Lots of performance per watt, in one case
No loud rack: a compact, low-power mini-server sits in the same Corsair 9000D case as the main rig and is wired directly over 10 GbE. A dedicated NAS holds the bulk data.
Why an N150 board
The Intel N150 is frugal (x86, 4 cores) yet by now carries more than 40 containers. With 48 GB DDR5, NVMe boot and an 8-bay NAS board it delivers lots of efficiency per watt — quiet and built for 24/7 instead of server noise.
Unraid as the foundation
Unraid unifies Docker and KVM VMs on a single machine and ships a convenient web UI — the ideal base for a GitOps-driven homelab. Next to the containers it runs the smart-home VM and a sealed-off test VM.
Mirrored, not hoped for
The host’s boot and data pools are each laid out as a ZFS mirror, so everything exists twice on two SSDs. If one SSD fails, the server simply keeps running; checksums detect silently corrupted data and repair it from the second copy.
10 GbE direct link
The server board and the main rig are connected over a direct 10-gigabit line. That hugely speeds up large file transfers and also carries hardware telemetry into the smart home.
Built into the Corsair 9000D
The huge 9000D case houses the workstation and the server board together — a tidy dual-system build: one case, short paths, a shared 10 GbE backbone.