geerlingguy / geerlingguy/mini-rack

Mini Rack: with Xeon ITX NAS

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Description

Thank you Jeff for putting together this community! I feel like I've found my people.

My aims with this rack were to cover the needs of my small apartment and provide a small test bed for learning:
- Wired connections for access point, PC, printer, TV
- Pi 3b running Pi Hole
- Pi 4b running Home Assistant
- ITX NAS with 6x SSDs (resulting in 3TB pool)

But most importantly it had to be **wife approved**. This meant blacking out all LEDs keeping the footprint as small as possible, and making the front look as clean as possible.

### The Rack
![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b2763378-505d-4669-8ea0-74414e0e4b3b)
_I went a little crazy with patch cables, because I feel that it's part of the server rack experience_

![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/df6e28ac-b098-464a-be73-051d15f78e29)
_I use a Tapo P304M power strip which is Matter enabled and has energy monitoring. All power bricks are hidden away in the basement_

### Software Dashboards
![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/60b4fa07-87ee-488d-8265-85cbc4f43615)
_Unraid server (all SATA SSD in ZFS array)_

![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7eb5d2a7-133f-477a-88d0-9d52aafa5157)
_Home Assistant dashboard fed by Tapo energy monitoring and Pi Hole integration_

### Planning Process

![Image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3e83f769-24e1-4fe1-a6a1-3c6b32e29d6d)
_I had a lot of fun using draw.io to plan out my rack. For the first week I just got my basic parts in as seen on the right. Then I used that as a transparent background on the rack diagram to make sure I had the dimensions correct. I think we could actually make a shape library for this community to use, with standardized sizes for common equipment._

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

The issue body is a community rack showcase with photos and planning notes; it names no repository file, test, entry point, or requested code or documentation change. There is therefore no concrete starting command or definition of done for a first-time contributor.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
raspberry-pi
Domain
content
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
15/100

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