AlphaObeisance
Well-Known Member
I'm not even sure where to begin here, it's been such a long journey. I suppose I'll start with something goofy; yes, I name my devices.
A couple years ago my wife somehow managed to get me into Anime and I began watching a variety of action based anime; one of which being my favorite
"Kaiju No. 8" where the protagonist's name is "Kafka Hibino"; a mild mannered lowly 32-year-old individual tasked with the cleanup of these massive creatures called "Kaiju". He just wanted to help society by contributing in some way; but his ultimate dream was to one day join the Defense Force; an elite agency tasked with defeating these massive monsters when they appear.
This character resonates with me as he's always striving to do the right thing, to help others; despite as the story progresses he encounters an unfathomable evil within him that he must constrain and control in order to continue using his new found abilities to aid mankind and try to save humanity. It's an inspirational story about overcoming ones inner demons and striving to be the best that one can be regardless of circumstances.
Thus, I dubbed my server rack "Kafka" and slapped a silly Kafka sticker on the front panel depicting Kafka's innocent nature within his demon form as is seen frequently within the series as a form of comedic relief from the heavy tones of the show.
Beginnings:
Something around 2 or 3 years ago (I don't recall, I don't do well with dates); a friend of mine asked if I would travel half way across the states to help he and another friend of mine load up a bunch of equipment they'd acquired through some auctions; of which were various apple computers and other relevant hardware. A mad dash, 3 days, and some 2,000 miles (3218-ish km) later I returned with a gifted DELL Poweredge 2950 for my assistance. A power hungry machine with 2-3TiB of storage. I had no idea what to do with such equipment, but it intrigued me.
I'd been studying Linux for nearly 2 and a half years at this point, daily driving Arch Linux for over half of that; so I figured why not just install Arch Linux on
the
server node and see what I could do with it; and I did just that. I had nowhere to put this behemoth of a chassis so I nailed a couple 2x4's to the wall and hung the node vertically on my wall and got to tinkering. It didn't take me long to discover what a Hypervisor was and at the time, ESXi was pretty much the go-to hypervisor for homelabbers fresh on the scene and unaware of any alternatives; so in ESXi went.I spent the better part of a month or so learning how to use ESXi to deploy Virtual Machines (VM's) and Containers (CT's). I initially used this new found power to begin "distro hopping" as it was easier to spin up a VM with any given distro and I figured if I had the means, I might as well.
Some weeks went by and as I discovered the reality of that which is homelabbing; being able tho replace virtually every single mainstream service I'd been using. I.e. Google Drive/One Drive, all of the streaming services I'd been subscribed too, I could replace my use of applications like Discord by deploying my own chat services, I could deploy Instagram and YouTube alternatives; the sky was the limit and I was hooked.
Commitment:
It was at this point I decided I was going to dive into this both feet forward, being an American from the Midwest; it's kind of in my nature to "Go big or
go
home" if you will. So I went as big as my finances would permit me at the time and I bought a DELL Poweredge R730xd. It come equipped with x2 Intel Xeon E5-2680 processors with a whopping 48 cores, 128GiB RAM and 36 TiB of storage. This was a powerhouse in contrast to that of the 2950 and I was here for it. Though I had an issue.
The server came preinstalled with Windows Server edition; and this was a direct violation of my commitment a few years prior to never, ever use Windows again. So I wiped the OS and installed ESXi; only to soon discover that VMware had been acquired by Broadcom and near immediately to follow the community was in an uproar about Broadcoms changes to licensing policy and it rapidly became far more headache than I wanted to deal with. I began to research alternatives; and while there were several good alternatives it was Proxmox that truly stood out to me due to its FOSS nature and powerful utility out the box. So began my study and eventual deployment to hardware.
I wanted to deploy the OS on an NVMe drive I'd had laying around but ran into some firmware complications and eventually found an alternative means to booting from my NVMe despite the lack of hardware support in doing so. At the time, I couldn't seem to find any patches or bios updates that solved the issue I was having where the R730xd refused to boot from my NVMe drive. I've since heard of a method native to the hardware; but at this point I'm quite committed to my existing infrastructure and don't want to risk breaking what isn't currently broken to start with.
