Yep, I was hinting on that. If you are judicious with RAM use and don't mind suspending things you don't need, you can run some useful things even down to 16GB of RAM. One of the bad habits of the relatively cheap RAM-and-storage era of the past 10 years is that people tend to over-provision hardware simply because it's cheap and readily available. Maybe the mid-2020s RAM and storage shortage will serve as like the oil shocks of 1970s car culture leading to the glories of the late 80s/early 90s (hopefully without the doom-and-gloom of the Malaise era).Yes, and that new hardware is not homelab or even really "home" friendly... sure some of us have 240v and higher 3-phase at home, but I have 0 interest in running anything that power hungry at home for any length of time... maybe current frontier or higher level for short bursts and power down
in 2026 the smaller models are becoming more impressive, and if we can have a better orchestration layer or moe handling we can swap in\out niche models better and as needed
Slowdown in the homelab segment
- Thread starter Greg_E
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If you live in an apartment you even could have as small as a 55-80A electrical panel. AC + electric stove or microwave + lights already takes a huge chunk. Even a 5090 system begins to look tricky when you try to cook... And you have to deal with all that heat and noise. A single B300 that uses 1.4KW would not be something easy to run even if you did it on a 120V circuit. Not great if one piece of your setup uses 1/4 of your entire apartment's power budget. Doesn't seem like theyre going any direction but up either.
Low end servers that would be more interesting for homelab also seem to be abandoned. I have a few old SMB servers from small businesses, but looking at the newer versions of them, they don't have the same features they used to for the size they are. I have a old supermicro mini tower that has 4 SATA/SAS hot swap bays, and a Xeon-D. The new version of it uses 12/13/14th gen intel core, doesn't support ECC, and doesn't support SAS drives. Newer version also costs more and is closer to consumer hardware than enterprise. I don't think I've seen a E-2400 system at all actually outside of dell ads. Quite a few low end storage servers I've seen have been using atoms and N100's and the like.
I have an n100 storage server, it seems to be fine with 16gb ram and the single 10g base-t I'm currently using. I've thrown a small workload at it, run some benchmarks, it's perfectly adequate for my lab. I could run production on it if I had to, but I'd want new drives to replace the decade olds drives I have installed right now.
The HP t740 I have in my lab is really doing well with more complex workloads like Harvester, but I do wish I had more cores, even just stepping up to t755 if I see deals in the future, 2 more cores would be better.
The HP t740 I have in my lab is really doing well with more complex workloads like Harvester, but I do wish I had more cores, even just stepping up to t755 if I see deals in the future, 2 more cores would be better.
In Europe you can get appartments with 230V (standard) and 400V (not standard except for electric oven). Which with NH fuses for 3-phase 63A could get you up to around 40kW. Provided you use CEE and cables the width of a baby's arm. A practical limit though is 11kW, like with car wall boxes.
But electricity cost of 30ct/kWh and rising will rob you blind. And the sound of a 4U 8 card server make you deaf. If you are really into it, you need to cap power to what solar and a few LiFePo4 batteries can provide. Which have gotten quite cheap at least. Probably wise to split everything into two outdoor bunker sheds, one for power and the other for servers. If one catches fire, damage will be lessened.
Or if you are a teenager, wait for post-Feynman innovation for inference. That will be way more efficient than today's GPUs.
80A to 100A for a typical NYC pre-war apartment, but unless you like the idea of putting your server rack next to a bed/futon or living room couch (and your SigOth didn't threaten you with bodily harm), it''ll have to fight for wattage with the microwave oven, the air fryer, the window AC unit, and all of the stuff that people have in their homes (let's hope that your kitchen isn't an afterthought open format where the living room shares wattage with the kitchen). You’ll still need a UPS and surge protector to noise filter those wiring, which might be shared with neighbors that has poor shielding. For a typical rack with compute and storage you are looking at 1.5-2kw, and that's not including the workload of cooling it. And unlike most of the high draw stuff in those homes you will be running it 24/7 instead of intermittently.
As for low end servers...eeeh, a lot of the use cases for having small server or server racks on-prem evaporated after 2020 or so. Entra ID kinda made the idea of keeping an onprem domain controller in a branch office obsolete, cloud storage meant that short of rather niche cases, almost no one runs an onprem rack with a NAS, since you can run SBCs in the cloud, you don't even need a telephony gateway to deliver phone or video calls. Most devs that I know of just spins up EC2 instances and get Jenkins/Hudson running on it instead of buying/running their own. The stuff that you run on-prem are not nearly as holy-cow mission critical as it once was, so you can run some on a retired mini-desktop or 2 in the wiring closet. The entire return-to-office mandate and its demands for on-site IT infra? Eh...with the exception of a distribution switch or 2 talking to Wifi6/7 APs and maybe a switch for phones and hardwired stations (like, say, trade floor booths), not that much demand for it. Much like how hardcore geeks wish that Apple would’ve just redid the MBA11 with Apple Silicon, many probably wished that HPE came up with a new upgrade board for their MSG7/G8 but with more modern SoCs.
