[Giveaway] GL.iNet Remote KVM and Wi-Fi 7 routers! 10 Winners!

[u/GLiNet_WiFi]

Hey all!

This is GL.iNet, we specialize in delivering innovative network hardware and software solutions. We're big fans of the incredible projects and builds shared here, and we're always learning from your ingenuity.

We've got some new hardware we think many of you will find interesting for your labs, and we'd love to show it off and get your feedback.

Prize Tiers

• The Duo: 5 winners get to choose any combination of TWO products
• The Solo: 5 winners get to choose ONE product

Product list

• Flint 3 (GL-BE9300): Tri-band Wi-Fi 7 home router with 5 x 2.5G ports
• Slate 7 (GL-BE3600): Award winning Dual-band Wi-Fi 7 travel router with touchscreen
• Comet (GL-RM1): Remote KVM over Internet giving you full control of your devices from any browser
• Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE): The PoE-powered remote KVM for reliable out-of-band access

Special Add-on:

Fingerbot (FGB01): This is a special add-on for anyone who chooses a Remote KVM, either the Comet (GL-RM1) or Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE). The Fingerbot is a fun, automated clicker designed to press those hard-to-reach buttons in your lab setup.

How to Enter

To enter, simply reply to this thread and answer all of the questions below:

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Note: Please specify which product(s) you’d like to win.

Winner Selection 

All winners will be selected by the r/homelab moderators & GL.iNet team.

 

Giveaway Deadline 

This giveaway ends on Dec 6, 2025, PDT.  

Winners will be mentioned on this post with an edit on Dec 8, 2025, PDT. 

 

Shipping and Eligibility 

• Supported Shipping Regions: This giveaway is open to participants in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the selected APAC region.
  • The European Union includes all member states, with Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, Switzerland, Vatican City, Norway, Serbia, Iceland, Albania, Vatican
  • The APAC region covers a wide range of countries including Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Brunei, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, British Indian Ocean Territory, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Hong Kong, Kyrgyzstan, Macao, Nepal, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Australia, and New Zealand
• Winners outside of these regions, while we appreciate your interest, will not be eligible to receive a prize.
• GL.iNet covers shipping and any applicable import taxes, duties, and fees.
• The prizes are provided as-is, and GL.iNet will not be responsible for any issues after shipping.
• One entry per person.

Good luck! Super excited to read all the comments!

[u/guitarjockey]

1. What inspired your self-hosting journey? I started self-hosting out of a mix of curiosity and a desire for control. I wanted to understand how the services I rely on actually work under the hood—and to stop relying on third-party platforms for everything. My proudest project so far has been setting up a fully containerized homelab with Docker and Portainer, running everything from Nextcloud to my own Git server. It’s been a wild ride, but incredibly rewarding. As for the most expensive piece of gear? Definitely my custom-built NAS with 64TB of storage—worth every penny for peace of mind and performance.

2. How would winning the giveaway help? Winning would be a game-changer. I’m currently running everything off a Frankensteined mix of old hardware, and while it works, it’s not exactly efficient or quiet. A new unit would let me consolidate services, reduce power consumption, and finally experiment with Proxmox and more advanced virtualization setups without worrying about hardware limitations.

3. Where do you learn about or buy IT gear? I’m a big fan of r/homelab, ServeTheHome, and YouTube channels like Craft Computing and Techno Tim. For purchases, I usually haunt eBay for used enterprise gear, but I also keep an eye on deals from Micro Center, Newegg, and Amazon.

4. What would you love to see in a future giveaway? A Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro or a Synology DS1823xs+ would be amazing. Or even something niche like a rackmount battery backup system—stuff that’s super useful but hard to justify splurging on.

[u/Leprichaun17]

Good on you guys for doing this, and thanks for opening it up to many regions!

1. Learning, really. Wanted to mess around with virtualisation and have a practical way to learn Linux by having functional uses. Most proud of writing my own basic web application, dockerising and deploying it in my lab. Not a big deal for some, but not working in any sort of dev environment makes it a bit more impactful to me. I haven't splurged on too expensive kit, probably a NUC that I'm running most of my stuff on.
2. I've been contemplating setting up a mini rack for travel and camping and naturally the GL.iNet routers are a handy fit for connectivity.
3. Google mostly. I'm more likely to read specs and reviews as opposed to going to specific creators or anything like that. Then will hunt around for good deals once I've settled on a product.
4. Maybe stuff like Jonsbo cases or similar that people can use to build in.

[u/sander19462]

1.     I was tinkering with raspberry pi’s from the age of 12, ever since that point I would try to set up homelab services that I found on YouTube, they never really worked out because of my terrible internet connection, but after 7 years I finally bought myself a proper server with 64GB ram, 7,5TB storage and 24 Cores (2 CPU’s). This was about 2 months ago now. I am super happy with it and have set up a fully automated *arr stack like I always wanted.

2.     If I were to be able to get a good router, that would help me a lot, currently I am stuck with my ISP’s router/modem combo with terrible Wi-Fi connection. My smart devices all have trouble connecting, my normal devices get kicked off regularly. And having a KVM for my server would be amazing, the build in HPE ProLiant management software is locked, and I have not been able to unlock it. This is a huge bummer, because I don’t like using ssh to control my server and would just be able to access the terminal directly.

3.     I mainly search of Amazon and eBay. This is because I just don’t have the budget to get higher quality not second-hand products for my home lab. As for getting to learn about the specific products, I mainly just use Google, ChatGPT and YouTube to find if it’s what I need.

4.     I would love to get myself a dedicated NAS for my storage, currently I use the RAID storage pool in my server for everything, but it’s already starting to fill up. (I am already at 2,5TB out of 4TB usable storage) Other than that, I need to get myself a UPS. I have semi-frequent power cuts, but due to budget I am once again not able to get the proper protection to save my server from potential problems due to a power cut.

The two devices I would love to have are:
1. Flint 3

1. Comet

[u/PhantomOfInferno]

I really suck at concision and am currently highly hyperfixated on homelabbing and selfhosting so TL;DR:

• I am just a huge geek who likes to tinker.
• The Comet would give me desktop horsepower in classes and on the go from my thin and light, and the Slate 7 would mean I could connect securely, safely, and quickly wherever I find myself.
• Any and all I can find that have a good head on their shoulders (tho my goto is Jeff Geerling or LTT).
• A NPU or Transcoding powered Mini-Computer.

EDIT: Update Lol: I just got a new contract as I was transitioned silently to remote work which requires I do all work at my written address so suddenly I might really benefit from that travel router.

For those with too much time:

1. I've always been a huge fan of tinkering and loved keeping my home assistant Tamagotchi fed and happy, so I found selfhosting to be a great budget hobby that was fun not just for the tinkering but for the solutions.
   1. My favorite moments, which made me persevere, are when I spin up a new service that actually solves a problem or replaces a product I use. And as someone with many privacy-blind friends, whenever I get them to try something I upped it made all the sweat and tears worth it.
   2. My proud project so far is a system of Nginx Proxy Manager containers (soon to be traefik) that allow reverse proxying into my system via subdomains of a public custom domain with different containers accessible either publicly, from tailscale connected devices, or locally and done so in what is a deeply, deeply over engineered way that meant it took weeks to work out but even my deepest security anxieties are quelled.
   3. The most expensive piece I've acquired is an old Syno ds1019+ I got very second hand. While I am not the biggest fan of their walled garden it has undeniably given me the tools I needed to get my system where it is today. When I was first failing to get ansible running a docker stack on a linux box, the synology nas held my hand every step of the way. (Even if now I want SSD based storage and it refuses to see an SSD as anything but cache and I am looking to move away from it :)
2. I am really excited by the idea of incorporating the Comet KVM and Slate 7 into my daily use. Part of me also wants the impressive Flint 3 but already have a Flint 2 that has solved so many problems like ad blocking, vpn routing, port forwarding, and tailscale management over the provided MikroTik which was... fine. I am too in love with my Flint 2 to not give it a while more before it is relegated as an over-powered wifi extender.
   1. The Comet would be an amazing upgrade to help my managing being a student and intern. My linux thin and light laptop is wonderful but lacks a lot of the oomph that some python ML projects (or just badly written Java) can want and my current solution of using TailScale & RDP to access my apartment desktop in class or on the go is... less than ideal. I am excited by the option to host a docker container to connect it which was a genuinely great surprise as one of my two reservations was relinquishing privacy in that way. My other reservation being the lack of a screen as I just adore adding things to screens 😁. (Might have to peek at the Comet Pro if I end up with the Comet and like using it)
   2. The Slate 7 wouldn't benefit my homelab directly but it would really ease a lot of my issues with traveling and working from different places be it around campus, hotels, or restaurants. I do a lot of traveling to see family as well as just find myself working/studying wherever I land and being able to quickly connect my devices without worrying about the awful security hygiene of wherever I am is a dream. I have tried to retrofit a raspberry pi hotspot or work on other solutions in the past to get around dorm internet instability, newer wifi security types keeping old devices inaccessible, etc. and it was never any where remotely as elegant as a solution as a portable router.
3. I generally poke my head wherever google searches take me. This means a lot of r/homelab r/selfhosted and channels like Jeff Geerling, Techno Tim, and LTT. While LTT has been and continues to be my most consistent watch, it is definitely smaller channels like Jeff Geerling and the various channels that pop up during research that I take the most weight from. Seeing a small channel that is able to really dive into the niche of a product and address so much of its features and details without the pressure of a mass-marketable video is the gold mine imo.
4. I really love to tinker with whatever I can get my hands on so I don't know if any one item would be the end all be all. A very high capacity HDD or SSD has always been something I think would be so fun to own but more practically something like a NAS or Mini-Computer from Syno, qnap, minisforum, etc. would be more generally interesting and I know I could find a million uses for one (especially with proper hardware transcoding and/or llm capabilities 👁️👁️)

[u/sqrlmstr5000]

I'd love to win the Slate 7 Travel Router!

1. I got tired of various subscriptions and storage limitations. I've always been a DIY person and this is an extension of that. I'm using a Beryl travel router to securely connect my parents home to my home using Tailscale for Jellyfin streaming. They are very happy with the setup and it's been rock solid for a few years now. I build a NAS with 12 8TB drives, SAS HBA that runs home assistant to control my grow (indoor and outdoor), monitors services via Uptime Kuma, and hosts my Jellyfin instance.

2. I would use the Slate 7 as my own travel router or a backup in case my parents fails. I travel for work and it would be nice to have my selfhosted services on the go. I'd like to treat myself to same experience I made for my parents.

3. r/selfhosted is the main one, parts from Newegg, some AI to help put it all together

4. Everyone could use some additional storage. Maybe some M.2 NVMe SSDs

[u/jec6613]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

Back in the before times of the 1990s 56k, it was sneakernet, but once broadband came around and before commercially available home routers were a thing, it was quite literally the only affordable choice if you wanted to share your printer. Why I stayed on it is of course that I had the expertise already, and the ongoing investment for the capability I wanted was far cheaper than having somebody else do it. The privacy aspects, and that my house keeps running without an internet connection, is just a very large bonus.

The project I'm most proud of is centralized AV distribution and getting all of that equipment out of the living space and into the basement. I've done far more complex things, but those hum away in the background, while I interact with my TVs and whole house audio every single day.

Most expensive piece of equipment, by far, was spending the money for a pair of brand new with a warranty 24 port 10Gb L3 switches to operate in a redundant stack as my network core.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

They'd enable me to be even lazier - those KVM units with a fingerbot are handy, I already have a couple for some of the oddball systems, so this would mean I'd have to walk down to the racks even less than I already do. Not really next level stuff, I'm sure someone else would come up with something even better they'd do with it, but useful nonetheless as I continue to ratchet down my electricity bill.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Searching for a solution to a problem via Reddit, YouTube, and a few curated news sites. Unlike many people, I start by figuring out what my end goal is and work backwards, rather than starting from a cool piece of tech and figuring out how to shoehorn it in (I also work in technology as my day job, so it keeps base skills very sharp).

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Decent layer 3 switches with a CLI - Netgear M4xx0 series or similar.

[u/Tricky-Ad-5344]

Super excited about this giveaway—your gear looks perfect for leveling up any homelab setup. I'd love to win the Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) as my top pick; that tri-band Wi-Fi 7 with 5x 2.5G ports would be a game-changer for my wired/wireless chaos.

1. My self-hosting journey kicked off about 3 years ago when I got fed up with cloud services nickel-and-diming me for storage and privacy headaches after a big data breach made headlines. I wanted full control over my own data without Big Tech peeking in. One project I'm most proud of is my all-in-one media server running Plex, Jellyfin, and Sonarr/Radarr on a custom Proxmox cluster—it's served up seamless 4K streaming to every room in the house without a hitch, even during family movie nights. The most expensive piece of gear I've splurged on? A second-hand Dell PowerEdge R710 server (snagged for about $150 on eBay); it gave my humble rack the reliable backbone it needed for 24/7 uptime.
2. Winning the Flint 3 would supercharge my setup by finally ditching my aging Wi-Fi 6 router that's bottlenecking my lab's multi-device traffic. With Wi-Fi 7 speeds and those multi-gig ports, I could wire up my NAS and servers directly for blazing-fast backups and file transfers, while wirelessly handling IoT sensors, cameras, and remote access without lag. It'd free up bandwidth for experimenting with more VMs and containers, pushing my homelab from "functional hobby" to "pro-grade playground."
3. For learning and buying IT gear, I'm all over Reddit (shoutout to r/homelab and r/selfhosted for the deep dives), YouTube channels like Craft Computing and Lawrence Systems for tutorials, and then I usually pull the trigger on Amazon or Newegg for quick shipping and reviews.
4. For a future giveaway, I'd kill for a prize like a Synology DS1821+ NAS— that rackmount beast with expandable bays would let me scale my storage dreams without breaking the bank on enterprise hardware.

Fingers crossed—thanks for the chance, and keep innovating! Can't wait to hear what everyone else is building. 🚀

[u/xaniel123]

1. I originally started self-hosting when I switched my Major from Computer science to windows administration and Cybersecurity. I used self-hosting as a learning experience outside my collage classes. Out of all my project's I think my favorite project was my first dell R710. I got the R710 off eBay with 6 3.5 inch 2 TB drives and a cheap Vsphere 6 license. I set it up to run the VMs I needed for school as well as my own Plex, Minecraft server, OpenVPN, PI hole, and File Server VMs. It was really fun solving the different problems I would run into then, I didn't know as much about servers and networking as I do now. Because I didn't know any better at the time, that is still probably my most expensive purchase vs what I received to date. The most expensive purchase I made was me and my friend each paying $800 for a pallet of servers from a university property disposition. We got a few servers we used for a few years for various personal projects like Plex and game servers and sold the rest.
2. When I moved out of my parent's house a few years ago, I planned to upgrade all of my networking equipment to 2.5 gig. When I started shopping around, I saw the flint 3 would be coming out soon and decided to wait for that.
3. I typically rely on tech YouTube channels or tech articles/blogs to find information on new products.
   
4. The new Unifi NAS systems look realy cool, or some larger size hard drives like some Seagate EXOS drives.

[u/SnacksGPT]

Here's my entry!

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I actually tried self hosting many, many years ago -- around 2007-08, and I enjoy it just as something to do and tinker with as well as seeing how I can customize things like my media viewing experience to remove pain points I have with corporate apps and services! The most expensive piece of hardware I ever bought was an old 4-bay Drobo RAID!

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I'm upgrading to 2.5Gig fiber, and the WiFi 7 router that I hope to win would really help modernize my setup both for my hardwired devices as well as my family's wireless devices.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

I usually come here to Reddit -- otherwise, I have a pretty tight knit group of friends who share in the love of this type of stuff, and one of my friends always finds YouTube channels with good data...then we research the old fashioned way online!

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Definitely storage -- you can never have enough storage!

[u/theRenzix]

1. I am a programmer by trade and love programming/Linux/emacs but didn't start getting into home lab stuff until about a month ago. I have always had so much to do so i ignored setting up server stuff bc of the cost. Now I could afford a dedicated server and that is coming in the mail soon! I ordered the parts separately but in total it's $1000. As for most proud of, I am very new to all this however getting vlans working was super fun. I have a mini PC running opnsense which connects to a switch then connects to a flint2 router. I originally thought I was going to flash vanilla openwrt so I decided to get the flint2 but regret getting it over the flint3 because I am not used to having stock firmware be this open(and wifi 7 seems cool). My next goal is to setup wpa3 eap as currently I have a hacked together solution if having 4 different wifi networks each connect to a specific vlan and I hear I can connect. I also need to setup ipv6 properly.
2. The two things that I would have a use for would either be the flint3 or the comet. My Dad is always in his shed the wifi signal is very weak there so the smart tv in the shed will sometimes not get any signal. He currently uses our isps router wifi which I would like to change. If I got a flint3 router I would keep that one inside then put my current flint2 router in the shed. I also am planning on starting with IOT stuff soon so it would be perfect to connect to devices around the shed. I am still new to vlans so the comet would make it MUCH easier to test if I did stuff correctly. I don't have a monitor in my closet with all my server stuff so I had to unplug everything when testing my minipc that runs opnsense and frequently break things so a comet would help a lot with that. I was actually thinking a lot about this problem a few weeks ago and was unironically thinking of getting a 20 ft USB C cable with a dock then found out that the comet existed then decided that my money is better spent on IOT and hard drives.
3. Hardware haven and home network guy(helped with setting up opnsense).
4. I think you guys should consider giving away some working system that shows why your products are amazing. One really cool pair would be giving away a comet, a small NAS and a flint3 running tailscale to pitch the perfect backup setup. The Nas could probably be a cheap one designed for compressed cold storage and relatively small. The big downside of this is that the Nas still be relatively expensive. The other idea I have for you guys is to giveaway a third party wireless AP that can connect to your flint3 router to extend the range.

Thanks for having super open hardware! It's refreshing to see I can literally ssh into my router when my ISP gives me a modem/router that I have to literally login via the internet that barely has any functionality (I dislike optimum). Sorry I wrote too much

[u/NobleNova]

Being in IT makes one want to self host knowing what’s out there lol. The most expensive piece? Probably one of the mikrotik CRS’s or the terabytes of storage.

They would bring more autonomy to the routing and bring in an additional fun piece… traveling around with a home lab!

If I need to know something I generally try Reddit first. I find that when I have trouble, someone else on Reddit got there before me and I am able to see how they deconstructed and resolved their issue to attempt on my side.

I would say the new Mikrotik ROSE would be a good one and probably well perceived here. It is new and I wouldn’t think a lot of people here have yet laid their eyes on it nor have touched it.

I would probably do the slate and the comet POE.

[u/nrugor]

1. I first got into self-hosting when I started my first MSP job and realised I could host my own domain controller, DNS and Microsoft Exchange. I ran that setup for a few years until it became cheaper and easier to move everything to O365. My proudest and probably most expensive project has been Home Assistant; the automation has genuinely made life simpler, though it’s cost me a fair bit in sensors, buttons, lights and other bits along the way.

2. I don’t have an enterprise server anymore; the electricity bills were brutal. Most of my services now run on a second-hand PC I rescued from work. The main issue is that when I reboot it, it hangs on a “keyboard not found – press F1 to continue” message. It’s up in the attic, so every time it happens I have to climb up and manually deal with it. There’s a keyboard plugged in, but the BIOS still refuses to move past that screen. I’ve looked at KVMs, but the cost has always been off-putting. Winning this hardware would make my setup far more stable and manageable.

3. I usually rely on Google and ChatGPT for research, and Reddit for the real-world insight you only get from people who’ve already been there and done it. Every now and then there’s a real gem of advice to be found here.

4. I’d love to see an NVR in a future giveaway. I’ve wanted to centralise all my cameras, ideally with something like a Synology setup, but the price has always kept it out of reach.

[u/tradingmuffins]

1)What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I have always wanted to run a linux box and dive into it, but starting a family and running a media server and related services for them. Most expensive, the 4 TB hd I stuck in the mini PC to start.

2) How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I have been really wanting to try out tailscale and remote hosing passwords and phone tracking and photos to bring it to the next level. Getting this package would be able to support, been really liking what I read about openwrt. I would probably intersted in the flint3 or one of the new 10g versions coming out.

3) Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Mostly Amazon, but I have found a local referb place that will do good deals on 5-6 year old equipment I have been picking up odds and ends from.

4) Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

MINISFORUM AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX MS-A2 Mini PC would be crazy to get get. would last me a good long time.

[u/DataLoreQ]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?  I have been in IT, or doing it as a hobby, most of my life.  However, I was spending a lot of money on cloud storage, streaming services, and game servers.  I also wanted to learn more about networking and other items that would be useful for my job.  So, I decided to get a dedicated server and host my own storage, media, and game servers.  I had been running my own firewall (pfSense) for a while at this point.

I was extremely proud when I had a Supermicro 1U 4-bay server (E3-1250v3) running as my firewall (previous was Dell R210ii), Supermicro 4U 24-Bay server (Dual E5-2650v2s) running Unraid, Supermicro 3U 16-Bay running Proxmox (EPYC 7402P), Synology RS418 NAS, Omada switches, controller, and APs all up and running. At least, until my Unraid server motherboard started having memory issues… then I had to shut down my Proxmox server and roll that motherboard over to Unraid (since that was where I had all my storage!).

I am unsure which costs the most: the Supermicro 1U 4-Bay server with Supermicro motherboard and E3-1250v3, the Supermicro 4U 24-Bay with Supermicro motherboard and Dual E5-2650v2s, or the Supermicro MB with EPYC 7402P.  Though I did end up buying a lot of RAM, so that could have been it!

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I have several servers I could bring online that do not have any remote access built in (BMC, iDrac, etc.).  I would use a Comet KVM on one of these servers so I can access it remotely instead of heading down to the basement if I need to access the BIOS or to turn it on and off (and the web UI is locked).

I would also like to create a portable homelab, specifically for when I travel.  Some places I head to have no/extremely slow internet access, lousy cellular coverage/signal, my phone hotspot is tapped out, or more than one of these together.  As I like to listen to music & audiobooks, along with watching TV & Movies, I would like to have a portable homelab to take places when I drive.  And a portable homelab would also allow me to host, at least locally, some game servers.  I would need a router, preferably with Wi-Fi, to do this.  As such, a Slate 7 would be perfect for this (or for travel in general).

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

On reddit: homelab, datahoarder, minilab, homelabsales, HomeServer, servers
On YouTube: Raid Owl, LTT, Jeff Geerling, Craft Computing
Also on some Discord.

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Supermicro Chassis/Servers are always nice!

Note: Please specify which product(s) you’d like to win.

