As I rely more on my home lab server, I’m starting to worry more about it getting stolen. If someone breaks into my home, I think the server will be a pretty attractive target.
Do y’all just stick it in a closet? That seems not great for cooling…
One of my neighbors recently got broken into.
Its big enough that they will have to break back in to move it with a friend. Its built shitty enough that it will fall apart if they lift it. Its next to an attractive and less effort to steal TV.
TVs and game consoles also have much better fence value.
Just put a big sticker on it signifying it has a tracker inside.
Even if they would want to steal it, it might just make them doubt enough to leave it be.
Someone who’s in the business of stealing computers would just stick it in a faraday bag. I guess for an entire server you’d need a sizeable cage though.
EASY does it: Experimental Autonomous Securitybot, Yellow.
May as well just rig the house to burst into flames
I bought my power supplies off temu. One way or another, someone is getting hurt.
That’s reserved for if they make it past the first three levels of security. EASY and pals are #2.
I plan on rack mounting things on the second floor, but normally someone running in and ransacking a place isn’t going to bother with a server, especially if it’s loaded down with hard drives. Heck, my NAS is in a desktop case and I hate even having to turn it around 😹
I don’t.
If you’re stupid enough to carry out my stuff, good luck getting anything for it.
My setup is a small-form-factor desktop, a NAS, and 2 other modest systems. Easy enough to carry away, but all worthless from a pawn standpoint, because it’s all old, as in long past support dates from the vendor.
I guess you’d need to understand what a burglar in your area steals, and what homes they target.
I doubt they steal systems.
Mine is primarily a 4u server, in a rack. That’s screwed to the wall (for added stability).
They’d need a couple guys to unrack it. It’s in the garage I rarely ever lock, behind the cars which are more valuable and easier to steal. Behind the much more valuable tools.
Garage does get warm in the summer and cold enough in the winter the fans do funny things.
Anything important gets replicated to another location as well as backed up to a cloud bucket. So if it got stolen it would suck, but not the end of the world.
I live 40km away from the nearest civilization, in the middle of Swedish wilderness. No neighbors and biggest bear population in europe in the woods. So I feel safe :)
By living in the middle of fucking nowhere. I haven’t locked my front door in over a year.
I doubt that a server would be an attractive target for common thieves. It’s heavy, bulky and not immediately clear how well it would resell and how valuable it actually is. So yeah… Just have plenty of other more stealable things lying around I guess 😄
I guess it’s a unique situation for everyone. My TV is huge, heavy, and requires at least 2 people (I used 3 people) to carefully move it out. Laptops are easy and fast to take. I don’t think one would stop there though. I don’t have gold n cash laying around like some other Lemmy users here, lol.
I’m not sure if I have anything else that’s valuable. No tablets. Not much tools. Uh. What else do people have that is sellable?
My home server is a smallish ITX box. I could see some idiot thinking computers -> gaming -> expensive -> money.
The 42U rack in the basement will be… hard to steal.
I only use 3U of it for compute and all of it came from my university salvage for less than… $350 total (switch, rack, 2 servers).
Since the other comments seem to be less than useful ideas on things you didn’t ask about…
I keep my NAS/Video server for my home cameras in my gun safe. Costco has a gun safe (really can be used for anything like documents too since it’s fire rated) that had power cable running to the inside. I used the same path to run a data cable and keep it all locked up in there with a monitor mounted on top and a UPS in the middle. My safe is close to my room with the idea being if someone wanted to break in I’d keep the footage. Not that anyone would, but like you seem to be asking I’m more concerned about the what if.
The rest of the switches/routers/WAP Controller is located in my home office closet inside of one of those on-Q boxes in the wall.
If the (theoretical) burglar finds a gun safe and it is even locked properly, I would think it looks quite attractive :)
That’s why it’s bolted to a concrete slab from the inside.
That sounds like a great idea but how is the ventilation on that setup? Does it have ventilation for letting in cool air and exhausting the hot air?
It’s a smaller unit for my camera setup and it’s in a cooler area. When I open the safe up it’s basically the same temp. So I’m not worried about thermal performance. At least on that front. The camera system is just for home monitoring. The main components (what you mentioned being concerned about) stay hidden too behind the closet wall in my office and the wall is an interior wall so thermally they stay pretty smooth.
3-2-1 every copy is encrypted, so taking the machine isn’t much of a concern and more of a inconvenience
It’s valuable to you
I want to steal shit that I can move easily, and I’m going to avoid niche stuff with a limited number of buyers because I don’t want to use the same people repeatedly
I mounted mine on the wall under a desk in a room with no other electronics, and then put up a fake wall in front of the server. It can draw in air from the sides, and exhaust upwards behind the desk. But the only real solution is offsite backup, which will also protect against fire and other disasters.
What do you do when you need to replace a drive?
A smallish (6U) rack mount that you can bolt into the wall. Even if they rip it down it’ll weigh a ton and have locked doors (with ventilation obvi).
