So, I was just listening to that audio Daniel sent over, and I have to say, the image of him standing there, dealing with a catastrophic server failure while watching a man hang lemons from a tree, is just peak Jerusalem. It is one of those moments where the digital world is crumbling, and the physical world is just being weirdly poetic in the background.
It really is. I am Herman Poppleberry, and I have to say, my heart goes out to Daniel on this one. There is a specific kind of sinking feeling you get when you realize the network is down, you try the usual tricks, and the machine just refuses to wake up. It is like a member of the household has gone silent. And that server has been a member of the household for a long time.
It really has. Seven years is an eternity in computer years. Think about where we were seven years ago, back in early twenty-nineteen. That was a budget build even back then, likely an Intel i3-eighty-one-hundred or maybe even older repurposed hardware. If he was running DDR3 memory in twenty-nineteen, he was already using parts that were a generation behind. It served its purpose, but man, when those old capacitors or the voltage regulator modules on the motherboard decide they are done, they are really done.
Exactly. And I think there is a lot to unpack here regarding his diagnostic process. He mentioned he thought it was the power supply unit at first. That is a very logical starting point. If the lights do not come on, you check the juice. But as he found out, sometimes the problem is much deeper. It is interesting because a motherboard failure is almost the worst-case scenario for a retrospective like this. It is the one component that ties everything else together. It is the nervous system of the entire build.
Right, and as he mentioned, the hardware landscape has shifted so much that you cannot just swap it out. If your motherboard dies after seven years, you are looking at a new socket for the CPU—we have gone from LGA eleven-fifty-one to seventeen-hundred and now the newer sockets—you are looking at a new generation of RAM, probably moving from DDR3 or DDR4 to DDR5, and maybe even different power connectors. You are not just fixing a server; you are facing a forced migration.
Which is exactly why this is the perfect time for a Server Version Two discussion. But before we get into the new build, I want to talk about that big realization he had about RAID. He was using a Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, and he felt pretty secure because he had four solid state drives in there. But when the motherboard died, the RAID did not save him.
That is the classic trap, isn't it? People hear the word redundancy and they think it means backup. But they are two fundamentally different things serving different purposes. I think we should really dig into that distinction because it is the most common mistake home lab enthusiasts make.
It really is. RAID is about uptime. It is about making sure that if a single drive fails, your system keeps running so you do not lose access to your data in the moment. It protects you against hardware failure of the storage media itself. But it does absolutely nothing if the controller fails, or if the motherboard fries, or if you accidentally delete a file, or if a piece of ransomware encrypts your entire pool. RAID is not a time machine; it is just a spare tire.
Or if the power supply decides to send a surge through the whole board. If the motherboard goes, it does not matter how many mirrors you have. The brain of the operation is gone. And Daniel mentioned he was using ZFS, which is a fantastic file system, but it still requires a functioning host to import that pool.
Exactly. ZFS is incredibly robust. It has checksums, it prevents data rot, it handles drive failures gracefully. But if you cannot boot the machine, that data is effectively locked in a vault that you do not have the key for until you build a new machine. And even then, there is always that moment of breath-holding when you try to import the pool on a new system. You are hoping the metadata is intact and that the hardware failure did not corrupt the file system during the crash.
And here is the kicker from Daniel's prompt. He said he was taking backups from one virtual machine and putting them on another virtual machine on the same host. Herman, I could almost hear the regret in his voice when he said that. It is like keeping a spare key to your house inside the house, right next to the front door.
It is exactly like that. It is the illusion of safety. If you are using a hypervisor like Proxmox, which Daniel was, it is so easy to set up automated backups. You think, okay, I will just back up my Home Assistant configuration to this other virtual disk. But if that physical machine dies, both the original and the backup are on the same physical platters or chips. They are both gone. You have a single blast radius that encompasses everything.
It is the single point of failure. We talk about this in engineering all the time. You want to eliminate single points of failure, but a home server is often, by definition, a single point of failure for a whole house. When Daniel's server went down, Home Assistant went down. The home inventory went down. Probably his internal DNS or whatever else he was running. Everything stopped.
And this is where the three-two-one rule comes in. For our listeners who might not be familiar, or who need a reminder, it is a classic data protection strategy. You want three copies of your data. Two of them should be on different media, like one on your server and one on an external drive or a different server. And one copy should be off-site. In twenty-twenty-six, we even talk about the three-two-one-one-zero rule, adding an air-gapped or immutable copy and ensuring zero errors through automated testing.
Off-site is the one people skip because it is the hardest or the most expensive. But in a city like Jerusalem, where you might have a power surge or, heaven forbid, a plumbing leak like the one Daniel mentioned they had recently, off-site is the only thing that actually guarantees your data survives a disaster.
Exactly. If the apartment floods and the server is sitting on the floor, it does not matter if you have a backup on a second drive in that same server. Both are underwater. Daniel mentioned they had to leave their apartment for a month because of a leak. Imagine if that leak had happened right over the server rack.
It is a sobering thought. So, let us talk about Server Version Two. If Daniel is starting from scratch, what should he do differently? He mentioned he might not even use RAID next time because it is complicated to set up and might not be worth the hassle. What do you think about that, Herman?
