A bit over a year ago, I bought a used Dell Optiplex 3010 computer in mint condition for a very cheap price, specifically to turn it into a server.
Initially, I was looking for something in a 1-liter form factor, but had a hard time finding anything remotely usable for my purpose in my area.
Stumbled upon a classified ad. The specs, and the price looked pretty attractive, so I decided to go and check it out in person.
A couple of things I instantly liked about the Optiplex were that it’s dead silent off the shelf (hand?) and can be placed on its side horizontally. This meant I could place it in a drawer and, ideally, forget about it. Also, as a huge bonus compared to most 1-liter computers, I could upgrade its components if needed.
So, I brought it home, added a couple of SSDs, installed Proxmox, did some acrobatics with VPN to escape the dreaded CGNAT, and started migrating existing services from Digital Ocean.
Currently, I’m hosting about a dozen services on it, and I have to say, I’m questioning myself why I didn’t start this homelab thing sooner.
Among other things, it houses Nextloud, Joplin server, Crater invoicing, my Audiobookshelf instance, and a whole bunch more useful services that I use daily.
If I were to rent servers from a VPS provider to accommodate all of those, I’d probably pay anywhere from $100 to $150 per month, which greatly outweighs the added cost of electricity for running my homelab in my home 24/7 plus the purchase price.
All in all, I’m quite happy with the experience, would give 10 out of 10.
It saves me lots of money while being quite useful. It’s silent and almost maintenance-free except for occasional system upgrades, and having to manually turn it on when my electricity goes out.
I’ll probably write another article about my specific configurations, and which services I use at some point, but no promises.
Cheers.
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