Hey everyone, Brandon here. I thought it would be fun to kick off something new for the community as we wrap up 2025 and head into another year of home lab madness.

It has been an absolutely wild year for home lab gear. Between the surge of Mini PCs, ARM boxes showing up in places none of us expected, NVMe hoarding, GPU passthrough on every node we can cram one into, and the never ending Proxmox vs ESXi vs everything else debates, we have all been building, tearing down, rebuilding, and optimizing our labs nonstop.

So let’s see what you’ve been up to.

This new topic is your place to show off your Best Home Lab Server Pics and Gear in 2025. Whether your setup is a full server rack humming in the corner, a stack of Minisforum boxes with Ceph, a DR cluster stretched between rooms, a pile of Raspberry Pis running Kubernetes, a cable-management masterpiece, or the most chaotic spaghetti rack ever built, we want to see it.

Share:
• What your setup looks like now
• What you added or removed in 2025
• Any upgrades you’re planning going into 2026
• A short description of your design, your goals, or the story behind your home lab
• Bonus points for photos of before and after evolution shots

Giving away this mini PC! - $799 value!

I just finished reviewing the new Beelink SER9 Max and now I’m giving the review unit away to the community! (US domestic shipping only) The SER9 Max I tested comes with 32 GB of DDR5 memory, a fast 1 TB NVMe drive, and built in 10 gig networking, so it is a great little home lab box.

If you want to check out the full review, you can read it here:
https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/12/beelink-ser9-max-review-major-platform-upgrades-and-real-10-gig-networking/

This community is at its best when we all learn from each other’s builds. Half the time inspiration comes from seeing someone else’s approach to storage, airflow, VLAN design, clustering, or even how they zip-tie cables. So jump in and start posting your pictures. Comment on other builds. Ask questions. Steal ideas. Improve your own setup.

And… I’ll just say this…
It might be worth posting your gear photos sooner rather than later. I’m working on something fun that will drop soon, and let’s just say someone who posts in this topic may end up getting something cool for their 2026 home lab plans. More on that later.

Can’t wait to see your setups! Let’s make this the biggest and most inspiring gear thread on the forum this year.

- Brandon

Here is my home lab setup starting with first picture and the rack on the left from top to bottom:

Server Monitor

Cat 6a patch panel

UniFi Enterprise 24 POE

UniFi USW 10Gbe Aggregation

Another Cat 6a patch panel

UniFi UDM SE Gateway/Router with two network WANs connected

UniFi NVR

Rack Temperature Monitor controlling Rack Fans

Synology DS923+

Aris Cable Modem Wan 2

ATT Fiber Modem Wan 1

2U Home built server running Windows 10 Hyper-V with TrueNAS and Ubuntu Server as VMs. Ubuntu Server runs PiHole backup.

CyberPower UPS

First picture rack on right:

Another CAT 6a patch Panel

UniFi USW ProMax 16

Dell PowerEdge R720XD running ProxMox. My ProxMox server is running VMs and Containers for:

Home Assistant

UpTime Kuma

Docker

Ubuntu Server running main PiHole wth Keepalived

Windows 11

ProxMox Backup Server

A Virtual Synolgy NAS

Second thru 3rd pictures showing rack closeups:

Last picture shows two Raspberry Pi5s running Pi Desktop and Ubuntu Desktop respectively

 The overall setup runs my home network with hardwired drops in most rooms and 4 UnFI APs for my wireless network. I have Vlans setup for four different types of network traffic.

• Mini PC can only be shipped to a winner in the U.S. and Canada due to shipping costs
• You can post multiple pics to a single forum post and also comment on others posts, but the winner of the give away must post pictures and specs of his or her home lab

The mini PC (It runs VMware ESXi and Proxmox!!!)

Read my review here: Beelink Sei14 Mini PC Review as a Home Lab Server with Intel Arc - Virtualization Howto

• Beelink SEi14 - Beelink SEi14 Intel Core Ultra 5 125H Mini PC 14C/18T Frequency up to (bee-link.com)
• 12th Generation Intel Core Ultra 5 125H Meteor Lake processor with base clock at 3.0 GHz and turbo up to 4.5 GHz.
• 14 cores and 18threads
• 18 MB of smart cache
• Intel Arc Graphics 2.2 GHz (7 cores of graphics processing power)
• 4k UHD with support for (3) monitors
• Maximum of 96 GB of DDR5 memory
• (2) M.2 slots with a max of 8TB of NVMe storage at max 4 TB per slot (this will be great for more storage, or using the other M.2 slot for NVMe memory tiering in VMware ESXi)
• Lots of connectivity options, including:
  • USB-C 10Gbps, USB 3.2 10Gbps x2, USB 2.0 480Mbps x2, RJ45 2.5GbE
    Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps/TBT4/PD/DP1.4)x1, DP1.4a (4K144Hz)x1, HDMIx1
    Audio jack
    
    

I've toyed around with Virtual Box on my Linux rig for some time but I don't like to "mess around" with my main Pop_os machine. I stumbled onto some videos about Proxmox and TrueNAS and thought I could do that too. Time to resurrect the clunker!

I blew the dust out of it and got it running again. Replaced the ram with 32GB DDR3 from the old parts bin. Swapped in an SSD boot drive, installed Proxmox, spun up some VM's, and started learning new tricks. I recently replaced the CPU with a core i7 from the same gen as a drop-in upgrade. Whoo! more power!

