So I was wondering, what is exactly the use case of owning a server rack with huge CPUs and 256GB of DDR4 RAM with 1PB of storage?
Obviously, I'm kind of exaggerating here, but it does seem that most homelabs are big server racks with at least two CPUs and like 20 cores in total.
Why would I want to buy a server rack with all the bells and whistles when a low-power, small NAS can do the trick? What's the main advantage of having a huge server, compared to an average Synology NAS for example?
Honestly, I only see disadvantages tbh. It consumes way more power, costs way more money and the processing power it provides is probably only relevant for (small) businesses and not for an individual like me.
So, convince me. Why should I get a homelab instead of a regular NAS?
Here's my list of "maybe somedays" that I'd love to have all run off a single machine:
Hash cracking. Red teaming isn't my career yet, but it would be nice if I had the tools ready when I get to that milestone
locally served "Cloud" gaming. I'm tired of being limited to a single desktop when I could be playing skyrim on my phone, but I hate supporting *aaS models—I want to own my cake and eat it too.
VM server. Basically turn everything else into a thin client. Also, what @ursakhiin@beehaw.org said. If I ever want to do realistic training, and not just stick to hackthebox indefinitely, I'm going to need to mimic a full network's worth of computers with multiple VLANs. Or have multiple different OSes emulated to do all kinds of pentesting.
Finally start those Mastodon/Matrix/Lemmy/every other federated app instances that I've been right around the corner from hosting for ages
media server
Websites and web-apps, even if only locally served. Possibly have copies of wikipedia and archive.org and other highly usefulness-to-power-consumption ratio sites for when I eventually go off grid
maybe email... maybe. I hear it's more of a headache than it's worth, though, so maybe not
home IoT server. Handling all the functionalities so I don't have to stream security cam footage to some random company's untrustworthy server across however many hops along the way
and probably a few other ideas i've had over the years that I can't think of at the moment.
Could I accomplish all this on a couple powerful towers and a half dozen smaller/cheaper/more power efficient devices? Certainly, but this reduces cables, network overhead, and weird edge case problems having that many devices on a single-maintainer network causes. Instead of dealing with updating, upgrading, and hardening a dozen or more devices, this would give me a single point of failure that I can build resentments against whenver it has a hiccup.