If there were an introduction video for the "So you wanna homelab" community, this would be in the running. Well said, well phrased.

My one bit of advice for anyone really wanting to get into servers, start with an old thinkpad. Built in battery backup, reliable hardware, no need to hook up an additional monitor or keyboard if you have issues remoting in because you're learning and wrecked your SSH config. I had an old 2016 thinkpad running Proxmox for almost a year straight with no downtime that I didn't plan.

Great intro 😊

I had a friend suddenly get into this area of computing. I showed him a PiZero W2 taped a wall running Pihole. *Behold a server! *

Thanks for the reminder to rewatch The Matrix. Its always nice to see someone with a professional background in server installations and IT talk about the differences in the needs and best practices of business as opposed to the needs and recommendations for those setting up their first 100% totally legal content distribution and acquisition box.

DUDE, that was SO refreshing! I don't think there are very many 'home'-server jockeys, that hasn't been - or still is - very much affected by the tacit rules of server'ism! Thank You for shooting that mental construction down! I JUST had my first real brandspanking relatively highspec'ed new PC, and finally - after 12 years, relegate my server-purpose-bought i3-3220 to server-duties. Yes, when i bought it, it was far more powerful than my intel dualcore cpu, so it ended up as my dailydriver/gaming PC. Such is PC-life! Yes, literally, Personal Computing life! now i can play with so much more, using proxmox, i'm having a lot of fun exploring server-functionalities Also, my RPi 4 with a REALTEK-based (gosh!) USB3-to-Ethernet dongle works PERFECTLY as a gigabit router! its cheap, its fun, and i made it fit the bill! FUN TIMES!

My current vm server is an older Dell optiplex system. Works great. I used an ancient PC as my router for years too.

Watching this while updating to the latest TrueNAS Scale stable on my media server I built in an Antec Fusion case I bought from a colleague in my university in Denmark 12 years ago for 100 DKK, rocking an Asus CS-B H87 board, an i7-4790, 16GB Corsair XMS DDR3, a hack-and-saw 4 bay HDD caddy that fits perfectly in the 5.25 inch bay, with 4 2TB HDDs, all parts picked up from ebay/marketplace and working non-stop for the past 10 years, makes me say cheers to you, my good sir! 🍻

Three things: 1) "What makes a server? You do. Well, technically, the software that you choose to run." Absolutely spot on. I used to run Solaris 9 on a Pentium MMX 166. It was so slow that my roommate and I nicknamed it "the shitbox". But it ran. It wasn't fast by any stretch of the imagination, even in 2000, but it ran. 2) re: (paraphrased) do you need server-grade hardware to run a server? That REALLY depends on what you're doing. My dual Xeon 36-bay server right now has 7 or 8 containers, and about 10 VMs running on it, simultaneously, and manages a native total storage capacity of somewhere around 220 TB, with 256 GB of RAM. Even then, there are days and times when the system still struggles a little bit, despite the load average being in the ~20s usually. Thus, when you have enough stuff going on/that you're trying to fun, especially simultaneously, the more powerful your server starts needing to be (if you want to consolidate it all down to run system) vs. having a whole PILE of systems, each running their own portion of the sum total of everything you want to run.| (There are three VMs that I had to split off from the server because it was running into thread contention issues with everything else that's running on the server.) 3) My homelab went from 5 servers down to 1, then back up to 2 (because of thread contention/performance issues), and then now my mini PC has also assumed the responsibility of one of the VMs that was on the consolidated server, and then my other mini PC, now also runs Proxmox inside VirtualBox, so that it can run game servers. A lot of people will just keep expanding, expanding, expanding. I went the opposite route via a massive consolidation project at the beginning of this year.

I love the format and opinion basis of this. One of your best videos in recent times and even though you didn't directly talk about the Zima blade much......I have far better context about it than any other review. Cheers, JZJ with a xul hazy ipa

This video needs to be pinned on your homepage for people new to the channel. Fantastic overview!

Dude, this was the best intro you have ever done. Solid job, love what you do.

