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As part of my ongoing efforts to evolve my home lab, the early 2025 overhaul brings a mix of exciting upgrades, optimizations, and migrations. From enhancing game server performance to further automating my smart home setup, these updates aim to improve efficiency, reduce noise, and increase the versatility of my systems. Here’s a breakdown of the major changes:

1. AMP Game Server Control Panel

Gaming in my lab is about to get more robust. I’ve set up AMP, a powerful tool for managing game servers. The new setup involves:

• 3x Rocky Linux VMs:
  • One VM hosts the controller for managing the servers.
  • Two VMs each run Docker containers that host 2x Minecraft servers, providing plenty of capacity for multiplayer gaming while keeping everything isolated.

This setup provides better performance and flexibility, allowing for dedicated resources for each server while easily scaling up or down based on load. There’s also numerous other game servers supported, meaning as I try other games and want to host my own multiplayer servers I can quickly and easily deploy and manage them.

2. Arista Network Stack Upgrade

In the quest for better performance and reduced noise, I’ve upgraded to an Arista DCS-7050SX-64-R as my main network switch. This high-speed switch is key to handling the data traffic between the firewall, TrueNAS, and other networked devices in my lab.

• The dual 40 Gb connectivity for TrueNAS and the firewall ensures that I have ultra-fast data transfers between systems. While no individual VM or host will use more than that on a single task, multiple intensive tasks could reach those numbers, as each of the 3 pools in TrueNAS are capable of 15-30 Gbps speeds when tested with fio.
• Fans are set to 30% speed, which significantly reduces noise in my rack while still sufficiently cooling the device. During the colder months of the year, the stock fans are hot swapped for Noctua fans for even further noise reduction.

3. Firewall Upgrades

The R220 previously running bare-metal pfSense has been upgraded to an R630 server to improve performance for my firewall duties. It now runs pfSense in a dual VM high-availability (HA) setup within Proxmox. This gives me greater redundancy and performance, ensuring the internet stays up when performing firewall software updates while also minimizing how often the physical server requires a reboot.

4. Family Photo Backups

I’ve integrated an Exabyte LTO2 tape drive, generously provided to me by Jason Buffington and Rick Vanover from Veeam, into my backup system. This was replaced in one of their labs as part of upgrades they performed in 2024. This tape drive is now dedicated to backing up family photos, which are securely stored in a fireproof box as well as with an immutable copy in public cloud S3 storage. The tape drive offers a reliable, offline storage solution that ensures these precious memories are safe in the event of a disaster.

5. Dell Fan Tuning

Noise levels have always been a concern in my lab, especially when running multiple high-performance systems. To address this, I’ve fine-tuned my fan setup to reduce noise levels, using the PowerEdge-shutup script. Every 60 seconds, this script runs on the TrueNAS and Proxmox servers with custom fan curves. On a shutdown command, a script runs to revert the fans to system control. This reduced home lab noise in the winter from 60 dB to 50 dB. With the changes made to the Arista switch, noise tends to average between 40 and 45 dB. Most of the noise now seems to come from the tape drive, which will be something I’ll be looking at in the later part of 2025. These changes, combined with a few other things such as powertop, also reduced power consumption by roughly 150W across all systems. While power is relatively cheap in Texas, and I do have solar, that does cause a noticeable reduction in my monthly electricity bill.

6. Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder (ERCF) for Voron

I’m in the process of building the Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder (ERCF), a key component in my Voron 3D printer setup. The ERCF is one part of a larger project to enable Multi-Material Unit (MMU) functionality for up to 8 filaments, allowing for more complex and colorful prints. This upgrade will significantly enhance my 3D printing capabilities by making it easier to print multi-material objects without needing to manually swap filaments during the print process. I’ll also be able to start using a water-soluble filament for my supports to make their removal much easier and cleaner.

The ERCF, along with the rest of the MMU system, will automate filament changes, ensuring smoother prints and expanding the range of possibilities for the kinds of projects I can tackle with my Voron.

