#selfhosting is a beautiful thing because of the one and only reason: when I decide, I can just turn off that old laptop(s) that is(are) cosplaying servers and I’m gone from the internet. Ok, probably my content will remain on Internet Archive. Scrapers also scraped my content so… my dissapearance is probably just an illusion, but anyway.
To start with, most of the time I don’t know what TH I’m doing. I’m pretty bad with Linux and networking, but miraculusly, most of the things just work.
If I have problems with my baby virtual machines, I just copy some bash commands from internet strangers and, things mostly start working.
Let’s start with the hardware. All laptops I bought from 2009 – now are repurposed as servers. Pssst, they don’t know they aren’t supposed to act like servers so don’t tell them.
The oldest grandpa ‘server’ is from 2009, 2 core HP 550 laptop with a broken keyboard running Linux Mint (Xfce) with 4 GB RAM. It runs Pihole in Docker. Last year I replaced it’s battery and it’s stable like a rock. Uptime currently shows 257 days. (We have power outages almost every day).
The next ‘server’ is a 2013 HP laptop, Pavilion DV6, 4 core I3, 6 GB RAM. It has a broken internal fan and bad battery, that holds charge only for 3 minutes. I’ve mounted 2 external fans on the back of the case to cool it, because I don’t feel dissasembling it right now. It also runs well, except when the power is out. It can’t restart itself. There is no ‘restore on power loss’ option in its bios. It’s fans (repurposed from 20yr old desktops) are loud as hell so it resides in the workshop.
It runs Proxmox with some VMs(virtual machines) and LXCs (linux containers).
VMs:
- Octoprint
- Warrior
LXCs (most from Ubuntu server template):
- Nginx (reverse proxy and static web page server)
- WordPress (from TurnKey WP template)
- Calckey
- WatchYourLAN
- Moodle
- some other testing lxcs like boinc, mysql
The next ‘server’ is 2013 Asus Zenbook Ux31 with Intel I5, 4 GB RAM that runs Linux Mint that runs VirtualBox that runs Home Assistant OS. It’s also pretty stable, except it also can’t restore after a power loss.
And there is a Synology Diskstation that I use for backups. It’s 10 years old. It has 2 disks (RAID), 1.5 TB. One disk (WD) is still the original, 10 years old, still no S.M.A.R.T. errors. I had to replace one disk (replaced it with Toshiba) few years ago, but it was easy, I just swapped disks and RAID rebuilt itself.
I ran out of space recently, so I attached USB 2-drive bay (a ‘toaster’) to it and re-purposed old 2.5” HDDs from laptops to hold not important stuff like movies. When I replaced HDDs with SSDs in my old laptops I didn’t have a heart to throw the HDDs away. Now they have a second life.
See, my homelab is disorganised mess. I use everything I could get my hands on and that was not too difficult to configure. Everything started as a test and temporary solution.
Energy efficiency? Not stellar. The consumption of each laptop is 20-50W.
I also know I shouldn’t disclose the configuration of my homelab, it’s an attack vector. Eh, YOLO.
Probably I will consolidate everything one day to a single, energy efficient Proxmox server, NUC or similar. Until then, duct tape and sticks should hold.
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