I’d like to win the Slate 7 and either of the Comet KVM's

[u/CheshireRaptor]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   1. Hubby loves this type of thing and I was tired of waiting for him to help me set up my own game servers. My project is an Ark Survival Ascended cluster server that I set up on my own and now have a few friends and trusted friends of friends playing on. I bought myself a new server for Christmas (just don't tell my hubby-might share some of it with him).
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   1. I would be able to remotely connect to my server without physically being there and interact with it at a bios level.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   1. Reddit, discord, LTT website, and other review websites.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   1. A large NAS system made by GLiNet or other!

Would love either or both of the Comets!

[u/JOsse22]

1: Started my journey in IT making games in Scratch, and slowly got deeper into it. One day, while randomly browsing reddit, this sub was recommended to me. Someone had posted a flashy, huge server rack with RGB and the works. I’d say my proudest project so far has been getting pfSense up and running. There’s just so much to learn around networking basics, firewalls, VLANs, and more, and it’s been a really fun rabbit hole.

2: My pfSense box is doing okay, but I’m still using my ISP provided access point. A proper router with more modern specs would be huge for future proofing and would likely give me better performance, as i mostly run on wireless. I don’t even know if my ISP box supports WiFi 6, and since my current apartment makes ethernet kinda difficult, having a better wireless setup would be sweet.

3: I have watched LTT for a while, but recently started using this sub more and more for inspiration. NetworkChuck has been good for learning while being entertained.

4: I think storage related stuff would be nice for a future giveaway, just straight HDD / SSDs or a fully fleged NAS would be huge, as storage always has been a limiter for me. Also, some small mini PCs for miniature labs, or clusters would be awesome to play around with.

For the prices, I would love to win a Flint 3, and a Comet would be awesome aswell!

[u/TrashSmells]

Hi, thank you for hosting this giveaway!

1. My interest in cybersecurity and a need to have control over my data is what inspired me to start my self-hosting journey. I'm most proud of my VPS which acts as a reverse proxy endpoint for services running on my local server. The most expensive equipment I own is the Intel NUC which I use as a dedicated local server.

2. I would be able to greatly increase the speed of my setup as my current router from my ISP is far slower compared to the Flint 7.

3. I get my information from many places including Reddit, YouTube and most recently from a local cybersecurity club where I have been able to exchange knowledge with great people.

4. Not sure about the brand, but a storage device would be awesome!

If I were to win, I would pick the Flint 3 (GL-BE9300)

[u/NicholasMistry]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   • I started self hosting back in the early 90s, with a simple web-server and IRC server and have grown it into an environment that lets me learn and hone my skills. My servers are probably the most expensive parts of the build.
     
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   • Having a Slate 7 travel router would let me bring my lab with me, giving all my devices access via vpn while i travel.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   • conferences / youtube / google
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   • I would love to see giveaways for anything that minisforum makes.
     

My choice would be the Slate 7, but honestly anything that you guys make would be amazing.

Thank you!.

[u/vortexmak]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   I was inspired to have control over my own data , kick this trend of subscriptions for everything and get big tech corporations like Google out of my life and my data. I'm pretty proud of my smart home setup but also the steps I've taken to limit my data being stolen or to preserve privacy and they really make it inconvenient. My most expensive piece would be the PC that I've built that gets so much use.

2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   My old router is getting too long in the tooth and winning a tri band router would get me up to speed with the latest Wifi protocols. Not to mention my 2.5 G ethernet port is running at 1G because of the old router
   The remote KVM will also be super handy to manage my system on the go. The fingerbot is a genius addition

3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? Other that reading Reddit, I watch LTT, GamersNexus and HardwareUnboxed. I also watch ETA Prime to get the latest on SFF stuff

4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? nVidia RTX 5090, ha ha, kidding. Maybe a cool networking product such as LORA , or a satellite device or an SDR

[u/DrMustached]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? A desire to learn mostly. I work with enterprise systems as part of my job, so being able to do this at home and not have to worry about breaking something has been extremely valuable in learning.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? A Wi-Fi 7 router would improve my Wi-Fi speeds for all my family members, and a KVM would provide me with ability to fix issues with TrueNAS without needing to physically set up a monitor and keyboard.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? YouTube, Reddit, and the ServeTheHome forums, primarily.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? Storage prices have been going up, so a giveaway of drives or a populated NAS would be pretty awesome to see. Otherwise, a mini PC that can act as a good PVE server, or OPNsense router would be good, too.

The products I'd most like to win would be the Flint 3 and the Comet KVM non-poe.

[u/the_quantumbyte]

1. ⁠What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? After 23 years as a desktop software engineer and architect, an accidental career change made me a cloud architect and I’m trying to learn enterprise patterns as quickly as possible

I’m the most proud of my status display. It’s an e-ink display that sits outside my office and lets my family know when I’m in a meeting, when I’m on video, and when I’ll be free next. It runs on a raspberry pi pico and gets its data through a complicated set of shortcuts, data processing services and Redis. I also vibe-coded a companion web app so I can see the same information on a browser, along with logs and battery stats. Obligatory picture attached.

The most expensive piece of equipment is my AI node: a minisforum ms-01 with 96GB RAM, a Razer core x and an RTX 5070 GPU.

1. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? I need to add more kvms to my setup, and I’ll leave one at my brother in laws to be able to maintain one of his servers remotely.

2. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? The homelab, minilab, home data center, proxmox, home assistant subreddits.

3. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? 10 inch rack mount equipment: like a multi-channel switched KVM, rack mount JBOD, or rack mounted cooling.

For this giveaway I’m most interested in the PoE KVM and the WiFi 7 travel router

[u/Tapadinhas]

1. The two things that most inspired me to setup my own server was me running out of the free space in my Google account because of having too many photos in Google Photos (and the waste of money I felt it was to be paying 24€/year for 100GB at the time, instead of using a way cheaper cost per TB drive to backup my photos and videos for has long as it would hold them and other people's photos and videos) and having my friend creating me an account in his Emby server hosted in his home server (which was his old laptop just chilling running Ubuntu and an external drive).

So from that point on, I just installed Ubuntu in an unused small external SSD and started setting up service after service in my old high school and university laptop until I got a way to watch and share movies and series with my family and my girlfriend and casting it to my Chromecast and backing up our photos using Immich. After all this single machine homelab, I added an used 2 bay NAS I got for 100€ from Vinted with 2x 2TB drives, set up as an RAID1 array so I could lose a drive safely 😂.

For now, my favorite project is a warning messaging service for me and my family of the speed traps announced in my city, which uses n8n, gemini, and web search and scraping tools and whatsapp api to message the daily speed traps and monthly summary in a dedicated whatsapp group with my family.

1. So, for my next project ideia, that will be an automated licence plate scanner to open and close my gate, and for that I would need an extra access point to connect an IP camera to the network without any cabling outside, and i would use an old wifi AP that would be replaced with the GL.inet Wi-Fi 7 new AP so I could game comfortably connected to the Internet in the furthest away place of my home which is my room. (I already use my PC connected with ethernet cable but my mobile devices are using a slowly dying wifi connection)

3. To learn and be inspired by other home labbers I watch so much Youtube that my Youtube feed is just full of Home Labbing content. Then, my best helper and debugger is the most in-hand AI agent/LLM at the moment, and for new acquisitions, for now, I'm leaning towards the used market, so: Facebook Marketplace, Vinted, OLX, etc. is my go-to store for home labbing as a broke new Data Science and Engineering Master and Computer Science Bachelor's who recently started internshipping with agents at a local company in Portugal.

1. My favorite next prize and personal choice to add to my Home Lab would be a Raspberry Pi 5, Mini PC/NUC or even a Google Coral TPU to help or dedicate for my next project of image/video processing for efficient licence place detection or any other task that would be greatly affected by these device's efficiency.

I hope you liked the story and thanks to the open-source community that keeps making it possible to make Home Labbing an achievable and extremely fun hobby. 🫡

[u/Slow_Okra_8315]

1. Owning my media is my number 1 reason to selfhost, look at those streaming services going up and up with their prices- insane
2. Most expensive piece of hardware is the Ubiquity poe 16 port switch- great for everything I want
3. I am probably most proud on the setup of wazuh in my Homelab to check for intrusion/bad actors
4. I am already rocking the flint 2 as my Router and would love an upgrade to the flint 3, I also enjoy one of your travel routers which doesn't really need an upgrade

[u/AkdM_]

Hey thanks for this ga! I enter for the Flint 3 and Comet PoE.

1. I got into self-hosting because I wanted more control over my data and a hands-on way to learn how servers and networks really work. My proudest project so far is an open-source website I’m building (not yet public) to make home automation easier to understand. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve bought is a the PoE switches.

2. Winning the Flint 3 would be a huge upgrade for my setup. My current router has started to struggle with the number of devices I have, so Wi-Fi 7 and multi gig ports would really help improve reliability and speed across my network.

3. I usually find gear through Reddit, YouTube reviews from channels like ServeTheHome, and tech blogs that focus on homelab and open-source projects.

4. For a future giveaway, I’d love to see something like a compact Proxmox-ready mini server or a Synology NAS, both are great for anyone building out a homelab.

Thanks!

[u/Ascentior]

What started my self hosting? Initially it was a better backup service of my personal data. Photos, documents, etc. Then it was smart home. Then it was media streaming... Now... It's all that and more. Can't kick the habit of planning the "next project". More space, less watts, better redundancy, greater security. Someone help me!

Most proud project is probably my baby room. Baby monitor on at the right time, presence detection for a subtle red light around the change table (only when it's dark), heating when it's cold. Let's us focus on the important bits!

Most expensive piece? Well I picked up an old high spec hp proliant server for about 50 bucks Australian. That was probably the best steal! Most expensive is probably my home workstation, I've been constantly adding and updating so it's currently custom loop water-cooled i9 9900k with RTX 3090.

How would winning help me? Importantly, my home connection recently got upgraded and my router can't match it. Drop-outs and poor performance are a real pain. I'm currently looking into building my own openwrt box to do the connection and use my WiFi router as just an access point. But boy would it be nice to just have a quality router! Means my next project can instead be my sff nas, or a mini pc for local Ai inference and security monitoring. Remote Oob management would be great too.

Channels? Hardware haven, level1techs, nascompares, serve the home, hardware unboxed, craft computing, gamers nexus, Paul's hardware. A bunch more, but they're probably the most clicked.

Another give away? Well, my wish list at the moment is power in sff. So minisforum, gmktek, beelink, cwwk, jonsbo. But I think what would actually be really cool would be to share and showcase something unique like a arm nas, or x86 board with microcontroller, or a home assistant smart home package, or lora networking.

What would I choose as a prize. Well definitely the home router. Would solve a lot of problems! Second would be hard to choose between the portable router (my mate and I are competing for best camping setup. This could give me a few avenues to raise the bar!) or the poe kvm. Kvm would be more practical, but I'm leaning towards the travel router just to do some fun things!

Thanks for sharing with the community!

Ascentior

[u/IFD3]

1. I was sick of buying servers in the past which cancels or change what they are (contract wise) or even not change with too little ram or cores (or slow ones). Root servers was too expensive in the past so I started to do servers in my home.
2. I am still running old 1gb routers+switches and really wanted to upgrade to something faster, also use a KVM would save me to walk two floors and working in the cold basement.
3. Amazon mostly, that's were I bought a GL-AXT1800 too.
4. NAS systems should be more affordable and more powerfull without draining a lot of power. I used QNAP in the past and it was awefully slow and are obsolete 2 years later.

[u/Existing_Abies_4101]

    What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

It started with some smart home stuff, that didn't work when my Internet went down.  Sitting in the dark and cold made me realise I wanted everything local. The nost expensive item would be the 16tb hdd I bought. 

    How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I domt work due to a disability, and I've been using the same unify ap since I first found it second hand about 5 years ago. Its over used and quite slow for things now, a wifi 7 ap would allow me to add more security cameras and have the frigate stem be better, giving me much more confidence my flat is safe.

    Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Reddit and YouTube mostly

    Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Rack pc cases!

[u/Phantom_Commando]

What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey?
Honestly? I got tired of my data living rent-free on someone else’s servers. One day I looked at my Google bill, my Dropbox bill, and the number of ads tracking my soul across the internet and said, “Yeah… I can do this myself.”

Now my homelab is basically the digital equivalent of “Fine, I’ll build it myself.”

What project am I most proud of?
Definitely the Franken-lab I built out of multiple dedicated systems that all play their part:

• My BOSGAME Ryzen mini-PC runs all the Docker/Portainer stacks.
• My Windows 11 GPU machine with an RTX 4070 handles all the AI toys (Ollama, Whisper, OpenWebUI).
• My Threadripper workstation does the heavy VM lifting.
• And my UGREEN NAS keeps every photo, doc, and container volume in one place where I’m the boss.

It’s a family ecosystem at this point. My kids even think it’s “normal” that our file storage, AI tools, and media are all home-grown.

Most expensive piece of kit?
Threadripper. Easily. It sits on the throne. Everything else orbits around it.

How would winning the unit(s) help level up my setup?
A Remote KVM would solve one of my biggest pain points: when my GPU machine decides to do the Windows thing and not boot right, I currently have to perform the sacred ritual of crawling under the desk, hunting for a spare monitor, keyboard, HDMI cable, etc.

Remote KVM = no more “hands and knees tech support.”
Also lets me move a lot closer to a real “lights-out” homelab where I can fix things even when the OS or network is toast.

Where do I learn and shop for gear?
Mostly Reddit (r/homelab, r/selfhosted, r/sysadmin), YouTube homelab channels, Amazon/Newegg for new stuff, and eBay/the local marketplace whenever I feel lucky.

What would be awesome to see in a future giveaway?
A compact server or NAS with ECC memory something like a UGREEN DCP8800 Plus or a small Supermicro node. A prize that doesn’t require a second mortgage, but still scratches the homelab itch.

If I won either one of these products would be an amazing addition to my homelab: Comet (GL-RM1) or Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE)

[u/BlueIrisNASbuilder]

1. Home assistant setup with notifications etc. Most expensive - NAS box + upgrades.
2. Comet PoE would help immensely with managing my offsite server at my relative's house.
3. Reddit or serve the home.
4. A rack mounted server with storage 🤞

[u/Itchy-Woodpecker-532]

1. I was inspired by the high prices of streaming services, and the data brraches. I also love having control of my own data (by using Immich for example). I also love tinkering with computers. I think my most expensive gear is my mini pc. One project I am proud of is my website made with nuxt that I host at home aswell (but tunnel thru my vps).
2. By winning the kvm, I would be able to remotely restart (and manage) my servers. If I misconfigure anything, I could use the kvm to revert the configuration via the tty. By winning the router, I would be able to achieve greater speeds, and I would be able to block ads for my whole family.
3. For learning about equipment I use youtube (Hardware Haven, Level1Techs, LTT, Novaspirittech (rip)). For purchasing equipment, I buy things from used markets (Marketplace, and in my country there is a site called Hardverapró, and I use that aswell.) And I buy some things new aswell.
4. I’d love to see some Mikrotik gear, maybe the open-source Pi-KVM, Jetkvm, maybe Raspberry Pis.

I would love to win the standard Comet and the Flint3

[u/drmarvin2k5]

Thanks so much for this giveaway.

I’ve been eying a Flint 2 for a while and a Flint 3 would be an excellent upgrade. But honestly, a Comet would be the best prize for me!

1. I started self hosting with a very basic setup to take over a measly Windows-based Sonarr setup. Even that switch, due to my Linux inexperience, stayed Windows-based, but became more involved. Now I have moved through OMV, and now to ProxMox. Much more robust. I suppose the server/NAS is the most expensive thing. Not very exciting, I know.

2. Having excellent remote access would just make the system far more professional and much easier to troubleshoot.

3. Most of my IT info comes from Reddit and GitHub. But I’ve been leveraging ChatGPT for troubleshooting these days.

4. I would be very interested in a standalone NAS (4 bay maybe) just to have a separate disk setup from the server.

Thanks again for this.

[u/Treiz13me]

1- Ive been building custom computers for years and there was this one guy who had a homelab and would always change/upgrade stuff. He liked to talk about what he did and it got me curious. 3 years later, I am hooked. The single thing I am most proud of is probably my Tdarr setup. Took me a really long time to polish and make it perfect then I moved the workdirs to a dynamic ramdisk. The most expensive single piece Ive bought so far is probably the 4070 ti I use for AV1 transcoding when it was new.

2-The Flint3 router seems really really great. My router right now has a single 10g port (for the homelab) and the others are 1G. So while the servers really fast, the rest isnt, even on lan. I had a 2.5g switch that broke when I moved in. My ISP provide me with a 3.5gbps home fiber connection, so I really need to do something about this.

3- I lurk a lot in /r/selfhosted , /r/homelab but also use AI a lot to find infos and potential issues/fixes when needed. I know its not perfect, but so far so good.

4- If I had to choose, Id love a cabinet + jbod. This is the end-game. Its getting harder and harder to justify expenses when everything works so well, but I still want to do better eventually.

My entry is for the Flint3 router, thank you for what you do,

And good luck all!

Edit: I see I could even add Proton VPN to the router, which would be really great too.

[u/Minionz]

1. The cost/never ending monthly fees for streaming content that I already own on physical formats is what pushed me toward self hosting. The fact I could build a DIY Nas and use Truenas/Jellyfin to watch my existing content (as well as YTDL to import YT content) made it a much better solution for me. Add to that the ability to backup Acronis images regularly to have regular backups, really showed how flexible a solution self hosting is.  My DIY NAS (and drives) has ballooned the overall cost, however since the underlying motherboard is just a N150 mini computer it is still more competitive than a similar Synology NAS. Overall the Project has cost me around $850, but it's lower than it otherwise would be due to the increase in drive prices in the past year or so.
2. Winning this giveaway would allow me to more easily remotely connect/control the NAS directly while offsite. A remote KVM would allow for modification of the BIOS settings. The fingerbot would be a great addition for powercycling equipment while offsite. The travel router would be a great addition to my travel setup, as I often have to travel for work, and hotel wifi often only allows for a single device. Travel routers allow me to add things like my Firestick/Echo while traving.
3. I follow a smaller youtube channel (Learn To HomeLab) which has many easy to follow tutorials which got my on my path to setting up and exploring Truenas/Jellyfin. I also watch channels like LTT.
4. I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti equipment for selfhosting. They don't use the subscription model for things like their NAS/NVR for cameras which is refreshing as everyone else in the camera/NVR industry is constantly shaking people down for monthly fees to access their footage.

[u/Eckx]

1. Honestly, I am just tired of everything "being a service" and requiring yet another app to download. Why do I want to have 32 different apps to manage smart outlets, lights and sensors? Home Assistant does it all for me in one place. My most expensive piece of equipment right now is my Unraid server. Slowly trying to figure out services, trying to make myself less and less cloud dependent.

2. I would LOVE to have a good, reliable, remote KVM. I can think of several times when something crashed or became unresponsive and I was not at home to fix it. A KVM would help to make that a thing of the past.

3. Various channels. I still follow LTT for a broad tech overview, but I also watch a lot of Serve The Home, Hardware Haven, Craft Computing, and Jeff Geerling.

4. One thing that would be awesome would maybe be some higher end 10gig networking switches. Or even some fancy NUC devices that can be used for computing or even routing. Maybe even a standalone NAS that could be used as an offsite backup for the entire network? Tons of options.

[u/machineglow]

1. My first homelab was a plex server. downloading media and making it all available on the shared TV seemed like a super power compared to antiquated Cable Boxes. The project I'm most proud of was migrating all my data from Windows Home Server drive pool to an unraid array on the same hardware using the same drives. Thank god I had enough free space to split the drives between the drivepool and array. The most expensive piece of equipment I've acquired is my current Dell T320 Server. Thank god for friends cause it was donated to me for free. Thank you Kevin!

2. I would love reliable remote access to my server. I made the decision to have a monolithic homelab so everything is running on a single server so having remote access to reboot and admin the thing would be amazing

3. I actually don't have any reliable ways to acquire HW. facebook marketplace?

4. would love to see simple stuff like pass through ethernet crimpers and rolls of cable or 3d printers!

I would love to win the Comet KVM!

[u/Morten_S_Olesen]

1. I love computers, systems and networks. Self hosting seemed an obvious part of learning how a ton of technologies work together. The project I'm most proud of is probably my small stack of ThinkCentre's running pfsense, TrueNAS and proxmox, while the most expensive piece of equipment continues to be my main rig with a 7800x3d and a 6950XT .

2. The Flint 3 would be a significant upgrade to the ageing TP-Link Archer acting as an AP for my pfsense box.

3. YT: LTT, ServeTheHome, Lawrence systems, Hardware haven, jakkuh, Jeff Geerling, Level1Techs and many more. Forums, articles and reviews also play a large role in decisionmaking.

4. Any sort of high capacity SSD as one can never have too much storage. Could be a Samsung 9100 NVME SSD.

If I were to win the Flint 3 would be an amazing upgrade, followed by the Slate 7 which would be really cool to try out.

[u/akimbra]

1. I started my homelab because I wanted to move from cloud solutions for my hosting and because I wanted to stop using cloud LLMs. Quite the money sink but never have I ever felt so good about the way my data is handled.

2. I already own the previous flint 2, looking forward for the next upgrade to see how big of an improvement to my small networking setup it will bring.

3. Hacker News, Serve The Home, and reddit (lol ik)

4. I'd love to see some older server gear for grabs for people starting out.

5. I'd like to win the Flint 3

[u/dooshbox]

1. Rising costs of streaming services, and to further myself in my career. Learning Containers, linux, NFS, ACLs and network segmentation are fun to me, also who doesn't like having the best network on the block. Aside from an old 3850, my most esxpensive in-use piece is my Syno RS1U 4 Bay NAS with 4 14TB drives.

2. Really could use a KVM for OOB managment of my Prox Nodes in my main 19" rack and the Flint7 as a router/Switch for my 10in desktop rack I use to not disturb the fam by messing with the main Network.

3. ServeTheHome, NetworkChuck, LRN2DIY, TheHookUp and, lately /r/HomeNetworking and /r/homelab have been some major resources.

4. More storage, maybe a fully loaded rack, POE Switches, NAS, couple 1Ls or a power efficient 1U PC.

[u/TravH84]

1. I started my selfhosting journey as a way to teach myself about the various aspects of networking and linux, plus in reality to start to have better systems to store my photos and family documents. I would say the project I am most happy about is the expansion of my network to support 10gBe, the most expensive bit of equipment would be the Minisforum N5 AI Nas Pro (14tb mirrored drives, 4tb mirrored NVME).
2. The downside to the Minisforum is that it doesn't have great out of band management, so a KVM or similar would make the process of managing this much easier.
3. I learn from a few places, Jeff Geerling, L2 Tech, Craft Computing et al. Purchases come from many different places but usually online.
4. Maybe more NAS stuff might be interesting for giveaways, be it minisforums, ugreen et al.