My first server was a truenas core fileservwr, built in an ancient, flimsy case, with a propriotary hp board off ebay to fit my i5 4440. With 2 mismatched 2tb hdds, used 128gb ssd as slog, and 2 flash drives for the os, it ran for nearly a year straight before i did a case swap. Nearly 3 years later, those same drives and motherboard are going strong! Any hunk of junk can be a server!

These honestly look amazing, I might get myself a couple. For travel. This company is mental. Love em. I've seen so many cool builds with their stuff.

Yes, my home network doesn't generate enough traffic to overwhelm a Realtek NIC, but that didn't stop opnsense randomly disconnecting the internet, requiring a reboot. Swapping it out for a dual port intel NIC completely cured the problem in my case.

Spot on Jeff, I had my server rig in a pc tower case for the last 8 years and it was just a desktop pc hardware, running Windows server, now Linux. I've just moved it to a 5u rack unit, only to better hold all the disks. It all comes down to what you can afford, willing to spend.

this is the best explanation of the homelab experience I've ever seen!! Well done!!

This was excellent content. I think you are at your best making hardware do what it was never meant to OR to stretch the limits of what we think of when we say "gaming" "server" "client" etc. Making a server part into a workstation, a workstation into a desktop, a desktop into a mobile/sff platform, and a mobile platform into a server... and many more combinations.

Hi Jeff! It's always good to remind the people that there are doors to open! And these days it's so easy. Even if you have a few years or bit more older pc, with that and the help of a virtualization software (virtual box, hyper-v the easy to install ones), you can start that journey already. Another pc and 2 hard drives are a blessing. Buying a 2 port network card? Already on the road to become someone on the IT field. An extra switch and you already doing some interesting home lab work, which is usable in the real world. So, the one with many network ports is capable to achieve the best part of all these, the communication of those devices and services. Heck, maybe even mimic the whole internet in a small size. Can I? What a challenge. I might even want to see a video about it. How to create a mini internet at home? A guide for 2 or 4 port network card homelabbers. Haha. Or how many I would need? Hence, your video was spot on.

This was nice to see. After watching your videos for a while (plus a few other "home lab" channels), I got the idea that I wanted to get a server to play with. But then I'd need somewhere to put it (I don't have a garage, and it gets pretty cold and wet in the winter here in Canada) where the noise won't drive everyone nuts. Plus the money to buy the server, the rack, the network switch, the.... It took me far too long to remember that I had an old Sandybridge i3 desktop that still works but wasn't being used. Instead of spending hundreds or thousands (shipping to Canada can be terrible) to pick up a server, only to discover that I actually have no need or interest in it.... I spent about $100 to upgrade the RAM to 32 GB (the max the board/CPU supports), and installed Proxmox. After a few days of having fun, I spent another $75 to upgrade the spinning boot drive to an SSD. The server isn't very busy, so the i3 is serving its purpose. My dedicated NAS device started failing (one of its SATA ports isn't recognized anymore, so it's always running in degraded mode), so I picked up four new, larger, drives and put them in the server and installed TrueNAS. Now I know it's fun, but I don't have a lot of free time to play with it. So I'd love to get or build a second, faster, server ... but what I have is filling my needs for now, so I can put it off....

Fantastic premise for a video! Also that was an awesome intro!

That intro!....So good, thanks for making me smile.

Hi Jeff! Delightful as always :-). I like to explain it as "A server is something that provides a service." I love that you called out that something can be a client and a server at the same time.

One of the good explanations about server.....!!!

That opening statement gets me every time.

i run a dell optiplex 7060 at work as an imaging server for labs and classrooms. this video was very refreshing to hear!

I always recommend people ask why something is recommended, then after understanding the principle, they decide if something applies to them. I say collect principles and use cases and the how and when they apply. After deconstructing the logic and gathering nuance, people are more equipped to meet their exact needs.

Pre-ordered mine two weeks ago and can't wait. Probably going to use is as a host for my business but we will see.

@CraftComputing Jeff, the Matrix themed intro was excellent! Well done! EDIT: This video is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to your channel. This was very well thought out, cuts right to the bone of the subject and spells things out for everyone to understand. Again, very well done!!

