Future¶

Ramblings and stream of conscienceness on the future of my homelab.

Size¶

I currently use a shallow full size 8U rack mounted to a wall.

In general, I like to keep the footprint small and out of way, but also accessible.

One thought is to go to a mini rack, but then I'd have to get rid of my current switch.

The other concern is the number of ports, which I like to keep connected to RJ45 ports routed to rooms in the house, althrough some are not being used.

Do I disconnect the ports that I'm not using from the patch panel and figure out a solution when I need them ?

OS¶

Desktop¶

I don't use many desktop environments. When I do, it's either ChromeOS or Windows 11.

I don't have a desire at the moment to try anything new.

Server¶

My favorite server OS is Debian which I got used to when I started with Ubuntu. I prefer Debian over Ubuntu, at the moment, due to it's smaller size and just install the applications that I need.

I tried Arch a while ago, but was too finicky to setup and time consuming.

I haven't tried Alpine linux, other than when compiling my own Docker images.

What I would like to try is NixOS because it's infractructure as code and it is easy to backup.

NAS¶

I'd like to have some type of NAS to properly store my files as well has some kind of backup.

I currently have 5TB external drive attached to my HP Pro desk, but it's not backed up in any way and not very compact.

My initial thoughts is to use 4 SSDs on a Raspberry Pi 5 using a Radxa Penta SATA HAT due to it's compactness, but the the speeds may suffer due to the RPi's 1 Gbit speeds. Do I actually need more than 1Gbit speeds ?