So yeah, your homelab will transition from half-racks of PowerEdge/Proliant to multiple TMM nodes with shared storage hosted off a cheap-and-cheery NAS (once again, something like a UGreen UXP6800 or Terramaster F6-424), and you'll most likely be working with commodity RAM and storage. No more SAS, no more ECC, probably easier on your ears, your eyes and your electric bill that way.
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Depends on your degree of microsloppiness and how many legacy servers/devices you are still supporting - with Entra ID, you don't need to have an RDC onprem per-se for most "branch office" things, but then it also depend on whether you wire branch sites up with MPLS/IPSec VPN talking to a network segment with an RDC far away...or not.
I don't understand why cloud storage is so huge for small/med businesses. I've worked for several businesses that have under 1-2TB (total for entire business) of needed storage that pay more in one year than it would cost for a new NAS and new enterprise NVME drives. And none of them use any cloud features that would be useful. They treat cloud how an SMB share used to be, even if they used to have one. It seems that has become more of the norm as it became a 1 step set up on windows with onedrive (even though I constantly hear complaints of lost files, unexpected costs, and even in one case a company switching their credit card because it got stolen and they lost all of their files because the subscription fee wasn't paid and the employee that stole the card was in charge of paying for it...). Is ease of access really it?
I am excited for the newest wave of switches though. More power, more efficient, and quieter. If POE based mini pc's become popular(maybe monitor mini pc combos too?), they could be a lot of fun for homelabs. POE powered home theater mini pc is something I have been looking for. So far it seems mostly to be industrial pc's which are expensive.
Depending on the mini-pc, there are many Poe power splitters out, I use a few 12v at 2a for some of my stuff. I have a 5v at 3or 4a for RPi needs. I recently bought a 12v 3a for an n100 system, it seems to have burned out the lower current device. This new one does require bt levels of power though (I have up to 90watt per port). All of these that I buy say they are gigabit, never tested for speed.
Because they lack the personnel to run a qualified IT department to handle maintenance, support and projects. So they use what Microsoft and others dish them up and that is cloud subscriptions. With all the risks you mention like data loss due to "involuntary russian co-administration", or unpaid bills. Sure some NAS would be cheaper. But what if you don't know what an IP address is, or CIFS, or RAID level, or SMTP. Instead Reddit has really nice horror stories of Google not liking a pushed Android app update at all, disables the account, and with that disabling any other booked Google services like email are no longer accessible. That day they learned that there is no cloud, just other people's computers.
That's because setting up a NAS implies putting it into a locked server room with ventilation at a central location and some way of backing it up, and that also implies return-to-office since working from home will mean you'll need to teach them to VPN in (which implies setting up a VPN gateway at the office with OpenRadius, which means some kind of server talking to a directory server for auth-auditing-access controls), and then you'll get to deal with the fun of making sure that the user knows how to do version control. You setup onedrive/google drive/box/Dropbox and it's "someone else's problem".
Eh, what's the current limit on normal POE...15 watts, and then it goes to 30 (plus), 90 (plus plus) and ultimately 100 (3 plus)? I mean, how many TMMs (besides the Apple Silicon Mac mini) do you know of can conceivably thrive on 15 maxed out (actually, that might brown-out on 15 it you kick it hard enough, like an iPhoto import job)? Even my lowly t540 thin client uses up 16 watts running frigate, and even for a reasonably power efficient machine (your typical Renoir or Tiger/Alder lake TMM) that’s 17-55w typical. You would need POE++, and unless you can justify it, you are better off using a USB-C dock and USB-PD with that. Same one wire setup but you won’t have to worry about the switch being both a networking and power distribution point of failure.
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The same goes for on-prem NAS, though. You’ll still need to setup a backup job to shadow-copy it somewhere else, and that’s either to S3 or tape-robot it off-site somewhere. You can do that with either an onprem NAS or cloud storage, but the need for a backup is separate from the presentation of storage services. At the end of the day the decision of whether your company wants to pay to back up the data repository somewhere else depends on someone above your pay grade. You just have to have it in writing that it’s their decision and that they will need to live within the consequences of that.
That's why the new generation of cheap switches is great. Some POE++ 90W (I think 100W is something special?) are actually affordable. I've seen some 4-8 port ~200W total POE delivery switches, max 90W per port for under $100 new. Sure cheap ones are gigabit, but 2.5g arent that much more expensive(see trendnet $320 rn for max 480W power, 2SFP+ and 8 95W ports, https://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-TPE-BG5091-Compliant-Government-Protection/dp/B0F1R457F6?th=1, non SFP+ is even cheaper). And it seems like it will improve in the near future with all power delivery stuff getting better recently. There are 10g 90W POE switches out there, super expensive, but some are quite quiet.