I wanted a NAS but could not justify the budget. This project started ugly. I was using  some 3 old 2.5" and one 3.5" drives as a raid array flopping around, literally, inside the HP case. This week I made two more upgrades. I replaced the 3.5" drive with a shinny new 2.5" WD Blue that matched one of the other 2.5's I was using. I also purchased a new drive cage and installed 4, 1TB - 2.5" sata drives in a raidz2 ZFS pool for a True. The best part of this cage? It fits into a 5 1/4" drive bay. Cage is an Icy Dock ExpressCage MB324SP-B. It isn't fast but I have 1.8TB of shared file space on my network now. Now I need to save up for some SSD's to replace the spinning rust.

Stable since the beginning of the year, I proudly present my upscaled (and downscaled) mini datacenter.

Upscaled with the addition of a leased Dell PowerEdge R740 and another PowerEdge R750. Downscaled as the OptiPlex minitowers I had have been sold off. The PowerEdge R710 was long ago sold. The R720, then the T620, sold off. Patch panels and 6" multicolored network patch cables removed, and all Ethernet cables swapped out for Monoprice SlimRun Ethernet cables.

Equipment Details

On top of the rack:

• Synology DS3615xs NAS connected via 25G fibre Ethernet, Linksys AC5400 Tri-Band Wireless Router. Mostly obscured: Arris TG1672G cable modem.

In the rack, from top to bottom:

• Sophos XG-125 firewall

• Ubiquiti Pro Aggregation switch (1G/10G/25G)

• Brush panel

• Shelf containing 4 x HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Core i7 10G Ethernet (these constitute an 8.0U1 ESA vSAN cluster), HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Core i7, HP OptiPlex 5070m Micro Core i7, HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Core i7 (these three systems make up a "remote" vSphere cluster, running ESXi 8.0U1). The Rack Solutions shelf slides out and contains the 7 power bricks for these units along with four Thunderbolt-to-10G Ethernet adapters for the vSAN cluster nodes.

• Synology RS1619xs+ NAS with RX1217 expansion unit (16 bays total), connected via 25G fibre Ethernet

• Dell EMC PowerEdge R740, Dual Silver Cascade Lake, 384GB RAM, BOSS, all solid state storage, 25G fibre Ethernet

• Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 Dual Gold Ice Lake, 512GB RAM, BOSS-S2, all solid state storage (including U.2 NVMe RAID), 25G fibre Ethernet

• Digital Loggers Universal Voltage Datacenter Smart Web-controlled PDU (not currently in use)

• 2 x CyberPower CPS1215RM Basic PDU

• 2 x CyberPower OR1500LCDRM1U 1500VA UPS

There's 10G connectivity to a couple of desktop machines and 25G connectivity between the two NASes and two PowerEdge servers. Compute and storage are separate, with PowerEdge local storage mostly unused. The environment is very stable, implemented for simplicity and ease of support. There's compute and storage capacity to deploy just about anything I might want to deploy. All the mini systems are manageable to some extent using vPro.

The two PowerEdge servers are clustered in vCenter, which presents them both to VMs as Cascade Lake machines using EVC, enabling vMotion between them. The R750 is powered off most of the time, saving power. (iDRAC alone uses 19 watts.) The machine can be powered on from vCenter or iDRAC.

Recently, I've switched from using the Digital Loggers smart PDU to Govee smart outlets that are controllable by phone app and voice/Alexa. One outlet with a 1-to-5 power cord connects the four vSAN cluster nodes and another connects the three ESXi "remote" cluster nodes.

"Alexa. Turn on vSAN."

"Alexa. Turn on remote cluster."

Two more smart outlets turn on the left and right power supplies for the PowerEdge R750 that's infrequently used.

"Alexa. Turn on Dell Left. Alexa. Turn on Dell Right."

Total storage here is about 6/10 petabyte.

There are a couple of additional NASes for, mostly, onsite media backup.

Okay, that's a fair bit of equipment. So what's running on it?

Software and Systems

Well, basically most of what we have running at the office, and what I support in my job, is running at home. There's a full Windows domain, including two domain controllers, two DNS servers and two DHCP servers.

This runs under a full vSphere environment: ESXi 8.0U2, linked vCenter Servers, vSphere Replication. SRM. Also, vSAN (ESA), some of the vRealize (now Aria) suite, including vRealize Operations Managment (vROps) and Log Insight. And... Horizon: Three Horizon pods, two of which are in a Cloud Pod federation, and one of which sits on vSAN. DEM and App Volumes also run on top of Horizon. I have a pair of Unified Access Gateways which allow outside access from any device to Windows 10 or Windows 11 desktops. Also running: Runecast for compliance, Veeam for backup, and CheckMK for monitoring.

Future plans include replacing the Sophos XG-125 firewall with a Protectli 4-port Vault running Sophos XG Home. This will unlock all the features of the Sophos software without incurring the $500+ annual software and support fee. I'm also planning to implement a load balancer ahead of two pairs of Horizon connection servers.

What else? There's a fairly large Plex server running on the DS3615xs. There's also a Docker container running on that NAS that hosts Tautulli for Plex statistics. There are two Ubuntu Server Docker host VMs in the environment (test and production), but the only things running on them right now are Portainer and Dashy. I lean more toward implementing things as virtual machines rather than containers. I have a couple of decades worth of bias on this.

So that's it. My little data center in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

I'd love to entertain any questions. Hit me up.