Converted my coat closet into a 42U home rack, plus a new 10″ mini rack I can’t decide what to do with

Long-time lurker, first post here. This has been about 8 years in the making. It started with one Alexa and a smart light switch, and I went all the way down the rabbit hole. The rack itself took about a year to build, and I'm still working on it.

🗄️ Main rack: StarTech 42U open frame (on casters)

Networking

**•** Firewalla Gold (router/firewall) + ARRIS S33 modem (2.5G) **•** USW-Aggregation (10G SFP+) **•** USW-Pro-Max-16-PoE (core, 2.5G) **•** USW-Pro-24-PoE (leaf, cameras and PoE drops) **•** 2× 24-port Cat6A patch panels **•** 3× U7 Pro APs 

Compute and storage

**•** Dell PowerEdge T420 running Proxmox: 14 cores / 28 threads, 192GB ECC, LSI 9207-8i in IT mode, X520-DA2 10G, Coral TPU **•** Mac mini M4 (Plex, UniFi controller) **•** Synology DS925+ (primary storage) and DS418 (local backup), plus a DS412+ offsite over Tailscale 

AV

**•** 5× Apple TV 4K in rack mounts, one per room, sent out over J-Tech HDBaseT extenders 

Power

**•** UniFi UPS 2U (1.44 kVA) feeding a USP-PDU-Pro 

What it runs

**•** Home Assistant with Z-Wave/Zigbee USB passthrough, Frigate NVR with a Coral TPU, AdGuard, and Immich, all on the T420. **•** 9 VLANs: Admin, IoT, Kids, Guest, Cameras, NAS, Voice Assistants, Home Security, and AV. Firewalla handles all routing and policy; UniFi does switching and Wi-Fi only. **•** Keeping my kids safe online is one of my main priorities. They have their own network with content filtering and ad blocking. It isn't bulletproof, since there's always that one friend with a hotspot, but I do what I can. 

🌡️ Cooling

**•** My HVAC company ran a dedicated supply duct into the closet. **•** An Ecobee remote sensor in the closet is part of the thermostat's average, so a hot closet triggers cooling. Averaging dilutes it a bit, so that's just the first layer. **• Planned next:** **•** Pull the Ecobee into Home Assistant for high-temp alerts. **•** Add a second sensor at the top of the rack, where the heat pools. **•** Install a temp-triggered exhaust fan. **•** Replace the door with a louvered/vented one for a proper return path. **•** The door is off for now. 

⚡ Power

**•** Everything behind the UPS pulls about **364W**, roughly 260 kWh a month. AV gear is on a separate non-UPS feed. **•** The T420 is the biggest draw. Sandy Bridge Xeons aren't efficient, but the server was free, and it's been a great learning platform. 

🔌 Cabling and AV

**•** An electrician ran low-voltage through the attic to every room and to the exterior corners for PoE cameras, all home-run to the closet. It's kept open instead of in conduit, which makes tracing and adding runs easier. Velcro only, with a service loop so the rack can roll out. **•** The Apple TVs are on their own VLAN with mDNS relay, so we control them from our phones. That solved the "where's the remote?" problem permanently. 

📚 Lessons learned

**•** Retired a TP-Link SX3008F. I couldn't get a reliable 1G link to the Firewalla (1G ports only) through it, and consolidating onto the Pro Max was simpler. **•** The USP-RPS isn't compatible with the Pro Max 16 or the Pro 24. **•** New Reolink cameras refuse local connections until you activate them in the app. 

🆕 10" mini rack

**• Rack:** TecMojo 10" open-frame with side panels **• Switch:** UniFi Switch Flex Mini (5× 1GbE) **• Patch panel:** 12-port Cat6 **• Nodes:** 3× OptiPlex 7060 Micro (one i5-8500T, two i5-8500), each with 16GB DDR4 and a 256GB SSD **• Power:** ElecVoztile 10" PDU 

The dilemma: what should it become?

**1. Replace the T420.** Big power savings, but I'd have to migrate everything and lose the PCIe slot for a future GPU. **2. Give it to my kids** for a local Minecraft server, so they learn Linux, networking, and server admin while playing. **3. A family AI learning lab**, where we build and learn about local AI agents together. AI is new to me too, so we'd be learning side by side. 

Options 2 and 3 are winning my heart, but the power savings are tempting. What would you do?