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Built a 'server room' in my apartment closet

General Discussion by Hel 25 replies 3.2K views
Hel

Member OP

Bare Metal Purist

#1

Three Dell T3610. Xeon E5-2670. 128GB DDR3 each. Picked from e-waste pile. Price good. Network: 500/50 fiber. Switch: old Netgear, fan dead. Replaced with Noctua. Temperature: 34C ambient. Box fan in doorway. Perkele landlord doesn't know.

Running:
- Proxmox cluster
- TrueNAS mirror
- Plex for friends
- WireGuard to OVHcloud VPS

Photos attached. Cable management: acceptable. Power draw: 450W measured. Breaker: 15A. Margin: thin.

Concern: summer coming. Closet has no vent. Considering bathroom exhaust fan through wall. Lease says no "alterations." interpreting loosely.

Anyone done worse? Success stories? Fire stories?

marcus_qc

Member

#2

Hey folks this is super stoked to see bare metal alive in 2026!!!

Honest tho that power draw gonna hurt come July. I had similar setup in Austin, had to admit defeat and move the hot boy to InterServer colo. $40/month for 1U, worth it for AC alone.

Mistake I made: didn't measure humidity. Learned the hard way. Rust on PCIe slots. Fix it fast, get a $15 sensor in there

42U and still growing
VE

Member

9 #3

Can lah but why leh

Three tower in closet heat go where lor
Your breaker trip already then you know

My setup: one mini pc, external, balcony
Can. No issue. 15W. Done.

You want cluster go Vultr or something https://www.vultr.com/pricing/
$6/month. Same same. Less fire.

beto60

Member

#4

Caramba!!! 450W nossa!!! My friend in São Paulo he do this too but with six server his apartment was like sauna!!! Double no cold there!!!

He move everything to HostHatch after the eletric bill come!!! Very expensive!!! But your cable management look better than his!!! He have cable like spaghetti monster

I think you need talk with landlord before??? Or maybe not???

ellagee91

Member

#5

The box fan. That's the concerning part. Not rated for continuous use. Especially in enclosed space. Dell towers run warmer than you think. I had a T3610 once. Power supply fan died at 2 AM. Smelled it before I saw it.

Exhaust fan through wall. That's alteration. Lease says no. But interpretation varies. Mine said no pets. I have three cats. Five years now. No inspection. You get the idea.

But seriously. Smoke detector. Check it. Especially if breaker trips. And you reset it. Without looking. At what's hot...

mediaaustin

Member

Deliverability Nerd

#6

What humidity level you reading now

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
Hel

Member OP

Bare Metal Purist

#7
mediaaustin said:
What humidity level you reading now

Don't have sensor yet. Ordered yesterday after marcus_qc mentioned. Finland dry in winter, summer different story. Lake effect.

OVHcloud VPS in Gravelines doing reverse proxy duty. Latency to Helsinki 35ms acceptable. But their S3-compatible object storage pricing jumped, considering migration.

Breaker math: 15A * 230V = 3450W theoretical. Real sustained maybe 2300W before warmth issues. At 450W I'm one space heater away from dark.

Aleksi

Member

#8
Hel said:
TrueNAS mirror

ZFS? RAIDZ1? Please tell me you didn't stripe three e-waste drives and call it backup.

I have opinions. You will hear them.

Mirror vdev, two pairs, four drives minimum. Your T3610 has eight bays. Use them. Scrub monthly. I don't care about your landlord, I care about your pool.

Helsinki brother here. Käpylä. I know that building stock. 1960s concrete, no ventilation, perfect for fungus. Get the humidity sensor.

mediaaustin

Member

Deliverability Nerd

#9
Hel said:
Finland dry in winter

Austin opposite problem. 80% humidity spring through fall. Had a closet server, different era, different mistakes.

Your mail situation: running mail from home IP? On that fiber? Reverse DNS set how? Because 500/50 residential, dynamic or not, most RBLs have that range flagged before you send hello.

I ask because "Plex for friends" becomes "Plex and mail for friends" real fast and then none of your friends get mail.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
ali3

Member

#10
vegetarob said:
Go Vultr or something $6/month

Vultr cloud compute starts at $3.50 now. Used to be $2.50. Still cheap. But their $6 plan is 1 vCPU 1GB. You run Proxmox on that? No. You run nothing on that.

I push to production on Fridays. I also read specs before recommending.

Hel's setup overkill for home? Yes. But "same same" is not same. Three node cluster with local storage versus single VM. Different problem.

https://www.vultr.com/pricing/

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