTX 2080Ti OC. The performance gains for gaming wasn't spectacular. But the speed increase for training and running models was incredible. It wasn't long until I was getting sick of the maxing out the 11GB of VRAM. So In September I ordered a MSI RTX 3090 Suprim X, this was the most expensive computer component I has purchased. But the performance increase from it was well worth it. I don't see this PC getting much more upgraded in it for the time being, It meets most of what I need of it, and anything else would be requiring going to a processor with more PCIE Lanes, and would be better off as a server.

Primary Laptop

  • Surface Laptop (1st Gen)
  • Intel i5-7200U
  • 8GB DDR4
  • 250GB SSD

My surface has lasted me ~6 years, but the hinge failed in November. This causes the laptop to be closed or completely open, essentially 180deg. As a crutch until I decide on and order a replacement, I have 3D printed a brace that holds it at a usable angle. I am planning to have this mounted in someway to my desk set up once I get my replacement.

Primary NAS

  • Intel i5-4570
  • 32 GB DDR3
  • 240GB WD Green SSD
  • 240GB Crucial BX500 SSD
  • 2x 4 TB Seagate IronWolf ST4000VN006-3CW104
  • 2x 10 TB Seagate ST10000NM0046

This NAS has been working completely fine and I haven't really had to touch it. But going into 2025, I will be splitting it into 2 systems, One for my family's photos, docs, movies, and one for all my files.

Prebuilt Units

Surface Pro 4
  • Intel i7-6650U
  • 8GB DDR4
  • 250GB SSD

I got several untested Surface Pro 3 and 4's in an auction a while back. I sold all the others off, but this one stayed. Because these come with Windows 10 Pro installed, It runs Hyper V and allows remote desktop. It is mostly used to remote into and check on systems. It is connected to a Surface dock, this just reduces the cabling and clutter I have to sort through.

3x Dell Wyse 5070
  • Intel Pentium Silver J5005
  • 16GB DDR4
  • 250GB SSD

These units surprised me, for the price I don't think they can be beat. I have these thin clients just runing proxmox and in a cluster. But this will be broken up and and they will be implimented elsewhere

Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 Tiny
  • Intel i3-6100T
  • 8GB DDR4
  • 250GB SSD

While I do like these USFF systems, the ethernet port on this one is completely dead. I have a M.2 E-Key to 2.5GBE RJ45 adaptor, but haven't gotten to fitting it.

3x Lenovo ThinkCentre M93P SFF
  • Intel i5-4570
  • 16GB DDR3

I have been using these just for self hosting and to fill gaps when required. I re-cased one for use as a NAS for most of this year, but I am probably going to offload them in 2025.

All the Servers

These systems have been modified and changed around many times this year. But the general systems are as follows

Server 01
  • 2x Intel Xeon E5-2650 V4
  • Gigabyte MD60-SC0
  • 256GB DDR4 ECC
Server 02
  • Intel Xeon E5-2690 V4
  • ASUS X99 Deluxe II
  • 64GB DDR4 ECC
  • Nvidia RTX 5000
Server 03
  • Intel i7-6850K
  • Machinist X99 E5 MR9A
  • 64GB DDR4 ECC
  • 2 x Nvidia Tesla P4
3 x Server 04
  • Intel i7-7700
  • Asus Q170M2
  • 16GB DDR4
Server 04
  • Intel i7-6700
  • Asus P10-S WS
  • 32GB DDR4

These systems need to be consolidated and correctly provisioned The extra GPU's I have are just used Ad-Hoc, but they need to be more available In addition to the above, there are unlisted android tablets, Single Board Computers and laptops. All the rest of components I have need to be logged in 2025

Software

My OS of choise for the NAS' is TrueNAS Scale, which was massively improved this year with the migration to docker for its containers. Most of these systems run Proxmox VE with LXC or VM's, with the exception of any systems that I was wanting to fully utilize the GPUs on. For those I just run Ubuntu because I wanted to avoid the hassle of setting up either GPU passthrough or virtual GPUs.