Fast forward several months and my Father in Law; who's been one of my biggest supporters in my endeavors since View attachment 31545
committing to the abandonment of Windows; having originally turned me onto Linux and starting the flame that got me where I am today. He decided to buy me a server cabinet by Sysracks so that I could get my servers off my wall and into a proper stack. The rack was high quality and I couldn't have been happier. Only there was one slight problem... the rack ended up lacking the depth it needed to fully enclose the hardware properly; but as is our nature, we decided to make due with what we had! We left the back panel off and carried on. At least we were no longer dealing with the vertical nature of our previous mounting methods which were contradictory the nature of airflow.It got the job done! And served me well for over a year. Until very recently (April 2026) when my wife and I decided it was time that I fix up my infrastructure proper. So I took to the web and began compiling a list of components I would need to fulfill my needs.
But you see, it's not just these servers I'd been building along the way; my personal computer (PC) had at this point been going on 7 years in the making and had become an absolute monster in it's own right. Boasting a Ryzen 9 5950x, 128GB RAM, and an RTX 4090 24GB GPU. And it was all housed in a rather large Phanteks case I'd been quite proud of for many years as it had done my build quite a service and housed many upgrades over the years.
The Dilemma:
I wanted to centralize ALL of my tech into a single rack, including my PC. I'd already known I'd wanted to stick with Sysracks for my new cabinet and had settled on a 27U unit.
So it was time to look into options for doing so that suited my wants and needs. I wanted a rack mounted setup capable of housing the large GPU and provide View attachment 31546me with sufficient airflow for aiding in the cooling of the hardware as I frequently put it under extensive load; and a 4090 24GB GPU generates quite a lot of heat under certain circumstances, especially when overclocked and pushing 500W+.
Enters the Silverstone RM51 5U Chassis!
This case, albeit incredibly expensive, suited my needs perfectly. It could accommodate the GPU and my 1500W power supply; as well as provide me with ample storage capacity. Purpose built for stand alone chassis or including parts to equip the chassis for rack mounting.
I purchased a set of rails to accompany the new chassis which arrived a few days prior to the new server cabinet; so I was able to migrate my PC to it's new home while waiting for the new cabinet to arrive.
I have been incredibly happy with the performance of the case and the configuration I'd come up with. I pride myself in organization and cleanliness; so I was particularly proud of my cable management on the build as it was done in such a way that everything is mostly concealed while being easily accessible in the event I need to go hands on.
View attachment 31547Even under extensive load, the workstation does not exceed 68 degrees Celsius and I couldn't b happier!
View attachment 31548
I've stress tested the unit rather extensively under heavy load yet thermals consistently remain under that 68 degree cap; idling at a cool 34-38 degrees Celsius under general use "chill" mode that I've configured.
I could not be any happier with the build thus far; all I had to do was wait for the cabinets arrival. In the mean time I was also in search of an updated switch. I'd been using a CISCO Catalyst 48 port switch but my current demands didn't really warrant such a switch and even worse I couldn't flash it with OpenWRT.
The Turing Point:
I'd discovered several months back as I decided to delve deeper into networking and grow my knowledge in sub-netting for better LAN management; that my rather expensive TP-Link B550 router was running quite a dated version of NGINX. It was at this point I discovered that despite frequently updating my router View attachment 31549hardware (I use Arch...by the way); I had come to realize that "updating" my router only meant that I was updating the proprietary wrapper TP-Link built to manage the FOSS services they'd built upon. My initial thought was "this can't be legal!"; I was genuinely bothered at the fact that my homework had taught me that all too often this proprietary equipment "upgrades" only apply to the proprietary wrappers and not the fundamental software that makes it function.
To add insult to injury, I discovered that due to the proprietary nature of the hardware; I could not gain administrative access to the hardware into order to update the fundamental software; which in it's dated nature contained bugs and security compromises I was unwilling to remain complacent with.
