Hey fellow enthusiasts, I’ve got an update to my home lab/projects/community cabinet running our Aussie community down under - https://xevnet.au

After 8 months we’ve gone from this: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/11ze3ij/aussie_homelab_running_our_gaming_community/

To this!

New cabinet and gear installed

A couple of changes over the past 8 months, firstly is power monitoring. A couple of you recommended I look at monitoring my outputs.

For this I’ve gotten two TAPO P-110 units. They’re about $20 bucks from JB HI-FI honestly a great product. You can see your live output, and monthly costings if you configure your cents per kilowatt. Very handy. I’ve set this up in a way where one monitors networking equipment + the 1RU (critical) and the other all my other ‘homelab’ and project machines that aren’t as impactful should they go down.

I’ve moved away from hMailServer and setup, installed: https://docker-mailserver.github.io/Its simple, and just works. The only downfall to some is its CLI only- but I’m OK with that 😎

In terms of software more briefly I’ve upgraded my hypervisors from Hyper-V to Proxmox, with a USFF (not in picture) acting as a Backup node. Although I have plans to rebuild this so that Promox sits atop of “Proxmox Backup Server” for better visibility.

I’ve replaced my old HP elite desk in here with a newer 7th gen model. The network switch has been beefed up as well as the UPSes, and cabling. Its not quite obvious but the weekend prior some mates and I cabled the place so I’ve got full CAT6 links to the rooms I want (you can see the conduit we installed on the top-left there)

A total of four RJ-45 CAT6 patches throughout. Perfect for ascertaining as much bandwidth as possible over the LAN (for my needs anyway) - I also have Unifi Pro AC WAPs throughout my place for some top tier Wifi. I get approx. 80Mbps where-ever I stand which is something I haven’t ever had before :)

Besides this just minor improvements to how I handle the software, monitoring and alerting.

We’ve expanded our game servers we host to a couple other classics and favorites. - https://xevnet.au/servers

We also have expanded to 3 other locations for Geo-redundancy which has been a fun challenge. We’re utilizing Tailscale and have created a pretty well orchestrated Tailnet which can only be accessed through a special ‘front-door’ instance- thus providing access to the LAN resources on the network. - I think this works well because it provides a great control measure as to how and what can be accessed by who.

Anyway, this is my update, feel free to shoot any questions or feedback and I’ll answer or reply where I can!

The bottom one of the two modified antec cases isn’t running. Currently looking at affordable gen 7 and up hardware but no rush at all.

The HPE 1RU unit is ~400GB of DDR4 RDIMM memory with 42 cores and 2x 800w PSUs. This unit is a part of a serious business project I’m endeavoring to get off the ground and it’s been a fun challenge to say the least.

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Picture with door closed

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Flashy light pic (poor exposure)