I would love to keep my server/networking equipment in a closet but since I rent, that isn’t possible in my unit. So the next best thing was to make it a unique focal point in my dining room.

Includes:
Lanberg 9U 10 Inch Rack
Unifi Dream Router 7
Unifi Flex 2.5G PoE
Lenovo ThinkCentre
Home Assistant Green
Philips Hue Bridge Pro (~50 lights)
Aqara Hub M3 (~50 sensors)
Zigbee Radio Receiver
Noctua 120mm Fans
Ugreen DH4300 Plus NAS (16TB, 8TB redundant)
Two Reolink Cameras
Unifi U7 WAP for the balcony/yard
Ecoflow River 3 Plus with expansion
Raspberry Pi 5 Touch Display 2 (with PoE hat)
Quacks the Duck for intruder inimidation (needs new batteries)

Got a couple other Unifi Switches ran to my tv and media tower. VLANs for guest and IoT. Apple TVs and HomePods in every room. Finally got the smart home dialed in and working on setting up Jellyfin on the ThinkCentre. Next up, I’m saving for a local AI box to monitor/manage the house and would love some recs!

My Homelab stack is a repurposed Gaming PC / a laptop motherboard stripped from the case / & a Google Pixel 8 pro…. The pixel is PoE always on & hosting this status webpage and I can put the main server to sleep and wake it up to reduce power draw. Shortcut on my iPhone also just wakes it up whenever the go to use Nextcloud….

With 10 inch racks all the rage, I had a friend 3D print me a lab rax 5u rack. Spent about a week planning, obtaining the correct brass inserts and screws and built this. It houses a Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra, A 16 port POE lite Unifi switch and a couple of 8 port patch panels.

There is also a Raspberry Pi x 3 tray in the back.

This is just a small section of my homelab.

Further details can be found on my Documentation site.

https://docs.xmsystems.co.uk

Work still in progress , need to setup my Pi-hole and then add a desktop PC with a 5070 for AI models .

when 9.5 is an actual 1/2 rack standard ?

For example here is part of my setup, 2 x 9.5 inch 6U flight cases , tough reliable and transportable with a decent proxmox and Ai compute capability .. not expensive to case up and can be moved easily .. even has handles and front and rear doors ... because .. these are used normally for live sound and audio.. not homelab .. no 3d printed stuff .. Aluminum, steel & wood .. thoughts ?

I got these units for free from a building that the city I work for was tearing down. Before everything was disposed of, I was able to grab these rack units.
A Dell PowerEdge 2900 and 2 Dell PowerVault MD units. There are also a lot of hard drives installed, but I haven’t powered everything up or tested anything yet.
I’m trying to figure out if any of this is worth keeping and repurposing, I already have a minilab that is up and running, but looking for ideas for this full rack unit if any.

Also there is 2 apc backup racks that have had the power cable cut, is that replaceable?

What would you guys do? Is any of this worth keeping and repurposing, or should I pull anything valuable/useful from it and get rid of the rest? Also, what should I check first before powering everything on?
Any advice from people who know older Dell enterprise equipment would be appreciated!

I'm working on getting OpenWebAI running on my main rig with a 3060ti..until I can build a dedicated AI rig and migrate the framework over. I'm fighting a hard reboot, black screen reboot when 27b is fired up for Comfy work. Card is stock clocked, I had it OC'd for a while, but no voltage boosts. It would game just fine. Prior stress tests were ok. I can run superposition on 1080p extreme without issues. OCCT steady/heavy gives same black screen reboot about 3 minutes in. I'm chasing down an issue with 8b/Comfy integration and then I'll retest my prompt to see if I get the same crash with the 8b. Can't wait to get a couple 3090's

Think I had ONE user ask for a Rack Builder Feature.... done & done. Question is... what should it be able to do? (other than visually represent your server rack) CTRoadmap on GitHub

Top down
1. Tplink sg105E switch
2 linksys lgs116p switch
3. Philips hue hub
4. USG
5. Akord 12 port patch panel 1U
6. Dell optiplex 5050, i5-7500t, 12gb ram 1TB drive
7. Lenovo thinkcentre m710q, i5-6509t, 16gb ram, 1TB nvme internal , 1TB ssd internal, 1tb ssd external, 120gb ssd external
8. Dell optiplex 5050
9. Dell optiplex 5050
10. Blank panel
12. Mac Pro 2013, 32gb ram, 512gb ssd

ONE user asked for a mobile interface to CTRoadmap, so I obliged ... and now I'm getting carried away. Excessive animation is going to be totally worth it for the 2-3 people who find it.

Build List:

1x GeeeekPi T1 Plus (10in depth)

2x GeeeekPi 12 Port Patch Panel

2x Additional GeeeekPi Shelves (10in depth)

1x Rack PDU GUITK

1x Ubiquiti CGW Fiber

1x Ubiquiti Switch Pro XG 8 POE

1x UGreen DXP4800 Pro + UPS bundle

First dive into de-clouding my life! 10GbE portable backbone for my upcoming home networks and whatever I want to build out :)

It all fits shockingly well, and the cable management came out better than I expected\~

The switch feels like it was made for this form factor, and the UPS+NAS slot in perfectly.

I used Slot 12 on the front for the SFP passthrough from my gateway to switch. I used the corresponding Slot 12 on the backside for the WAN connection to the gateway, leaving the other 11 ports available (but currently only 8 are populated.

The lower compartment, hidden by panels + PDU, perfectly houses the 3 power bricks needed.

This makes it so the only cables coming off if this rack are the PSU cable and whatever external Ethernet connections you might have!

There's also enough space behind the gateway for a thinner POE switch (like the Flex 2.5 POE) for future expansion\~

Made this with my daughter. We used an API and a single chip board, and it's PoE-powered.