Homelab glow-up: from “klein aber fein” to a full rack (before → after) Details below 👇

Then (first pic):
• ASUS TUF-AX3000 router
• Raspberry Pi 4B (Debian) running AdGuard Home
• ThinkPad T590 (Garuda) + ThinkCentre M700 (CasaOS) as my compute
• 1× Synology DS923+ (4×4 TB RAID 5)
• TP Link TL-SG1016D gigabit switch + a couple of D-Link 2.5G switches
• Everything just stacked on an open frame

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/EeyI9Ijhyw

Basically: DNS-level ad blocking and a bit of container tinkering.

Now:
Everything from networking to NAS to my Docker/Proxmox hosts lives in one rack, and I just added a patch panel to finally tame the cabling.

Top to bottom:
• Xbox One S on top (had to go somewhere 😄)
• GL.iNet Flint 3 as router/AP, WiFi 7, proper 6 GHz band, 5× 2.5GbE
• 2× Synology NAS, 4 bay (4×4 TB, RAID 5) + 2 bay (2×4 TB, RAID 0), 24 TB total
• Raspberry Pi 5 (Ubuntu Server)
• Intel NUC as my main Docker host (Ubuntu Server), the heart of the lab
• Fujitsu Esprimo mini PC running Proxmox
• TP Link 16 port gigabit switch
• New: Cat6 16 port keystone patch panel
• PDU + cable management at the bottom
• 2.5G switch tucked into the rack

Networking:
A dedicated 2.5GbE switch is now the core. Hanging directly off it: the ISP uplink, my main PC, the 4 bay NAS, and the Flint 3 as router/AP. The NAS has a 10G card, but on spinning disks it tops out around 2.5G anyway, so 2.5GbE is the sweet spot there, no point paying for 10G the drives can’t feed. Everything that doesn’t need more than gigabit fans out from the TP Link.

What I self-host now:
• Home Assistant (+ ESPHome, Zigbee, HomeKit bridge for Siri), whole smart home, fully local, no cloud
• AdGuard Home + Unbound, network-wide ad blocking with a fully recursive, DNSSEC validating resolver (no public upstream DNS)
• Immich for photo backup
• Plex for my ripped Blu-ray/DVD collection 😉
• Portainer managing the Docker stack
• CrowdSec as IPS, Stirling PDF, Glance dashboard, IT Tools, Rackula (a rack layout designer, fittingly running on the NUC)
• Watchtower to keep containers updated
• Tailscale for secure remote access into the LAN

Biggest changes since the first post:
• Swapped the ASUS for the Flint 3 -> Wi-Fi 7 + 2.5GbE everywhere
• Retired the ThinkPad/ThinkCentre combo; the NUC is now the main Docker host, the Esprimo runs Proxmox
• Added a second NAS (24 TB total now)
• Pi 4B -> Pi 5
• Moved into a real rack with patch panel, PDU and actual cable management
• Went from “AdGuard + a bit of tinkering” to a proper self-hosted stack

Plans:
• UPS is next, so a power cut doesn’t hard-kill everything (whole rack pulls ~80–100 W, so nothing crazy needed)
• Slowly migrating more services onto the Proxmox host to split things out from the single Docker box

Klein aber fein – nur halt nicht mehr ganz so klein. 😄