Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025 - Home Lab Pics

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Alonzo Smith — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:52:06 +0000

@brandon-lee Beelink SER9 Max winner, can't believe it, thanks Brandon!

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Alonzo Smith — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 18:08:43 +0000

@brandon-lee Thank you

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Brandon Lee — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:16:31 +0000

@alonzosmith You won the Beelink SER9 Max! Congrats! Can you sign up on my discord server and send me a message? https://discord.gg/Zb46NV6mB3

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

gregtripp — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:16:17 +0000

Hi,

I made some real improvements to my home network and put my toe into the homelab world in 2025

Beginning of 2025 Hardware setup:

- Netgear AX8 RAX70 Router, providing Internet access and serving the whole home and all devices
- Synology DS1019+ NAS, plex and other apps
- HDHomerun TV Tuner
- Google Chromecasts, including TV streamer and audio only
- Logitech Harmony Hub
- Smart Lights and switches
- Netgear R7000 Router serving as a print server and running ddwrt in bridged mode
- Mobile devices
- desktop and laptop computers

2025 Problem(s) to solve:
- Wireless router experiencing performance issues, requiring restarts. Most likely too many devices
- All traffic on single network, including IOT and work devices
- Little network management capability
- Router, switches, NAS, and other gear are not in an appropropriate space not organized.
- No UPS capability

2025 Hardware and Software Upgrades made:

- Protectli VP2420 with opensense router
- Microtik CRS310-8G+2S+IN managed switch
- Netgear Router repurposed as an Access
- Trendnet TEG-S380 8 port 2.5 gb unmanaged switch
- Point to support network clients
- Deployed used Linksys router running openwrt as access point for IOT devices
- Repurposed desktop computer to run proxmox and hosts home assistant, bezel, and Uptime Kuma, as well as a Windows virtual machine
- Intel I7-6700, 8GB
- Cyberpower CP1500PFCLCDa Battery Backup with Sine Wave Output

2025 Additional Capabilities Added
- Network Management
- VLANs for home, work, and IOT networks
- Improved Firewall
- Reliable wired and wireless routing
- 2.5GB wired network
- NAS auto-shutdown during power outages

My current setup:

898 899

2026 Problems to Solve
- Current platform has little expandablity
- cannot run additional VMs concurrently
- Router, switches, NAS, and other gear are not in an appropriate space and not well organized.

2026 Hardware and Software Upgrades Planned:
- Obtain new server hardware for proxmox host
- 64B or greater RAM
- newer gen processor
- Add a new mini PC or SFF PC to desktop setup
- Add a desktop KVM with dual monitor support up to 3840x2160/60hz
- Add two 10GB SFP transceiver modules to the Mikrotik switch
- Add a 10GB unmanaged switch

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Joe Machynia — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 07:16:35 +0000

I've been working on this for a few years.

On the right is the super Micro server running proxmox and truenas Scale. It's older and was my first used buy into the homelab world. It was built as a CAD machine 5-6 years ago, so it hasn't aged well. Older Intel Xeon chip 6c/12t, 64gb emmc ddr4 ram, I've added dual 10gbe nic, 4x1tb nvme's and a HBA. It has space for 8 HDD's and was the big selling point.

Middle is just an old sff that I use to backup my main truenas pool. It did have Home Assistant running on it, until I got the mini pc.

That's my xmas present to myself. It has an i7 13th gen cpu, 32gb ddr5 ram, dual m.2 slots (and the coral dual tpu I have). It is going to be my main machine for home assistant, Immich, Frigate and Ollama AI. I'll have Jellyfin on there too, but we dont use it that much, so it shouldn't stress it too much.

My plans for 2026, simple, get another bada** mini-pc that I can use as a dedicated AI server. Host Ollama, n8n, whisper, and some other AI inspired services. This would let me create a powerful, local voice assistant for home assistant.

The server rack has a UDM Pro SE and a used USG 48-Port Unifi switch. There's also a 3rd party, used, POE switch I have just to run my cameras (12).

I was looking for a second mini-pc and the one in your giveaway is on my short list! I've never tried AMD and was scared to pull the trigger. I think this would be a BEAST running a large parameter LLM that would give me the ultimate voice assistant/chatbot.

Keep making these great videos and I'll keep watching!

Happy New Year!!

897 896 895

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Russell Nitting — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:48:37 +0000

894

My Current 2025 Setup:

Hardware

2 × HP EliteDesk 800 G4 DM (35W i5-8500T, 64 GB RAM each)
1 × Older Intel NUC (16 GB RAM)
1 × PiKVM
1 × Synology NAS (36 TB usable)
Ubiquiti UDR and APs

Software

Proxmox runs on both HP nodes. One is dedicated to containers and a few VMs. The second I use for nested VMware ESXi — perfect for testing upgrades, scripts, and new settings.

