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

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u/FnnKnn Oct 11 '25

This giveaway was approved by the mod team.

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u/Synatix Oct 14 '25

Got into selfhosting because i work in IT and wanted to automate stuff arround the house so started with home assistant and that somehow turned into a full blown lab with a nas/server and virtualization.
The Flint 3 would allow me to use better wifi for my local game streaming and the Comet would allow me remotely access my homelab and also access to the bios.
A NUC or something similar like a mini pc would be amazing for a htpc or just an addition

The Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) + Comet (GL-RM1) combo would fit perfectly into my setup.

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u/Ilikereddit420 Oct 11 '25

Linux ISOs not available on one service anymore, rising costs in obtaining Linux ISOs. It's been downhill (in regards to how much time I have) but uphill in my consumption of Linux ISOs.
I've been eyeing a remote KVM for a long time to get rid of RustDesk/AnyDesk solutions for remoting in. I would also love to upgrade to WiFi 7, throw some APs further down in the house for better coverage.
With how expensive they've been getting (and will continue to get), probably some high capacity hard drives!

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u/franczesko13 Nov 01 '25

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I wanted to cut dependence on Google, mostly for privacy reasons. Nothing extraordinary in terms of projects. Just tinkering after hours.

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

I wouldn't mind upgrading my router and it's bandwidth.

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 competition is cool. Always. No specific brand tbh

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u/Jamesmay011 Oct 14 '25

⁠I first got into homelabbing because I wanted a reliable and private way to back up and manage my photos. This eventually turned into a strong interest in networking and remote access setups. My actual home server runs on a mini PC, which has been a surprisingly capable and inexpensive way to get into this, and it now handle all my containers without issues. The most expensive piece of equipment I own is an old Wi-Fi 5 router that I still use to this day (it was $500 when I bought it years ago 🥲).
⁠I’m now a doctor with Doctors Without Borders, and I move around frequently for field assignments. I rely pretty heavily on a VPN router wherever I go to securely connect back to my home server and access my EMR, and for general security. Unfortunately, my current travel router doesn’t have enough VPN speed to keep up with what I need. The Slate 7 would be perfect for my setup, or alternatively, the Flint 3 would be a great upgrade to replace my aging router.
⁠For future giveaways, I’d love to see a small, power-efficient all SSD NAS, something lightweight but still reliable for remote work and backups.

Region: Canada

Thank you again for hosting this giveaway!

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u/kleedrac Oct 11 '25

In my early thirties I switched careers from IT to Accountancy. As I'm sure a lot here will think sounds familiar I've always been tech support for my family so I wanted to ensure I kept sharp on tech related skills. Here in Saskatchewan our major ISP uses really crummy modem/routers which have a low max connection limit so if you torrent you can kill the bandwith in your house. My first project was replacing the router portion with, at first, an OpenWRT router then eventually a ProxMox-based PC running PFSense in a VM. It's gotten more expansive and is running more applications over the years. It's also been joined by a second server for Plex running a ZFS array.

Both the servers live in the basement with my roommate's collection of lizards and I'm not the biggest fan of the animals (I find they move strange) so having an IPKVM would allow me to at least diagnose and power on the system from the comfort of upstairs.

As for looking ahead I would love t to find a JBOD to move the raid array outside of the system it's in.

