I thought it might be a nice idea to start writing about what I'm running in my homelab over time, this will let me see how things have changed for me - and also let me share a passion. I don't think anyone actually reads any of the sh*t I write, but I'm sharing it all the same. I will probably make one of these once or twice a year inbetween dedicated posts about any major changes I've made, or not, I'm not sure yet!

For me, 2026 has been a year of moving away from TrueNAS Apps. They're convenient, but they're too managed and they aren't really mature enough for me to have full implicit trust in them. A fine counter to the thought that they're "too managed" might be the fact that you can deploy applications with custom compose YAML now, but I personally have fixed multiple bugs around this that would either leave the apps page in an unusable state, or put considerable load on the system.

With that said, here's the current state of my homelab in July 2026:

Hardware:

TrueNAS Version | 25.10.2.1 - Goldeye
      CPU       | AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X (24C/48T)
      GPU       | Intel ARC A750
     Memory     | 128GiB Corsair DDR4
    Boot-Pool   | 2x256GB Crucial/Intel SSD
   Storage-Pool | 6x2-Wide 14TB WDC + 2x500GB L2ARC
    Apps-Pool   | 2x1TB FanXiang S100 NVME
      HBA       | LSI SAS9300-16i
    Network     | X540-T2 - 2x10GbE
    Chassis     | Silverstone RM61-312

I recently upgraded to a Threadripper 3960X from my i9-9900k. Unfortunately it died after many years of service, starting out in my gaming PC. The Threadripper has been very nice and surprisingly easy to cool.

The Silverstone Chassis is also technically a "new" addition. It was an extremely expensive impulse purchase but I can't say I regret it. It's a beauty.

For the future, I plan on swapping out my NIC for something more power efficient, preferably something I can stick the hundreds of SFPs I have laying around in. Maybe an Intel X710. I also plan on moving to ECC memory, but that may be much further down the line considering how absurd the prices are at the moment. Similarly, I don't plan on buying any more hard drives, and if I start having failures I'm in a bad situation - I only have one cold spare!

The FanXiang NVMEs are going strong, but both because of their lack of brand reputation and their size, I'm hoping to swap them out for something larger. Unfortunately much like memory, NVME and SSD prices have skyrocketed similarly, so I'm not in a great position to be buying anything new at the moment. I will need to see what happens over the next few months.

ZFS Pools:

                                            capacity
pool                                      alloc   free
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
boot-pool                                 53.5G   168G
  mirror-0                                53.5G   168G
    sdk3                                      -      -
    sdi3                                      -      -
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
data                                      33.9T   117T
  raidz1-0                                16.0T  60.4T
    2076c586-86ec-4386-a387-4e2c40a85ebd      -      -
    46257013-978c-40de-876d-6c46ab7d05d8      -      -
    ef9330a6-b315-44e7-8a77-1d67963a6728      -      -
    02af2c3d-06f7-47b2-9902-1553e9d86a99      -      -
    0c15c4f8-ae7e-4eb7-809f-7fe7a9831b9d      -      -
    2d48ec92-1940-4459-8979-48677c9ccf81      -      -
  raidz1-1                                17.9T  56.9T
    ccb913f3-2179-40c1-b664-9e1d0174d6e4      -      -
    533219ee-0183-4afa-b609-47f2bae3e7ef      -      -
    461015f2-726e-4244-b91e-b243e282fdb8      -      -
    58bd1f11-131a-4aa5-a6a5-33550d62c6c5      -      -
    52e693d8-cec5-474f-a7b3-0b50f5ac5b7a      -      -
    bca09cc1-b7f6-4a43-8f69-8653fe92d839      -      -
cache                                         -      -
  f3b1db55-67a6-4047-83b7-4dbbf723736a     441G  23.1G
  bff49755-41c2-4ff4-a334-e71c5a91a7a3     441G  22.4G
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 
nvme                                       357G   587G
  mirror-0                                 357G   587G
    f7aeb2f8-2f23-4db5-b872-b5292ae8cffc      -      -
    40ea21fc-2dd1-4468-8e70-4543389c25d4      -      -

I'm up to 117T total usable capacity in my data pool. 33.9T of which is allocated to mov- I mean... Linux ISOs.

I also like to store large language models, like DeepSeek V4 Pro (8-bit quant is 1.67T)!

Docker (with a couple omissions):

  • Adguard Home (DNS Adblocking)
  • Archi Steam Farm (Steam Idle, I use this to automatically claim free-to-keep games)
  • Caddy (TLS Termination endpoint for any WebUIs)
  • Cloudflared (Remote Tunnel to Cloudflare ZTNA)
  • Dockhand (Docker Management Platform)
  • Essinghigh-Dev (you are here!)
  • Homeassistant (Home Automation Platform)
  • Immich (Google Photos Replacement)
  • Kavita (Ebook Reader)
  • Mailcow (Mail Server)
  • Netbootxyz (iPXE Image Provider)
  • Plex (Legally Obtained Media Watcher)
  • Uptime Kuma (Infrastructure Monitoring/Alerting Platform)
  • Vaultwarden (Password Manager)
  • Watchtower (Automatic Container Image Updater)

VMs:

  • IPS (Returns fake service-signatures on any port and tarpits scanners)
  • Splunk_Server (Thank you Splunk for the developer license)
  • unifi (Unifi OS Server. I don't like it)

Networking:

  • OPNSense Edge Router (Some no-name x86 hardware, it does the job nicely)
  • Ubiquiti EdgeRouter PoE-500 (Core Distribution Switch)
  • Unifi USW Pro 24 (Access Switch)
  • 3x ZyXEL NWA50AX (Access Points running OpenWrt)

... And God knows how many unmanaged switches

My network is still flat. I have not had the time or the interest in splitting it out into VLANs. It's something I'd like to get around to, but for the moment I'm running a single-VLAN /23.