YES. Absolutely Jeff, very well said, and a very tight video. This may, in fact, be the best concept->execution you've ever done. I am wondering if you know what CPU's are actually on these zima blades. The celeron ARC page is.... a cluster, and I'd really like to see if one of these would happily replace the compaq laptop that's currently running my homelab's test docker instance, which I can't do until I can see what CPU power is actually available, because these look to fit the bill. Oh, also, I'd love to see your take on a proxmox cluster built out of used thin clients, but, wait a few months until I'm done building mine so prices don't go up on ebay lol

I tossed together a server running Debian and Docker to host Plex, Web services, PiHole, and a few other things on an Odroid H3+ with two 6TB hard drives to hold content. The H3+ uses an N6005 Pentium process. This thing has been humming along serving my home needs just fine for almost a year now. I totally agree that it just have to be high-end if it serves your needs!

Small correction to an otherwise awesome video: a router does not need 2 physical ports. It is certainly ideal to have more than one, but a single device (or even VM) can run as a "Router on a stick." Note that there are configuration and performance considerations when sharing a single physical link, but a router sends packets from one network to another, and that *can* be done over a single connection for inter-vlan routing.

Best intro ever. But now I have to watch the series again

I SO love this video! Some of us old guys made really nice servers on 50Mhz (SPARCclassic). I so aggree with your 'ignore the rules' statement. Today people are selling all their 5 year old Mac's because they cannot be upgraded to Sonoma (macOS 14). And one with broken screen, missing 3 keycaps and almost dead battery is a really cheap and good server for many things - and it saves the environment for all this electronic waste. One important thing - we must all stand together and make ECC ram 100% standard everywhere! Without ECC things most often works just fine... but you cannot be sure. Often you will not get errors, just crashes or corrupted files. After mainframes started to use ECC everything changed! Like ethernet we can use the worst cables - on data corruption we just send again. But integrety checks makes you KNOW it is wrong. Without ECC you do not know if it is good or bad. It makes data rod. We so need SBC's with ECC. Thanks again Jeff - SUPER statement! Cheers!

Best advice to start out and geek out

I love the message at the end! Excellent video!

HS, this is a cool intro.

...also, "LOL, this fan is dead" had me in stitches... :-)

That was an epic speech I didn't know I needed to hear.

That Morpheus intro, so good!

Thanks more making this! I'm a DC Admin and have a homelab with noctua fans. Reddit loves to complain about it not having enough cooling/pressure. They're very wrong.

Amen brother! I've been running my lab on old gaming desktops that I replaced with newer ones over the years. Chuck in an SSD, load up Debian, and away we go!

I love the matrix theme. Really pushing my want to make a server here. Cheers to a video of breaking rules to thinking about networking.

There is one exception: For "media server", you should use a tiger-lake - based CPU as it's QuickSync even allows hardware-decoding of AV1 and EVERY other codecs. So you can have an AV1 media hw-decoded and re-encoded to h264 (hw) to stream to your device...

LOL Loved the "so you can start drinking like a pro"

*Technically* a router can also work with only 1 network interface. It could route data between two subnets on the same physical connection, or (as it's the case in my home network) data between 2 vlans. Latter of course needing a vlan capable switch to seperate the nets. In my setup I use a virtual instance of opnsense running on proxmox. I don't use seperate ethernet ports for wan and lan, because the vm can migrate between a low power celeron itx machine and a more capable 4th gen i7 box. The celeron is not quite fast enough to give me the full 1gbit downstream my internet connection can offer, but it only uses around 10 watts or so. That's fine over night. The i7 uses 50-80 watts but can give me the full speed (also using a 10gig nic). By not using 2 ports on each host and instead relying on vlans for wan and lan I can significantly reduce cable clutter and don't need a switch for each "side". Thanks @CraftComputing for providing the initial knowledge about proxmox and truenas that now shape my home network / lab :-)

My first home server was literally a Pi with a USB hard drive. Loved it.

AWESOME INTRO!!!!!

I had seen another KZfaqr plug this brand in a sponsor spot. Was very curious how the product works, and not 48 hours later you'll be answering that question for me. Thanks! Maybe it'll be replacing my devil's canyon i5 "server" platform in the name of power savings.

Yeah, I have been using Raspberry Pi's as servers. They are cheap and great to tinker with. Raspberry Pi's are cheap and great to learn on for both adults and kids. Many ways to learn about servers and client stuff as well as software development.

