Westerhof

During the last months of 2024 I focused on setting up something I wanted to do for a long time. And that is to have dedicated hardware to run my own homelab on. In this post, I wanted to share my set up and archive it for personal use in the future.

All links on this page are not affiliate links.

The hard parts

What a beauty, if I do say so myself.

While she might not be as fancy smancy as something you find on /r/homelab, I am very happy to call it my own.

This rack houses pretty much all of my programming projects. All communication is wired via Cat 6a, directly from the modem.

Parts list

• StarTech 10u Network Rack case https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B09BBMD4KW
• Power strip: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B00FHCQNP2
• Rapink Patch Panel 24 Port Cat6A with Inline Keystones: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJB7M4FC (way easier!)
• 1x Brush face plate: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B00HQIN8IU
• 2x Blank face panels: Konig & Meyer 28210
• 1x Ventliation panels: Adam Hall 87221VR
• 1x Shelves: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B084CZCGFP
• 1x Raspberry Pi Rack Mount for 1-4 Raspberry Pi from MyElectronics

Because I am running most of my software on 2 refurbished Lenovo Thinkcentre computers, I wanted to have a custom rackmount in order to put them neatly into my rack. A friend of mine found the following print on Thingiverse and printed it for me in black/red colors.

• https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4769452

Huge thanks to them for the rack aesthetics!

The rack hosts a couple of clients and other network components.

• 2x Lenovo ThinkCenter M710q and M900.
• 3x Raspberry Pi connected
• 1x Netgear Switch
• 1x Ubiquity EdgeRouterX
• 1x Raspberry Pi 1A to sign certificates.

Each machine has it’s own power brick, plugged into the power strip. The strip itself is plugged into the wall. I do not plan on owning a UPS as the power net in my country is very stable, but I will consider adding them if this ever changes. I’ve also been toying with the idea of adding a UniFi LTE backup for internet over SIM incase my ISP goes down. This is also overkill currently.

The soft parts

I have different software running on the machine. I’ll try to update this overview with links to relevant guides for that software if I make a dedicated post about it.

• Prometheus Node exporter to track my machines
• Grafana dashboarding
• Docker swarm and registry for local deployments and workloads.
• Multiple Gitlab runners to build software.
• Centralized Postgress DB to store data.
• Custom software, such as a batch scraper and my GoLang API
• Multiple Archive warrior instances to spend the compute on. Consider running one as well!

Why host it yourself?

I have the philosophy that owning is beter than renting, and I despise the ‘you own nothing and will like it’ idea. This does not stem from some conspiracy theory, but rather that you shouldn’t rent if you can own as it is cheaper below the line.

Owning it myself, while less efficient, means I can touch it, say it is mine, do whatever with it, and not get booted off because of malicious actions, or get a surprise bill from using a little too much CPU or egress accidentally.

Changelog

• 2025-02-22 - Picture, rewrite, publish.
• 2025-02-11 - Added links and specs
• 2025-01-28 - Rewritten
• 2024-07-08 - Draft