Is there a RAID controller in your machine?

I have a esp32 gizmo connected to my meter. It has a built in web server displaying live data, and also pushing MQTT data to Home Assistant.

I’d return it if it was sold as a server rack.

That didn’t answer my question. 🙂

My R720 with 12 SAS drives idled at around 225W.

I’ve cut down the number of spinning rust to 6, and added 4 SSDs, now it idles around 120W.

I also enabled power capping in the BIOS at 250W. 2x Xeon v2, forgot which model, and 128GiB RAM.

That’s mostly semantics, for me at least.

I have only one NAS, and one Proxmox host that is up 24/7, so they are in production.

I regularly tinker with those two as well, it’s all part of my lab.

Did you select the correct boot drive(s) in the HBA BIOS?

I like Mac Minis in general, but for a first homelab machine I’d choose something with 2+ NICs, without using USB dongles.

Maybe you’re just supposed to describe your VM setup?

Like host and guest OS, hypervisor, networking, service(s) running etc.

Anything in the Opnsense DDNS logs? That’s usually the best place to start.

It’s a nice server, but pricey.

Do you have a dedicated room for this? It’s not quiet, and it’s not very power efficient.

Yeah, the SAS drives are fairly power hungry.

Look into power capping if you have the enterprise license for your iDRAC.