My homelab is a constantly evolving platform for learning, self-hosting, and running serious workloads — from VMware vSphere clusters and AI inference to network automation and cloud integration. It lives in a dedicated server room, built around a StarTech 25U open-frame rack, and extends into the cloud via AWS and Cloudflare.
What am I looking at?
That figure is what my homelab is drawing from the wall right now — a live reading, not a number I typed in once and forgot about.
Home Assistant asks each machine's management controller how much it is using: the Nutanix cluster reports its shared chassis power supplies over Redfish, and the Quanta storage server reports over IPMI. Those get added into a single whole-lab total.
Every 30 seconds Home Assistant pushes that total out to a Cloudflare Worker, which keeps the latest reading (and the last half hour of them, for the sparkline) at the edge. This page reads it straight back, so what you see is at most a minute or so behind reality. Nothing here talks to my house directly — the lab only ever pushes out.
Readings are taken at the power supplies, so the true draw at the socket is roughly 5–10% higher. If the dot turns grey, the lab has stopped reporting.
Table of Contents
At a Glance
| Compute Nodes | Total RAM | Usable Storage | Network Uplinks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 (3× NX-1365-G4 + HP Z840) | 1,280 GB | 95.9 TB | 25 GbE |
I would estimate the replacement value sits somewhere around £15–20k. This has been accumulated over the years through a mix of enterprise surplus finds and deliberate upgrades.
My hardware choices are driven by a consistent set of design principles — some are non-negotiable, others are strong preferences:
- vSphere compatibility — HCL-listed hardware wherever possible, so certifications mean something
- IPMI / remote management — everything must be operable headlessly
- Rack-mount form factor — clean, manageable, and expandable
- Low-power 24/7 operation — the lab runs continuously, so efficiency matters
- Noise isn’t really a factor due to location
- Heat output isn’t a huge factor
- A GPU is essential in at least one node.
Physical Hardware
Overview
GPU/ Management Cluster
This is made up of a single HP Z840 running ESXi 8.0U3. It is an amazing workhorse and has been a key part of my lab (running multiple functions for over 6 years). It currently runs vSphere and I often use it for running Holodeck on top of vSphere.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| HP | Z840 |
| CPU | 2x CPU E5-2673 v3 @ 2.40GHz 30MB Cache, 5.0GTs, 105W |
| RAM | 256GB |
| NIC 0 | Supermicro Intel AOC-STGN-i2S 10Gb Dual Port |
| Storage 0 | Intel Optane DC P4800X used for Local NVMe Datastore |
| Storage 1 | Intel 2TB NVMe used for Local NVMe Datastore |
| GPU0 | NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 — display adapter only (the Z840 would not boot without a GPU installed; keeps the A10 free for compute) |
| GPU1 | NVIDIA Ampere A10 (24 GB) — GPU compute: AI inference, LLM serving, and ML workloads |
| Boot Volume | 2x1TB Raid 1 |
Compute Cluster
Nutanix NX – 3x NX-1365-G4
This is a significant resource for running a lot of my workloads however, due to electric costs, it does not run all the time. It is made up of 3x Nodes in a Supermicro Big-Twin with an identical configuration as below…..
This is running vSphere 8 with VSAN ESA being used as storage
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| Model | NXS2U4NL12G400 |
| CPU | 2x XEON E5-2640 V3 |
| RAM | 256GB |
| NIC | Intel Ethernet Controller XXV710 for 25GbE SFP28 |
| Boot Disk | 64 GB SATADOM |
| SSD 1 | Samsung PM863 960GB |
| SSD 2 | Samsung PM863 960GB |
| SSD 3 | Samsung PM863 960GB |
Storage
Primary Storage
Quanta D51PH-1ULH (66.3TiB usable)
Quanta server running TrueNAS scale. This was originally configured with striped mirrors. I have changed this to a RAIDZ2 config, giving me a usable 66.3 TB. This is presented as SMB/NFS and iSCSI to multiple environments. More details are here
Secondary Storage
Synology DS1512+ 4x8TB SHR1 ( 21.8TiB Usable)
This is in my office and used for “offsite backups”
| Hostname | Model | NVMe Capacity (TB) | SSD Capacity (TB) | HDD Capacity (TB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP | HP Z840 | 2.6 | ||
| vSAN ESA | 0 | 7.42 | ||
| Quanta D51PH-1ULH | 0 | 0 | 66.3 | |
| Synology DS1512+ | 21.8 | |||
| Total TB (Usable) | 2.6 | 7.42 | 95.9 |
Network
Physical Network
| Model | Description |
|---|---|
| Ubiquiti Dream Machine Beast | Core Firewall |
| Mikrotik CRS504-4XQ-IN | Core Fibre Switch |
| Mikrotik CSS610-8P-2S+IN | POE Switch |
| Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+ | Fibre to Ethernet Switch |
Wireless Network
| AP Model | Description |
|---|---|
| Ubiquiti UniFi AC-Pro | Access Point — Office |
| Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Pro | Access Point — House |
| Ubiquiti UniFi Lite Pro | Access Point — House |
WAN
| Wan Providers | Description |
|---|---|
| Zen FTTP (Via CityFibre) | 900/900 with a /29 IPV4 |