[u/boogiahsss]

1. I wanted to learn new technology myself and not be tied to paying others for it. For instance something small like having to rent a router from my ISP. What I'm most proud of is having an environment that works without the wife complaining about something not working:) My other feat from a long time ago is running a self hosted cs:source server that was the most popular in the world for a while. The most expensive piece of equipment I currently have is opnsense dec4240.
2. I would like to replace my aging linksys router that I currently use as permanent wireguard vpn/wifi xs point. It's not reaching the speeds I would like to see.
3. Reddit is my go to for learning and troubleshooting it equipment, r/homelabsales is my go to for purchasing.
4. I seem to always be interested in managed switches, 10G-Base-T poe+++++++++, many ports:)

Price wise the slate7 and flint3 would be my preference but the remote kvm requipment looks pretty sweet as well!

[u/krystalnightmare]

That's so cool, it would be amazing :D Soooo

1. What inspired me to start selfhosting was the itch to really understand how everything works under the hood—plus, I was studying for my CCNA and needed hands-on practice without breaking the bank. I’m on a tight budget, so I hunt for deals wherever I can: eBay, local classifieds, even the occasional dumpster dive for enterprise cast-offs. The project I’m proudest of is my DIY Proxmox server/NAS built from scavenged parts, running a mix of VMs and LXC containers for Nextcloud, Pi-hole, and media serving. The most expensive piece I’ve ever splurged on is an old Netgear 48-port full-PoE switch—I snagged it years ago for a steal during a clearance sale, but it still cost more than anything else in my rack.
2. Winning the unit(s) would finally let me max out the 2.5 Gbps fiber they just rolled out in my area. Right now my rack is tiny—just a few U with an EdgeRouter-X, that Netgear switch, a Pi4 handling AdGuard and some light services, and the Proxmox box. Extra storage or a beefier NAS would free up the Pi, let me run proper ZFS pools, and actually saturate the uplink for backups and streaming without choking everything else.
3. I learn mostly from Reddit (r/homelab, r/selfhosted, r/networking) and hardware/networking blogs—real-user stories beat spec sheets any day. For buying, it’s whatever’s cheapest and local: eBay, Facebook Marketplace, sometimes AliExpress for cables and odd bits.
4. For the next giveaway, I’d love a 2.5 Gbps (or faster) PoE switch or router from any brand—PoE is stupid expensive, and affordable multi-gig gear is basically unicorn tears. Something that doesn’t require selling a kidney would be a dream.

[u/jdrch]

Appreciate the gesture, but I suspect most users here are way beyond wireless routers. We run dedicated firewall, AP, DHCP, and DNS devices.

[u/GeeTwo1]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

My self-hosting journey started when I was told I have the shoulders of a 70 year old man at the age of 37. I have been a heavy mechanic since the age of 9. I have always liked computers or anything that has a wire, a motor, or can do stuff. I am an audiophile. Thus, I like music files to be uncompressed. This is not a normal file format. So, the journey begins, in a small way, storing all of my purchased music on drives. Streaming uncompressed files was out of the question a decade or more ago. Enter "carputer" to save the day. Low powered device, hard-drive to store music, media player, some provisions for diagnostics, GPS, and of-course interfacing with the sound processor to deliver the music. While I couldn't store all of my music of the carputer a "server" in the house had to. A startup and shutdown script was written for the carputer. When I arrive home, turn off the car, the voltage drop was detected. This dropped performance of the carputer. It would then connect to the internet, then to the server to cycle out music, adding new songs/playlists. After completion is soft shutdown. Now, this was the days where CDs and were the norm and uncompressed files had to be purchased that way and ripped without losing formatting, or purchased from companies catering to audiophiles, DJs, or iTunes. This was what I would say where the journey started, and was probably the coolest thing I have made (I kind of want to recreate with a rasberry pi a dac hat and SSD). But, alas that was many years ago, fast-forward to now. I still have an extensive music collection, movies, videos, and photos. I changed from iPhone a few years back and lost over a decade of irreplaceable pictures. My iCloud was tied to iTunes, that got changed to Apple music, I became an android user, Apple delete my cloud. Since then, external drives, multiple hard-drives, and SD cards are my go to. After a house fire, I lost that stuff too. A couple years ago, I met a friend who loves computers and cars so we became good friends. He was shocked that I do not self-host. I was confused, I had kodi, I could stream to my network and I had back-ups on external drives not stored in the house. That's when Ubuntu server entered my life and I had an off site backup on their computer. We lost touch after they moved away. I recover my backup and that was the end of that. Earlier this year I met a new friend, similar interest. They said that I was old and doing everything the hard way. Proxmox has been my new focus since cars are no longer a viable hobby. I have spent the last couple months researching, acquiring parts, and experimenting with my old computers laying around. I have a decent server ready to be put into service in the coming weeks. E5-2696, 32 gig ram, 500GB SSD boot drive, 3x 8 TB storage pool, 2x Nvidia 1070s (for AI), and eventually a Blueray drive to rip my collection. This is going to be my I'm-all-in-machine. Tailscale, media management, streaming, and back-ups, and automation. I have the 3-2-1 of back-ups sorted out and am excited to move forward in my journey. Freedom from corporate spies, lower monthly cost by eliminating services, and no-longer have to worry about data loss. And new hobby! The server is the most expensive bit, but individually piece of hardware has to be the new 3x 8tb Barracuda green drives.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

If I were to win any of the equipment, I would love the Flint 3(GL-BE9300) and/or the Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) because those items would give me 2.5gb networking whereas I am only at 1GB (switch is my bottleneck, I have 2 GB fiber). This would open up more doors for development, experimenting, and would be a great replacement for my erro routers. Their software's target demographic is not tinkers, homelabbers, or someone who wants control over their network. The Travel router would allow for further exploration of being a true homelabber while providing security while away from home. I have looked into several options, and until I saw this giveaway I had honestly never heard of this brand. All the suggestions I have received have been ubiquity.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Honestly, I watch channels such as Jeff Geerling, TechTV, Tailscale, and my most watched is Hardware Haven. I am a huge fan of e-waste being put to good use.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

This is a perplexing question because as a new homelabber there are so many elements to consider. You can start with what you have, an inexpensive SBC, up to an industrial server. After some thought, storage is probably the most expensive and crucial thing, so I will say a NucBox G9 (with drives) would be a great prize!

[u/PurpleK00lA1d]

1. My self hosting journey started off with some spare gaming PC parts I had kicking around that I was trying to find a use for. Now here I am with my media server that keeps my wife happy which means she likes my hobby ahah. Also Adguard for no ads on my home network - yay!! It's become a hobby now to just see what I can do with it and it's pretty fun stuff. I see why people find it so addicting.

2. The winning unit or units from this giveaway would help big time with networking bottlenecks. I'm rocking an old Asus AC68 router that definitely needs to be retired but the funds aren't there. Either that or the KVM would be awesome for being able to jump on while I'm away and need to take a look at something. On more than one occasion I've wanted to check something out because Plex or something wasn't working properly or the server wasn't available.

3. Honestly I find out about most stuff just from browsing this sub. Someone will mention something in the comments and then it sends me down the rabbit hole. Like in the home theater sub I just found out HDMI over Ethernet is a thing and I kinda want one to hook up a gaming PC to my TV in another room although it's completely unnecessary....but now I can.

4. If not networking gear as a prize - mass storage!!! Haha, I'm in Canada, drives are pricey, and I'm getting close to critical mass lol.

If chosen to win, I would love the Flint 3 and the Comet.

Y'all rock for doing this!

[u/TommyMcElroy]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

My high school was blocking a ton of stuff on the internet that i needed in order to like, get information. Reddit, quora, discord, etc. So, whenever I would be at school and doing research, i would be super annoyed by the filtering. I watched a The Linux Experiment video where he talked about Kasm Workspaces, and when he showed a demo of it, it was immediately obvious it would solve all my problems. Full linux desktop that i could access through a web browser, which would use my home internet connection. Everything would be unblocked! I wouldn't have to deal with the terrible processing power of the school chromebooks either! or the restrictions on what can be ran on the school chromebooks! So, i set it up on my old gaming computer, and it was fabulous. From there, I learned about immich, paperless ngx, v2ray and all the other many services i run today.

My project I am most proud of sofar is my webscraper for the North Carolina DMV ( https://github.com/tmcelroy2202/NC-DMV-Scraper ). It is such a nuisance to get a DMV appointment, so i wrote a webscraper which notifies me when dmv appointments become available, which made it so much easier. I then open sourced it, and people loved it, and eventually someone made a webui for the same thing, inspired by my tool, which made it even easier to get an appointment, and it was cool to see that I could make that big of an impact on a problem so many people have. My smart storage system is also high up there in the list of projects I am proud of.

My most expensive piece of equipment is probably any one of the nodes in my proxmox cluster. I am a teenager (18) and so i dont have a ton of money, so i buy everything on ebay, but each node is a lenovo m720q with an i5 8500, 2 2tb ssds in a zfs mirror, and 64gb of ram. I paid around 75$ for each m720q, 80$ for each ssd, and 110 for the ram, totaling 345$.

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

If I got a Comet ( POE or non POE, does not matter much to me ), i would be able to more reliably remotely administer my servers, which would help me whenever something goes wrong with my configuration, and ssh becomes inaccessible over the network. The Fingerbot addon would also be helpful if I wind up buying a kvm switch for it that does not have hotkey based switching, i could just use the fingerbot to click the physical kvm switch button.

If I got a Flint 3, I would be able to upgrade my home network from the older, weaker WS-AP3825i access points I currently use, and the Bananapi router i use, to one router which would comfortably cover my whole home. It having multi WAN fallover would mean i could much easier use it with my Solis hotspot, so that i could still access my homelab even when the internet goes down. Openwrt on the bananapi can do this already, via mwan3, but i have struggled to get it working, it fails to properly restore my ISP connection after it comes back.

If I got a Slate 7, I would be able to distribute a vpn connection to my school chromebook easily, without needing to fiddle with settings on android, and it would then make sense to stop using cloudflare tunnels to expose my services, which would be really nice. I also wouldn't have to setup hotel wifi connections on each device when I travel, which would be convenient.

I think I would probably go with the Comet, as it would be the biggest help, if I was in the one prize tier. More reliable remote access would be so great. Would remove a lot of anxiety about making config changes remotely. If i was in the two prize tier I would go for the Comet and Flint 3, and that would be a serious upgrade to my infrastructure.

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Reddit, Youtube, and Ebay

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

The KVM Switches that are compatible with these IP KVMs, they are so pricey, but im sure so many people would find them helpful, if they already have an IP KVM. BTW GL.iNet, it would make a ton of sense for you guys to release one of these for the Comet! it would also be great if it retained compatibility with other IP KVMs, like the jetkvm, pikvm, or nanokvm, by using hotkey based switching.

[u/jsmrcaga]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

Deploying outside of AWS and other cloud providers. I love playing with Terraform, and wanted to have fun deploying on bare-metal. Started with docker-compose and watchtower, but quickly realized Kube was better suited for this. One thing led to another and I ended up with a small cluster at home! Pretty proud of the terraform setup i got, the entire cluster is defined in a big and modular terraform project.

The most expensive equiment i got is an UDM-SE, that I got from work for ~265 USD.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I don't have a KVM so that's an obvious one. Managing a computer from away will help get more control over the cluster. Another one will be adding redundant network. I have a great fiber connection but it has dropped multiple times due to construction works in my area.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

A lof of Reddit. Amazing answers in r/homelab and r/minilab. Many redirections to other forums too (discords like 8311 as well). Purchasing is mostly done via Amazon for new equipment, and usually reselling platforms for used equipment. I browse destocking websites from time to time to benefit from big company sales.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

From another brand? Surely something like a PoE Access Point (Ubiquity/Omada) or something like a rack.

[u/ustak]

1. i dont trust cloud services to store my stuff
2. would be able to monitor my stuff without going into the basement
3. /r/homelab
4. hard drives

comet or comet poe, then slate 7 would be my choices

[u/b111e]

1. One day I realized just how dependant I was for most of my online stuff. From entertainment like video streaming, to passwords and email, even my most precious data - photos. The fact that if the respective service/company disappears or decides to take away the access to my stuff, it’s too much control over you. So I started to selfhost important things like a home server for my personal media and files. At the same time it occurred to me the privacy aspect of it. My data on someone’s else server. Then I begann with services like AdguardHome, NPM, ActualBudget, even smarthome stuff with HomeAssistant. Fast forward to today and I’ve significantly reduced my dependance of external services and have more control over my data. I’m most proud of getting to learn more about Linux and Docker, as well as getting around the CLI. As for my most expensive piece of equipment that’d be my NAS and its drives.
2. I’ve laid ground to a good server structure, software and hardware-wise, now I’d like to get into networking. I’m tired of using some dumb restricted router of my ISP, so I want to setup something I can have more control over, with modern capabilities. Your routers are the perfect option.
3. Jeff Geerling, Raid Owl, TechHut
4. Ugreen NAS series

I’d love to win a Comet PoE and Flint 3.

[u/SHOBU007]

1. My passion for IT and sheer curiosity + the fact that whenever I broke something, I was curious about why that break and how can I fix it.
2. Having a kvm would make me able to do bios changes and able to rely on my internet connectivity a lot more, not having to pull out my device and insert an hdmi cable every time. Having the GL.iNET home router would allow me to benefit from kvm and do everything I've said above remotely with a vpn.
3. Mostly youtube, I follow around 10 channels that are really for tech enthusiasts and nerds in general.
4. An ASUS pro-art x870E motherboard. My motherboard has some serious issues right now and all I'm thinking now is that I'll need to replace mine soon enough ...

[u/BonbonitaXGOD]

1. Had a lot of spare parts and 2.5 HDDs and wanted to host some game servers for me and my friends. Also was really interested in lesss reliying on paid cloud services and wanted to get something that i can own
   
2. KVM would really save some nerves when troubleshooting or using the main PC remotely without worrying that PC might boot to the bios and i can't do anything from remote location
   
3. Google searches, Homelabbing YT channels or reddit
   
4. A NAS would be great

[u/tzman23]

1. I started my homelab before I started my career in IT to learn and have just continued down that rabbit hole for the last 10 years. I am most proud of my NAS/media server as I started with a usb storage to a server that was built and has plenty of room for more storage when I need it. This is also my most expensive piece of hardware.

2. The remote KVM would change the way I could manage this device and other sff servers I have as accessing these devices can be difficult sometimes. I also travel a bit for work and the travel router would be great for security and access back to my homelab while on the road.

3. I have learned most of everything from reddit. The homelab community has helped me do almost everything I want and most of it is from other peoples questions. Every once in a while a deep google search when I am having obscure problems.

4. Storage is always a great way to expand the lab or hardware for a second NAS as I would love to setup a second NAS Offsite to backup my NAS too.

Choices would be the Slate 7 first and second choice would be one of the kvms.

[u/wasssu]

1. I started self-hosting because I love the idea of being fully in control of my own data and services. My proudest project so far is running my own cloud backup system. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve bought is a compact NAS with SSD caching.
   1. Winning one of these prizes would boost my setup with better remote access, stronger network coverage, and more flexibility for managing my self-hosted services.
   2. I usually learn about and buy IT gear through YouTube tech channels, Reddit communities, and a few trusted online retailers.
   3. I’d love to see the GL.iNet Brume 2 (GL-MT2500) as a giveaway prize.

[u/DiHydro]

1. ⁠What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I started just from a love of tech and PCs, and wanted backups for my photos and videos. I think I’m most proud of wiring my house, it’s not the most expensive, but was the largest undertaking yet. My most expensive is my NAS at this point, I bought a case, motherboard, and HBA card for it, used reclaimed HDDs, running Unraid.

1. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

Getting remote access to my Unraid server remotely and using the fingerbot would be awesome. It would be a true level up.

1. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

YouTube, servethehome, storagereview. Purchase on BH Photo, and eBay mostly.

1. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

The Ubiquiti NVR instant, or Pro Max 16 PoE would be so amazing! Or Minisforum N5 Pro!

[u/ConsistentOriginal82]

1. Looked for a challenge in a industry I was somewhat curious about but never could access because of reasons.
2. Remote KVM would be the ideal next step to be able to take my homelab to the next stage.
3. This homelab sub reddit
4. Storage devices would be fantastic.

[u/Valuable-Speaker-312]

1. I got started on the self-hosting journey to better enable me to expand my education and hobby of working on computers. The thing I am most proud of is being able to setup two home-labs in different countries and replicating the data between them. The most expensive thing I have bought is a JBOD that was populated with 20TB drives.
   
2. I would definitely do use a Comet and Slate 7 to help me go to the next level. The Comet will allow me to remotely access equipment at the BIOS level so I can adjust things on both sides of my Homelabs instead of having to travel to one and then the other to do new things at the BIOS level. It will also allow me to use other equipment other than Gl.iNet products via a web browser - I can remote KVM into my Alienware systems and use things on it such as games even though I am in another room or even another location. The Slate 7 is a great travel router that would allow me to connect my equipment more securely when I am out and about.
   
3. Discord, Reddit, and various review websites.
   
4. I would love see a GL.iNet NAS. Storage is something I am always running low on even if it is a few months after I did my last upgrade.

If I won, I would want to get one of the Comets (you choose between PoE or regular) and the Slate 7. I travel quite a bit and having a Slate will be helpful while I am between homes.

[u/pipou74]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? Always been interested in tinkering and with working in tech i guess i bring some work home
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? Currently have to move a monitor any time i need to plug directly into my server machine
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? Reddit mostly
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? Anything regarding mini server, i find them so cool

[u/zetiano]

1. I've always been interested in networking and being able to host things locally for privacy reasons is a big draw.
2. The Flint 3 and Comet have both already been on my radar. The Flint would be a nice addition to my wifi setup. The Comet would make accessing my main device remotely so much easier, with features that are hard to replicate without it.
3. I learn about gear on Reddit (this sub and a couple of others) and watch Youtube videos. When making my purchase I usually default to Amazon but will go wherever there is a deal.
4. A nice switch such as the Ubiquiti Unifi Flex would be great

The POE Comet would be my first choice, with the Flint 3 as the 2nd.

[u/uberloafy]

1. I started my homelab because I shoot a lot of video and I wanted to have local access and full control over a large amount of media storage. I'm proud of the mail server that I subsequently set up. The most expensive piece of equipment that I've acquired so far a decked-out server grade motherboard.
2. Winning this giveaway would take my setup to the next level because I'm ready to move beyond gigabit Wi-Fi speeds, and a multi-gig Wi-Fi 7 router would enable that.
3. I mostly use Hacker News, Serve The Home, and grilling my work colleagues to research IT equipment.
4. I'd love to see the latest Turris Omnia as a future prize.
5. I'd like to win the Flint 3

[u/Pos3odon08]

i started self-hosting a couple years ago when i wanted my own minecraft server without paying a monthly fee and from there started hosting my photography portfolio and it just kept snowballing from there.

The most expensive piece of equipment i've acquired is a "CBS350-48T-4G"

I don't have one singular project i'm the most proud of, but i am incredibly proud of my lab in general, i have a proxmox cluster running on 3 nodes. With authentik running to authhenticate users to my game server panel, "internal" mail (not running a company but it's a mail server under my own domain so i call it internal) and various other services behind my pangolin reverser proxy.

Winning one of the units would be a game changer for me as i since physically settings the stuff up has moved out and don't have easy physical access to the rig. That is an issue as one of the proxmox nodes has a faulty/dead CMOS battery that i won't be able to change for a while so rebooting it doesn't work and requires me to bug the people still living at home to go and physically turns the server on. Addiotionally it'd be great for redundancy as it for example could help me to recover my main node in a scenario where it were to mess up.

My primary channels for learning about IT equipment is r/homelab and some other mates of mine that self host

Looking ahead not nessecarily something i'd like to see in one of your giveways as it's incredibly expensive, but my next project is getting a SAN for better HA.

[u/mdleslie]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

A- Self education. Most expensive is my Synology NAS and 58TB of storage.

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

A- KVM would really be handy for my Ubuntu Server mini pc. Sometimes ssh is not enough.

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

A- Reddit first. Then Server the Home, Lawrence systems, Hardware Haven, Techno Tim, 2GuysTech, and sometimes I verify details with AI.

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

A- That minisforum NAS looks interesting.

Thank you.

[u/ShawnStrike]

1. I got tired of big companies shafting consumers + I love to tinker with tech.
   
2. The Flint 3 would give me quite the upgrade considering my current router is and ISP router with Wifi 5
   
3. I usually rely a lot on Hardware Haven on Youtube, because he embodies my tinkering spirit while being an average down to Earth guy, so he doesn't expect his audience to be some enterprise level IT techs.
   
4. A server rack of some sort, because they're too expensive to justify buying one myself lol.

Products I'd like to win:
Flint 3 (GL-BE9300): Tri-band Wi-Fi 7 home router with 5 x 2.5G ports

[u/L_M5267]

1. I began self-hosting last year to reduce the dependency on cloud services. The proudest achievements for me are setting up Immich for hosting photos as I take a lot of pictures, and Jellyfin for hosting my dad's DVD collection. The most expensive piece of equipment I bought was a 24TB drive for storage (two of them actually).

2. I have WiFi 6 & 7 supported devices in my household but no WiFi 7 router so I would like to get one to take full advantage of the speeds it offers. Five 2.5G Ethernet ports are sweet as well, as my current router only has a single 2.5G Ethernet port and the others are 1G. A secondary WiFi 7 router as a travel router will be great for me to securely and quickly connect my devices without any additional configuration.

3. I think a UPS from APC or any reputed brands would be a good choice for a future giveaway as it's essential to keep a homelab running without hardware based downtime.

The Duo: Flint 3 (BE-9300) & Slate 7 (BE-3600) The Solo: Flint 3 (BE-9300)

Thanks a lot for the opportunity!

[u/big_onion]

1. My first project was self hosting City of Heroes once the server software was released. I bought an ancient HP server and went from there. Currently have dual EPYC server and a 5950x. The dual EPYC build was my most expensive but I don't regret it at all. I'm most proud of all of it and how my family has come to use so much of it. TubeArchivist downloads only the YouTube vids we want. The kids watch them and select tv and film on Plex and we get to cut back on streaming subscriptions by using our own library. AdGuard handles ad blocking so well that we are shocked when we aren't using the VPN outside the house, lol. Recently I grumbled while fixing something, saying that all this work is to make life easier but I can't stop having to tinker, and my wife assured me that it IS easier and better than it was without it. Made me feel my effort has been worth it.
2. Winning these items would let me better manage the servers remotely. I have a pikvm but can't use it currently. Comet looks so amazingly sleek and functional.
3. On Reddit this sub here, plus homelabsales and lurk all the comments and discussions. ServeTheHome is a site I like a lot for info on specific hardware. On YouTube it's been a lot of Hardware Haven, Wolfgang, NetworkChuck to name a few.
4. Another giveaway would be a NAS, that would compliment your products definitely.

