A 9U open-frame rack, a firewall built from a refurbished mini PC, a decommissioned enterprise server, and two laptops that were headed for a landfill.
| U | Device | Role |
|---|---|---|
| U1–U2 | APC Smart-UPS1 | Power |
| U3 | HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen92 | Proxmox hypervisor (shiva) |
| U5 | HP ProDesk 600 G4 Mini3 | pfSense firewall (morpheus) |
| U6 | MT-VIKI 8-port KVM4 | Console access |
| U7 | Jadol 24-port patch panel5 | Cabling |
| U8 | 10-outlet PDU6 | Power distribution |
| U9 | MokerLink 26-port managed switch7 | Core switching (neo) |
Off-rack: two Ubuntu Server laptops on a shelf (prometheus, oracle), an
8-port unmanaged TP-Link switch feeding them, and eero Pro 6E units distributed
through the house.
| Host | Hardware | CPU | RAM | Storage | OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
morpheus |
HP ProDesk 600 G4 Mini | i5-8500T | 32 GB | 1 TB SSD | FreeBSD 15.0 (pfSense) |
shiva |
HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 | 2× Xeon E5 v3/v4 | — | — | Proxmox VE |
prometheus |
Apple MacBook Pro (2012) | i5/i7 | — | SSD | Ubuntu Server 24.04.3 |
oracle |
Dell Inspiron 15 | i5-1235U | 32 GB | 2 TB SSD | Ubuntu Server 24.04.3 |
The observability stack runs on a thirteen-year-old MacBook. It handles four SNMP devices at a 60-second interval, two Alloy agents, and 30 days of metric retention without complaint — which is a useful thing to know before spending money on a monitoring host.
- 1U rackmount tray for the ProDesk Mini8
- Sliding rails for the ProLiant9
- 1U universal rack mount for the APC10
- ViewSonic N1700W LCD, used as a rack console via the KVM
- RJ45 Cat6 in-line couplers11
- Cat6 patch cables12