Older 60W POE stuff is also starting to be sold used. Having 10g does feel better if you want to connect a PC through POE, but I think I've only seen a single 10g POE-in PC. I got a used netgear MS510TXUP (8 ports POE++ 60W max, 4 multi gig, 4 10g) used a while back and it's too loud to sit next to my desk, but is almost inaudible above a dresser. Not sure how much louder it will be with max POE (only using 20-40W rn), but for a used 10g capable POE++ switch it was quite cheap. It's still being sold new I believe, but older ones are leaving companies as well. (Chatgpt says released in 2021 linking to a STH announcement
). Useful for homelabs if you eventually want say 1 HTPC connected with power and data from one cable, plus an access point or two. Maybe you need to connect an extra switch in another room. You can get one powered over POE-in as well.You could definitely power a N100 system or the like with 60W. 90W/100W seems to be quite common now. I don't know how the efficiency works for POE vs DC adapters/internal PSUs, but these new switches make high power poe much more affordable, and could make some fun things. Not going to be for big servers or anything, but I'm sure a lot of people here can think of some ideas. I'd love some poe lights if the conversion wasn't so expensive.
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I'm honestly flabbergasted by this line of thought. It's likely just me, and I don't get it, but..
You want to limit your hardware choices because of POE? Is there not a power plug nearby?
Definitely niche use case. It's not for an EPYC or Xeon system of course. A wall mounted TV with a mini PC mounted to the arm to control it is what I'm going for eventually. Could be controllable from a button too. Not for most people, but I think the mini pc and raspberry pi crowd is going to appreciate these new switches as well. Maybe my dislike for dc adapters is showing a little. I have definitely plugged a 24V to a 12V and vice versa before
. I've tried plugging 39V ones in as well, good thing they're usually slightly different sized. And I've had lots of power bricks die mysteriously.I've seen one person use an old POE-in industrial PC in their garage to control garage doors and act as an NVR. He was renting and there were no power plugs in his garage (which apparently doesn't meet the national electrical code). Low power budget can also be perfectly fine for a HTPC if you want low power for the low heat to run with no active cooling, or to minimize fan noise.
There are definitely limitations because of the power budget. There's probably some advantages I'm not thinking of. I've only seen a few people do it. Connecting too far devices to a UPS via managed switch is basically all that I've seen it for so far though. On all these ads for small business switches, I see stuff about POE lighting but I've never seen affordable options. Wiring up actual lights to smart switches seems so much cheaper for the exact same result. I saw a POE powered phone a while back (I think cisco) that needed POE++ for the built in skype (RIP) webcam. Not sure how many people want that... I've largely been shown the failures from friends. Not sure how many people want a phone at home that uses up to 40W. POE-in seems to be getting more popular in industrial deployments, I've seen a few mini-pcs from lower cost vendors in China. Still far more expensive than standard DC input models, but not the 3x the price I used to see.
It's not a reason to upgrade to POE++, but in terms of new things that could be cool for a homelab, I see it as literally the only area where there is improvement now. My first 8 port POE switch (I don't even think POE+, circa 2014?) made a ton of heat and noise. Now I have a 8 port POE++ model that is more efficient and far quieter. Sure it's not going to power a dual socket system, or even the lowest end server now, but cheaper, more efficient poe switches are legitimately better than the used to be and seem to have improved quite a bit the past 5 years. And the pricing is quite competitive when looking at POE+ to POE++ models new.
Efficiency of POE is actually something I wish was tested more. It would be good to know how much worse the efficiency is POE powering w/ poe splitter is compared to DC adapters. Hard to measure tho. It was really bad 10 years ago. Like up to 20% less efficient if I recall correctly comparing to good DC adapters, but it's hard to account for the switch. A lot of the times on specs sheets I see POE using more power than DC as well. I've heard cisco reps claim POE is more efficient than DC adapters also, but I've never seen evidence of it. I know an engineering shop that was using 300W POE continuously controlling all their machines ~5 years ago. More efficient switch may actually make a financial difference there. If it makes a difference to you, it largely depends how much POE you're putting out. I also believe if you use POE power in a industrial context, you have fewer/easier electrical codes to follow.
TLDR, no it's not you. There is basically no reason for this in a home other than it would look slightly nicer with one fewer cable and it would be fun
. More efficient and quiet switches is very nice though. I think at least one person at STH agrees with that or they wouldn't run power consumption tests on their switches. It would be interesting to see how efficient poe switches are at POE.The biggest use of POE in the home would be a good AP set, and some faster AP may need more current. Early WiFi 7 units needed more than 25 watts.
I have a no name passively cooled dumb POE+ 2.5g switch I recently purchased for some testing, it was as cheap as many gigabit switches.
I have a no name passively cooled dumb POE+ 2.5g switch I recently purchased for some testing, it was as cheap as many gigabit switches.
Try looking into one of these Amazon.com : smart plug to control an outlet remotely or with a button...
Eh, my beef with those "smart" plugs is that they rely on an IoT stack that resides somewhere far away, (i.e. .cn) and if that layer goes away or is no longer supported, you'll be stuck with a paperweight at best, or something that sits inside your network that you can't entirely trust. In a way I like the ZWave stuff a little bit more, since the scope of control theoretically only resides between your ZWave controller/hub and the mesh network with your sensors and control devices.
I don't want to send anyone down the project rabbit hole but there are plugs you can open and flash with open source firmware (and apparently some with OTA exploits which can get you the new firmware without a screwdriver,) to the use with your own local services.