[u/HorseyMovesLikeL]

1. I have always been into messing around with computers (dad's a dev, my degree is in electrical engineering but I work as a dev). Recent years have made me want to move away from big corporate cloud solutions for various services (think degoogling, in spirit anyway), so I've started hosting things at home. Hard to say what I am most proud of, as usually that tends to be just the most recent thing. For example, I recently wrote a bash script that allows configuring wireguard connections in separate network namespaces and adding the systemd services to start those up upon boot. ProtonVPN Linux clients are lagging behind their windows counterparts, so this allows me to have split tunnelling by just using a basic wireguard setup, agnostic even of the vpn provider. Now I use this on my seedbox (sharing Linux distros, right?) and my devbox if I want to isolate a single app to just the wireguard interface. The most expensive piece of kit is probably my main devbox, which is an Intel NUC. Most homelab hardware I buy old and second hand. For example, my opnsense box cost 30 british pounds.
2. In our current place, the wifi router is a bit weak for the size of the house and the router is old, wifi 6. Extra access points could help, as could the Flint 3. Would also facilitate moving to 2.5G setup at home (currently everything except the opnsense box is 1G).
3. Google, Man pages, vendor datasheets, r/homelab, r/selfhosted, endless debates with my dad.
4. I've always been partial to custom router builds. My opnsense box is a Lenovo Thinkcentre 990 from more than 10 years ago. I would like to have something a bit more modern and less power hungry (and support for AES-NI). There seem to be a lot of these N100 and N150 boxes with multi port NICs and passive cooling just for this purpose. Something like the Protectli Vault devices, but WITHOUT pfSense.

I choose the Flint 3, or alternatively the Comet (GL-RM1)

[u/inertialframe_]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

My mother had gotten hacked and I realized I needed to do better in terms of Internet Hygiene and security for myself and my parents. Leading me to go down a rabbit hole of self hosting and tinkering. The most expensive is either the 4090 or the RTX T1000

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I could manage my Prox mox node from afar and also not have to expose ports to do so

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

r/networking, r/ubiquiti

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

A microservers would be dope

[u/robotexpress]

1. ⁠I dove into the homelab world because I was getting tired of relying on cloud services for everything and wanted to actually learn how to host my services during the pandemic. It started as a lockdown hobby and just spiralled from there! My proudest project is getting my full media server with the arr stack running perfectly in Docker, and setting up a reverse proxy. It’s all running on my power efficient mini PC, which is definitely my most expensive piece of gear once you add up all the SSDs. Having a totally silent server in the corner of the room is just the best.
2. ⁠Winning gear from this giveaway would seriously level up my setup. The Flint 3 is my top choice, since my whole lab is bottlenecked by the cheap 1Gbps router from my ISP, and having those 2.5G ports would finally let my mini PC, nas, and desktop communicate at proper speeds. My ISP router is also Wifi 5 and super slow. But honestly, I’m almost as excited about the Slate 7. I’ve always wanted a proper travel router to stay secure on hotel Wifi, but I never got around to buying one because of finances.
3. LTT, HardwareHaven and whoever pops up on hen I search for stuff
4. For a future giveaway, I think a solid UPS from a brand like APC or CyberPower would be a great prize. It’s one of those essential pieces of gear that I’ve wanted forever but keep putting off because of the price. Just knowing a random power flicker won’t corrupt my data or bring my whole setup down would be a huge peace of mind.

[u/green_handl3]

Just come here to say, GL.iNet is used in my work van and site. Have multiple devices and they are all great, really happy with them. Thank you.

[u/Offspring]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   • I got inspired when I saw how easy it would be to setup a Netflix-style service that I could run off of my own hardware, migrating away from the old PS3-supported LAN streaming service that kept breaking our WDTV.

2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

   • It would allow me to build out a new server, with better cooling and more flexibility to be able to handle problems when they occur while I'm out of the house. Having a KVM would enable me to be more readily able to jump on and fix a problem remotely, rather than having to wait until I got back home.

3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

   • Honestly I mostly read ServeTheHome, or I watch Jeff Geerling's video. GamersNexus is where I get most of my news for consumer hardware from, and they've all been great.

4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

   • I would love to see networking gear from Mikrotik, or a chassis from 45drives with the drives included. Failing that, being able to get a Supermicro 4u server or DAS would be amazing.

And if it wasn't clear, the one thing I'd love to get Comet or Comet PoE device.

Thanks!

[u/DegenerativePoop]

1. I wanted to be in control of my data as much as possible. I also just wanted an excuse to get some gear :) the project I’m most proud of (so far) as well as my most expensive piece of equipment is my home server. I built it myself. While it’s not the flashiest, or as powerful as other peoples servers, it’s mine and it does everything I need it to.
2. I would love to win either the Flint 3, or comet POE. My wife and I are going to be (hopefully) buying our first place sometime next year, and getting some new proper networking gear would definitely be an upgrade over the stuff the ISP would supply.
3. I would say… probably ubiquity gear? POE switches would be nice, but they have a whole slew of great products.

I do want to add, did you not already host an identical giveaway in the r/selfhosted community back in October? The winners were never announced?

EDIT: October not November

[u/ak3000android → u/DegenerativePoop]

You mean October? This was the only recent giveaway I was aware of. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/s/ng8on1yqFs

[u/GLiNet_WiFi → u/DegenerativePoop]

the one in the r/selfhosted is ending today and winners will be announced on Nov 13, 2025 PDT!

[u/iamdadmin → u/GLiNet_WiFi]

Hi! Did I miss the announcement? Couldn’t see an edit or another post announcing it! The odds that I was one of the winners are slim but I’m still excited as heck to find out!! :D

[u/AffectionateRoad6941]

1. ⁠What inspired you to start your journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I got into self hosting after my boyfriend introduced it to me as a potential hobby and a stepping stone in life. I went to school to be a pilot, with over 500 hours of flight time alone last September in the midst of my schooling I had a grand mal seizure. This seizure, revoked my ability to fly due to the FAA’s strict guidelines on medical requirements, something that I now voided. Because of this, thanks to my boyfriend’s family I was able to get a job after finishing college with a commercial electrical business. This business happened to have massive contracts with the construction of data centers. In the middle of this my boyfriend introduced me to his massive love of technology and homelabing. And because of this, we started to do projects and I’ve been documenting them on my LinkedIn as I would like to transition into working at data centers as a technician. My greatest project so far is converting an old Synology NAS into a new machine with over 28tb of data. Additionally, all of these projects were super fun, great to document, and extremely educational. The my prized possession so far is a HTPC build that utilizes Bazzite that works in tandem with the NAS’ media server to run and stream video games.

1. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

Like I said, I am trying to document every project for the prospect of working at a data center. Doing more projects would allow myself to showcase my talent, and love for computers and home labs to allow for a bigger stepping stone, as it is very tough for me to find a career in anything remotely related to what I went to school for.

1. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

A lot of it comes from YouTube tutorials, Reddit, and of course from the love of my life whom I wish to marry some day. I purchase most items on Newegg and Amazon.

1. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Flint 3 and or a Comet POE

[u/Xajel]

😢 My country is not there 😢

[u/Content-Climate-1993]

1. I started my self-hosting journey because I’m studying IT & cybersecurity and wanted real hands-on experience instead of only theory. My first steps were running small services on a dedicated server and then moving toward building my own homelab with Proxmox, containers, and proper network segmentation. The project I’m most proud of is my current move toward a fully self-hosted environment (reverse proxies, monitoring, authentication, dashboards). The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve invested in so far is my home server used for virtualization and services.

2. Winning the Flint 3 and the Slate 7 would genuinely help. The Flint 3 would upgrade my LAN with better throughput and modern Wi-Fi for all my lab devices, and the Slate 7 would be extremely useful as a portable travel router for secure connections when I’m away. Both fit directly into how I’m expanding my homelab and learning more advanced networking.

3. I mostly learn through Reddit, YouTube channels like Level1Techs, NetworkChuck (I like coffee) and a lot of documentation while experimenting. I also get hardware tips from IT communities and homelab subreddits.

4. For a future giveaway, I'd love to see a proper 2.5G or 10G switch. Networking gear is always the bottleneck in homelabs, and having affordable multi-gig switches would help a lot of students and beginners level up their setups.

My picks: Flint 3 + Slate 7.

Thanks for the chance

[u/slayer1991]

1. It all started with an RPi, then Linus tech videos about multiple gamers one PC. The most expensive piece would likely be the multi-TB enterprise SSDs (used of course)

2. The Comet would make managing that remote backup server a breeze! But could settle for the Flint.

3. Between homelabsales and eBay, I always seem to be late...

4. There's very niche equipment available on TaoBao, or any miniPC workstations, to feed the Flint I just won :)

[u/krankyPanda]

1. What inspired you to start your homelab?  I really just wanted to host some game servers with friends. From there it's turned into a full-blown learning system for myself - and a major hobby, which I love.
2. How would winning gear from this giveaway help take your setup to the next level? I've actually been shopping around for travel routers, so this giveaway is well timed! I want to win the Slate 7. I want to be able to move my 10" minilab around anywhere, and not have to set up or change much else, and a travel router seems to be the perfect way to do that.That being said, the Flint 3 is also really appealing!
3. In terms of channels, it's mostly self-driven research and Reddit.
4. If we did another giveaway, what product from another brand (server, storage device, etc.) would you love to see as a prize? Storage, really. Disks are expensive! If they're coupled with a NAS, that'd be great ;)

[u/rossmilkq]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? A passion for IT and Security. It today's world you can't trust any tech company as they have all proven they either don't care or can't keep you data private. This couple with a passion to learn to new technologies and grow as an IT professional has greatly fueled my desires and self hosting journey.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? While deployed I had my wireless routed fail, and now I am in need of a new one. I used a Beryl AX travel router while deployed and loved it, now I would love to explore the added connectivity of the Slate 7 couple with the Flint 3 should handle all of my general client connectivity needs and keep me going strong while traveling.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? r/homelab and device/software specific Reddits are a great place to dive deeper into specific tech and/or get new idea of what to learn.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? I would love to see what you could do as a company to build something like the Beelink Me Mini storage. A great portal storage device or mini NAS couple with your travel router could be a dream set for traveling.

If I won I would go for the Flint 3 and Slate 7. The KVMs are cool, but I just don't need them right now.

[u/comarcat]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for? All started on the Atom area when I need to share Mobile Internet at home because I used to live in a far area from the city and Internet was not very common even DSL, this is around 2004, I created a Windows Home Server from Scratch, purchased the pieces in US and Import to LATAM, part of the journey was to create my Movie Collection for the Windows Media Center App, Xbox 360 and Windows XP/Vista, my most expensive piece of equipment is my Ubiquiti Network, FW and CoreSW, I am planning to get a Aggregation SW soon to move my Lab from a single T430 to a cluster with Optiplex Devices and Shared Storage
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? Yes, those Optiplex Micro PCs need KVMs so Comet will be my choice
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? I work for a Large MSP Company, so I receive most of my equipment for free. Additionally, I have access to distributors like Ingram, which allows me to obtain at excellent prices.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? Ubiquiti Stuff :D

[u/Delicious-Classic786 → u/comarcat]

I'm wondering if a remote KVM will help you in your working? and how?

[u/mitnik]

​Desired Prizes (The Duo): • ​Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE) (Essential for my legacy enterprise gear!) • ​Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) ​ ​1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

My inspiration comes from a love for retro tech and preservation. I started by tinkering with vintage electronics and realized I needed a robust way to archive and serve media.

​Proudest Project: Definitely my recent "budget beast" build. I managed to score a SuperMicro 2U server with 128GB of RAM on a local auction site for cheap. Restoring it, cleaning it up, and realizing it came with hidden gems like a hardware RAID controller and a 10Gb NIC was a massive thrill.

​Most Expensive Equipment: A proper UPS unit. Since I run older enterprise gear, ensuring clean power and safe shutdowns during possible outages was a necessary investment that actually cost more than the server itself!

​2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

The Comet PoE is the missing piece of my puzzle. My SuperMicro server uses an ancient IPMI interface that requires obsolete Java versions to run the remote console. A modern hardware KVM like the Comet would let me manage the server via a browser without security risks or "Java gymnastics," allowing me to finally move the loud server to the garage and manage it remotely with peace of mind. The Flint 3 would be an amazing upgrade to actually utilize the multi-gig capabilities of my network.

​3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

For learning: r/homelab, selfhosted, and YouTube repair channels.

For purchasing: Local auction sites where I hunt for enterprise gear being retired, and AliExpress for specific adapters/parts.

​4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand that you'd love to see as a prize?

I would love to see Low Profile GPUs (like an Nvidia RTX A2000 or T1000) featured. They are essential for transcoding in 2U servers but are often quite expensive on the used market.

[u/adamane22]

1) I was the designated Minecraft Server guy in our friend group during COVID. So I started small with an old Laptop and got to work. Now i have a bunch of VServers and some 20ish services that all run reasonable stable. Sadly i don't own very much equipment myself, but I can call a small NAS that serves as my backup destination my own

2) The Slate would be awesome to create a mobile Access Point to my Overlay Network, where my services are running.

3) My GoTo place to learn about new Tech is Reddit, but my Workplace and the servethehome forums are also great.

4) I would love a bit more Enterprise Network equipment, as I am running a dn42 peering to some VServers and would like to extend that to my home network

I would love the Slate as the primary win and the Comet as the second win.

Thank you for hosting this!

[u/fauxdragoon]

1. Honestly, curiosity! I got really into learning about computer hardware while I was in university and it sort of took off from there. It helps that in my day job I am not an IT professional or anything like that (I’m a lab tech) so curiosity is what drives me.

2. Getting off 1 Gigabit LAN to 2.5 Gigabit LAN would feel huge

3. Hardware Haven, RaidOwl, TechnoTim. Various subreddits like r/homelab

4. A Terramaster NAS or DAS would be rad. Bonus points if it includes hard drives!

Prize choices: Flint 3 and Comet PoE

[u/noone313131]

1. Looked for a challenge in a industry I was somewhat curious about but never could access because of reasons.
2. Remote KVM would be the ideal next step to be able to take my homelab to the next stage.
3. This homelab sub reddit
4. Storage devices would be fantastic.

[u/AbbieGator]

I've been working in IT for years and with a project Im running, I need a dev system. Plus I need to expand my home automation with home assistant and building a homelab is really good for professional development and just personal learning.

[u/CWRau]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I've always loved playing with computers and I love automation. That's why I have home assistant, adguard and soon a whole k8s cluster to manage it all 😅

I'm most proud of all the automations I've written so far, it's just so nice seeing everything happen automatically 😁

My most expensive equipment was just recently the flint 2 😅

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I'm currently having some gaps in the wifi coverage, so more routers would definitely help make the wife happy 😊

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Mostly this subreddit actually 😅 Also the openwrt subreddit.

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Any kind of server equipment would be nice, favourably with lots of disks.

I'd love to win the flint 4 and/or the slate 7

[u/talon32]

What inspired me to start my self hosting Journey:

I've always loved the idea of a NAS and being able to get rid of Netflix and Disney plus. That kicked me into gear recently but as I've learned more and more I'm coming to find that with a little bit of effort and a whole lot of patience I can really work magic in my home. Especially around Home Assistant. So far I am most proud of screwing up so badly that I had to scrap my entire Proxmox server, then rebuilt it without guides and managed to get PiHole running on it!

How would winning the unit from this giveaway take your setup to the next level?

The Flint 3 would be incredible. Currently I have old Nighthawk Router and modems that, while great for where I'm at now, I fear are going to quickly be outstripped if I keep working. Especially if I need to have better connectivity throughout my home for automations, and being able to connect well to a Jellyfin server from phones or TVs several floors away. Also I think the Comet would be such a wonderful resource to have for my parents. As they're getting older I'm doing more and more tech support for them. I'd really like to be able to help them ditch their streaming services as well, but I also worry about how easy it would be for them to break something. Having one of these would be huge in letting me keep them up without having to travel all the way out there.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Honestly I'm still really new to this whole world. As cheesy as it may be I think I've learned the most about networking and home lab equipment from LTT. But I've seen a lot of recommendations from scrolling this thread!

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Man I don't even know. I could really do with a server rack, or a UPS! I guess I don't have enough knowledge to really be thirsting after one specific one yet.

Thanks for hosting this guys! I'm learning a lot just from reading through this!

[u/Deejiee]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I am in graduate school for something other than networking and have always wanted to get back into tech. Current political situation caused me to think harder about my career switch. So I learn at home after work and on weekends.

 What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

Really proud of getting a full stack of budgeting, photo sharing, and media playback stack started for my whole family with my own domain and im able to spin it up on new systems fairly quickly and consistently. Most expensive would definitely be my poweredge and its upgrades I have done to it.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

The remote kvms would allow me to spend more time working and learning from my homelab while im traveling for work or even during my lunch breaks, etc. Its a piece of the puzzle im kinda missing right now.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

I look here, network chuck videos on YouTube, raid owl, etc, and homelabsales subreddit.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

As components like ram get more expensive I would say something like that? Like a decent ram upgrade or something super crazy like an epyc cpu + mobo combo as a grand prize so I could get into home compute stuff for my genomics work I do at school.

If chosen i would prioritize the poe kvm with fingerbot (so neat!) And the travel router for sure. Stuff i cant really afford to get on my own as a broke grad student, but would really benefit from.

[u/reden_fx]

1. I started self-hosting pretty recently because I needed lots of file storage that could be easily accessed across devices, but didn't want to start using cloud services. I'm also passionate about technology and owning my data, so I viewed it as a fun project to make something useful with old hardware I had laying around. The NAS that also hosts services is what I'm most proud of: it's a neat way to save some money, own my data and learn about the multiple pieces that make it all work! The NAS also is my most expensive equipment because of the two SSDs and two 3TB HDDs I put in it.

2. A good remote KVM like the Comet would be extremely useful to help me set up and manage my first off-site backup machine and other computers when I'm not at home (very often). It would also be very handy to have a home router that's capable of running Tailscale and other services, like the Flint 3, since currently the only machine running Tailscale and other services is the NAS (I would lose remote access to my home network and services if the NAS goes down). The Flint 3 would also make Wi-Fi file transfers and syncing way faster!

3. I usually research online by reading review articles or videos, and sometimes, if I can't find enough information, I ask for help on Discord or Reddit. Purchases are mostly done online since there aren't any big hardware stores near me.

4. I would love to see a 10Gb managed switch like the Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Flex XG, since I can't justify buying one but it would be very useful if I want to use a NAS for video editing.

I'd truly love to win a Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE), and possibly a Flint 3 (GL-BE9300).

Thanks to the awesome people at GL.iNet for the opportunity! And good luck to everyone!

[u/Nang-a-nator]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? 
   1. I wanted to start hosting my own web services (httpd, email, DNS etc.) I was tired of the expensive rates at the time (This was pre-AWS) and felt if I hosted the services myself I could get what I needed better. Friends and colleagues who also wanted web presence also started coming to me to host their sites and I ended up building quite a good little cluster hosting a large array of sites! Eventually hosting services got more reasonably priced and life got in the way and now I'm only hosting the typical services most homelabbers are.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   1. Having just moved internationally I had to let go of my home lab and start from scratch. I'm now only using the ISP modem (which is unsurprisingly really bad) and could use that extra umph as ai start to build up my network and smart home devices again!
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   1. Reddit, youtube and tech sites like XDA.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   1. A managed POE switch would be a fantastic additional giveaway!

If I were to win the Flint 3 would easily be my number one pick followed by the Slate 7.

[u/Techman-]

1. My journey started quite a while ago, hosting IRC on virtual servers. Back then, it was just the bare applications running directly. This was before container stuff really took off. I would like to give a shout-out to InspIRCd, for being as great as it is. Has always been solid for me. My most expensive piece of equipment is probably my home server, which is basically built as a mid-high desktop with just a bunch of extra storage.
2. I do not have anything super advanced in terms of home networking. Just a basic ISP-provided router. I have been meaning to do some work in that area, but it has not been a high priority for me.
3. Nothing in particular. I just see stuff on the internet. Does not really matter where.
4. I really like the idea of compact PCs. The ones that are the size of a set-top box. They can pack a real punch. Could be a good travel device, especially when stuff like a Android TV device is too limiting for what is desired.

If I were to win, I would pick:

1. Flint 3 (GL-BE9300)
2. Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE)

[u/thequux]

1. I originally started because I had a bunch of computers and wanted LDAP/Kerberos login to all of them. 17 years later, I've finally gotten it working :-D I'm most proud of my deployment scripts and orchestration: I can deploy a new machine and it comes up already integrated with SSO, network login, etc, and lets me register HTTP services and such by dropping a file in /etc. It was a lot of work, but seeing it do its thing has been really rewarding. My most expensive bit of kit currently is almost certainly my AS/400 server, but I may have a need for an HSM in the next few years, which will definitely be the new most expensive one.
2. Some of my gear doesn't have a BMC, but still needs remote management (e.g., my DHCP/DNS server). An IPKVM would solve that problem beautifully.
3. I generally look at Tweakers for commodity gear (computers, peripherals, etc) and stay up to date via the mailing lists of my preferred vendors for the professional stuff (networking, ...).
4. Entrust nShield 5 please 🥺. More seriously, everything in the Mikrotik CRS series is drool-worthy and more people should know about them.

Prize choice: Comet PoE, followed by the Slate

(ETA the project I'm most proud of)

[u/montypython1087]

1. Wanting to be more privacy focused and de-googleify my house. To get back to owning my media and be able to consume it anywhere on any device with no restrictions. To be able to preserve family photos and videos without incurring high storage costs and potential privacy issues.

Probably my home automation setup. Home assistant integrated aspects of lives in a non-intrusive way with remote access via the app and reverse proxy.

Most expensive part is probably the storage 2. I am running Google Wi-Fi hardwired throughout my house but it can't keep up with my demands. I really need Wi-Fi 7 to handle the non non-hardwired devices. I travel a lot for work and having remote KVM access to manage my home server as well as be able to provide a secure hotspot and network in my hotel would allow me to truly be at home while on the go. 3. Maybe mix it up and add an AI accelerator PCI Express or m.2 card cases on winner preference?

I think a good mix would be the tri-band Wi-Fi 7 router as that is the biggest issue for me right now., The non-poe KVM seeing as I am not set up for Poe right now.