A+ content. I agree with some of the other comments. Well organized.

My first dedicated server machine was an old 386DX ex-desktop machine that work was disposing of. Add Linux and - presto! - file server. Add a cheap modem and some software tweaks and it's also a dial-up router. Add a tiny 8 port switch and I have a full network with internet access from bits in the late 1990's. Much fun was had.

Brilliant video and just to show exactly what you are saying is so true, my current server I bought as a 'was working when stored but unknown now, barebones'. I got it for around £60... and it's a bargain, but also not the spec of a traditional server. It's a Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.3ghz running on a Gigabyte Z87X-OC, GeForce GTX 650 Graphics (which didn't come with it) and 32gb Ram with a AIO cooler and a quality (Corsair I think off hand) gaming case with 5 drives. i.e. largely what was when new a high end gaming rig. I run Linux Mint with mergerfs to combine the partitions into one, snapraid for an element of redundancy and owncloud as I prefer hosting my own 'cloud' service due to the amount of data I store. Overall works really nicely, I like snapraid because the only stipulation drive wise is that the parity partitions(s) are at least the same size as the largest partition. It doesn't work automatically though so you need to manually sync or use a scheduler, but for a home server that's a non-issue. Mergerfs is simple and very useful, and owncloud while not perfect does the job fine.

Great video (and intro) Jeff!💓

Back when I started in computing the average server I worked on was an ibm 5170 (Xenix or network 286)and the average client was a IBM 5160 (dos) the software made the difference. Great intro btw

Back in the day, more than a decade ago, I got a Lenovo laptop which was later recalled for a faulty motherboard replacement, but I completely missed the recall. As a result of that, the laptop has been self-rebooting at random, sometimes multiple times per day, sometimes once every couple of days. I used it as it was for a few years, and although it was very annoying, it got the job done anyway. I finally retired it recently into being a tiny TrueNas with 3 external 1 TB USB hard drives, also from about 12 years ago, in 2+1 RAID configuration. I am now using it for downloading Linux ISOs and it's working fine, so far. It still sometimes reboots itself multiple times per day, but since it's not my main TrueNas, it's not a big deal.

Louder for the people in the back. This is excellent.

Great video! I loved how you made the Matrix style intro!

Huge fan of the Matrix theme on this video. Also, 100% legit advice here. As someone who has a Manjaro daily driver on a Radxa Rock 5b, NAS running on a X99 Aliexpress special with dual Xeon E5-2630L v4 (because 55W, lol) and OPNSense firewall/router on an HP mini PC... I pretty much can't help but break the PC building "rules". When it comes to computers these days... There is no spoon.

👍 thumbs up for the play boy cup!

I love you, man! That intro made me laugh my ghost in the shell

The line "Do you think that's air you're breathing now" could have been replaced with "Do you think that's one computer you're using right now." Because every computer has many tiny little computers take make up the whole. An equally profound realization to Neo and the user. For what it's worth my first business server was an Intel NUC, because it was tiny and I could leave it in my bedroom without keeping me up all night. The second server was actually a Raspberry Pi because ya know what. It didn't matter and it made a really good backup with no moving parts it's still running today many, many years after putting it into service.

Full Contact is one of my favorites right now. If a bar had Bodhizafa, All Ways Down, and Full Contact it would be about 20 minutes before I could decide what to order - and would probably end up with one of each 😂

I think 1 or 2 more Matrix references where needed in the video...😂. Great video encouraging those just starting out with a home lab by getting them to think outside the box or free their mind.

you have great videos, love the intro. props to the editor! I too am a huge proponent of "it could be a server"

People needed to hear that. Regarding the Zimablade... I think if the 4 core could have hit a lower price point it would be perfect. Otherwise I would prefer more threads.

Well done with the intro!

Thank you for this…it’s like enough of the ECC or die crap.

This video is kicking wisdom and knowledge!

Good job Jeff, another great and refreshing video.

Just about to turn the X58 system I just upgraded from into another home server. It's been a good gaming system for 15 years. It'll work well for a file server for many to come.