I immediately took to the internet and promptly purchased a Flint 2 router from GL-iNet, as it was the single best router I could find in terms of hardware power and FOSS nature in that it's powered by OpenWRT. After receiving the Flint 2 router, I was so blown away by the sheer power of the hardware that I bought a second one the next day so that I could utilize the two to deploy a DMZ network architecture.
I knew though, that I would want to continue expanding upon my tech stack in the near future as I could. I knew that I would eventually want to integrate
home security, NAS, and eventually get away from WIFI entirely which would require hard-lining all relevant devices; which meant I'd need more port space, naturally.
Yet given my new found love for the Flint 2 routers, OpenWRT and LuCi for gaining absolute and control over my own hardware, and my own network; I wanted to maintain that level of control. I began my search for a switch that could be flashed with OpenWRT in order to retain network continuity from the top down.
Enters the Zyxel GS1920-24HP. As it recently gained OpenWRT support via snapshots which made me hopeful for an official stable release in the near future; and the Zyxel switch seemed to be held in high regard by those who have put it into service. This is providing to be a solid switch and provides me with the features and functionalities required to even further my knowledge of networking as I'd set out to learn. While I've made strides since switching to the Flint 2 routers by way of DMZ configuration, DNS Encryption and DNS Hijacking to ensure my privacy is retained to the best of my ability; I still aim to learn better management by way of VLAN configuration and more. I felt this network stack would suit me well as things progress.
I've since decommissioned the Poweredge 2560 as my Father in Law has shown interest and I'd like to gift it to him. Having since replaced it with a smaller 1U Dell server I'm not even privy to the specifications of right off hand as I lack the storage to utilize it at this time.
On the point of storage; my "lack" of storage isn't so much a lack of capacity as it is a lack of redundancy through multiple drives. In the earliest of my R730xd build I opted for drive storage capacity over drive quantity; so I sit on x3 24TiB Iron Wolf drives, and x3 12TiB WD drives that initially came with the server. So while I have an astronomical amount of storage; I'd eventually like to expand by way of 8-10TiB hard drives so to establish better redundancy practices and expand with proper RAID configurations.
FINALLY:
The day arrives and my 27U Sysracks Cabinet shows up on my back porch. And after nearly 18 hours of setup and configuration; Kafka finally came into
fruition. Carefully configured with adequate cable management to keep things tidy and neat, and carefully thought out so to ensure utility to all hardware with no excess of cable or restrictions to be accounted for when pulling a server from the rack (i.e. all cables are neatly arranged to account for server extension.And in order to account for the fact that my PC would now be homed within the new cabinet from the other room; I ensured to invest into 50ft optical cable Display Port and HDMI cables so to ensure a 0 latency transmission of display to my x3 Scepter Ultra-wide monitor PLP configuration with 50'' TV peripheral display (I use it to watch movies with the wife and kids).
Additionally, I invested in an AV Access HDbaseeT USB 3.2 Extender and a 50ft Cat6 cable to ensure a seamless USB experience for my AULA Keyboard & Mouse and other devices.
So far, I couldn't be happier with the build.
It's been quite an adventure having since abandoned Windows. At the time, I'd only ever built Frankenstein computers using salvaged parts as a kid; and I'd gone a good 10-15 years having not even touched a computer of any kind while I was trying to find my way in this life. It wasn't until I met my wife and found steady work that I took the interest back up in computers now that I'd had the means. I started with having bought my first PC in years (this is back in 2015), which was a cheap $580 CyberPower PC from BestBuy. I just wanted something that I could kick back and play some video games on at the end of a long day at work. I started small as my interest in Personal Computing began to grow once again. Initially starting with a simple GPU upgrade (the PC originally came with a GTX 1050ti) and I upgraded to an RTX 2060S, later upgrading the CPU. Some years later I decided to build the workstation discussed here and it's initial build was conceived. Only recently did my original motherboard on the workstation fail me; RIP ASUS PRIME-X570 Pro; it served me well for many years.
I knew nothing about software, nothing about Linux, I was just a working class dude with an hour or two to kill at the end of the day. No formal education, no IT education of any kind outside of self driven study. And here I am today having built my own data center and self host a variety of services and servers; own a few domains, and manage/maintain the entire infrastructure from the top down entirely solo. From LAN management to SIEM OPSEC monitoring and more.
