My journey from a single, simple server to a full-blown homelab addiction. A relatable story for anyone who can’t resist ‘just one more’ upgrade.

It Starts With a Confession

Hi, my name is… well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m a homelabaholic.

It’s been about twenty minutes since my last “quick config change.” You know the one. The little tweak that somehow snowballs into a six-hour rabbit hole of optimizing a setting that was working perfectly fine before you decided to “improve” it.

I told myself I was done. I really did. I had everything a reasonable person could ever need. My server, a trusty old Dell machine, was humming along beautifully. It managed my storage, ran all my media apps, and served up movies without a complaint. “This is enough,” I said to myself, trying to believe it. “24GB of RAM is plenty for anyone.”

I was lying, of course.

The First Stutter

Everything was fine until it wasn’t. The breaking point came silently at first, then all at once. The new 4K movie files started to stutter during playback. My photo management app, which uses machine learning to tag photos, was eating up RAM like it was free. My poor, aging graphics card was working so hard I think I could hear it crying.

The system that was “enough” suddenly felt ancient. The thought started as a whisper: You need more power.

So I relapsed. And I relapsed hard.

“Just one more server,” I told myself as I clicked ‘Buy It Now’ on a shiny, compact HP EliteDesk. “It’s just for transcoding,” I rationalized. “It’s a practical purchase. A necessity, even.”

That’s how it starts, isn’t it? With a perfectly reasonable excuse.

Welcome to the Command Center

Now, my reality is a little different. My main network switch, for reasons I can’t explain, has decided to connect at 100Mb speeds, like it’s 2005. My storage drives are filling up faster than my list of excuses. My wife asked me if I was having an affair last week because I keep sneaking down to the basement at 2 AM to “check on the servers.”

I guess I am having an affair. With a Dell and an HP. And honestly, my relationship with them is far less stable.

The worst part? That shiny new HP server is just sitting there, running a single, barely-used operating system, mocking me. It’s like buying a Ferrari to just go get the mail. It stares at me with its cold, blinking power light, a monument to my impulsiveness. “You bought me for a reason,” it seems to say. “Yet here I sit, doing nothing.”

My desk has become what I can only describe as a “command center.” That sounds cool, but the reality is much less glamorous.

• The Left Monitor: Shows the login screen for my old server.
• The Center Monitor: Displays the Proxmox dashboard, which I refresh compulsively as if something magical will happen.
• The Right Monitor: Is an extension of my laptop, which constantly reminds me that it’s too old for Windows 11. Even my laptop is a relic.

I have two keyboards and three mice on my desk. Why? I have no idea, but I live in constant fear that unplugging one of them will bring the entire system crashing down.

The desk itself is a wasteland of poor life choices. Empty energy drink cans stand guard next to bags of Cheetos from last week’s “late-night maintenance window.” There’s a bottle of cleaning spray that’s been sitting here so long it’s become a decorative item, a fossil from a time when I had ambitions of keeping things tidy.

“I’ll clean this up one day,” I tell myself, right before getting an idea to spin up another container to test something I don’t really need.

The Cycle Continues

I’ve come to accept a few things. I will never have enough RAM. I will never have enough storage. And my desk will probably never be clean. I’m powerless against the urge to add “just one more thing” to my setup.

It’s a strange, frustrating, and deeply satisfying hobby. You’re the creator, the user, and the full-time, unpaid IT support staff, all rolled into one.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do some research. I’m wondering if I can fit a second graphics card in that old Dell…