I have a small home lab consisting of 2 Lenovo M93P Tiny computers. One is a web facing server and the other is an internal services server, both running Debian Linux (no GUI) in headless mode.

The rationale for using these is that I wanted the following:

• Low power to keep the electricity bills down.
• Didn't have to be amazingly fast as they were to be more of an educational tool and to run lightweight components. Could always upgrade later if required.
• Cheap. I'm a bit of a 'maximum bang for the buck' kinda guy.
• Preferably would run X86 code.

The servers themselves have the following specs:

• Processor: Intel i5 4570T.
• Memory: 8GB.
• Storage: 128GB SSD.
• OS: Debian Linux server (no GUI).

Although relatively low powered, I have been surprised how well the web-facing server is performing, considering it is currently running the following:

• Caddy reverse proxy.
• This website.
• Trilium note taking application ( https://github.com/zadam/trilium ).
• Immich photo and video sharing app ( https://immich.app/ ).
• fail2ban.

All the above are running in docker containers, except fail2ban.

Why do I have it?

Apart from sitting there looking pretty (if you're a geek), I am using it to get more experience in Linux, Docker, Caddy and some .Net Core amongst other things. This website is running off the production box and is being served from a Docker container behind a Caddy reverse proxy (also running in a Docker container).