All my homelab stuff is boring. Host machine names are just 'model ’ + ‘-’ + ‘increment’. VMs and containers are either service or service + increment.

Whimsical names and themes are fun, but don’t scale and I need the mental bandwidth for other things than mapping service to machine etc.

I still love my rpi’s, was on the wait list for the first run when they came out! But the chip shortage and subsequent scalping drove me away to buying recycled lenovo tiny PCs.

Dirt cheap on eBay, like $60 without storage. Got three of them clustered for VM and LXC hosting loaded up w/ 32gb ram, 1tb data ssd, and 500gb nvme each. About the price for a top model pi4 these days after all the accessories and they absolutely smoke the pi’s. Even have pcie on some models if you want to add a network card to build a router, or a small graphics card etc.

You could also get a set of rails from navepoint and custom build for a bit cheaper. Or IKEA lack rack diy.

But I agree, all this stuff is too large for my taste and current gear too. I’m eyeing 10in 9U for my minilab, which is now comfortably tucked away hiding in some furniture in my living room.

I was able to add 16gb to my ds220+ for a total of 18gb, which exceeds what Synology claims you can run. Had success with timetec, but have heard crucial works as well.

Main thing that was an issue for me was having to reinstall the ram a few times. Don’t be afraid to be a little rougher than on other machines, needs to be fully inserted and it took a good bit of force for it to finally take