After the red 3-node Lab Rax, I built a second one, this time in blue and with a different goal: something a non-technical person can plug into their router and actually use every day without ever opening a terminal.

What it does:

Movies & shows on any TV, phone or tablet (Jellyfin, with Intel Quick Sync hardware transcoding)

Automatic photo & video backup from phones (Immich)

Shared network drive for the house (Samba)

Network-wide ad-blocking (AdGuard Home, optional)

Radarr / Sonarr / Prowlarr / qBittorrent with hardlinks for managing the media library

What's inside:

Dell OptiPlex 3040 Micro: i5-6500T, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD

Datto Alto: Celeron 3865U, 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD

D-Link 5-port Gigabit switch built into the front panel, plus keystone jacks

2x 4TB Seagate drives (one for media, one for photos) on SATA-to-USB adapters inside the case

Top exhaust fan, carry handles, and "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" on the front

Software side:

Proxmox VE 9 on both, as two standalone hosts (not clustered…