My first ever "server" was a Pentium 3 450mhz dell desktop machine with two 250GB IDE hard drives and freenas. I thought I was on top of the world with that thing. Now I use a DL360p G8 w. 2 Xeon E5-2680V2, 32GB of ECC RAM, and 4 x 2TB HDDs in RAID Z running on TrueNAS core w. 2 VMs for DLNA and HomeAssistant which I'm not really using. I have build countless servers out of consumer hardware. Used desktops and grabbing an old sandy bridge i5 system and throwing it into a case with 6 hdd bays and filling it with WD Red CMR disks. I have a server at a client site on core 2 duo system and it has been running 24/7 for 10 years except for a couple of days when the PSU failed. Ran a new PSU over and replaced it and it is still chugging along.

Duuuude Awesome video. Content and presentation are great.

regarding the $10 adapter, if your good with a soldering iron all your really need is one sata connector this board comes with wire a secondary power lead from the first cable and im sure most people who will be picking these up already have a few sata data cables

I cringed at the intro when i first watched a few seconds of it and turned it off immediately; thinking it would be too elementary. But it popped up again for the n'th time and i gave it a chance. Nothing groundbreaking for me, but certainly thought provoking and a good video. I really appreciate the take that you bring to the space and I'm so sick of the extremists, with their "realtek and non-ecc" is the devil, when you look at their infrastructure more closely you find they don't even follow their own extreme rules. It's like they want to hire an excavator to plant a sapling. Its the nerd way to flex on other people. "Pff, you got no ECC. Turn it off and don't compute!"

I agree with everything you said. Nice job.

"PC-parts is nothing but LEGO for computer nerds!" I nearly fell of my chair laughing!

I was going to buy a Pi 5, since I've bought a 2, 3 and 4. For a bit more, I went for the Zimablade 7700.

my first "server" was an ancient core2quad pc. It gets addictive pretty quick. Now I have a rack and multiple servers in a cluster.

First time here. First impressions, love the Matrix vibez haha!

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a 64-core Epyc server with a terabyte of RAM, but my first server was built into a second-hand Optiplex and it worked fine. Now I'm using a machine built out of spare gaming PC parts. It's plenty for basic homelab use, economical, and it keeps old parts out of a landfill.

Great informative video. The application in most cases, will give direction to what you want to build. I like the idea of using what you have. I was looking at a mini-pc to host proxmox, as my objective was to become energy efficient, but the cost to do that was unnecessary. So I simply collapsed the 2 old PCs I had into one. I used the old i5 core Intel I had, bought some SSDs and boom, promox sorted by hosting my 2 VM's. Only minimal money spent on some SSD's, which is way cheaper than speccing out a mini-pc.

Love the cyberpunk reference!

Great Video I just ordered a orange pi 5 for playing around with different software and emulation.💯😊

That's the beauty about those computers, x86 is a x86, no matter how capable it is. The same can't be said about the arm ones. Those has some CPUs there are just too specific or lack some features. You can get what you want or to work in more boards, if you know how to compile the OS. No need for that on x86.

Love the Intro!!! Nice content!

This is really a great video. I am very surprised your whole rack is only 400W. I need to rethink my server.

This is great. Running TrueNAS on my old ITX i7 desktop. Great little kit, but keen to swap in my current AMD ITX system when its time is up so I can play around with VMs!

I've been using an Up Squared, with 100% passive cooling, 0 noise, for many years.

Much respect for your contents, sir

FANTASTIC VIDEO!!!!

11/10 intro. Love it

“Boom! Now it’s an ass!” - thanks, I needed that 😂

Great explanation, great video

Appreciate the honest review

My homelab started off with a strange Sandy Bridge PC I got in a bulk lot. It is very much the ship of Theseus now, but it's still serving its purpose (Plex/NAS). I want to experiment with more server-grade equipment, but it's something that can wait until I buy a house.

You couuuullld set up two vlans on the one ethernet port, have pfSense/openSense route via just the single port (yea I know it's a dirty solution, but this zima device also feels like it) Great education video!

I personally mix hardware using server cases in a rack mounted case, haven't had any problems for years. Currently in the process of setting up a water cooled Debian firewall/router with consumer level hardware in a rack case :P

Cool, and good explanation. Rock on

Nice graphics at the beginning