Things have been going quite well! I have reached a point where I am using my home server collection to host a lot of my services, and while my university wifi has certainly been restricting, I have been able to host just about everything I have needed.
This has mostly been things like Nextcloud and a webui for my self-hosted models, but it has also served as a testing ground for my learning process with things like reverse proxies and other middleware solutions.
Above all, I have gotten really good with the idea of containerization, and practically use docker compose for everything now.
However, in terms of physical appearance, the home lab looks just about the exact same as when I started this project. There is no enclosure or rack, just a bunch of computers crammed behind my monitors on my desk. This doesn’t really affect the performance of the server, but come time when I move into my new apartment, I think it is time for a renovation.
After a good amount of thought, I have found that it is most realistic for me to have a 10-inch rack. Realistically for what I would be running on this server, nothing really requires the overkill setup of a full-size server rack and all the noise and power draw that comes with it. Unless I am running my own AI models ( which would be ridiculously expensive and much more work that just bootlegging free cloud solutions ), there is nothing I would need this for.
And thus, I will either buy a DeskPi 10 inch T1 rack, or print my own from scratch. The desk pi solution looks really nice and clean, but for 140$, I think it is a bit much for what is essentially a hunk of metal.
The 3d printed solution looks a lot more appealing to me right now, as I not only get full control over how it is designed but also the fact that a 10inch rack is the perfect size for a single printer build place ( ).
Some Reference Photos:
DeskPi T1:
Some 3d printed samples:
from A new idea - 3d printed 10” rack
from a reddit post
another youtube video I found that might be nice for 3d printing a rack: