The future of homelabs is more deliberate
Rising memory and PC-part prices are changing how we build homelabs, what we self-host, and which hardware earns a place on the rack.
read field note ↗ALWAYS ONOFF THE CLOCK / 01 — HOMELABThe always-on
The always-on
corner of the house.
The homelab is shared infrastructure now: storage, local services, media, automation, and the network connecting them. The interesting part is not the rack. It is how the pieces depend on one another.
84TBSTORAGE ARRAY
Primary storage on Unraid
48GBMEMORY
Capacity for containers and local services
iGPULOCAL AI
Transcoding and models processed locally
GIG+MULTI-GIG LAN
A wired backbone across the house
LIVE MAP
Follow the connections.
SELECTED / SRV-0184 TB
Unraid server
An 84TB array with 48GB of memory runs storage, containers, media transcoding, and local AI workloads from one system.
scan 01 · 4/4 nodes reachable✱DESIGN RULE
Use PoE when it simplifies power, placement, and recovery. Use something else when it does not.