Motivation? Originally, I'd say curiosity alone. Today? I'd say a drive to achieve digital sovereignty; as the more I learn, the more absolutely disgusted I am with how broadly society is ripped off with their hardware and the services and software they pay for. My love for technology is a genuinely love hate relationship in that on one hand, technology and the things people do with it make me some days contemplate selling everything I own and retreating to the bush with my family, my guns, and my desire to live freely. On the other hand, I'm so absolutely fascinated with what one can achieve if they put their minds to it, and technology is an invaluable tool to achieve those goals.
I still haven't managed to figure out how to monetize my knowledge and skills; as I lack certifications and the paper trail required to get a job in IT "the right way" (lul). But I trust that be it through networking, or entrepreneurship I will inevitably one day make a living and provide for my family doing what I love.
I did manage to score an independent contract a while back deploying cloud services for a corporation here in the States. Though being my first gig, turns out I basically castrated myself in terms of payment for services rendered. I was so eager to prove myself that I basically gave it all away. And I was so thorough that my hand off packet included an A-Z maintenance plan which effectively guaranteed I was no longer needed. But it was a valuable experience that gave me the confidence I needed to begin believing in the skills and abilities I've learned along the way.
Thanks for reading. Until next time.
A couple years ago my wife somehow managed to get me into Anime and I began watching a variety of action based anime; one of which being my favorite
This character resonates with me as he's always striving to do the right thing, to help others; despite as the story progresses he encounters an unfathomable evil within him that he must constrain and control in order to continue using his new found abilities to aid mankind and try to save humanity. It's an inspirational story about overcoming ones inner demons and striving to be the best that one can be regardless of circumstances.
Thus, I dubbed my server rack "Kafka" and slapped a silly Kafka sticker on the front panel depicting Kafka's innocent nature within his demon form as is seen frequently within the series as a form of comedic relief from the heavy tones of the show.
Beginnings:
Something around 2 or 3 years ago (I don't recall, I don't do well with dates); a friend of mine asked if I would travel half way across the states to help he and another friend of mine load up a bunch of equipment they'd acquired through some auctions; of which were various apple computers and other relevant hardware. A mad dash, 3 days, and some 2,000 miles (3218-ish km) later I returned with a gifted DELL Poweredge 2950 for my assistance. A power hungry machine with 2-3TiB of storage. I had no idea what to do with such equipment, but it intrigued me.
I'd been studying Linux for nearly 2 and a half years at this point, daily driving Arch Linux for over half of that; so I figured why not just install Arch Linux on
Some weeks went by and as I discovered the reality of that which is homelabbing; being able tho replace virtually every single mainstream service I'd been using. I.e. Google Drive/One Drive, all of the streaming services I'd been subscribed too, I could replace my use of applications like Discord by deploying my own chat services, I could deploy Instagram and YouTube alternatives; the sky was the limit and I was hooked.
Commitment:
It was at this point I decided I was going to dive into this both feet forward, being an American from the Midwest; it's kind of in my nature to "Go big or
The server came preinstalled with Windows Server edition; and this was a direct violation of my commitment a few years prior to never, ever use Windows again. So I wiped the OS and installed ESXi; only to soon discover that VMware had been acquired by Broadcom and near immediately to follow the community was in an uproar about Broadcoms changes to licensing policy and it rapidly became far more headache than I wanted to deal with. I began to research alternatives; and while there were several good alternatives it was Proxmox that truly stood out to me due to its FOSS nature and powerful utility out the box. So began my study and eventual deployment to hardware.
I wanted to deploy the OS on an NVMe drive I'd had laying around but ran into some firmware complications and eventually found an alternative means to booting from my NVMe despite the lack of hardware support in doing so. At the time, I couldn't seem to find any patches or bios updates that solved the issue I was having where the R730xd refused to boot from my NVMe drive. I've since heard of a method native to the hardware; but at this point I'm quite committed to my existing infrastructure and don't want to risk breaking what isn't currently broken to start with.