I think it depends on his goals for uptime. If he can handle the house being dumb for a few hours while he restores from a backup, he might not need RAID one or RAID five. He could just use a single, high-quality drive for his OS and another for data, and focus all his energy on a bulletproof backup system. However, I usually argue that a simple mirror, a RAID one, is worth the cost of an extra drive. It just saves you so much time if a drive develops bad sectors. But Herman, the key is that the backup must exist independently of that RAID.
But he is right that it adds complexity. If the motherboard fails again, he still has to move those drives to a new system. I think the real lesson for Server Version Two is hardware decoupling. Instead of one big old desktop that does everything, maybe he should look at smaller, more efficient nodes.
You mean like the tiny-mini-micro trend? Using small form factor business PCs like the Lenovo Tiny or Dell Micro series?
Exactly. They are power efficient, they are relatively cheap on the used market, and if one dies, you are not losing your entire infrastructure. You could have one tiny PC running your core services like Home Assistant and another handling your heavier storage or media tasks. It makes the failure of a single motherboard less of a total blackout.
That is a great point. And since he is building in twenty-twenty-six, he has access to some incredible low-power hardware. He could look at the newer Intel Twin Lake chips or even a modern Ryzen APU that would absolutely smoke that old i3 while using a fraction of the electricity. We are talking about ten to fifteen watts at idle versus fifty or sixty on that old machine.
And the noise factor too. If they are living in an apartment in Jerusalem, space is at a premium. A giant mid-tower case taking up a corner of the room is not ideal. A couple of small units tucked away in a closet or on a shelf would be much more manageable.
I also want to touch on the software side for Server Version Two. Daniel mentioned Proxmox. I think Proxmox is still the right choice for him, but he needs to change how he handles the backups. Proxmox has a great tool called Proxmox Backup Server, or PBS. He could actually run a very low-power instance of that on a completely different device, maybe even a Raspberry Pi five with an external hard drive, or a cheap cloud instance.
That is the way to do it. If the main server fails, the Backup Server has the snapshots. You just point the new hardware at the backup server, and you can be back up and running in minutes. It turns a disaster into a minor inconvenience.
And for the off-site component, he should look at something like Backblaze B-two or Amazon S-three. For the amount of data he is likely talking about for a home inventory and some configuration files, it would probably cost him less than a dollar a month. It is the best insurance policy you can buy. He could use a tool like R-Clone or Kopia to sync those backups automatically.
I think there is also a conversation to be had about the hardware lifecycle. Daniel used that machine for seven years. That is impressive. But maybe for Server Version Two, he should have a plan for a five-year refresh. Not because the hardware is definitely going to fail, but because the efficiency gains and the reliability of new components are worth the investment before the failure happens.
It is the old proactive versus reactive debate. If you replace the heart of your system while it is still beating, you can do it on your own schedule. You can migrate the data calmly on a Tuesday evening instead of frantically on a Saturday morning while a man is hanging lemons outside your window.
Exactly. It is about taking the drama out of it. I also think he should consider the environmental factors. Jerusalem can get dusty, and the heat in the summer is no joke. If he is building a new server, he should make sure it has good filtration and that he is cleaning it out every six months. Part of why motherboards fail is heat stress over time, often caused by dust buildup in the voltage regulator heatsinks or the CPU cooler.
That is a very practical tip. And speaking of heat, he should look at the power supply more carefully this time. He thought the power supply was the issue, and while it was not, a high-quality power supply with good voltage regulation can actually extend the life of a motherboard. If you buy a cheap, bundled power supply, the ripple and noise in the voltage can slowly degrade the capacitors on the motherboard.
So, the advice for Daniel is, do not cheap out on the PSU for Server Version Two. Get something with a gold or platinum efficiency rating from a reputable brand. It protects your investment.
Absolutely. And I would also suggest he looks into a small Uninterruptible Power Supply, or UPS. If the power in their neighborhood flickers, which happens, that UPS will filter the power and give the server a chance to shut down gracefully. It prevents file system corruption and protects the hardware from those nasty brownouts.
It is funny how we start by talking about data and we end up talking about electricity and dust. But that is the reality of self-hosting. You are the sysadmin, the hardware engineer, and the janitor all rolled into one.
It is a lot of responsibility, but as Daniel said, it is a period of growth. You learn more from a failure than you ever do from a system that just works perfectly for years. He now knows exactly what his dependencies are. He knows that his home inventory is valuable enough that he misses it when it is gone. That is a great insight for designing the next version.
I am curious about the Home Assistant side of things. If he is rebuilding, should he stick with the same setup? He was using a virtual machine. Some people prefer running it on bare metal or in a container.
I think a virtual machine on Proxmox is still the gold standard for flexibility. It makes it so easy to move to new hardware. If he had been backing up those VM snapshots to an external drive, he could have plugged that drive into his laptop, installed Proxmox on a temporary machine, and had his lights working again in twenty minutes. The issue was not the VM; it was the backup location.
