This page describes my janky homelab setup. Someone has to pay the power bill for this thing... (over 100$/month)

Some of my servers are on a wooden rack that I designed and built myself. The rack has a cheap 8 port gigabit switch which is connected to a router. I also have a APC Smart UPS SUA1500RM2U on the bottom of the rack to power the most important equipment.

My primary interest with homelabbing is high performance computing (HPC). I also like learning how to configure and run my own services.

Starting in 2025, I moved to New Mexico for a new job, and have my homelab split across two locations, identified by ABQ (Albuquerque, New Mexico) and NJ (my previous location).

I give all my servers character names to identify them.

Tohka (NJ, main server, June 2024 – present)

Named after a character in the anime Date A Live. This server is a central location for data storage and self-hosted services.

Yuuka (ABQ, compute server, June 2024 – present)

Named after Yuuka from the mobile game Blue Archive which also has an anime adaptation. This server was built for high disk speed to enable faster trillion digit computations with y-cruncher.

Riri (ABQ, compute server, Oct 2025 – present)

Named after Riri Hitotsuyanagi, a character from Assault Lily, which is a mixed media franchise that has an anime that aired in 2020 and a game which has since ended service for its global version.

Yuyu (ABQ, compute server, Oct 2025 – present)

Named after Yuyu Shirai, a character from Assault Lily, which is a mixed media franchise that has an anime that aired in 2020 and a game which has since ended service for its global version.

Laptop "cluster" (ABQ, Oct 2025 – present)

A grouping of three laptops. It was supposed to be five, but one has a fatal graphics issue preventing its use and the other has a forgotten BIOS password preventing the installation of Linux so it was instead given to a family member. I obtained four Dell Precision laptops from an old laptop giveaway, two of which are in this cluster, one of which was given to a family member, and the remaining one became my new main laptop.

Setsuna (NJ, compute server, Aug 2024 – present)

Named after Setsuna Yuuki from the anime Love Live Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai. This server was obtained from a very good deal.

Kurumi (NJ, compute server, July 2023 to present)

Primarily named after Kurumi, the hacker character in the anime Lycoris Recoil. Also happens to be the same name as Kurumi from the anime Date A Live. This is a server I use for heavy computing with low memory requirements.

Komari (NJ, compute server, Jan 2024 to present)

Named after Terakomari Gandesblood from the anime Hikikomari Kyuuketsuki no Monmon (The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess). This is a server I use for heavy computing with high memory requirements.

Rimuru (NJ, storage server, decommissioned, July 2022 – 2024)

Named after the main character in the anime Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken (Tensura). Previously a central location for data and self-hosted services. Has since been decommissioned and replaced with a Dell R730xd LFF

Lacia (NJ, compute server, decommissioned, July 2020 - June 2024)

Named after the character Lacia in the anime Beatless. This used to be the central server for my data and services, then became a place for some heavy computing. Considering its age, I have decided to decommission this server from my homelab in favor of better performance on newer hardware.

Shirase (NJ, test server, decommissioned, 2020 to 2022)

Named after the main character from the anime Battle Programmer Shirase (BPS). This is one of the servers I used to begin my homelabbing with enterprise hardware. I found this one in recycling while I was working on my Bachelor's degree at RPI.

Pictures

Page last updated: 2025-11-30

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