The older NUC is running Fedora as my daily desktop/workstation for lab work.

Plans for 2026

Try out TrueNAS and Unraid installs to compare them.
Much-needed cable management upgrades throughout the house, plus some new runs.

Happy New Year! Always enjoy your videos — thanks and keep up the great work!

-Russ

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Jamie English — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:51:58 +0000

@brandon-lee fingers crossed!! Good luck, everyone!

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Nicholas R — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:35:16 +0000

@brandon-lee someone is going to have a great start to their new year! Best of luck everyone!

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Andrew M — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:41:12 +0000

@drewcrawford if nothing else Dell servers look really cool!

RE: Best Home Lab Server Pics and gear in 2025

Andrew M — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:39:29 +0000

I began my enterprise I.T. career in 1998, but took an 8ish year hiatus to do electrical engineering/wiring design in the autonomous world beginning in 2016. In October of 2024 I was unceremoniously laid-off from Daimler Trucks North America because they decided they no longer wanted remote employees and I found myself at a crossroads. I decided to re-enter the I.T. game, but had enough of a lapse that I needed to really put effort into re-learning a lot of stuff. The problem was I had to take a massive paycut to get employment again which meant I had very little funds to put into my home lab. What you see is 12 months of scraping pennies together, finding deals on used stuff, and enlisting the help of friends to be able to make happen.

As of today, my lab consists of:

Bare Metal:

Primary ESXi Server:

HP Proliant DL360 G9
- 2 Xeon( CPU E5-2660 v3 @ 2.60GHz - 10 cores each
- 192GB RAM
- 6x 600GB 10K SAS in RAID5 - 3TB total
- Running VMware ESXI8 and VSphere

Secondary ESXi Server - Stores all replicas from primary ESXi server

Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro
- i5-6500T @ 2.5GHz
- 32GB RAM
- 120GB SATA SSD
- 1TB NVMe SSD
- Running VMware ESXI8

Backup Server

OptiPlex 3040 Micro
- i5-6500T @ 2.5GHz
- 8GB RAM
- 250GB SATA SSD
- External 4GB USB RAID1 drive
- Running Windows 11 Pro and Veeam Community Edition

Proxmox Cluster

PVE1
- DellOptiplex 3040 Micro w/7040 mobo
- i5-6500T @ 2.5GHz
- 16GB RAM
- 128GB NVMe SSD system
- 1TB SATA SSD
- Running Proxmox VE 9.1.2
PVE 2
- DellOptiplex 3040 Micro w/7040 mobo
- i5-6500T @ 2.5GHz
- 16GB RAM
- 128GB NVMe SSD system
- 1TB SATA SSD
- Running Proxmox VE 9.1.2
PVE Backup
- DellOptiplex 3040 Micro w/7040 mobo
- i5-6500T @ 2.5GHz
- 16GB RAM
- 128GB NVMe SSD system
- 1TB SATA SSD
- Running Proxmox Backup Server 4.1.0

Virtual Devices/Services

VMware Virtual Machines
- Windows 2019 Server AD Controller/DNS/DHCP
- Unifi 10.0 Controller running on Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS
- Windows 2025 Server File and Print Server
- Vsphere Appliance
- Kali 2025
- CheckMK running on Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS
Proxmox LXCs
- Ngnix Proxy Manager
- Wazuh XDR/SIEM
- Technitium DNS (Not yet in service)
- Adguard (Running for my IoT VLAN)
- Homepage Dashboard
Virtual Machines
- Home Assistant

Other Devices:

Lenovo IdeaPad 3
- Kali 2025 setup for pen-testing
4TB RAID1 NAS
- 1TB allocated to Proxmox Backup Server
- 1TB allocated to Proxmox VE
- 2TB allocated to general file storage

Network:

Hardware
- Unifi UXG-MAX Gateway
- Unifi US 8 PoE Switch
- Unifi USW Lite 8 PoE Switch
- Unifi USW 24 Switch
- Unifi AP AC Pro x2
- Unifi AP AC LR
- Unifi AP U6+
Topology
- 3 wireless networks
- 4 VLANs
- Isolated IoT and Guest networks
- Separate management VLAN

For 2026 I am hoping to do the following:

Build a media server and play around with some of that stuff
Expand the Proxmox VE cluster

I would also LOVE to add another Proliant DL360 to the environment if I can figure out where to put it. Unfortunately my house doesn't lend itself to "home lab" setups. The DL360 I have currently is hanging on a wall in a closet since it was the only good place for it. I don't think I could fit 2 in the same spot.

849 851 850

I *may* have just scored another DL360 to add to the lab. Will know more later this week. Fingers crossed!