7. Veeam 12.3 Upgrade

Veeam Backup & Replication version 12.3 has now been released, bringing better backup and disaster recovery features. In particular, it brings several QoL improvements to the initial Proxmox release in the summer of 2024, which you can read more about at my other blog post here.

8. GitHub Runner VM

In order to accelerate AI projects, I’ve created a VM with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 3050 GPU dedicated to acting as a GitHub runner. This setup allows me to automate build and testing tasks inside of GitHub, so that Python package updates, Docker image updates, and container publishing for projects like Wyoming Whisper TRT can be fully automated.

9. Attic Exhaust Fan and Temp Sensors with ESP32 BT Proxy

I’ve set up an attic exhaust fan system along with temperature sensors monitored by an ESP32 Bluetooth (BT) proxy. This system helps regulate temperature and humidity in the garage, ensuring that conditions are optimal for both my workbenches and the lab’s overall environment. As the garage becomes warmer than the attic, this exhaust fan turns on and consumes about 75W. In the evenings, it causes a noticeable 5-10F reduction in temperature. Paired with some air sealing of the garage door and some radiant barrier installation in the attic, it should keep the garage much cooler in the summer. During this, I also noticed that my existing Bluetooth sensors were occasionally showing as unavailable, so I added an ESP32 device near them to act as a Bluetooth proxy for Home Assistant, which has mostly resolved the connection issues.

10. Home Assistant Hardware Upgrade

I’ve upgraded my Home Assistant setup, moving from a Raspberry Pi 4B to an Intel N100. The upgrade provides significant performance gains, offering more processing power for automation tasks, faster response times, and improved stability. The Intel N100 brings much-needed flexibility for running more complex automation routines and integrating with other systems in the lab. This upgrade is especially beneficial as I continue expanding my smart home automation and adding new devices to the network. The biggest perk of it has been the significantly faster boot times, meaning when addons, HA Core, or HA OS update, it is a much less frustrating and nerve-wracking experience.

11. Home Assistant Voice PE Edition

In January, I purchased a Home Assistant Voice PE Edition to test using it as the voice satellite for the custom voice assistant I am building. With this, I can control various devices and execute commands simply by speaking, and have it all be controlled locally. Nabu Casa is putting some good work into improvements for it, plus community members have started modding the devices some to add things like better speakers and custom enclosures. Hopefully later in 2025, I will be purchasing several more of them to finally replace the Echo devices in my house.

12. Partial TrueNAS/Proxmox Plugin Re-write

As part of the ongoing improvements in my TrueNAS/Proxmox integration, I had to rewrite parts of the plugin due to the REST API deprecation introduced in TrueNAS 25.04. This update leverages the new JSON webhook and midclt (TrueNAS’s CLI utility) for handling storage interactions more efficiently. While the REST API freenas-proxmox is built on still exists, it has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. There are also issues with the plugin and TrueNAS 25.04 already.

Key Changes:

• JSON Webhook: The new webhook system in TrueNAS enables real-time notifications and interactions between TrueNAS and Proxmox. This is a significant improvement over the previous REST-based API, as it offers more flexibility and reliability when managing storage operations. With the webhook, Proxmox can be notified instantly of changes in TrueNAS, ensuring smoother integration and better synchronization of storage resources.
• midclt: TrueNAS’s midclt command-line utility is now central to the plugin’s operation. It allows for easier querying and management of TrueNAS resources directly from the Proxmox host. By using midclt, I can run TrueNAS commands remotely, making the integration between Proxmox and TrueNAS more seamless and efficient. It also helps to interact with TrueNAS in a more scriptable, automated way, eliminating the need for continuous API calls.

This integration makes storage management smoother and provides a more efficient communication channel between Proxmox and TrueNAS, allowing for a more dynamic and responsive environment. Between the changes I made to the code and some iSCSI tuning I performed, disk operations are noticeably faster and the VMs in the cluster no longer stun when 1 or 2 VMs are under heavy IO load. There are a number of disadvantages to the way in which I incorporated this new API and further enhancements I can make to the storage plugin, I will be covering those details in a future blog post. For now, you can check out the GitHub repo here.