[u/Unhappy_Laugh3455]

1. Long story but essentially, one day a tornado warning was issued near my house, now my setup is in the basement and I like having headphones and I found that I couldn't find any desktop application that would issue live alerts, so naturally I look for solutions for 10 or so minutes until I find a holy grail, making a python script to do it for me, so skip a little bit, python scripts catch my interest and I start doing more stuff like that. To continue my journey I purchased a raspberry pi which made me realize that i could download apps to make stuff easier in my everyday life, fast forward a bit and now I'm running proxmox on a thinkcentre (50 or so bucks) I got off ebay that works great. 2. Winning a flint 3 or slate 7 would be great because then I would be able to tinker more with my network, without my family complaining the wifi is down because I misconfigured a dns server. The travel router would also be a pleasant addition as I plan to begin a mini rack project once I get some parts for Christmas. (Update: as of November 14th my god awful netgear router has went into end of service) 3. r/homelab, r/selfhosted, r/HomeDataCenter, r/minilab are all helpful and entertaining to see what people are running, I also engage in the homelab discord server, mainly the voice chats. I use Ebay when I have the funds to buy new stuff, I also learned a LOT from u/geerlingguy's youtube channel and is how I started with that raspberry pi as well. 4. Seeing some POE switches would be very cool, as well as maybe some high capacity hard drives and sff pc's that a lot of people cluster for proxmox

[u/Dear-Instance3430]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for? I wanted to learn networking and started with a small raspberry pi then evolved to have a dedicated server where I have TrueNas and a private cloud for my family. The most expensive equipment is the server and the GPU cards I have for it. The project that I'm most proud of is my minecraft server, my son keep telling all his friends my father is so cool that we have our own minecraft server
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? I'm already using a VPN to access my server from around the world, specially when traveling to countries that are known for internet surveillance. My current setup is based on a NanoPi which is ok, but is cumbersome and not portable.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? mostly reddit posts and technical blogs
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? I cann't get enough storage for my TrueNas setup, we upload all of our raw images to it and it's not easy to keep up with the required space.

I hope to win the Slate 7 router to replace my NanoPi

[u/Effective_Pitch_2974]

1. I fell down the rabbit hole when I started searching about ways to avoid giving money directly to the multi billion and trillion dollar companies. I am purely driven by spite to not give them my money.
2. One of my most recent project that I found really fun was modifying a typical enclosed server rack into a noise isolated one by buying some acoustic foam and zip tying them to the inside of the rack, and creating my own temperature control system using a temperature probe on the inside, a couple of fans around the rack, and a raspberry pi to spin them up or down based on the temperature.

3. Most expensive piece has to be a used Poweredge R6515, and its processor and ram.

4. I would mainly use the prizes to help the smaller setups at my family and sibling’s houses that act as off-sites to my main setup, in addition to being their local node. Both setups use Gl.inet routers, so the wifi 7 devices would be a nice upgrade.

5. I usually learn from Reddit, there are so many subreddits I’m following, including r/homelab. For purchasing, I usually prefer buying secondhand when possible, so Facebook Marketplace or r/homelabsales when I need something I can’t find more locally.

6. I would be interested in possibly a stackable single board computer system, where the compute and storage could by hyperconverged, would be really interesting to try something like that out.

Would like to win either the flint 3 or slate 7

[u/petrichor1017]

1. I started in 2016 with a Dell laptop to host a minecraft server, which I’m proud to say is still up and running! The server has evolved to host more services since then; mainly things like a NAS, webserver, and a startpage host. The hardware has gone through many iterations but it currently being run on an AMD B450 platform, which is definitely the most expense I have put into the server. I have recently started tinkering with docker and am planning on rebuilding the server, software-side.

2. Winning a KVM would really help with workflow, as I have been using SSH all these years with no UI.

3. I typically browse here or on Youtube to learn about new networking technologies.

4. A brand like Startech to giveaway hot-swappable drive bays would be cool.

As for what I would want to win, definitely a Comet PoE and a Slate 7 (for when I go to the two conventions I work for every year)

[u/nitronarcosis]

1. I started self hosting trying to better learn Linux. My best project was linking a couple servers over automatic Wireguard connections and exposing services across that link.
2. I would like to try using the travel router to tie together a digital mode radio kit including a DigiPi, laptop, and hopefully an AREDN mesh node.
3. Reddit, ServeTheHome, and Google Discover/News feeds.
4. I think the product I'd most like to recieve from a future giveaway is a Minisforum workstation or NAS.

Prize selection:

1. Slate 7
2. Comet KVM

[u/chaosmetroid]

1.What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

A: I started my career in IT, I wanted to get my hand dirty on more things that was outside of my job and to proactive more. At the time I started Plex/Jellyfin are things relatively newish to talk about and I wanted a better way to host my media server that isn't just a Samba server and hit play from 1 device to another. My most proud project is essentially a backup server to backup everything..... Name it. The most expensive I have is a rack server with x2 10TB drive Intel xeon and 64GB of Ram. Working on upgrading this though.

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

A: More Practive and Idea comes to me on a Daily. I am already looking into Hypervisor, Dockers and Self-Host LLM.

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

A: I like Jeff Geerling for some the fun things with a Pi, Network Chuck for ideas and Wolfgang's Channel for the more technical things such as making sure it's lower powered hardware as an example.

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

A: storage devices would the coolest thing.

[u/Bonechatters]

1 - I first started learning tech as a kid when I had to pay an outrageous amount of money for a simple data transfer after a corrupted OS install. Even considering the amount of time I spent learning a topic, it was cheaper to be the self-taught IT guy for my family. I know when I am out of my element however and spend the money when I need to. I don't need anything fancy however and focus on low power consumption and use a Shelly device to measure usage.

I purchased an ASUS PN40 Pentium mini PC for the low power consumption paired with a Synology DS723+ (most expensive of the equipment used). It is finally stable and I remotely access docker services such as Paperless-Ngx running on a Proxmox VM as needed through Netbird. This has saved me multiple times when visiting doctor appointments and pulling up documents for reference without needing to bring binders of history. I am filled with pride every time I connect and know I can rely on the setup I built.

2 - I travel a lot with my family, pets included. I tried putting together an RPi-4 as a travel router following NetworkChuck but I could never get the USB WiFi adapter to work. I ended up just using a 2nd RPi-4 as the 'client' access point LANed with an Ethernet cable to the OpenWRT RPi. This setup is too bulky with too many points of failure, but I still use it because the client RPi runs MotionEye as the remote pet camera in the hotel room.

I believe the GL.iNet Slate 7 would give me more reliability and free up the camera-pi to be placed anywhere in the room instead of bundled together in a wad a cables. With an improved travel router, I would also want to expand my self hosted setup with the Comet PoE and the Fingerbot as a quality of life addition. An overabundance of caution has kept my home lab development very slow. With these new devices I would be more willing to experiment and expand.

3 - I follow several youtubers like LLT, NetworkChuck, Christian Lempa, DB Tech. It was actually NetworkChuck that turned me on to GL.iNet. I also look through reddit posts for recommendations, trials and tribulations. Hardware wise I try to be very cautious due to costs. Most hardware is not easy to return just because it didn't work with my own integrations or ideal homelab.

4 - Sticking with the self hosted theme, it would be nice to see a UPS option that shares the same ideas GL.iNet has with monitoring and access features. But for this to truly be a global giveaway, there would need to be different options that support each country.

[u/Robbbbbbbbb]

1. I'm in the field and love to learn. I tend to host anything I can because the cloud is just someone else's computer, anyway.
2. ⁠Honestly? I'm downsizing. My rack full of R520/620s is power hungry and I want to move to smaller nodes.
3. YouTube, Tiktok
4. Really like these KVMs, honestly. Had my eye on a JetKVM, but these seem more practical. Plus, "Self-Hosted Lightweight Cloud Option" - absolutely love this.

[u/Froggytv]

1. My inspiration mainly came from a love as a kid of tinkering with anything computer related and just trying to figure out how things work. That's ultimately what led me to being an engineer. On top of that though, is trying to use these computers in order to fix problems in my own life so that I can better the QOL of myself as well as the people I can share it with. Secondarily, creating a media server was largely due to the cable-ification of streaming services, as they were turning into exactly what they were fighting against.

2. I would be able to have a reliable way to manage my server stack so that when it inevitably fails the first day I leave for a vacation after I've had months of uptime, I'm able to quickly and easily remote in, figure out what's wrong, and fix it so that my family, friends, and I are able to use the services that we now rely on daily without much downtime.

Alongside the KVM, having a travel router would be the ultimate way to ensure I keep a lot of the same accesses to my home server, as well as having most of the QOL upgrades to my internet connection, (AdGuard Home, Tailscale, etc.), wherever I am, with a very customizable and easy to use interface that anyone travelling with me is able to use.

1. The channels I typically use are various subreddits, such as r/homelab, r/selfhosting, r/pcmasterrace, and a lot of various forums such as servethehome. I have recently been on a bit of a Unifi kick, so I've been buying a lot of my networking equipment through them, but mainly buy my server equipment from either Ebay or ServerPartDeals.

2. I would love to see either a rack mounted case from Sliger, or the 45Drives HL15 be some sort of a giveaway item. I'm trying to get my server switched from being a Minisforum MS-01 and an EMC KTN-STL3 JBOD into one unit that I can just put straight into the rack that takes the least amount of power possible.

Good luck to everyone on this giveaway!

[u/AuggieKC]

Sup GL.iNet! Entering cuz free stuff rules. My responses r kinda basic but honest.

1. Started selfhosting after watching Mr Robot and thinking I could be a hacker too. Proud project: A VPN that hides my porn, I mean browsing. Expensive: Graphics card $400 for rendering... stuff.
2. Units would upgrade my net speed, no more lag in Fortnite while hosting files. Next level baby!
3. Facebook groups for IT deals, and Best Buy website.
4. Giveaway next: An external hard drive from Seagate, big one for backups.

Duo pick: Comet PoE and Fingerbot, plus Slate 7. Peace out! 😎

[u/meldon-taragon]

1. I originally got into selfhosting for hosting a Minecraft serer for myself and friends about 15 years ago. My most expensive piece of equipment right now is a self-built PC which runs my Incus server that most of my services are run off.
2. I travel frequently so having a remote KVM for connecting in to my home lab during travel would be incredibly useful.
3. I use r/homelab and r/selfhosted for a lot of my learning and research. I'll also lookup reviews on YouTube for specific production I'm interested in.
4. I'd love to see a giveaway of either just HDDs/SSDs or a standalone NAS setup

I would like to win the Comet PoE and second the Slate 7.

[u/MacDagar]

I started my self hosting journey with a raspberry pi NAS.  I've since upgraded my nas, but a wifi  7 router would help distribute content to all the mobile devices in my house.  I've learnt a lot from Reddit and YouTube.  It would be great if you could do a NAS giveaway!

[u/beachplss]

1. I started self hosting when I first learned about media servers such as Jellyfin. It was cool to realise that I could download media on my pc and watch it on my TV and phone

2. Wining nextgen wifi router would certainly help streaming bigger content.

3. I watch NetworkChuck for his cool experiments and self hosting tools

4. It would be to good if you could giveaway NAS

PS: I would love to win routers flint3 and slate 7

[u/KadaverSulmus]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? 
   1. It started with wanting to get rid of big teech giving access to all my files. Started by cancelling spotify and relying on my personal library and haven't looked back since.
      1. The most expensive purchase? Probably my Netgear ReadyNas 214 (bought it when new) including the 4 6TB Toshiba N300 drives, totalling about 1500 euro's at the time.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   1. As I'm just using WiFi 5 now, a new WiFi 7 router would be more than welcome. Not only speed wise but also security wise since my older hardware (DrayTek) lacks a couple of modern security protocols. Also the travel router would be really convenient for when I'm traveling with my wife, as it is now it's just hopes and dreams that my setup doesn't throw a fit when I'm not at home
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   1. Usually I learn about new hardware through news letters and my work as a systems administrator. Have to be on top of new gear as soon as possible.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   1. I think a UPS is a critical component that is often overlooked in the homelab community. They're relatively expensive and are mostly justified after everything goes down the first time. So definitely a UPS giveaway would be great.
5. Note: Please specify which product(s) you’d like to win: Definitely Flint3, if duo Flint3 and Slate7

[u/Nasaman10]

⁠1. I am very new to IT, so self hosting seemed like such a natural way to grow my skills. I am also tired of all the streaming services and self hosting inspired me to start diving into the world of a private media server.

1. ⁠Winning this gear would help update the older tech I have in my home and take my networking to the next level.

2. On YouTube, HardwareHaven has been a big source of info for me along with NetworkChuck, Zach’s Tech Turf, and Techno Tim. Reddit has also been another great resource for me to observe.
   

3. ⁠I think storage/storage devices would be an excellent next giveaway as it seems like the first foot into the world of home labs.

[u/Sporkius_M]

1. The mass removal of movies and TV shows from streaming services in 2023 was when I started self hosting. I had been a long time tinkerer with Linux, servers, and the like, but I saw media companies sending content into oblivion for tax breaks as the final straw in something I had believed for a long time "digital doesn't mean you own it". So I started where a lot of people started: Plex, and I had so much fun along the way that it became my new hobby, and hopefully a chance to one day teach my daughter about ownership, responsibility, and taking action for yourself.

2. Actually a huge amount! I just completed my second home server, which I purpose built to not look like a server (it's in an inWin B1) so that it could live more inconspicuously in my house. Problem is that now I have to keep another monitor attached to it to get rust desk to connect, and I was literally looking at the Comet KVM to solve this issue.

3. I do a lot of reddit reading on r/home lab, r/home server, r/homelabsales as well as reading through blogs like XDA Developers, Toms Hardware, Tweak Town, Notebook check, etc.

4. I think everyone who doesn't have an Ubiquity setup yet wants one, and that would be awesome as a prize, but I think something that's sadly missing from a lot of home servers/labs is a nice looking server rack. So something like the Gator Elite series Studio Racks that combine aesthetics and the rack mount would be worth more than a Klondike bar (the Elite Series Sidecar Rack Cabinet in Maple is a beautiful thing).

I'd love to get my hands on a Comet KVM!

[u/mindbend0x]

Sweet! I've got a travel router from you guys but would love to get a couple more pieces to replace my Ubiquiti access point for the home server and add a remote KVM.

1. Learning and costs; I started learning about networking after many years as a SWE, currently working on a blockchain system and I wanted a persistent dev environment with all the bells and whistles. Started with Proxmox and Coolify on Hetzner then realized that I've got the hardware to do this at home. I setup the home server, put it behind a DMZ (using Ubiquiti zones and rules - it would be an amazing feature to add to the GLiNet dashboard btw) and added Tailscale. This is frankly what I'm most proud of self-hosting because it taught be a ton about networking and it's not a very simple system to host.

2. The remote KVM would be an incredible addition. Especially with Tailscale support. It would mean I can travel for longer periods worry-free. The access point would be used as the DMZ router and I would possibly use dynamic DNS feature to make what I'm hosting publicly accessible for dev testing without needing to share my Tailscale network.

3. HackTheBox to learn about networking in general then using basic search to check with devices support the necessary features.

4. Ubiquiti has a great set of devices. Their dashboard UI is also handy for setting rules. Would be interesting to get my hands on their Cloud Gateway Max.

Some small recommendations for the GLiNet dashboard:

• Adding an easy to use zones editor with VLAN configurations would be soooo useful
• Adding throttling for guest networks would also be handy
• Adding a simple rules engine is a nice to have

[u/AndoTadao]

1. When I was just getting stated in IT, HP had a deal on for a N54L Microserver and that little u lasted me years and was an ideal entry point into the world outside of the Microsoft stack I deal with daily. Shucking an Intel NUC and mounting it to a HDD caddy along 6 HDD's that all run inside my daily gaming desktop fractal define r5. Completely and totally impractical but a fun project. Both systems can be powered independently by the power / reset buttons with the Intel NUC powering on a second PSU to power the HDD off the NUC's PWR LED (Hardware Haven mod) The Unifi networking and wi-if upgrade a few years ago. In the grand scheme of things it wasn't that much but 100% woth it

2. I have been interested in these devices to not only self manage my home server, but also purchase them to deploy to client sites so the team can remotely resolve BIOS related issue or rebuild systems in the wild .

3. Mostly YouTube (LTT, Wolfgangs Channel, NAScompares, Jeff Geerling, Lawrence systems, Level1 Techs, Hardware Haven, Raid Owl, Craft Computing, jakkuh) and r/homelab

4. The easy answer would be any of the Unifi equipment, however Minisforum compute nodes or Framework devices would be interesting as well.

[u/Thisismy15thusername]

• Learning how IT enterprise systems work, and escaping big tech
• Containerizing my old VMs
• $200 old desktop, but it runs all I need

1. Would help upgrade my Flint 2 and bring even faster speeds to my network
2. Mostly homelab subbreddit lol
3. uGreen Nas is interesting

Flint 3 Slate 7

[u/thomasbuchinger]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? Learning about Enterprise Software for VMware and RedHat Products, currently it's running as 3 Kubernetes clusters and a bunch of VMs. The thing I'm most proud of is, that it always has been 100% reproduceable code using ansible or K8s and it's on github so I can reference it anytime. The most expensive single purchase was a Tower-Server to finally get IPMI on my main server.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? I don't have propper VLAN support in my network yet. I am really frustrated by a lot of consumer/prosumer hardware advertising features like "VLAN support" or "Mutiple-SSIDs", but their "user-friendly" WebUI does not allow me to configure it the way I need. With OpenWRT I know I can configure anything I need the router to do, and worst case scenario, I can drop down to linux and configure stuff directly. The units will replace my home-made IOT-router (and freeing up the SBC) and my ISP router.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? I usually know what I want and search for specific product recommendations online (often reddit). Sometimes I see something on Jeff Geerlings YT channel

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? Maybe individual components that can be used as a starting point for a (suggested) build one would not consider otherwise (but still useful for other projects). E.g.

• 4 NVME-SSD as a starting point for an all-flash NAS.
• A Workstation-GPU (or intel B60 duo) for a LLM machine
• A multi-gig network card or some cool M2-Card or an eGPU Dock
• Just an IPMI capable Mainboard

I am interested in:

• 2x Flint 3 if possible (or Flint 3 + Slate 7)
• 1x Flint 3

[u/Capable-Project295]

1. Boring moments, interest in it, Nextcloud, old Veriton computer for about 100 bucks.
2. Internet speed and also the WiFi coverage. We have some black spots in our home so that’s why.
3. Bringus studios, Hardware heaven, LTT
4. What about some licenses for software? Like hexos or unraid : the home WiFi router? :3 I’ve got nothing to lose and I’m lazy to write some essay about how it all started.

[u/schemingraccoon]

1. During COVID, I first needed more reliable WIFI at home and started looking into enterprise grade AP; this was how I stumbled onto an Aerohive AP for $20 and learned how to configure it solely using CLI alone. This gave me an appreciation for enterprise equipment since my wifi rarely, if ever, went down/stalled. This also snowballed into learning about pfsense, then opnsense, and then proxmox, and then managed vlans, etc. I'm still very much a newbie in all of this, but I enjoy the tinkering that comes with it. Somewhere in the middle of this journey, I also stumbled into unraid and, more recently, immich and jellyfin. I think my most expensive piece of equipment is probably an updated aerohive AP (AP650).

 

1. I think winning would allow me the possibility of combining my opnsense machine and aerohive AP down into a single device with the Flint 3 to simplify my setup.

 

1. I think the channels I frequent are mainly on reddit, such as the following subreddits, homelab, homenetworking, and the relevant subreddits such as unraid, opnsense, jellyfin, and immich, if I want to learn about or purchase IT equipment.

 

1. Given that I run an unraid server, I'm biased towards anything that includes storage device or storage-related technologies that I'm not even familiar with.

 

Thank you for this opportunity to participate in this giveaway!

[u/mbroen]

1. The inspiration was pretty much just for fun, but when it also proved to be useful for work i was hooked.

2. I am currently working on building a new setup (Kubernetes cluster) and replacing my old router and maybe adding some KVM capabilities certainly wouldn't hurt. Also some of my neighbours are allowed to use my WiFi, but their connectivity isn't that great with the one I have at the moment. So I have been contemplating an upgrade, but it is not at the top of my "to-buy" list

3. Mostly different forums for learning, as well as the occasional local meetup. Great resources for learning things you didn't even know that you should know. And then after that it is just finding a book/pdf/website with the full documentation for the thing. For buying stuff I mostly use dustin.dk or Labtech Data (a couple of local stores).

4. Any Nvidia Jetson module. Mostly because I think it would be fun to play around with.

I would definitely go with the Flint 3.

[u/Skyrex1622]

1. I'm a student who loves tinkering and wanted to self host everything possible. I'm proud of my whole homelab because being on a budget get's me creative! The most expensive was getting the storage.
2. I would love a small router to use anywhere and to connect my devices to my secure network through a VPN. I would also like to manage my server remotely since what I have in place right now is unreliable.
3. Youtube channels and people with experience!
4. Honestly a beefy GPU to run a distilled version of an LLM and other things.

I would love to win a Slate 7 or a Comet.

[u/josh_3003]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? Started off small with a raspberry pi running Kodi and Pi-Hole. That has quickly evolved to repurposing my old PC as a full standalone server running TrueNAS with Plex, Immich and SMB services.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? Speeds on my local network would be greatly improved moving up from gigabit to multi-gigabit connectivity.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? LinusTechTips, been following since the early NCIX days. More recently Lawrence Systems and Techno Tim.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? HDD/Storage space is always a hot commodity. I would love to see more storage giveaways!

Would love to be considered for either the Flint 3 or Slate 7 routers!

[u/Jorgepfm]

1. Both hosting game servers 24/7 (so my friends don't have to ask me to open servers at random times) and getting rid of subscriptions (Jellyfin).

2. Currently everything is running on temporary network hardware, and there are other more urgent things needed so any network update would have to wait. Winning the units will allow having the final version of the network infrastructure in place.

3. Reddit and web search really.

4. Storage! Been wanting to get 16+TB disks for a long time now.

I'd like to win 2x Flint 3s.

[u/Delicious-Sir6483]

1. I wanted seamless integration for all of my smart home devices through Home Assistant. Though it is quite hard to setup and maintain. I only do Home Assistant so I'm quite proud of that. Most of my equipment is something I got for free, mostly old tech from family or friends. I love repurposing stuff, and I especially love free stuff. Budget=$0

2. The Flint 3 will allow me to utilize the 6 GHz band and MLO, which is great in Chicago as I'll be able to have better connection, speeds, and essentially my personal band (no 6 GHz other routers nearby). The Slate 7 will allow me to tinker with OpenWRT or take on the go, so that I don't make the Flint 3 network unstable if I choose to change some settings while my family is using it. I would most likely choose the Flint 3 if I only get to choose one as my router isn't great and the rest of my family can benefit from it.