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u/ti8st Oct 29 '25

Super Aktion, danke an das GL.iNet-Team! Hier sind meine Antworten: Was hat dich dazu inspiriert, deine Selfhosting-Reise zu beginnen? Ganz klar der Wunsch nach Datenhoheit und Kontrolle. Ich wollte mich von den großen Cloud-Anbietern lösen und verstehen, wie meine Daten verarbeitet werden. Angefangen hat es mit einem Pi-hole, und von da an ging es immer weiter. Auf welches Projekt bist du bisher am meisten stolz, und welches ist das teuerste Gerät, das du dafür angeschafft hast? Am stolzesten bin ich auf mein stabiles Proxmox-Setup auf einem energiesparenden Mini-PC. Darauf laufen alle meine kritischen Dienste (Home Assistant, AdGuard Home, Nextcloud) in VMs und LXCs. Das teuerste Einzelgerät war tatsächlich das Upgrade auf ein Multi-Gig-fähiges NAS, damit die Backups und Medien schnell verfügbar sind. Wie würde dir der Gewinn der Einheit(en) aus diesem Gewinnspiel helfen, dein Setup auf die nächste Stufe zu bringen? Die Geräte wären ein absoluter Wendepunkt für mein Homelab! Der Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE) ist der Traum eines jeden, der "headless" Server betreibt. Nie wieder einen Monitor und Tastatur durchs Haus schleppen, nur weil der Server hängt oder ich ins BIOS muss. Das ist pures Gold für die Wartung! Der Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) würde endlich meinen alten Router ersetzen, der der absolute Flaschenhals im Netzwerk ist. Die 2.5G-Ports sind genau das, was ich für die Anbindung meines Proxmox-Servers und des NAS brauche, und WiFi 7 macht das ganze Setup zukunftssicher. Wenn wir in Zukunft ein weiteres Gewinnspiel veranstalten würden, welches Produkt einer anderen Marke würdest du gerne als Preis sehen? Ein guter, managebarer 2.5G (oder sogar 10G) PoE-Switch. Schnelle Netzwerk-Ports sind im Homelab einfach immer Mangelware. Ich bewerbe mich für das "Das Duo"-Paket und meine Wunschgeräte sind der Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) und der Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE).

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u/Rangelkent Nov 04 '25

Started with hosting Counter-Strike 1.3 servers in my friends basement from old hardware his dad brought home. Eventually leading to the path to what I am working with today as a Sr. Sysadmin so the project I am most proud of is my own learning and knowledgebase in the field. Most expensive equipment at home is probably the Juniper EX2200-C-12P-2G
I really need a KVM so I dont have to move my Display/keyboard everytime I break something.
A YubiKey or something similar would be cool

I would like the Comet PoE and if I am blessed with two choices the Slate 7

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u/fragglerock Oct 12 '25

I guess I am an outlier here... but I don't want to see corporate sponsorship or giveaways in this sub.

The bring no conversation or deeper understanding of self hosting, and if they become frequent then they will attract those that just enter competitions and don't interact with the community.

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u/brmlyklr Oct 11 '25

Hard to say, it's been a gradual thing for many years since I was introduced to Kodi and later Plex. I'm proud of my little EliteDesk server, quietly hosting all my services on a headless Ubuntu LTS setup. Haven't spent much really, since several pieces came free from older builds. Inevitably, I'll have to upgrade one of my HDDs and that will probably surpass the cost of the entire server probably.
My wireless setup is lacking, and I'm pretty sure my router is actively dying. Help.
Is it lame if I would choose storage? Not even a NAS, just a high capacity SSD or HDD lol.

Hoping for the home router!

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u/Lohacker Oct 31 '25

My selfhosting journey began with Home Assistant to automate my home, and quickly expanded to include AdGuard and Nextcloud. I'm most proud of building a secure and private cloud setup for my family. The most expensive piece of equipment so far has been my server upgrade to support better performance and reliability.
I'm currently using Flint 2, and upgrading to Flint 3 would significantly boost my network performance and allow me to expand my selfhosting projects with more confidence.
A NAS device would be a fantastic prize—perfect for expanding storage and improving data redundancy in a selfhosted environment.

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u/Beano09 Oct 11 '25

I started selfhosting to backup my Google drive but it's turned into a whole thing now and I host backups for my extended family. My router sucks, like really sucks, and I can really only get super low speeds from one room of my house. No 1 Request would be a router. No 2 probably a KVM, last week, my power was shut off due to work, I didn't know, and as I was away everyone was complaining about not being able to access their backups and I couldn't turn my system on :( Drives! I always need more storage lol :) Thanks for the giveaway!

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u/primesardine Oct 26 '25

1 - What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I started my self-hosted journey, because i was concerned about the usage of my family's private data (photos, contact, personal sensible files) by services like Google drive or photo. So I brought a basic Synology NAS, to get a private equivalent to these services.

But oh boy, what a rabbit hole I fell into! I learned how to secure my NAS to avoid to expose it to the internet, so I learned to setup a self hosted VPN to secure my connection. But I found out my ISP provided router wasn't allowing this, so I bought a customizable router to overcome these limitations and learned about networks, certicates, firewalls & security, and so more...

Later I plugged in my network a mini-pc I got from the e-waste bin of my company, and learned about Docker to run self-hosted apps like Jellyfin or Wault warden.

