Hey All... I currently live in an apartment, and have been using a 12U rack for the past several years. I'm getting a little tired of crawling on the floor to change this little bugger around. I've also nearly filled it up at this point. Does anyone have a decent 25/27U rack that they would recommend. I don't want anything terribly expensive, so something under $500 would be preferable. I'm trying to plan some projects for 2026 that don't require buying memory or storage, and this one has been bubbling just below the surface for a while now. Preferably it would be something 4-post, open on the sides, but with an option to add panels later if it somehow becomes desirable.

Take a look at my post here. Do You Really Need Wi-Fi 7 in Your Home Lab in 2025? https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/12/do-you-really-need-wi-fi-7-in-your-home-lab-in-2025/

This is an interesting one, that I didn't think we would be thinking about late 2025. But, here we are: https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/12/has-ram-pricing-just-made-used-enterprise-servers-the-better-home-lab-deal/

hi everyone here

Hey all. Just curious if anybody else is running Home Assistant in their home lab. Over the weekend, I installed ESPHome on an ESP32 board. One gotcha to keep an eye out for is that some of the functionality of ESPHome won't work (without some hoop-jumping) if you are running Home Assistant in Docker or in an LXC Container. I've had HA Core running in LXC for most of this year. I will likely be backing up the config and moving it to a full VM so I can get access to the extra features. Just wanted to share the rabbit-hole I found myself down over the weekend. Have a Happy Monday!