Fast forward several months and my Father in Law; who's been one of my biggest supporters in my endeavors since View attachment 31545
But you see, it's not just these servers I'd been building along the way; my personal computer (PC) had at this point been going on 7 years in the making and had become an absolute monster in it's own right. Boasting a Ryzen 9 5950x, 128GB RAM, and an RTX 4090 24GB GPU. And it was all housed in a rather large Phanteks case I'd been quite proud of for many years as it had done my build quite a service and housed many upgrades over the years.
The Dilemma:
I wanted to centralize ALL of my tech into a single rack, including my PC. I'd already known I'd wanted to stick with Sysracks for my new cabinet and had settled on a 27U unit.
So it was time to look into options for doing so that suited my wants and needs. I wanted a rack mounted setup capable of housing the large GPU and provide View attachment 31546me with sufficient airflow for aiding in the cooling of the hardware as I frequently put it under extensive load; and a 4090 24GB GPU generates quite a lot of heat under certain circumstances, especially when overclocked and pushing 500W+.
Enters the Silverstone RM51 5U Chassis!
This case, albeit incredibly expensive, suited my needs perfectly. It could accommodate the GPU and my 1500W power supply; as well as provide me with ample storage capacity. Purpose built for stand alone chassis or including parts to equip the chassis for rack mounting.
I purchased a set of rails to accompany the new chassis which arrived a few days prior to the new server cabinet; so I was able to migrate my PC to it's new home while waiting for the new cabinet to arrive.
I have been incredibly happy with the performance of the case and the configuration I'd come up with. I pride myself in organization and cleanliness; so I was particularly proud of my cable management on the build as it was done in such a way that everything is mostly concealed while being easily accessible in the event I need to go hands on.
View attachment 31547Even under extensive load, the workstation does not exceed 68 degrees Celsius and I couldn't b happier!
View attachment 31548
I've stress tested the unit rather extensively under heavy load yet thermals consistently remain under that 68 degree cap; idling at a cool 34-38 degrees Celsius under general use "chill" mode that I've configured.
I could not be any happier with the build thus far; all I had to do was wait for the cabinets arrival. In the mean time I was also in search of an updated switch. I'd been using a CISCO Catalyst 48 port switch but my current demands didn't really warrant such a switch and even worse I couldn't flash it with OpenWRT.
The Turing Point:
I'd discovered several months back as I decided to delve deeper into networking and grow my knowledge in sub-netting for better LAN management; that my rather expensive TP-Link B550 router was running quite a dated version of NGINX. It was at this point I discovered that despite frequently updating my router View attachment 31549hardware (I use Arch...by the way); I had come to realize that "updating" my router only meant that I was updating the proprietary wrapper TP-Link built to manage the FOSS services they'd built upon. My initial thought was "this can't be legal!"; I was genuinely bothered at the fact that my homework had taught me that all too often this proprietary equipment "upgrades" only apply to the proprietary wrappers and not the fundamental software that makes it function.
To add insult to injury, I discovered that due to the proprietary nature of the hardware; I could not gain administrative access to the hardware into order to update the fundamental software; which in it's dated nature contained bugs and security compromises I was unwilling to remain complacent with.
I immediately took to the internet and promptly purchased a Flint 2 router from GL-iNet, as it was the single best router I could find in terms of hardware power and FOSS nature in that it's powered by OpenWRT. After receiving the Flint 2 router, I was so blown away by the sheer power of the hardware that I bought a second one the next day so that I could utilize the two to deploy a DMZ network architecture.
I knew though, that I would want to continue expanding upon my tech stack in the near future as I could. I knew that I would eventually want to integrate
Yet given my new found love for the Flint 2 routers, OpenWRT and LuCi for gaining absolute and control over my own hardware, and my own network; I wanted to maintain that level of control. I began my search for a switch that could be flashed with OpenWRT in order to retain network continuity from the top down.
