Homelab Hardware - What’s inside and what it does

Motherboard: ASUS B550

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3700x

RAM: 64GB @3200MHz

Boot/OS drive: 500GB nVME SSD

Storage: 2x 8TB HDD (ZFS pool)

OS: Ubuntu 22.04

Special note: The server (pictured) sits inside a case from an late-90’s Infomedia system a friend found at a garage sale. When I opened it, the case told a STORY - I’ll include a full blog post about it in the “My_Content” section for those interested.

*There is a post in My_Content that covers the story of how I built the server itself, and the several iterations necessary to get the machine running, functioning, and most importantly, not overheating (which was a journey). I encourage you to check it out if you’re here because you’re interested in PC building or “sleeper PCs”. I’ve always loved off-beige for technology.

Workload

• NAS (Network-Attached-Storage): Crucial personal files, photography projects, and resources (library of TTRPG content) hosted via SMB

  • Critical personal data is backed up from local machines on the network to server nightly / non-critical data monthly

  • Storage (2x 8TB Western Digital HDDs) organized in a ZFS-1 pool (mirroring, with room for expansion)

    • “Especially Critical” data backed up to off-site hard copy monthly

• Media Server: Streams multimedia library for over network (Jellyfin)

• Crowd-Computing: Virtual Machine (Virtualbox) running Fold @ Home 24/7 — here’s how much it’s completed so far!