13. Inovelli Indicator Bar Alerts

In late 2024 and early 2025, I replaced what was previously TP-Link Kasa Wi-Fi smart switches, Z-Wave Fan switches, and Sonoff iFan Wi-Fi fan controllers with Inovelli White series devices. One of the perks, besides migrating a significant chunk of my smart home off Wi-Fi and over to Matter over Thread with dimmer capabilities, was the indicator bar all Inovelli switches come with. Now, each “zone” has all indicators in a group, which is controlled by a script in Home Assistant that sets the indicator based on a number of statuses. The statuses are below, set from top to bottom. So, for example, if there is a severe weather alert and a package at the door, the severe weather alert will display since it is a higher priority.

• If the alarm system is armed, set indicators to pink at 1% brightness (This also makes fan indicators dimmer when on, so they are less annoying when sleeping at night, since the alarm is set to arm automatically at 10 PM every night)
• If the power grid is down and the house is running off the PowerWall, set indicators to orange
• If there is a severe weather alert with “Warning” in the name, set indicators to red
• If a water leak is detected, set indicators to dark blue
• If there is a person at the front door, set the indicators to light blue
• If a package is at the door, set indicators to a similar yellow to the Echo Dot notification color
• If a thermostat is turned off, set the indicators in that room/zone to white
• Otherwise, everything is clear, turn off the indicators

This has all been extremely helpful in being able to see overall smart home status at a glance from multiple places around the house. The only issue I have, is that the Matter network seems to be somewhat unstable. Eve Energy devices seem to be most of the culprit, as since their new firmware for the smart plugs released, things have been better. I am still awaiting updates for their switches since the attic and garage lights use them, as well at their in-wall outlets. Future Inovelli and Python Matter Server updates may increase stability as well. For now, I just have a widget on my main dashboard that shows unavailable devices. A quick reboot of the affected device causes it to re-interview successfully and re-join the network.

14. Bathroom Auto-Exhaust Based on Humidity

Using some humidity sensors near the showers and a script/integral function a Home Assistant community member wrote, I’ve automated the bathroom exhaust fans to turn on based on humidity levels. This ensures that the fan operates when needed, improving ventilation and preventing excess moisture buildup in the bathrooms. When humidity returns to normal, the same script shuts the fans off.

15. Ootbi VSAs for Testing the Object First Appliance

Finally, I’m testing the Ootbi VSAs (Virtual Storage Appliances) for the Object First appliance in my lab. This setup allows me to explore object storage capabilities, test various configurations, and fine-tune my storage solutions before deploying them in production environments. If you saw the Community Hub post Maurice Kevenaar wrote or presented with Geoff Burke at VeeamOn about Zabbix and Grafana integrations he wrote for Ootbi, those were created using VSAs, with some of the final Grafana testing actually performed in my lab. Maurice and I are both Object First Aces, and we’ll likely be iterating on his work and releasing some other projects in the future, all powered by the VSAs in our respective home labs.

Future Plans

Time and resource permitting, I have a number of ideas planned for the rest of 2025, so make sure to stay tuned for future posts. Some of which include:

• TrueNAS-Proxmox plugin improvements and one or several blogs about the project
• GLaDOS TTS improvements and a blog around the project
• An exploration of the Veeam Decoys Project
• Inventory tracking for the home lab
• Better monitoring for the home lab
• Some Veeam Data Cloud content
• USPS/FedEx/UPS package tracking in Home Assistant dashboards
• Per-power circuit energy monitoring to incorporate appliances into the HA energy dashboard
• Proxmox Datacenter Manager deployment
• Home appliance receipt/manual/serial tracking
• Complete ERCF for 8-color filament changing
• Build MPCNC for milling and laser engraving