Karen HauerMay 25, 2025
Jan Wildeboer 😷

New blog post: My Cute Homelab, in which I explain the basics of my homelab setup with a cute 10 inch rack, ThinkCentre Tiny PCs running RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) without getting lost in too much nerdy details (I hope). With complete BOM (Bill of Materials).

Replies to this toot will soon show up as comments under the blog post. Enjoy and share your thoughts on my setup! And feel free to AMA (Ask Me Anything) on my setup in the replies!

https://jan.wildeboer.net/2025/05/Cute-Homelab/

My Cute Homelab (updated)

As I experiment a lot with open source solutions, I am always in need of a bit of compute power to run stuff on. Nowadays, with containers and automation through CI/CD, that has become a lot simpler compared to, say, 5-10 years ago. You just need a few simple, but powerful enough machines, a bit of networking and you can play around. So. Let me explain my current homelab setup. Updated 2025-07-21.

Jan Wildeboer's Blog
May 24, 2025 at 1:47pmWeb
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷May 24, 2025
Because someone asked: The rack draws around 25-30W in total on average. It may peak at 60-75W when I put the ThinkCentres under a lot of load, but I haven't seen it go above that.
Show threadJakub WołynkoMay 24, 2025
@jwildeboer to be honest I expected Fedora or Ubuntu. RHEL it’s just too stable ;)
Show threadSean BootsMay 24, 2025
@jwildeboer Looks really cool - thanks for sharing! 🙌
Show threadDjangoMay 24, 2025

@jwildeboer Ui how cute little thing! 🤗

My homelab is a little bit bigger and higher 🫣

Show threadArjen HaaymanMay 24, 2025
@jwildeboer the first link to a 3D model is a 404
Show threadI. Huguet (moved to masto.es)May 24, 2025
@jwildeboer What makes the ThinkCentre to be so quiet? Are the bigger model quiet too? I want to prepare a server with HDDs in RAID, so I need at least 2 SATA bays.
Show threadchipiguay - Pablo 😴May 24, 2025
@jwildeboer hi! Thanks for sharing 🙏. How do you handle power? This is something I've been think about when having several tiny factor machines. Also, it'd awesome if you could share a picture of the backside 🫶
Show threadDiego Carrasco G.May 25, 2025
@jwildeboer
That's interesting! Thanks! Can you maybe elaborate on why RHEL? I like stability in servers and until a few months ago I was using Debian or Ubuntu and changed to Alma Linux to try it out. I don't really remember why I didn't choose to try RHEL. Maybe a follow-up post on the software choices?
Show threadPauliusFeb 6
@jwildeboer hey, nice setup! I just have some questions regarding the 2.5G ethernet cards - are they being utilized and if yes - how?