About

I’m Mark, and my homelab is small: a few machines on a shelf, most of them more than ten years old, doing real jobs every day. Backups, networking, home services, and a lot of tinkering.

Small Server Lab is where I write down what I’ve learned running it: what works, what broke, what it costs to keep running, and what I’d buy if I were starting today.

How I recommend things

Every product on this site is labelled one of three ways:

• I own this and use it. I bought it, it’s in my lab, and I’m telling you how it has actually gone.
• My pick from specs and reviews. I haven’t tested it. I say so, and I tell you why I’d choose it.
• On my list to buy. I plan to get it; a hands-on review follows when I do.

I never claim to have tested something I haven’t.

How these posts are written

I write with help from Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, which also helps me run the lab. I supply the experience, the measurements and the opinions; Claude helps turn them into readable posts and checks the facts against my lab notes. When Claude did the real work, such as troubleshooting a problem, the post says so.

Affiliate links

Some links on this site are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The commissions help pay for the tools I use to run the lab and write this site. See the affiliate disclosure for details.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections or suggestions: hello@smallserverlab.com.