Right. The location is everything. So, to summarize for Daniel and for anyone else in this position, Server Version Two should focus on three things. One, hardware diversity. Move away from a single old desktop to modern, efficient, perhaps smaller nodes. Two, a real backup strategy. Use the three-two-one rule and never, ever back up to the same physical machine. And three, environmental protection. Get a good UPS and a high-quality power supply to protect the new motherboard from the same fate as the old one.
And maybe keep an eye on those lemons. They might be an early warning system for weirdness.
Ha! Yeah, if the neighbor starts hanging oranges, you know a drive is about to pre-fail. But seriously, I think Daniel is on the right track. This kind of retrospective is exactly how you build a more resilient system. It is easy to get discouraged, but the fact that he is already planning Version Two shows that the hobby has its hooks in him.
It is a great hobby. It gives you so much control over your digital life, but it does demand a certain level of vigilance. I think the move to a more modern platform is going to blow his mind in terms of performance too. An i3 from seven years ago versus even a modern budget chip is a night and day difference. His Home Assistant dashboard will feel twice as fast.
That is the silver lining. You get a massive performance upgrade out of a disaster. It is like the forest fire that allows new growth to happen.
Exactly. And he will have the peace of mind knowing that he has an off-site backup. That feeling of knowing your data is safe even if the building disappears is a very powerful thing. It changes how you interact with your technology. You stop worrying and start exploring.
Well, I think we have given Daniel a lot to chew on for his Server Version Two build. It is a tough break, but it is a classic rite of passage for anyone into home servers. You are not a real home labber until you have lost a motherboard and questioned all your life choices.
It is true. Welcome to the club, Daniel. It is a frustrating, expensive, and ultimately very rewarding club.
Definitely. And hey, for everyone listening, if you have ever had a catastrophic hardware failure that taught you a hard lesson, we would love to hear about it. You can get in touch with us through the contact form at myweirdprompts dot com. We are always looking for more stories like this to explore.
And if you are finding these discussions helpful or even just entertaining, please consider leaving us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It really helps the show reach more people who might be staring at a dead server and wondering what to do next.
It really does. We appreciate all the support we have received over the four hundred plus episodes we have done. It is a great community.
It really is. Well, I think that covers the great motherboard disaster of twenty-twenty-six.
For now! I am sure something else will break soon enough. That is just the nature of the beast.
Hopefully not too soon. I would like to see Daniel get Version Two up and running before the next lemon harvest.
Me too. Alright, this has been My Weird Prompts. You can find us on Spotify and at our website, myweirdprompts dot com, where we have a full archive of all our past episodes.
Thanks for listening, and good luck with the build, Daniel.
See you all next time.
Bye!
So, Herman, I was thinking about the ZFS pool specifically. Daniel mentioned he hoped to recover the ZFS pool. If the motherboard is dead, but the drives are fine, how hard is that actually going to be for him when he gets his new hardware?
That is actually one of the best parts about ZFS. It is incredibly portable. Unlike older hardware RAID controllers where you needed the exact same card to read the array, ZFS stores all the metadata on the drives themselves. So, when Daniel gets his new server, he will just plug those four SSDs in, install his OS, and run a command like z-pool import. The system will scan the drives, find the pool, and bring it back to life.
That is a huge relief. So even though his OS and his VMs are gone because he did not have a good backup, the actual data on those drives is likely perfectly safe.
Most likely, yes. As long as the motherboard failure did not involve a massive electrical surge that fried the electronics on the drives themselves, the data should be sitting there waiting for him. It is one of the reasons why ZFS has become the standard for home servers. It separates the data from the hardware in a very clean way.
That is a good point. It makes the recovery process much less stressful. But it still highlights the need for that backup of the configuration. He might have his data, but he still has to remember how he configured all those services, right?
Exactly. He might have his database, but does he remember the exact docker-compose file he used to run it? Does he remember the specific network settings or the API keys he had stored in a config file on the boot drive? That is the stuff that is a pain to rebuild. That is why I always tell people to back up their etc folder and their home directory, not just the big data pools.
It is the small files that kill you. The big files are easy to track, but the tiny configuration tweaks you made three years ago and forgot about? Those are gone forever if you do not have a backup of the system drive.
I have spent many late nights trying to remember a single line of a configuration file that I wrote years ago. It is not fun. Daniel, if you are listening, when you set up Server Version Two, make sure you are using something like Git to track your configuration files. If you push your configs to a private repository on GitHub or GitLab, you have an instant off-site backup of the brains of your server.
That is a pro tip right there. Infrastructure as code, even for a home server. It makes rebuilding so much faster. You just pull your repo, run your scripts, and you are back where you left off.
It turns a week-long rebuilding process into a thirty-minute automated task. It is the ultimate goal for any sysadmin.
Well, I think we have really given him the full roadmap now. From the hardware to the software to the backup philosophy.
I hope so. It is a lot to take in, but once you have a solid system, the peace of mind is worth every bit of the effort.
Absolutely. Alright, let us wrap this one up for real this time.
Sounds good.
Thanks again for listening to My Weird Prompts. We will be back soon with another prompt from Daniel or from one of you.
Take care, everyone. Stay redundant, but more importantly, stay backed up.
Well said. See you later.
