Building a portable homelab - Wrong answers only

I have been stuck on this idea of building a portable homelab. I had heard of these kinds of builds and it never clicked with me I watched a Jeff Geerling video about making a mini-lab and the goal was to bring all or most of the info on his homelab at home. That’s when it hit me. My goal is to build something that is a mini version of my homelab that I can take with me. Then it doesn’t matter if I can connect back home or how slow my remote internet connection is, I have everything with me.

The goals are:

• Run Docker, Podman, LXC, and other various containers. Like, a dozen containers running at the same time.
• Ability to run 1-3 virtual machines simultaneously.
• Carry a huge selection of media. TV, movies, YouTube, podcasts, audiobooks, ebooks, etc. We are talking like 4TB worth of media so I can choose whatever I am feeling like.
• Play PC games. In particular a bunch of games I have from GOG, Humble, and other DRM-free games I already own that do not require the internet to play.
• Retro gaming and in particular PSX era.
• Create a LAN so I can have multiple devices able to use and share data.

These are all odd things to say out loud and for 99.9% of folks they would never consider something like this. I get it. To be honest, I don’t have a use case for it, either. In a previous life I traveled for work 8-12 days a month. During that life I could have used a portable homelab. Now I never travel.

Yet, this idea came up again because occasionally I have these large gaps in my work schedule where I’m just hanging out in my truck for 1-3 hours. Time and fuel costs means it is not worth it to go all the way home. I typically find a park with a good bathroom and camp in the truck until it is time to go to my next stop.

Once again the challenge with this kind of build is only using what I already have. No purchases, there is no budget for that. I can only use what I have and I have been stuck for months brainstorming how I can build a portable homelab with the junk in my bins. I’ve hit a wall because I have this vision in my head of what I want with no money to buy what I need.

I have this vision of this sleek laptop with multiple internal drive slots I populate with 2TB NVMe’s that slides easily into my bag. Or a mini PC/RPI with a special case that will hold a single 3.5" HDD. I then get a 18TB drive for it and it turns into a full homelab that can fit into a backpack. All my visions are of builds that are neat and tidy, no hanging cables, and would look so good it could even get through TSA at the airport with no questions. Picture the new Steam Machine.

I will never be able to afford any of this.

So, to combat being stuck I’m going to change tactics. Instead of trying to build what is in my head and getting stuck on it, I’m going to start my brainstorming with wrong answers only. What are the worst portable homelabs I could build? What builds could I do that would be the most awkward? The least likely to be used? What is the most cumbersome build?

That’s where we are.

Idea 1: Stick a whole tower in the truck.

I have a Sandy Bridge era desktop that is in pretty good shape. The CPU, RAM, and GPU combo can definitely handle the types of games I’m thinking of and has 8 HDD slots. I have a 4TB and a 2TB 3.5" HDD laying around I could slap in for storage.

I could put both those drives, plus a few from my 2.5" old laptop hard drives. It can hold 8 drives internally and has a PCIe to SATA card to connect them all.

I have a lapdock I could connect for keyboard, trackpad, and screen.

Would use a lot of power and space. I don’t know if the inverter I use can handle the power load and it would take up the whole floor on the passenger side. But, it would work. I could even put multiple NICs into it for a proper LAN. It is x86, so I could install anything.

Idea 2: Use a mini PC with multiple drives

I havea GMKTec mini PC that is not being used right now. I could carry a 1TB 2.5" HDD I took out of a Mac Mini in a USB enclosure I already have. Then I have a 1TB NVMe. Both would be on the USB ports. Then I have a 1TB SD card and the mini PC has a built-in TF slot. This brings me to a combined 2.5-ish TB of usable space for storage.

Let’s just keep making this thing more ridiculous.

I have a 3.5" external drive enclosure in my cyberdeck kit. I could take that out and use the 4TB drive I have to add another 3.5-ish TB of storage. Now we are up to 3 USB devices plus the SD card with a combined 6TB of storage.

The CPU and iGPU in the mini PC could handle retro gaming and a lot of older PC games.

It would work with my inverter and battery bank I have in the truck. There’s multiple devices that would need to be plugged in, so I would need to have a little 3-outlet extension cord with the kit.

I would also use the same lapdock for peripherals and a screen.

It would also be a PITA to setup every time. Multiple USB devices dangling from it. Potential storage issues having everything on USB or a SD card.

Idea 3: Use my favorite laptop of all time

I’ve posted about this laptop a lot recently. It has 3 internal drive slots, 2 - 2.5" and an mSATA slot. I could put the 1TB 2.5" drive and another 500GB 2.5" drive in the slots, plus the 1TB NVMe external drive and the SD card in a USB reader. Last, use that same 3.5" HDD enclosure to bring it up to like 7TB of storage, some internal and some external.

The GPU in it is essentially useless, so it will only play older games and maybe the PSX era emulators.

However, it has a built-in screen, keyboard, and trackpad, plus RJ45 ethernet and a wifi card.

The two batteries I have give me approximately 5 hours of usage and it will charge from my truck inverter.

This laptop is a chonk, so I wouldn’t be carrying it.

Idea 4: A fuckload of 2.5" drives and a Dell 7490

The 7490 has an 8th gen CPU that plays all the games I’m thinking of the best. The iGPU can even play the original Slime Rancher at 720p/60FPS. It has a 1080p screen, too.

It only has a single NVMe slot internally. So, for storage I would carry the 4-6 500GB random laptop drives I have from recycled laptops and rotate them through the external enclosure depending on what I’m doing.

I wouldn’t need to plug in multiple devices to AC power on the inverer or power station. I would just be a single laptop and a stack of HDD in a small case.

Conclusion

There are machines and builds I left out of this list, like carrying multiple drives and trying pull this off with my Chromebook using the Linux container. Or connecting to my phone and using Termux, Dex-mode, and Winlator.

I have a few other ideas and, honestly, writing this was helpful with getting the creativity going. There’s lots of different combinations I could do here, none of them are practical. Which was the whole point of writing this. Of course none of them are practical. But, are there some ideas in here that I can use to make something? Can I creatively use what I have to make the most practical build based on what I have around?

I don’t know yet.

I know one problem to overcome is syncing the data to this portable device that will sit offline for large gaps of time. One way is to use my phone for the important data and then sync that to the portable homelab with Syncthing once the portable LAN is setup.

I don’t know. Let’s get weird. What’s the weirdest way I could set this up? Remember, no buying anything. Only use what is around. Please, send me the weirdest, most obtuse, least practical portable homelab builds based on what you see in this post.

For real!

Shoot me some ideas.

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