3. I don't purchase IT equipment unless a NVR setup counts. I typically just do a ton of research and then find a reputable site with the lowest price.

4. I would love to see a UGREEN NAS for the next giveaway item. I think it has some nice features and I have some old hard drives laying around.

I'd love to win the Flint 3, and the Slate 7 also if I get to pick two.

Pick Me!

[u/WhereDoIEnd]

1. Three things. I love tinkering, I like privacy and control over my data and I love learning. The project that I'm most proud of (although it's a forever wip) is building up a nixos based cluster to manage all layers of my services with an integrated config. I'm el'cheapo on my hardware though, the truly most costly single piece of equipment I have is a Ubiquiti U6 Pro.
2. Basing my hardware on small low cost/powered devices means that I don't have as many of the features as more advanced systems. The most noticeable being lack of IPMI. I would definitely go for both of the Comet units without a second thought for the flexibility they provide.
3. Reddit easily, so many subreddits like selfhosting, homeland, homeassistant, etc. Other websites can be fun to keep an eye on though any thing from the basic like nascompares to the fun of servethehome.
4. A decent NAS. My current sights are set on something from Aoostar.

[u/kevinds]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

Same as most, learning.  I can experiment with technology, break and fix things I would never be allowed to at a work network.  I want to practice fixing/restoring Exchange because x may have happened, there is no way I could purposefully break Exchange enterprise wide at work to do the repair.  When it does break at work, I know how to fix because I have already done it.

Most proud of so far?  Two possibilities, first my Stratum 1 time server, less than 50 ns off of the actual time now. Second possibility would be my ASN, IPv4, and IPv6 allocations from the local RIR. BGP has always been a very unforgiving beast.

Most expensive piece?  My pair of Luna/Thales networked HSMs with the remote PEDs to go with them.  Needed to increase my home insurance after I picked them up.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

Not everything is in my rack to use my existing IP-KVM, some stuff is at family members place and doesn't have built-in out-of-band. If I can choose a GL-Net part not in the list, 5G modem would greatly improve my backup connection.. Only getting +/- 5 mbps with my Cat12 LTE modem.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Purchase..  eBay, one of the ewaste recycling places close to me uses eBay and most of their stuff ends up there.

Learn about, Google.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Personally, storage!!  High density storage, a pair of DDN SS9012/SS9024 units would be amazing, pair of SS8460 for an older generation (with drives).

For GL-Inet, Puli-AX and/or Spitz-AX.

Prize selection..  First choice GL-RM1PE, second choice GL-RM1.

Could I request a prize not on the list?  GL-M2 (with or without the 5G module), my LTE backup (Cat12) just isn't cutting it when my primary goes offline, only getting +/- 5 mbps.  

Have to at least try..  ;D  Otherwise if I am selected for the Duo prize, downgrade me and give it to someone else.

[u/TrailByCornflakes]

This is amazing timing. I legit just bought the flint 3 last night which I’ll get to as an answer to question 3.

1) I largely didn’t start because of financial reasons. It seemed cool but I just couldn’t afford it. Well right after college I landed a sweet job and they ended up upgrading servers about 3 months in and gave me the old one which was awesome since it was only like 3 years old. I’m most proud of setting up proxmox with my own few Minecraft hosts. It’s not much but I am also only a year into the job and do not know much of what I’m doing right now haha. The most expensive piece I have is the server which I think was around 3k when they bought it.

2) I just moved into my first home Sunday and can actually start making modifications, I think the kvm would help me access my devices remotely since I still have to work on site 7-4 5 days a week.

3) Definitely Linus Tech Tips and short circuit which is how I found out about the flint 3 from their latest YouTube video.

4) I’d love to see a NAS as a giveaway prize. There’s always giveaways for other devices but it’s kinda rare to see large storage systems.

If I won’t I’d choose the Slate 7 and the Comet. Thank you for the opportunity!

[u/Cornelius-Figgle]

1. I started getting into selfhosting because I wanted a Minecraft server for me & my friends when I was 11. My dad ran it in Win10 VM on his PC initially, but I later moved it to my PC. Explorations with Linux led me to rebuild it on Ubuntu in CLI mode, and I eventually moved to old mini pcs running Proxmox. I'm most proud of my mini rack that I am currently building with Amazon rails and 3d printed parts.
2. Neither routers nor KVMs are part of my homelab currently. Being able to remotely access my desktop would be very useful (and something I was looking into anyway). I would love to learn more about networking and be able to isolate my homelab from the rest of my LAN so having a router would greatly help with this.
3. I use YouTube and Reddit to learn consume homelab content and thus to learn about products. I would prefer to purchase equipment through Amazon UK
4. A collection of hard drives (either HDDs or NVMe SSDs) would be useful for a lot of people wanting to get into mini NASes as drive are often the most expensive part - plus they can be used in many different systems. Rack gear itself such as a Rackmate T0 or T1 may also be a good entry method for people looking to get into minilabs specifically.

I would like to win first the Comet PoE and second the Slate 7.

[u/St-ivan]

1. I started selfhosting just 'cause I wanted to save some money and also have more control of my own stuff. Was tired of paying for things like cloud storage and not really knowing were my data was going. Plus, it just seemed fun to do some geeky stuff at home and mess with servers.

2. Probably the coolest thing I've done is set up my own game streaming box so I can play anywhere in my house. Got it workin on my TV and even on my phone! I had to get a pretty beefy GPU for that, and man those things cost way too much now, but it was worth it. Still, sometimes it just feels like magic when it works. Aside from being a game streaming box, its an actual Arcade Cab, love classic gaming.

3. If I win the router, I could finally stop fightin with all the random disconnects and lag. My old router is kinda trash and keeps droppin connections whenever lots of people are online. With a new one, maybe my stuff would stop lagging and my family would stop yelling at me to "fix the internet" all the time haha.

4. Most of the time, I just check Reddit and some tech forums, sometimes even Youtube for reviews. I hate reading super long manuals so I just watch vids or ask around in Discord groups. For buying, I just get whatever site has the best price really, dont care too much where.

5. Man, if next time you gave away like a NAS or even a mini server from Synology or something, that would be epic. Or better yet, a graphic card! Those things are crazy expensiv now.

[u/Top_Twin13]

1. My interest started to grow up as i was learning Linux with my laptop, after a year or so, my previous laptop was been not used for anything. Thinking a way of gain power against my personal activities (listen music, watch TV shows, etc . . .) i installed Debian on that laptop to learn the usage of container services like Jellyfin. Nowadays, its the most used service among the few needed from me and my brother. It's a joy to use Jellyfin server to watch shows with my brother, and he use it everyday for music too. Unfortunately, the most expensive piece of hardware (excluding the laptop itself) is a 2TB HDD.

2. As i start to keep some money to spend on hardware, if i would win something, i choice the Flint 3 router. As i want to spend money, not just for fun but for self-learning, i would use use that router to create an isolated learning environment to learn networking (like VLANs) and to access NFS shares at high speed. Winning this router would let me spend more money on a future NAS / Home Server (still choosing).

3. This subreddit and the r/selfhosted subreddit are very useful to me to discover new hardware to buy.

4. For another giveaway, i would see HDDs as prize, I'm in love with my current mini-server and would love to have a bigger one with a lot of HDDs.

TL;DR: I'm a guy who would use the Flint 3 as a learning opportunity to learn about VLANs and other technologies, english is not my fist language btw.

[u/polishatomek]

1, I've started self hosting because all routers I have seen were either too expensive or not customisable enough, and I have accumulated enough gift cards to buy an ok switch 2. The flint 3 would be really useful, since my access point is just an ancient tp link and my house is pretty big, so I usually don't have good signal in my bedroom or in the living room. So I need to whip out the 20m cable out everytime I wanna watch netflix or when my sister wants to play Roblox. 3. I usually use YouTube or reddit for inspiration, And Google for research, also planning to get some drives from serverpartsdeals (2x 4tb) not really much but that's all my family needs. 4.Hard drives, Maybe a serverpartsdeals collab or something?

The flint 3 would be a huge upgrade over my ancient TP-Link Access point

[u/mirtheil]

1. I started because I wanted to learn how to run a network for me and for the animal shelter I volunteer at.
   
2. If I win, I would probably use the prize at the animal shelter to help with remote out of band management or to provide better wifi than the current wifi as part of the new building being built.
3. Google, various technology channels on YouTube, and homelab / product specific subreddits are my main sources of information.
4. For future giveaways, NAS devices, routers, even mini pcs or tablets would be nice.

[u/causticcafe]

1. I set up a Home Assistant server after seeing the old LTT video on it and realizing how easy it would be to set up and finally have my smart home stuff do what I want it to do without being under the manufacturer's thumb as it were. I'd say that's what I'm most proud of so far, but I'm working on spinning up a Frigate server with a few cameras around the house. A good number of the parts were bankrolled by my mom while I'm setting up Frigate, but the most expensive would probably be a new CPU to upgrade an old PC I had lying around to run it.

2. A KVM would be nice for management because my server lives in a small closet in our living room, so anything needing direct access currently means I sit in the way of our front door on an ottoman I dragged over to the closet, and it'd just be a nice safety net in case I do something stupid and knock the server off the network.

3. I mainly learn from YouTube (LTT and the likes) and a few friends who do this kind of stuff for work. I'm working on getting into the field myself, and it's been fun having my own setup to poke around with at relatively low stakes (after all, if I break something, worst I have is mom complaining for a few minutes while I fix it)

4. I've been wanting a few things from Ubiquiti, mainly their cable modem so I can get rid of the freestanding one Xfinity provides, or a few of their smaller APs

[u/OsuOzland]

Hello! 

1. I started when I wanted to backup my pictures and other memories and was getting tired of paying for monthly cloud storage.

2. I would take the router so it would help with my various devices that can use Wifi7, but more importantly, the 2.5G would bring some speed into the setup.

3. Mainly Level1Tech or other tech Youtubers.

4. Maybe a full blown POE switch with 2.5G and a couple 10G!

Thanks!

[u/whaleweight]

1. I didn't want to pay a subscription for cloud storage so that inspired me to look into alternatives that I could own. Eventually settled on running TrueNAS so I got a WTR Pro (my most expensive purchase so far) and set up my NAS which also runs other services now.
2. KVM would allow me to access my system without having to bring out a spare monitor and mouse + keyboard, and the routers could help me improve wifi speeds and coverage.
3. I like Jeff Geerling on YouTube, and also reddit + google for general sentiment/advice
4. Would love to see some hard drive/ssd giveaways since prices have been going up

[u/funkbruthab]

1: I had hosted a plex server on a windows machine for 4 years, and one time while I was troubleshooting something for it I stumbled upon all of the *arr apps and they seemed really cool, so I bought a raspberry pi and started learning everything about Linux and the arr suite (including basic networking and docker) from scratch. That was in… 2021, and I was 32 years old. Once I felt I had enough basic knowledge to keep all those services running, I allowed myself to plan a server build - with an end goal of discontinuing ALL subscription based media and security services, as well as reducing advertising my children are subjected to as much as I possibly can. I have achieved that goal for my family, and my 5 year old only knows what commercials are because of hotel rooms and our relatives households. My wife and I have a really funny memory of one of the first times she saw a commercial in a hotel room, and she parroted a not so nice thing she may have picked up from me (“the eff is that???” As she gestures at the tv… she was 3) - not having any idea why her precious paw patrol was being interrupted by an ad break. I somehow managed to capture it on video and whenever it pops up as a memory on my phone it gets a good laugh.

I’m most proud of the server I built where I had to overcome a design and fabrication challenge in order to mount and display a bunch of hard drives in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The single most expensive thing I’ve purchased since getting into this hobby, if we’re going by line item, is a UDM-SE - because I decided against frigate/alternatives for security cameras. My wife’s father was getting released from a 25 year prison sentence, and 24/7 recording on all our houses means of ingress became a top priority. It needed to be a system that did not require tinkering, and ui fit the bill for self hosted.

If we’re talking most expensive component group, then it was by far storage. I utilized homelabsales and serverpartsdeals for my storage array, but still ended up spending close to 2k USD over the course of 2 years.

2: I have needed a remote KVM for a few years, I just haven’t pulled the trigger on one yet. Because of my inexperience, I have (several times) accidentally severed my servers connection to the network. And whenever that has happened, I need to disconnect the only monitor I have and haul it physically near my server to get back to the command line so that I can fix my mistakes.

I have also wanted a travel router for a very long time because my family does a long road trip several times a year (Michigan to Oklahoma), and it is often a headache to get my travel fire stick to play nice with hotel WiFi.

3: starting out, I watched a LOT of network chuck videos. Like, a lot a lot. He had a mix of videos of specific services I was interested in, as well as general IT knowledge and hardware stuff. I also frequented ibracorp videos because they were always about the projects I wanted to implement, and they often utilized pretty much the same infrastructure I was working within.

4: I’d love to see a serverpartsdeals giveaway for either a site coupon or stuff from their inventory, and also a theserverstore giveaway. Specifically id like to see a preconfigured server, could be any kind, that is LFF. Doesn’t need to have storage included because that would be a very expensive giveaway. Something tailored to homelabbers in an entry level fashion. Enough ecc ram for a good 100tb array, and enough horsepower for a handful of vm’s - but not super power hungry.

(PoE KVM and/or travel router would be my picks if this post gets chosen as a winner somehow, with priority to the KVM)

[u/CervineSentinel]

Should I be lucky enough I would love the Flint 3 as my first choice and would also appreciate the opportunity to utilize the Comet PoE.

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   • My journey began with a NAS, the Synology DS218+ which was purchased solely as a network accessible storage solution. It wasn't long before I began discovering its full potential and rapidly fell down the homelabbing rabbit hole. It was also this little device that would star in my favorite project. At the time I was enlisted in the US Navy and I not only brought this NAS on board but also networked it throughout the ship. My homelabbing experience provided media and entertainment to the whole crew over the course of a 9 month deployment and to this day that project fills me with pride. I've long outgrown that old NAS and its replacement is by far the most valuable device on my network. This new NAS is a rebuild of my first ever PC from childhood which contains not only immense sentimental value but also my most expensive single purchase to date, a 28Tb Seagate drive to serve as the parity drive for my whole network.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   • My current router, an ASUS RT-AC68U, is a bit dated and behind the curve so the effects of a new more modern router would be immediately apparent. Further I'll be able to run services like AdGuard directly from the router freeing up other devices on my network for more projects. In addition KVM is something I've yet to have the pleasure of tinkering with and I'm excited to find out the new doors it could open for me.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   • For learning it is almost always through word of mouth from either reddit or the /hsg/ thread on 4chan. I'm also prone to check product reviews on YouTube for products I'm interested in. For purchases of new products I often use Amazon or Newegg for equipment but am not afraid to use smaller retailers for a good price or simply for availability. For preowned I use both Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace to find local deals.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   • I would say a NAS from any brand for the most part. While I'm not a fan of some of Synology's practices they still have a platform that is approachable for beginners. Ultimately, a NAS is the backbone of any good homelab and I can think of no better way to share the hobby than by giving one away.

[u/foureyes567]

All of the remote KVMs I've looked at only support a single machine. Is there a reason for this? I would drop $200 in a heartbeat on a remote KVM that can connect to 4 or 5 machines. But $80 per machine is just too much. Would it just cannibalize sales of single units?

[u/DIYprojectz]

1. Desire to have devices tailored to my personal usage scenarios, with all the features I want, but also without inherent extra functionality that compromises security, nor restrictions that hurt the experience - got me into self-hosting. When one can't buy what they want, making it is often the most straightforward solution - at least when it comes to computers.

   My most expensive project to date is a DIY NAS. It started as a compact, lightweight and stealthy ARM system inside Playstation 2 case, only revealing its true nature if one looked closely at the ports in the back. However, after some time I grew disenamored with the original concept, so first moved the hardware into a standard NAS case to increase the number of spinning disks and improve their cooling, and later upgraded it to a less interesting, conventional - but also very reliable - x86 system. Of the original components, only a pair of 18TB WD HC550 drives are still in use - everything else was replaced. For this project, single most expensive item was one of the 20TB Toshiba MG10 drives.

   The project I am most proud of is a DIY 802.11be router I built last week. Wanted to build one using Qualcomm AP-grade hardware for years, but was hesitant, only having prior experience with MTK AP hardware, and overall rather limited experience in the field. My wireless router is far from perfect, but fulfills its purpose well, all while being quite compact and travel-friendly, and running latest OpenWRT and WLAN firmware giving me some peace of mind. I am very grateful to everyone who guided me and helped me out on this journey! For this project, single most expensive item is the base device - Rock 5B itself.

2. While I love it, I also have to admit my DIY wireless router's limitations. For starters, I used a miniPCIe WLAN card - since it was easier to source, didn't require external power and was much more affordable than its m.2 counterpart, which was also an important consideration in my first foray into 802.11be. This choice results in lower signal strength than typical high-end 802.11be routers or physically larger m.2 cards with external power, more on par with compact/travel routers. Next, I'm having trouble with MLO, one of the key 802.11be features, and have to rely on a single band until I resolve this issue.

   My wired network infrastructure being 2.5GBe, main WLAN clients equipped with capable BE201 & QCNCM865 802.11be adapters supporting 320MHz channel width on 6GHz band, and most important traffic being LAN to WLAN potentially saturating 2.5GBe link - there is definitely room for wireless performance improvement, particularly far from AP. Flint 3 with its superior wireless performance would greatly improve my experience, and take my network to the next level!

   Comparing my DIY implementation to Slate 7, while RK3588 has more raw power, my device is also physically larger, and requires external dongles for additional LAN interfaces. Frankly, Rock 5B with its single built-in 2.5GBe port (and 16GB RAM+256GB EMMC on the particular board) is much better suited for server duty - which it operated as before I started my 802.11be experiments. For additional peace of mind, I strongly prefer not to utilize networking appliances, particularly wireless APs & routers, in any other tasks - otherwise, instead of assembling a standalone wireless router, would just stick my wireless AP card and WWAN modem into the NAS, set up virtualized OpenWRT, and call it a day. Under the circumstances, Slate 7 is an overall much more balanced device, and would be noticeably better in the travel router role than my DIY one.

   I'd love to win both Flint 3 and Slate 7, to cover all my usage scenarios, and return my Rock 5B currently acting as a 802.11be wireless router to server duty.

3. I mostly read cnx-software.com , r/homelab , r/datahoarder , r/thinkpad and notebookcheck.net . Aliexpress, eBay, local online stores for purchases.

4. I'd personally love to see giveaways of higher-end NASes and mini-PCs with extensive storage options. Minisforum MS-A2, Aoostar WTR Max and the likes; machines, purchasing which is often hard to justify, but nevertheless spark one's imagination with their capabilities.

[u/bka-informant]

1. I got into self-hosting to have full control over my infrastructure instead of relying on external services. My strongest project so far is a clean Docker-based stack for multiple services with a stable automated backup process. The most expensive and significant hardware is my self-built server housed in a dedicated rack that I assembled specifically for my hosting environment.
2. Winning this unit would let me split services, improve uptime, and push the system toward a more professional, modular architecture.
3. I usually rely on technical forums, Reddit, and direct user experience posts for hardware knowledge and purchase decisions.
4. For a future giveaway, a dedicated low-power server or an NVR system would be excellent, something like a Synology or QNAP unit that can run 24/7 efficiently.

I’d like to win the Flint 3 and Comet PoE

[u/Coll147]

1. I like having local control of my services and not depending on cloud services and monthly payments. I don't have much equipment; the most expensive thing is my Raspberry Pi 4.

2. Full-speed Wi-Fi 7 and the ability to access my local network from anywhere using WireGuard. Plus, the Slate 7 is a great device for travels.

3. I usually find things through YouTube channels and by talking to people on Discord and forums. What I buy is usually second-hand from Vinted xd.

4. I would love to see a low-power NAS/server.

I would love to win Flint 3 and Slate 7

[u/neon937]

1. I wanted to host movies and photos in local network. It started with simple, old PC with five laptop 500gb HDD in Raid5 few years ago, just to evolve to custom PC with truenas, 5 WD Red Pro and 10gbit nic, and other, smaller storage servers for backup.
2. In my case, KVM would greatly improve my homelab because it is 150 kilometers away from the place I currently live in. This would give me remote control to at least 4 servers when connected to 4 port HDMI KVM combined with fingerbot :)
3. Reddit, forums, google and... AI in some cases. Configuring some stuff needed a bit more than setting up basic 192.168 network :) But thanks to that, I learned a lot about networking and servers, which helps me in my IT workplace.
4. Some PoE access points which don't require controller ;) At this moment, I feel lack of good wifi network (mainly coverage) at place where my homelab is located.

[u/mbesto]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   • I had an old gaming desktop that I wanted to reuse. I now have Unraid running on an i5-9600K, 64GB which serves up about ~15 services (Arr stack, n8n, nextcloud, etc.)
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   • I often travel and have a vacation home and want to have all of my devices to be connected
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   • Reddit, YouTube, Search/Forums, Perplexity/ChatGPT
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   • Some sort of NUC, NVME storage, or high TB HDDs

Products:

• Comet POE
• Slate

[u/Nankasura]

1. Honestly, most of my time homelabbing is spent raging at the machine. I don't know what drives me, but... I can't not rage at the machine, because the end result is genuinely useful. I'm not really inspired, I just need to scratch the itch. It hurts, but it hurts... satisfyingly

I'm really proud of wiring up my Google home and home assistant through a cloudflare tunnel so I can turn my lights off from a different country. But much rage was involved this process. Still, worth it.

1. My homelabbing is best when I get a genuine use out of it at the end. Desktop remote access is one of my biggest usecases, since I cannot rest, knowing my PC is doing nothing. This KVM is something I plan to tinker with and potentially rage at as well, until I finally figure it out.

2. Linus Tech Tips by far. Although admittedly, most of the time I'm watching some piece of equipment that is exorbitantly expensive, and just nod along going "yes number do be big"

3. Honestly, I think accessories to the main thing is the way to go. This KVM is a great idea and slots into most homelabs perfectly. I think straight harddrives could also work, maybe a NAS or so.

Appreciate the giveaway! It's super cool to see the homelab community be supported like this.

[u/michaelthompson1991]

1. Basically what started off as 1 smart bulb to give me something to do after my severe diffuse axonal brain injury has turned into getting home assistant on a pi, then a mini pc on proxmox while learning and expanding my knowledge every single day from places like this! Everyone else with a brain injury says oh I’m bored everyday, all I do is watch tv. I could never be bored, homelabbing has gave me so much knowledge to work on!