Enters the Zyxel GS1920-24HP. As it recently gained OpenWRT support via snapshots which made me hopeful for an official stable release in the near future; and the Zyxel switch seemed to be held in high regard by those who have put it into service. This is providing to be a solid switch and provides me with the features and functionalities required to even further my knowledge of networking as I'd set out to learn. While I've made strides since switching to the Flint 2 routers by way of DMZ configuration, DNS Encryption and DNS Hijacking to ensure my privacy is retained to the best of my ability; I still aim to learn better management by way of VLAN configuration and more. I felt this network stack would suit me well as things progress.
I've since decommissioned the Poweredge 2560 as my Father in Law has shown interest and I'd like to gift it to him. Having since replaced it with a smaller 1U Dell server I'm not even privy to the specifications of right off hand as I lack the storage to utilize it at this time.
On the point of storage; my "lack" of storage isn't so much a lack of capacity as it is a lack of redundancy through multiple drives. In the earliest of my R730xd build I opted for drive storage capacity over drive quantity; so I sit on x3 24TiB Iron Wolf drives, and x3 12TiB WD drives that initially came with the server. So while I have an astronomical amount of storage; I'd eventually like to expand by way of 8-10TiB hard drives so to establish better redundancy practices and expand with proper RAID configurations.
FINALLY:
The day arrives and my 27U Sysracks Cabinet shows up on my back porch. And after nearly 18 hours of setup and configuration; Kafka finally came into
Additionally, I invested in an AV Access HDbaseeT USB 3.2 Extender and a 50ft Cat6 cable to ensure a seamless USB experience for my AULA Keyboard & Mouse and other devices.
So far, I couldn't be happier with the build.
It's been quite an adventure having since abandoned Windows. At the time, I'd only ever built Frankenstein computers using salvaged parts as a kid; and I'd gone a good 10-15 years having not even touched a computer of any kind while I was trying to find my way in this life. It wasn't until I met my wife and found steady work that I took the interest back up in computers now that I'd had the means. I started with having bought my first PC in years (this is back in 2015), which was a cheap $580 CyberPower PC from BestBuy. I just wanted something that I could kick back and play some video games on at the end of a long day at work. I started small as my interest in Personal Computing began to grow once again. Initially starting with a simple GPU upgrade (the PC originally came with a GTX 1050ti) and I upgraded to an RTX 2060S, later upgrading the CPU. Some years later I decided to build the workstation discussed here and it's initial build was conceived. Only recently did my original motherboard on the workstation fail me; RIP ASUS PRIME-X570 Pro; it served me well for many years.
I knew nothing about software, nothing about Linux, I was just a working class dude with an hour or two to kill at the end of the day. No formal education, no IT education of any kind outside of self driven study. And here I am today having built my own data center and self host a variety of services and servers; own a few domains, and manage/maintain the entire infrastructure from the top down entirely solo. From LAN management to SIEM OPSEC monitoring and more.
Motivation? Originally, I'd say curiosity alone. Today? I'd say a drive to achieve digital sovereignty; as the more I learn, the more absolutely disgusted I am with how broadly society is ripped off with their hardware and the services and software they pay for. My love for technology is a genuinely love hate relationship in that on one hand, technology and the things people do with it make me some days contemplate selling everything I own and retreating to the bush with my family, my guns, and my desire to live freely. On the other hand, I'm so absolutely fascinated with what one can achieve if they put their minds to it, and technology is an invaluable tool to achieve those goals.
I still haven't managed to figure out how to monetize my knowledge and skills; as I lack certifications and the paper trail required to get a job in IT "the right way" (lul). But I trust that be it through networking, or entrepreneurship I will inevitably one day make a living and provide for my family doing what I love.
I did manage to score an independent contract a while back deploying cloud services for a corporation here in the States. Though being my first gig, turns out I basically castrated myself in terms of payment for services rendered. I was so eager to prove myself that I basically gave it all away. And I was so thorough that my hand off packet included an A-Z maintenance plan which effectively guaranteed I was no longer needed. But it was a valuable experience that gave me the confidence I needed to begin believing in the skills and abilities I've learned along the way.
Thanks for reading. Until next time.
Last edited:
. I can be a bit childish sometimes, but "I don't care who you are, that's funnay right thur" 
