The Homelab has been getting a nice bit of attention recently. Today I rebuilt Apollo, the main "server" in the cabinet that handles things from Plex, a UniFi controller, Ubuntu repo and a few other VMs.
Apollo is mostly comprised of consumer gear to keep the power consumption and noise levels down. This may change soon though with a different cabinet installation - more on this soon!
Apollo also was housed in a 4U chassis which takes up precious space in the cabinet and the hardware wasn't necessarily requiring a large space. This Homelab is under strict instruction to have as little downtime as possible by a closely monitored SLA implemented by my girlfriend, so a two part build it is.
Even though the hardware is staying mostly the same, moving to another server chassis was a pain.
Anyway, onwards with the build! I'll start with a spec list dump of what Apollo currently runs off:
Gigabyte HD3 Motherboard
Intel i3 4330 1150 CPU
Noctua NH-L9i CPU cooler
Gigabyte 650W PSU, to be replaced with a Modular Corsair PSU
250GB SSD, can't remember what brand - to be replaced with a 500GB Samsung SSD
Rosewill 2U chassis
3x Noctua NF-A8 FLX fans
Corsair CMZ16GX3M2A1600C10 Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz RAM
Part I of the build involved switching to the 2U chassis, installing the new RAM and the CPU cooler.
Total downtime was a little less than 2 hours, not bad :) Stay tuned for Part II.
















Everything booted up on the first go, which was satisfying!
Apollo is currently sitting on top of the PSUs until Part II is complete, here's the to do list for Part II:
Install rails
Install new SSD
Re-install Ubuntu server
Migrate from OpenVZ to Docker
Mount SSD and HDD in their drive bays
Cable management
For now, let's look at the RAM and sensors output to see everything is OK.
[email protected]:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +27.8 C (crit = +105.0 C)
temp2: +29.8 C (crit = +105.0 C)
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +48.0 C (high = +80.0 C, crit = +100.0 C)
Core 0: +48.0 C (high = +80.0 C, crit = +100.0 C)
Core 1: +45.0 C (high = +80.0 C, crit = +100.0 C)

Stay tuned for Part II, thanks for reading!