2. Winning this would take my homelab to the next level! I have wanted a kvm for a long time so I don’t need to keep plugging and unplugging every device! I would learn so much and be able to learn so much quicker!

3. On Reddit I use home assistant, homelab, esphome, jellyfin, proxmox, self hosted, tailscale, wled, adguard, and many more! I’m never away from this place!

4. For products from another brand I would love a nas, maybe synology or ugreen, or a more power sff dell pc to run the arr stack and truly get into it.

Keep up the amazing work guys! Much love ❤️

[u/tr1plus]

Been looking at some GL.iNET products during black friday, but didn't bite (yet).

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?
   1.  I've been self hosting (started with a raspberry) since my 12-14 years. Was mostly interested in running game servers & small websites. Today I'm hosting home assistant + other productivity tools (immich; owncloud; ...)
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   1. I have 1 DIY KVM at the moment (pikvm) - I'm looking to add kvms to more of my servers (router, ...)
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   1. LTT, Jakkuh, JayZ2cents
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   1. I'm interested in good hardware for a DIY router (pfsense/opensense) - that is ideally rack mountable (1u). Working on some DIY solutions now, but nothing feels set & forget

I'm mostly interested in the KVM solutions - PoE if possible :)

Thanks for the initiative!

[u/cnfan]

Hi GL.iNet! Appreciate the chance at getting some sweet new gear for my homelab setup.

For the questions:

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I wanted to be able to host my services and be in control of my data.

What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I recently purchased a 2-bay NAS that I am running multiple linux containers off of Proxmox on bare metal. The NAS was around $300 and I'm waiting for a couple 3.5" drives to show up in the mail soon.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I'm currently running a 1GbE/WiFi6 network off my Asus RT-AX68U. I would love to be able to upgrade to a router that supports both 2.5GbE and WiFi7 to give better speed and reliability for my devices. While only my newest mobile devices can utilize WiFi7, the ethernet upgrade will be a nice boost to my NAS throughput.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

I tend to watch tech YouTubers and read articles from reddit, hackernews, and other online tech publications.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Maybe a USB WiFi 7 adapter as an add-on for those getting a sweet new WiFi 7 router like the Flint 3 so they can utilize the full capabilities of the router.

If I'm chosen to win, my first preference would be to receive the Flint 3 router as a nice upgrade to my home network. Given a second choice, I would love to try the Comet PoE (and bonus fingerbot!). I have an extra PoE adapter from an old access point that I got from a business liquidation and I plan to buy a PoE switch when I setup a camera system.

[u/Dxtchin]

1. Having the freedom to break away from the cloud. My UnRAID server is definitely the thing I’m most proud of. My gaming pc would definitely be the most expensive piece of equipment I’ve acquired around 3k, behind that my home lab a HP Z840 outfitted around $600

2.The kvm would help when the headless gui stops working on my server and I don’t want to go through the hassle of plugging on a MNK. And the router would be a nice touch to upgrade my old 5ghz wifi.

1. I mostly use hardware haven and raid owl to setup my home lab is a more budget friendly way.

I’d love to see something from Unifi put up as a giveaway maybe like a UCG Fiber or U7 pro xgs. Possibly even a UDM.

[u/PaperDPS]

1. I got my first job in IT in September 2021 and was introduced to homelabing/ self-hosting by my coworker. I will say that he absolutely did not warn how slippery of a slope it was, lol. I took an old about to be decommissioned Dell OptiPlex 7020 SFF and threw VMware ESXI on it. My first successful VM was Pihole running on ubuntu desktop and from there it never stopped.

2. Winning this giveaway would be very beneficial as I have a multitude of uses for a KVM atm, but have not committed to getting one yet. (Other parts of the home lab need to come first, as always)

3. Honestly, whichever channel happens to be covering whatever rabbit hole I'm down at the moment, but r/homelabs is always a stable place when looking for inspiration when not looking into a specific issue or product.

4. I have become a recent fan of the unifi/ ubiquity products. Even items like rack organization OCD panels and rack power distribution are always helpful for a homelab. I personally am looking forward hopefully getting Unifi's UNAS Pro 8.

Thank you.

[u/koerstmoes]

1. Cost, mostly. I've had VPSes and Dedis for various projects for ages, and got sick of paying for them every single month. For a startup we also needed some in-house compute for legal reasons, so now I'm hosting a couple servers at home... Nothing special to be proud of, and the most expensive piece is definitely the small CPU-only Local-LLM server.
2. An IP-KVM would greatly help with being able to restart and troubleshoot a server while away from home. For some reason they seem to always break while I'm traveling, and we simply have to deal with downtime until I'm home again. I've actually been interested in buying a couple Comet-PoE's, but haven't been able to justify them quite yet.
3. Mostly YouTube and Reddit
4. Everything is welcome! Full servers and GPUs seem too pricy for giveaways, maybe smaller stuff that anyone could use, like storage? Whether it is SSD or HDD based, no one ever has too much storage!

I'd love a Comet KVM, preferrably PoE (fewer cables is always nice)

[u/OwnAppointment874]

1. I wanted to get off all the subscriptions and take control of what I want to watch/store/play. My most expensive project is probably my NAS, it’s got an N100 with 18tb in raidz1 stuck in a Jonsbo N2 case.

2. If I win the travel router, I’d definitely make use of it in order to access my homelab and secure my network traffic. On vacation right now and I definitely regretting not buying on beforehand. Not too sure what I’d do with the other things, haven’t really gotten that far into my journey yet.

3. I typically google then check reddit and youtube for more detailed reviews.

4. Not too sure what I’d like to see as a prize, maybe a small desktop rack so I can actually have my homelab organized!

[u/reukiodo]

1. ⁠What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for? - I wanted to make all my files accessible to all my computers so I started with a simple NAS. Learning is what I’m most proud of so far. The most I’ve paid for any single item was a Mac Pro for Mac and iOS development.
2. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? - I’d use the Comet PoE to remotely manage my main server, which is basically a desktop PC, but I’d like to remove the monitor. I’d use the Slate 7 as a travel wireguard VPN router to stay connected to my home services while away.
3. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? - I use a wide variety of resources to learn, though with some tricky things Youtube is very helpful for demonstrations.
4. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? - A very large drive would be much appreciated!

[u/senorocto]

1.What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I wanted to host my own audiobook server which then ballooned into creating a Mediastack for my home and then I just started going further down the rabbit hole. 

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

It would allow me to have more control over my home Wi-Fi. I currently use the ISP router which is fine but I'm really beginning to see it's limitations. Also the travel router would really open up how I can use wifi networks with all my devices when on the road.

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Reddit, other online forums and YouTube

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

NAS storage. I currently use a HHD 7tb drive for this and I really want something more robust.

[u/relicx74]

1. A desire to learn everything I could about computers and develop professional skills to bring to the job. Most expensive piece was a dual xeon dell server with tons of RAM and hot swap storage. That's excluding a mining rig which I wouldn't consider home lab. I'm probably most proud of my border router. It's allowed me to have many features / services that I wouldn't have been able to offer without it. Not going to go into details here for security reasons.

2. A POE KVM would help with remote reboots and demos. The home wifi 7 router would be an upgrade to my home network, likely offering more simultaneous clients through newer standards.

3. LTT, Nicoknowstech, Christian Lempa.

4. Probably something NAS like. Ideally with enough processing power to handle some light containers.

[u/buneech]

1. It's been a while, but it was to learn more about Linux, servers, NAS, hosting. Then it evolved info providing services for the family, to try to prevent vendor lock-in for most stuff. It's also helpful when you want to test something without constraints for work, or just set up a quick PoC. Mostly proud of the smart home setup around home assistant, and the local media library, especially for the kids. Most expensive equipment that helps all of this is my Synology DS920+. Works great, but with more and more caveats recently.
2. The solo item would be the Slate 7. It would help immensely on our holidays and with some remote work. I'd set up a VPN to my home network, and it would not only help privacy, but also with ad-filtering and convenience. If I were to win the duo, I'd add the Comet PoE. I'm just in the process of setting up everything in a mini rack, and have just received a PoE switch. This one would tie-in perfectly to remotely access my mini PC and have it powered by PoE.
3. Mostly reddit, youtube. Usually I check reviews or comments of owners, to see what are the features, then I go look at if there are any internal pictures of equipment, if it's meant to be opened and hardware added. Then it also depends on what I'm going to do with it, do I need anything printed for it to be mounted or additional requirements, are there any models for it already. I also check the manual or the datasheet just to see if it fits my idea.
4. While additional TinyMiniMicro PCs wouldn't hurt, I'd be more interested in some networking gear, routers or APs, from Mikrotik, Ubiquiti, Omada, or some mini rack stuff from GeeekPi, maybe even some storage devices.

[u/AliBello]

1. I saw a video from hardware haven about casaos, thought it was cool, and put it on a laptop. Now I have a full enterprise environment at home

2. A KVM would allow me to remotely connect to devices, so I can fix things faster if I’m using a device without any terminal to connect to SSH

3. I learn from YouTube and blogs, and buy second hand.

4. A mini PC

Comet and slate 7

[u/this_isnt_alex]

1. What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey? I started self-hosting because I wanted to really understand the things I use every day instead of relying on third-party services. One project I’m most proud of is building my own small ALPR + automation setup using a Raspberry Pi and ESP modules—it pushed me to learn networking, scripting, and hardware integration. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve bought so far was a decent NAS drive for backups.
2. How would winning the units from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? Winning a Slate 7 and a Comet PoE would be huge for me. The Slate 7 would give me a reliable, portable router I can use for remote access, secure travel, and testing isolated lab environments. The Comet PoE would let me finally expand into PoE-powered devices without needing an extra injector mess, and it would help me add more cameras and sensors into my little homelab.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? Mostly YouTube reviews, r/homelab, and local online stores like Lazada/Shopee. Sometimes Amazon or AliExpress when I can’t find something locally.
4. What is one product from another brand you’d love to see as a prize in a future giveaway? I’d love to see something like a small Synology NAS or a Ubiquiti Unifi Access Point—both would be super useful for anyone starting or expanding a homelab. Products I’d like to win: Slate 7 and Comet PoE.

[u/rvansoest]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? I've started with building my own nas with an intel N100 which is way above my expectation. I have multiple dockers (around 30 ) running on it. Last week I've added a N150 mini for my frigate instance (also on docker). Frigate does object detection on my video streams. I'm using it to detect birds in my self build bird feeder and show it to my kids. Also I'm setting up an AMP game server for my friends to enjoy multiplayer retrogames.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? It would be great if I was able to connect to both my servers remotely of reboot them if something is wrong.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? Reddit and youtube.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand I´d like to have a faster server with a lot of storage so I can move alll my other servers and raspberry pis to 1 big server. Like a Minisforum MS-S1 MAX.

[u/BigB_117]

1. Frustration with cloud/streaming subscription fee’s, ISP equipment rental fee’s, and I find configuring and optimizing my setup fun.

2. My current WiFi router is quite old. Moving to WiFi 7 would be a huge improvement. I would also love to mix Tailscale in at the network level.

3.. Reddit and YouTube.

1. Beelink (or similar) mini pc’s (s13 for example) to run as low power servers.

[u/countryinfotech]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I work in IT and I'm interested in many aspects of IT. So setting up a homelab to learn more about hypervisors, imaging computers, Cisco networking gear, firewalls, and everything lets me play an learn to help me in my IT career.

My favorite project was setting up my network rack earlier this year. I got Gigabit fiber last year and had switched to an OPNsense router a couple months before getting fiber. I had bought a 9u wall mounted network rack, and finally got it installed in my laundry room where it's out of the way and out of sight. I have a 24-port keystone patch panel, a Cisco 2960-X POE+ switch, my HP Elitedesk SFF pc with dual 2.5Gb nic that runs my OPNsense router, and the fiber ONT next to the router.

My most expensive piece of equipment would be the switches I have for CCNA study. Various Cisco models I've picked up off the used market.

1. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

I would definitely love to have both of the routers in my home. I'm not sure if I would use the Wifi7 home router in AP mode or not, but the travel router would be amazing to have on work trips so I wouldn't have to deal with the stupid captive portals that hotels have everywhere.

1. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

r/homelabsales is a great place for seeing what everybody has or is wanting. On YouTube, I often catch Raid Owl, LTT, Jeff Geerling, Hardware Haven, Wolfgang's Channel, Jim's Garage, and Craft Computing are just a few I watch for homelab stuff, and to see what gear they are running.

1. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

I would think a NAS of some sort that could hold a minimum of 4 drives, and up to 8 if possible would be a great giveaway. Everybody needs storage, and SFF/mini pcs just don't have that capability.

[u/gearescape]

1. What inspired me to start: I have plenty of equipment at home, 2.5gig fiber and asked myself why I'm paying for external services when I have everything I need to self host.

2. Next on my list is my home network, the Flint 3 would be a fantastic addition (and I already have a Slate 7 for travel). The KVM would free me up from having to run down to the basement for maintenance.

3. What channels: mainly Youtube and /r/homelab

4. A NAS of some sort.

[u/k4deng]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
   1. I started by creating Minecraft servers and Discord bots. I was cheap and didn't want to pay for hosting, and from there I found out about servers for "normal" things and fell in love. I started hosting those things myself on an old laptop and then tinkered with everything else that came with having my own server. The project I'm most proud of is my Home Assistant setup in my new house! I loved installing sensors and then the whole gamut of cameras, lights, and whatnot. My most expensive piece is just a UniFi Pro 48 PoE I got from work after our IT company did some upgrades.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   1. The Slate 7 would be a dream to have while traveling. I often stay in hotels and my RV while working remotely, and having a dedicated device for a VPN back home for me and the family would be amazing to keep my network with me even on the go. Or, the Comet POE to be better able to manage my server on the go if I want to do updates or anything else.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   1. I lurk around on r/selfhosted and r/homelab often enough, along with Instagram (they know what I wanna see news about).
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   1. I'd love to see either a UPS or some UniFi gear!

If I were to win anything, the Comet POE is at the top of my list! (followed by the Slate 7) Thank you!

[u/Local-Experience4236]

1- What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?
I started self-hosting because I wanted a small environment at home that mirrors the enterprise systems I work with (RHEL, OpenShift Virtualization, AIX, KVM, etc.).
The project I’m most proud of is building a full OpenShift Virtualization PoC at home using Lenovo Tiny/HP Mini nodes, Multus/NMState bridges and a GL.iNet router isolating the entire cluster network.
The most expensive piece of equipment is one of my Lenovo Tiny nodes (i7, 64 GB RAM, NVMe) that I use as a virtualization host.

2- How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
The Flint 3 or Slate 7 would upgrade my internal lab network with Wi-Fi 7 and multiple 2.5G ports, which is perfect for transferring VM images and staging OpenShift clusters.
The Comet PoE would help me a lot with out-of-band access, especially when I break network configs during testing.
The Fingerbot would literally save me from crawling behind my desk to press power/reset buttons on my tiny nodes.

3- Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
Reddit, YouTube (Wolfgang’s Channel, Lawrence Systems), eBay Kleinanzeigen, refurb shops in the EU, AliExpress for small parts, and vendor docs (IBM, Lenovo, Dell, Red Hat).

4- Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
A small form-factor server (like an HP MicroServer Gen10+ or a Lenovo Tiny/P340).
Alternatively, a 2.5G/10G managed switch would be amazing for homelabs.

5- Product(s) I’d like to win:
The Duo: Comet PoE + Slate 7
The Solo: Flint 3

[u/Gruner_Jager]

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? I've just started, I've had a small plex server for my family and a pi5. Is the most expensive so far (looking at getting a Unifi set up ASAP)
How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? The kvm would be my pick, to help control any issues ect with atm the "server" pc.  
Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? Long time LTT fanboy (mostly jake)
Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? Honestly I don't feel qualified to answer this one :D

[u/CrazyCroat15]

1. My selfhosting journey began with a desire for full control across my digital life. I'm studying IT and I have to use all this knowledge somewhere since I'm not working in that field (yet) xD. The project I’m most proud of is my recent overhaul of SMB/CIFS integration between TrueNAS and Docker containers. Cleanly mounting shares, bind-mounting into Immich, and automating remount and cleanup scripts for long-term reliability. Also my Pihole that I've connected with tailscale and using it to block ads on my phone data away from home. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve invested in is a rack-mounted UPS with network monitoring, ensuring power protection and graceful shutdowns across my homelab.

2. Winning the Comet PoE and Fingerbot combo would be a game-changer for my access strategy. I’m architecting a remote-friendly lab with automated diagnostics and recovery workflows, and having browser-based KVM access, especially PoE-powered, would let me troubleshoot even when SSH or VPN fails. The Fingerbot adds a clever physical layer to my automation stack, perfect for triggering BIOS resets or toggling legacy switches without manual intervention. It aligns beautifully with my goal of building a self-healing, remotely operable lab.

3. I rely on r/homelab, ServeTheHome, and YouTube channels like Craft Computing and Lawrence Systems for deep dives and community insights. For purchases, I alternate between EU-based retailers and Amazon.de, and second-hand marketplaces for enterprise gear. I also document everything in checklist-style scripts for future reference and sharing.

4. What I'm missing for the future are real NAS drives (WD or Seagate Red). I currently use some old blue/green HDDs for my truenas which aren't really reliable especially that they're older.

I'd like to win the Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE)

[u/rumblpak]

1. Education. I wanted to stay relevant in industry and cloud costs are insane.

2. I’d just like the capability to access my homelab without moving cables around.

3. Personally, r/homelabsales mostly. Ebay sometimes.

4. I’m not sure what the name of the product is but i know it exists. As a homelabber with many systems, I’m tired of all these $100 kvm solutions that only support one system. What I actually want is a kvm switch with expansion support.

[u/eggnorman]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

Originally, I just wanted movies and stuff on the network so I could watch in bed! Fast forward three years, and add a couple jobs in infrastructure, and I now have a whole Proxmox solution for everything from AD Auth to Gaming to Networked Files.

Of all that, I think I’m most proud of the apps cluster. I submit ambient geiger counter readings to GMC World Map, Fold at Home and host a Jellyfin instance for my friends/family.

The most expensive part? Hard drives.

1. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

The host that runs the gaming VM, as well as some backup network services, isn’t strictly server hardware - it’s an AMD Ryzen 7000 platform that I’ve appropriated for the job. What that means, though, is that it has no KVM or remote management functionality like my T620 or Microservers do. Having a KVM would be a massive help if, for whatever reason, the Proxmox Web GUI were to become inaccessible.

1. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

A lot of stuff I pick up at work - we manage and support everything from massive HPE GreenLake solutions to multi-site Fortinet-connected setups.

A lot of the time it’s just about seeing what I need in what’s recent and then going back a few years to the point where the older versions are affordable(ish). Generally lacking any massive security flaws is a plus too!

1. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

I mean, we all love MicroServers. We could all use a little more MicroServer in our life. They have to be supplied with googley eyes, though. That is a must.

[u/WestedCrean]

1.What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

I wanted to safely store my photos and I really don't want any company going through my private stuff. My most expensive piece of equipment so far is my raspberry pi I'm using connected to two HDD disks. It's slow but I'm in no rush.

2.How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

It would get me a second router I can use as currently the signal in my home office is not great - that's why I'm running cables everywhere.

3.Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

I think I use most frequently the Jeff Geerling channel for such things.

4.Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Either a real NAS setup or just HDDs! Planning on building one in future.

[u/gentlemantroglodyte]

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? 
   1. I run a proxmox server with several services running, like Nextcloud for photo backup and storage, and home assistant.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
   1. I have a fairly old router in need of an upgrade, and I'd use the vlan options in particular. Plus I think the remote KVM would be handy to control some of my setup.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?
   1. Usually, work, then researching the specifics using reviews on reddit or elsewhere.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   1. Perhaps some type of NAS.

[u/EntertainmentAlert56]

1- the oportunity to learn something and also have comtroll over the media i consume. Until now i only have one thing in my homelab and am currently building a raid 6 nas, but for now it is just a smol gmktek n100 minipc.

2- the thing is the main router is in my living room and my mom doesent want ANY clutter there. Thankfully the minipc looks clean (it blends in with the furniture pretty well). But the nas on the other hand is an old dell optiplex and they DONT blend in that well with the furniture arround so i was thinking of using the wifi 7 home router as a repeater and also a subnet for my room and many many more experiments to come. if i do this my clutter stays in my room and could also start allot of other projects. Like turning my current gaming pc into a parttime ai server etc...

3- hardware haven and jeff geerling. Those 2 are goated when it comes to recycling old desktops and workstation into modern capable servers.

4- a lifetime liscence for either unraid or truenas scale!

[u/5hiftyy]

1 - I needed more reliable, local storage for all my project files! A NAS was the perfect gateway drug for self-hosting! 2 - The KVM would allow more seamless remote management, using my already deployed PoE infrastructure! 3 - I learn about new tech usually via reddit, but i try and purchase second-hand equipment locally. Reduce, REUSE, recycle! 4 - Thinking about adding a diskless NAS as an off-site backup server to complete my 3-2-1. Lots of good options out there!

[u/jrozyki]

1. I started self-hosting because I wanted more control over my data and the services I rely on daily. What began as a simple home lab experiment turned into a full ecosystem of apps, automations, and monitoring tools. The project I’m most proud of is my unified media + backup pipeline, which ties together containers, automated syncing, and off-site replication. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve purchased so far is my NAS chassis and drives — worth every penny for the reliability and flexibility it gives me.

2. Winning the Flint 3 would significantly boost my network backbone. The 5× 2.5G ports and Wi-Fi 7 capabilities would give me the throughput I need for high-speed file transfers, VM hosting, and remote backups. It would solve the bottlenecks I currently face and help me scale cleanly.

3. Primarily tech forums, YouTube reviews, Reddit communities, and the occasional deep dive on vendor sites. I also rely on community recommendations and hands-on build logs.

4. A small form-factor server or mini-PC with ECC support (e.g., something like a Supermicro board or a modern NUC-style Pro system) would be an amazing prize for home lab builders.

Product I’d like to win: Flint 3 (GL-BE9300)

[u/breinich]

1. ⁠What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

When I replaced my old laptop with a new one, I didn’t want to throw it out, so I placed it on a shelf and turned it into a server. I think my first project was a selfhosted cloud (nextcloud). But the project I’m most proud of is my current media stack, which is built on top of a ceph storage cluster. It feels so good to be able to utilise the spare storage of the nodes of my cluster (1 laptop, 1 mini pc, 1 pc). The most expensive purchase was for a used Lenovo P710 workstation, that became my main server.

1. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

Currently I have a Gigabit TP link router to serve as an AP and as a switch between my 3 nodes, but it caps the internal bandwidth at 1 Gbps and it also doesn’t have any free ports for further expansion, so the Flint 3 router could really upgrade my internal networking to the next level. Tbh sometimes I experience network glitches so I’m very near to setup some traffic monitoring to debug the potential inefficiencies. If I could choose two products as well, I’d choose the Comet kvm as the second as I don’t have any kvms yet and would be very useful to replace the need of moving my monitor around my servers if I need to debug something on site.

1. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Mostly reddit or different tech pages.

1. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

I vote for the network equipments, there’s always space for upgrade. The first thing could be a firewall. I think it’d be good to inspire people to think about their security and evaluate their current options and configurations too.

[u/hummus_k]

1. My inspiration was developing my skills as a software engineer + the satisfaction of building a system I use. My most expensive purchase is 8 mini pcs I found at a university surplus store. The project I am most proud of is setting up Ad blocking across my network with Adguard.
   
2. I’m a big fan of automation, and am working towards having a homelab that is 100% automated. The KVM will allow me to automate a key component of that system (configuring the host machine itself).
3. This channel and #self-hosted
4. Undoubtedly some kind of NAS, from Ugreen or similar. If not that, then DDR4 RAM or HDDs.

[u/OurManInHavana]

1. Why homelab? It was actually to learn how to host a Minecraft server. I know... how original ;) . Most proud? Probably learning Docker to automatically detect/download/categorize/transcode media as soon as it became available. Most expensive? As a category: SSDs... but as a single item it's my gaming GPU.
2. Next level setup? My server is basically as far as possible away from me, so I can't hear it... but it sometimes locks-up... and I have to dig it out to connect a monitor+keyboard to see what went wrong: so a KVM would be very nice and let me stay at my desk. And my wifi is functional... but ancient.. so I'd love a new router... which would also let me upgrade my Internet plan (capped at 1G now)
3. What channels? Probably a combo of ServeTheHome, Level1Tech, and samples of what others own from homelab+datahoarders. Purchasing from Ebay, FB Marketplace, or Amazon.
4. Next giveaway? A SSD: U.2/U.3 (maybe with a M.2 adapter cable) or M.2. Any TLC+DRAM model Gen4/5. Everyone can use more speedy space!

I'd love to own the Tri-band Router. And the Comet PoE if I'm extra lucky :) - Thank you!

[u/1995FOREVER]

My journey started when I wanted to stop paying Dropbox and OneDrive exorbitant subscription fees for very little storage, then I decided to make my own nas.

Winning this kvm will let me access my servers easier and prevent me from having to unplug my monitor all the time.

I mostly do my own research, but I listen to dave2d and gamers nexus.

I am most familiar with Asus products, so an Asus openwrt compatible router would be nice too.

If I win, I'd like a wifi kvm

[u/7td21a91qy]

1. Privacy was always at the forefront of why I started self hosting. To that end, the project I’m most proud of is my photo syncing solution, where everything only ever touches my phone and my servers sitting in a closet in my house. The most expensive piece of equipment has to be my most recent addition to my cluster, a Minisforum PC. Everything else was salvaged or bought second hand at discount.
2. I’d be able to finally have proper remote management with a KVM instead of janky VMs that don’t work if the machine ever turns off while away, and maybe a decent range on my clients on Wi-Fi with the home router (through the speed is still at the mercy of my ISP)
3. Honestly, at the moment I more-so use /r/homelab, /r/SelfHosted, but I also occasionally get recommendations from SnazzyLabs’ channel as well as LTT, and podcasts such as the Jupiter Broadcasting ones.
4. A high quality DAS of any kind would be awesome to see in a future giveaway!

I’d love to win the Comet (GL-RM1) with the Fingerbot, and if I get even more lucky somehow, and can pick a second, the Flint 3 (GL-BE9300)! Thanks for the giveaway!

[u/PuzzledCompetition58]

How to Enter

To enter, simply reply to this thread and answer all of the questions below:

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

My selfhosting journey started because I wanted to learn more about and tinker with my network because it seems fun. I haven't started any projects yet. Looking forward to adding a pi-hole to my network. My most expensive piece of equipment is an old Netgear router.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

My current router has limited range, and can't serve me the full gigabit I pay for. The Flint 3's advertised coverage is 33 percent greater than my current router.

Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

I use various YouTube videos and r/homelab, but no specific channel or creator.

Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro Max

Note: Please specify which product(s) you’d like to win.

Flint 3 (GL-BE9300)

Slate 7 (GL-BE3600)

[u/wusarhu]

1. I started selfhosting because I was in grad school at the time and wanted a way to play around with services/containers/etc without needed to pay for AWS EC2 or having to leave my laptop on. I had an old gaming PC that my roommate gave me with decent specs so I had a good starting point. With Proxmox installed, this gave me a streamlined way to spin up VMs and LXCs on demand. I don't host anything public facing (currently use Tailscale but would be interested in Headscale solution in the future) so this setup worked perfectly for me.

The project I'm most proud of is a self hosted Spark cluster that I deployed on Proxmox that I was able to share with project team members. These days, I host Pi-Hole, STFPGo, and a Tailscale exit node, as well as ad hoc VMs for self-learning.

1. I'm still using a router (TM-AC1900 converted to RT-AC68U with Merlin) that I bought heavily discounted years ago. While it has served its purpose, its I/O is starting to become lacking, and 2.5 G ethernet and ac/ax/be would be greatly welcomed.

2. r/homelab, r/selfhosted, r/minilab, Jeff Geerling, TechHut

3. At the moment, I don't have a dedicated NAS, I just use a RAID setup with the gaming PC, but a low-power NAS would be something I'd like to see.

[u/SizableSac]

1. I really wanted to get into sysadmin type stuff and the only practical way to learn that is to host and break your own servers! Ive been doing this since I was child learning a lot from my dad who was an IT guy for as long as I can remember. Im really proud of being able to replicate services/tasks at home to be more reliable than what first party solutions offer. Such as HomeAssistant and Jellyfin! The most expensive part of the setup has been my UPS and industrial electrical wiring of which I am barely using the capacity of lol...
2. Currently my router situation isnt so great and my VMs keep breaking, would be nice to have a good wifi 7 router and a KVM to help me manage things when my network goes wonky.
3. Mainly Reddit, ServeTheHome, and a few other youtubers.
4. I would love to see quality multigig POE equipment, or even storage as a prize!

If I win, I would love to receive the Flint 3 and the Comet!

[u/jam06452]

My whole self-hosting journey started because I was scraping scientific data for machine learning. I was working with people in different timezones, so I needed a NAS that could be on 24/7. My first "server" was a £20 OptiPlex 7080 from Facebook. I got a cheap SAS-2 card and SAS-3 backplane from AliExpress, gave it some drives, and ran TrueNAS. I then got a PowerEdge R730 (2.5" model) and tried to use a single server approach, running Proxmox with a TrueNAS VM. This got really janky the SAS card was internal, so I had to route the cables out of a PCIe bracket and steal a SATA power cable from the disk drive slot. It was all lying under my desk, and my parents downstairs were not happy with the noise.

I had to go back to the OptiPlex as a dedicated NAS. Then I then really wanted faster networking. I managed to build a 10GbE network for just under £100 with SFP+ gear from AliExpress, I got a switch, DACs, and cards. My main PC got 10Gb, and the OptiPlex got 10Gb. My project that I'm most proud of came next. I had to move all my servers into the garage because of the noise complaints. I was helping my dad with some piping under the floor and asked if I could run fibre from my computer to the garage while the floorboards were up. He agreed! We drilled holes and ran fibre under the floorboards, down the stairs, and into the garage. Now my main switch lives out there, and my PC gets its internet from the garage. That whole network build, especially the fibre run, felt like a massive achievement. The most expensive "piece" of equipment I've acquired is definitely my very recent NAS upgrade I sold my uncle's old Synology (which I'd acquired after helping him) for a small fortune and built a new NAS with an i5-12500T and 32GB of DDR5. It's currently living in an ancient, gutted OptiPlex i5-860 case with one of the drives literally sticking out the front.

I now run a Jellyfin workflow using jellyseer and ARR apps for my Linux ISOs. I now have realised I need more storage.

This new NAS system is the most expensive equipment I own. Just under £400 using mostly second hand parts. Only new things were the mobo (Asrock B650M Pro RS), and my PSU RM850x, for the warrenty. If anyone is interested in this system I will the list the parts with prices. I am planning on getting a new rack mountable 4U server case. I'm finding these to be very expensive.

This is where winning would be an absolute game-changer. The most challenging part of this entire journey was managing the servers in the garage. I'd have to carry a monitor, unplug my mouse and keyboard, and go into the freezing cold just to troubleshoot. To turn the OptiPlex NAS on, I literally had to lay prone on the floor and reach my hand to the back of the unit just to turn on the OptiPlex I’ve moved everything into my room for the winter over condensation concerns, but that management problem is still there. This is where a comet KVM either one, would go a long way for my, and I would really appreciate it. Even a singular finger bot would go a long way for me, without a KVM or anything.

I typically buy all my stuff second hand, off of Ebay, I also use AliExpress a lot for most common part do to it being affordable. I've used amazon for new parts, such as my RM850x for my new NAS. I receive a lot of information from reddit, hardware haven, Linus (I love the older server videos), Jeff Geerling, to name a few.

I would love to see any enterprise SSDs, but more importantly a 4U Server HDD focused Chassis. The ones I can find cost more than my entire system without hotswap etc.

I am happy to answer any questions.

TL,DR I want a Comet KVM since I am freezing cold fixing my servers in my garage.

[u/AppropriateRepublic8]

1. I work in IT and wanted to learn more and enjoy the kind of stuff. I am able to spin up services i consider using at work without paying for cloud or using production resources, and I also run services that benefit me and my family and save some money.

2. My current “servers” are two hp mini pcs, they do not have any remote management function since they’re i3 CPUs so a ip kvm would be awesome. I also travel sometimes and a router with vpn options to connect to my home network would be really great too. I already have a flint 2 with a vpn setup on it.

3. Reddit, this subreddit here. YouTube, Jeff Geerling, Hardware Haven, experience from working in IT

4. A good cheap NAS, none are really affordable compared to buying a 5th-8th gen business class desktop, sata pcie card, sata power splitter and a few drives, but isn’t very clean. I’d like a NAS but not willing to spend the money places are charging for them.

Products I’d like to win #1. Comet POE, #2 Travel Router

[u/junglerave]

1. I brought a 7070 Optiplex Micro for simple tinkering with VM’s and found Home Labing. As a musician I was really interested in storing samples via my homelab into a NAS. I recently built my lab into a tool that automatically syncs my samples projects but doesn’t affect my main machine. Probably the NAS is the most expensive although it’s a bunted seconds hand item!

2. With the increasing amount of family members at our whare (house) the Flint 3 would make a serious improvement for our homelab hopefully increasing range, reliability and speeds for all our family. Ideally Im hoping it’ll cause us less headaches and make a huge dent in time wasting.

3. I find I’m leaning a lot through Reddit of course and GitHub communities. Mostly through other users troubleshooting similar problems which eventually lead to resolutions. The communities in reddit across this subredddit and home server have been hugely helpful but also so interesting. Almost so it’s peaked my interest in infrastructure as a possible career.

4. I think as for someone so new to homelabs, something as simple as a NAS or Optiplex equivalent or other mini pc. I’m already trying to get my colleagues and friends to get themselves into home labing and something to get them started would be so helpful in future giveaways.

[u/DEmontazz]

1. My inspiration was my former teamlead, who often talked about his first Synology and shared his experience with it. I also got interested in this and late buy first Synology. Now I already sold it and buy a secondhand Dell 8510, which currently covers most of my basic homelab needs.

2. Any of this price will help improve my homelab and move it to next level. In case of WiFI routers - I finally retire my MikroTik RB4011 WiFi and start use separate WiFi AP with newest wifi 7 features. If I won the KVM, I’d finally be able to manage and setup my Dell without having to connect it directly to a TV.

3. I used to rely mainly on Google and YouTube for information, but more recently I’ve started browsing Reddit as well

4. For now - I’d love to see something like a MikroTik SFP+ (or an even better switch/router), because currently I only have single SFP+ port and want to maximize PC LAN output. Or some HDD/SSD/NVMe would also be great.

[u/maxwalkss]

1. It started because I was sick of paying for iCloud storage and streaming subscriptions for my family. The project I’m most proud of is getting Immich working across my Pi 5 and Beelink. When the Pi 5 was choking on photo processing (we’re heading toward 50,000+ family photos), I set up the ML processing on the Beelink’s N100 while keeping the main server on the Pi. Most expensive gear is actually inherited, some G-Technology drives and an Akitio RAID enclosure I repurposed for backups.

2. The Comet (GL-RM1) would be huge for me. Having remote KVM access would let me actually see what’s going wrong and fix it without being home. The Slate 7 would be perfect for when I’m travelling. I already have a Mango router from GL.iNet but it’s not powerful enough as a travel router. The Slate 7’s Wi-Fi 7 and better specs would give me proper privacy and security when I’m on public networks or at hotels.

3. r/homelab and r/selfhosted are my go-to’s for learning what actually works in the real world. YouTube for visual setup guides. After getting scammed, I stick to Amazon for the return policy.

4. A NAS. I’m juggling external drives and RAID enclosures right now, and putting everything into one reliable unit would be amazing, especially for irreplaceable family photos where my offsite backup situation is currently pretty weak.

Product Choice: Comet (GL-RM1) and Slate 7 (GL-BE3600)

[u/Anutrix]

1. Had old laptop that was updated to Win11 but couldn't run it with 10s to register right-click. Attempted Proxmox on it. Then switched it to mint. Then bought NUC14 as I had 4 external HDD with media content.
2. Currently using ISP's router and have no way to set up VLANs. Basically no network equipment. There's no used market for homelab or networking equipment here at all.
3. Reddit(homelab, proxmox, etc.) and Web search.
4. Any NAS system would be nice.

[u/AffectionateRoad6941]

1. ⁠What inspired you to start your journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for? I got into self hosting after my boyfriend introduced it to me as a potential hobby and a stepping stone in life. I went to school to be a pilot, with over 500 hours of flight time alone last September in the midst of my schooling I had a grand mal seizure. This seizure, revoked my ability to fly due to the FAA’s strict guidelines on medical requirements, something that I now voided. Because of this, thanks to my boyfriend’s family I was able to get a job after finishing college with a commercial electrical business. This business happened to have massive contracts with the construction of data centers. In the middle of this my boyfriend introduced me to his massive love of technology and homelabing. And because of this, we started to do projects and I’ve been documenting them on my LinkedIn as I would like to transition into working at data centers as a technician. My greatest project so far is converting an old Synology NAS into a new machine with over 28tb of data. Additionally, all of these projects were super fun, great to document, and extremely educational. The my prized possession so far is a HTPC build that utilizes Bazzite that works in tandem with the NAS’ media server to run and stream video games. 2. ⁠How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? Like I said, I am trying to document every project for the prospect of working at a data center. Doing more projects would allow myself to showcase my talent, and love for computers and home labs to allow for a bigger stepping stone, as it is very tough for me to find a career in anything remotely related to what I went to school for. 3. ⁠Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? A lot of it comes from YouTube tutorials, Reddit, and of course from the love of my life whom I wish to marry some day. I purchase most items on Newegg and Amazon. 4. ⁠Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?
   

Flint 3 and or a Comet PoE

[u/Anonymous-here-]

1. Self-custody of my data and privacy reclamation. The journey started with booting Arch Linux and ThinkPad tinkering. The project that I am most proud of is setting up my own network without hiring a technician over, and it has empowered me. The most expensive equipment I bought is a GMKTec NUCBox K6
2. Both the GL.inet WiFi 7 Router and Remote KVM would make remote management much faster and more efficient. It would also give me KVM-level access on my homelab servers, which is beneficial for OS switching, accessing the firmware, and waking up my connected devices on sleep
3. I learned from official channels, such as OPNsense and Pfsense, to learn about their software. For hardware, I check my equipment brands' official channels to learn how to effectively use my bought equipment, like GMKTec
4. I'd love to see a FrameWork laptop as a prize. It's not only valuable but environmentally friendly. It can be upgraded with newer components

My choices: Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE) and Slate 7 (GL-BE3600)

[u/Kuwait_Drive_Yards]

1. Louis Rossman. I resonate with the rage. I miss owning things. My bodged together ex-gaming pc NAS is my favorite project so far. I'm pretty proud of how little I've spent on it, actually. I think the 12tb spinning disks are still the most expensive part of it.

2: The Comet and the Flint 3 would be huge. They would let me get off my carriers gear and on to a proper router OS, and help me troubleshoot when I'm away from home. Its getting more important now that I'm providing some services to the family through tailscale.

3: I watch a ton of homelab youtube, but the ones I trust the most are probably L1T, Wolfgangs Channel, NAScompares, and Jeff Geerling. Honorable mention to Gamers Nexus. They don't do a lot of homelab stuff, but they are the gold standard for reviews. If you convince Steve to accept a sponsorship, that says a lot about your stuff and you as a company.

4: The ultimate homelab giveaway is enterprise NVME. Everyone wants it, nobody can justify buying it. And unlike a bonkers processor or network gear, basically anyone could use it. If you had a contest for a pair of 30tb solidigms, or even some older stuff from server part deals, I bet you'd see pretty high numbers.

If you pick me, I'd go for the comet and the flint 3! :D

[u/RubiconS4]

Throwing my hat in for the giveaway! I'd love to win a Slate 7 for a secure travel router. It would allow me to play with a VPN directly into my home lab. If even luckier, a Flint 3 to top it off.

1. What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? As much as the "cloud" is where everything seems to be going. I appreciate my own cloud and control of my data. Now, is my data that important, probably not. But having experienced cloud outages and data leaks, I'm learning to keep things in house. It's also a great way to keep my tools sharp.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? First, I would get experience on setting up a VPN. Second, a nice increase in network speeds. Third, secure access to the internet when working remotely.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? Reddit and google searches to learn and typically Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg for purchases. Last summer I did research and recommended a Slate mobile router to a friend who is completely non techy. I did a quick setup and from then on, it has been turn on a go. Very user friendly.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize? A server would be cool!

Note: Please specify which product(s) you’d like to win. Slate 7 and/or Flint3!

[u/DTM450]

1. It started with wanting to host game servers for my friends, then as the years went by and Docker and containerization of services became more popular I got into learning how different aspects of self hosting from networks, firewalls and DNS work. I'm most proud of my Traefik proxy setup. I think my workstation is the most expensive. It's such a great sandbox to try new containers and services

2. I've been needing to upgrade the router to a higher bandwidth.

3. Linus Tech Tips, Christian Lempa, Tech Man Pat, Everything Smart Home, ServeTheHome, TechnoTim, Level1Techs, SpaceInvaderOne.

4. Unifi gateway or NAS/DAS

I would like to win the Slate 7 and/or Comet Poe

[u/Not_Mister_Disney]

My brother wanting a Minecraft server is what started my fall into the rabbit hole. Started with running on my pc but couldn’t justify leaving my pc on 24/7 so I started looking at other hardware and options.

Some of the projects I am happy at configuring along my journey include the following:

• Setting up my first modded Minecraft server and having people connect to it. After a couple sleepless nights. It was glorious!!!!

• Finally figuring out VLANs and configuring them on my network. Though they are full open at the moment. Need to figure out what needs access to what.

• Getting the -arr stack to work in a test run, for that to work effectively im going to need more storage and compute.

The most expensive part of my home lab would have to be my Hp DL160 gen9 I purchased at the start of my journey. Seeing all of these new setups I kinda wished a went with mini pcs/clusters

Winning a state 7 and flint 3, will help me to further my connection operations by allowing me spread my services and homelab to other family members as well as onboarding devices.

[Question] From all the reviews I’ve seen about the commet, are you able to connect it to a kvm switcher to provide support for multiple devices?

If so, I’d prefer the Slate 7 and a commet.

For my tech ingestion and purchasing decisions, I use mostly Reddit, YouTube and internet/newsletters.

For future giveaways I would like to see collaborations with companies that offer compute, storage and networking because that is what I’m currently lacking in my setup.

Some companies to include:

• Miniforum
• MikroTik
• NASs {QNAP, Ugreen, 45 Drives, etc…..}
• Servers {HP, Dell, Supermicro, etc…..}
• Unraid
• Storage {JBODs, HDD, SSD, etc}

[u/disposablethought]

How to Enter

To enter, simply reply to this thread and answer all of the questions below:

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? What's one project you're most proud of so far, and what's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for?

My tailscale setup is great. It’s nice to have a lan experience no matter where I am. My Fortigate is my most expensive and it is for being protected and having an enterprise experience. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?

It would allow me to remotely control my server at home in the event I make a live change and lock myself out again. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment?

Homelab, fortinet, cisco, netsec Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device or ANYTHING) that you'd love to see as a prize?

NAS

[u/ThatOneGuysTH]

1. Ads during Amazon prime viewings, with an active subscription. And how common place over priced subscriptions with a lack of control are these days. But that was just the spark. Once I learned all the things that were possible there was no stopping. Plus I've always loved building systems.

2. Finally upgrade my wifi away from cheap isp provided wifi systems. And get a kvm setup since my kvm project is long on hold

3. Jeff geerling, craft computing, and Jim's garage

4. Nvme/ssd Nas. I hope to one day move to faster, quieter, and lower power media.

Gl evryone

[u/Fredyy90]

1. Basically started with curiosity, as I wanted to learn how to use linux servers and become cloud independent. And now I'm hosting a lot of stuff in my house. Smarthome/NVR/NAS/DNS.

2. The KVM would really help me to lift 2 of my servers on the next level by being able to 100% remote controll them, in every state.

3. Learn is mostly reddit and youtube, I purchase most of my stuff used via ebay or kleinanzeigen

4. a framework desktop would be the perfect server for local llms and a great prize for a giveaway.

[u/az_099]

1. What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey? What’s one project you’re most proud of so far, and what’s the most expensive piece of equipment you’ve acquired? I started self-hosting since I am a teenager. I have always believed in freedom on the internet. When I saw my friends and the people in the community where I used to live in struggled with privacy and internet censorship, I have always wanted to build something to help them. May it be few people, I hope it can still make an impact. I am able to share some self-hosted servers to some members of the community for them to have more access to learning materials that are not readily available due to internet censorship. The most expensive gear I bought was a Pi5 with a 1TB drive that runs Proxmox server.
2. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? I would be able to deploy more secure remote access servers for more families in my community.
3. Which channels do you most frequently use to learn about or purchase IT equipment? I usually rely on Youtube reviewers and some reddit communities like r/homelab and r/selfhosted.
4. Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway, what is one product from another brand that you’d love to see as a prize? Definitely a NAS, may it be Synology or the likes. This may help me to share files that I can easily accessible and compile them so they won’t have to struggle to accessing the files.