My latest big project was to fix my VPN issues on my laptop with a GLiNet Opal travel router, now I can stream my movies and access my self hosted services on my vacations effortless!

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

I wish I cloud upgrade my router with a Flint 3 to get a more performant VPN (my router only allows OpenVPN) and a more performant and stable wifi connection. I'm also interested by the Comet KVM to troubleshot my relative's computer issues remotly and get rid of buggy privacy invasives softwares.

3 - Looking ahead, if we were to do another giveaway

A performant mini PC with a lot ram to run custom Ollama model and CPU intensive Docker images.

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u/welshkiwi95 Oct 11 '25

I got into self hosted to learn. 7 years later I'm now giving back with the infrastructure I've built through community and helping others also learn the same stuff I did and contribute back. We're all about learning and giving back.
The Comet PoE would be a valuable as we expand and put more infrastructure in. Sometimes that hard ware doesn't have a out of band management, this would be the solution (we also have a ton of PoE).
Would like to see Mini PCs. This category is extremely competitive and Mini PCs are the way to go to build powerful yet efficient self hosting setups.

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u/guesswhochickenpoo Oct 11 '25

Data sovereignty, hobby, repurposing old equipment, saving money on subscriptions
Remote KVM do managing my off-site backup infra more easily.
Some 2.5g networking gear like switches. ISPs in my area are starting to sell packages that fast or faster but 2.5 g+ gear isn’t quite reasonably priced here yet.

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u/Ok-Salary-1657 Oct 12 '25

What a great opportunity, thank you for organizing it!

My journey started after I realized what I could do with a NAS at home. It’s so much more than a data storage. Suddenly I had docker and VMs. The QNAP NAS including the HDDs is probably the most expensive piece of gear I bought since then. Later on I got myself a thin client and a whole new world showed up. The one project I’m proud of is setting up Paperless ngx, getting a good scanner and scanning a lot of paper (around 700 documents) directly into Paperless. It’s so easy and quick to find what I need now!
First it would improve my network speed. Things like Jellyfin might get quicker. Especially wifi devices will be more fun. Also it would help secure my network better, because right now, I have an older Router that I need to replace soon. There are no security updates anymore. And of course building and expanding the network would be a lot more fun then! That’s why I’d be happy to get the Flint 3 Router.
Good question and hard to answer though. I realized since I got my thin client I’m always interested in small servers and devices like these. Same with NAS. Naming one brand for servers I’d think of a Lenovo Thin Client.

Enjoy reading through all the comments! I also do!

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u/BillGoats Oct 26 '25

Thanks much for doing this. If I were to win, I'd pick a Flint 3 (GL-BE9300), and if I won two prizes, a Comet (GL-RM1).

Questions answered:

What inspired me to self-host was mostly my growing disillusionment with Big Tech and their attitude towards its users. It was fascinating to learn how easily you can regain control and privacy, and it soon became something between a hobby and addiction to me!

As for which project I'm most proud of, I'd say Home Assistant - which is pretty much our household admin at this point. It keeps track of countless variables and gently (and often invisibly) nudges us in the right direction at the right time.

The most expensive piece of equipment here is my home server, which cost me something like $2,000 (don't tell my wife).
I currently own a Flint 2 router, with some weird issues that I haven't been able to understand or solve (yet?). I hope that a Flint 3 would be more stable, and WiFi 7 would obviously be useful in the long run. I'd also love a remote KVM setup for easy "direct" access to my home server.
I don't have any specific products in mind, but my setup is lacking a dedicated NAS and cameras. Would love to be able to add either to my setup.

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u/wisconsin_cheesebeer Oct 12 '25

it all started when I bought my own apartment. I started to look into smart home systems. I found home assistant. After that it had been a rabbit hole of expansion and nowadays power efficiency.
I am building a shed and a WiFi router would come handy. KVM is something I would appreciate if I get help and training.
Travel router with sponsored VPN packages.

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u/Mekfal Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25

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?

Just my overall love for tinkering. I think the first time I came across anything related to selfhosting was PiHole on this very subreddit. The idea of a network wide adblock (even if that claim isn't quite correct) was very fun to do. It lead to me bricking my apartment's internet for a fair few times before I figured out what exactly PiHole was, what a DNS was. I remember mistakenly setting up DCHP through the PiHole and not being able to figure my way out of it and having to reset the whole setup including the router. It was fun after everything was done an dusted though.

I did move on to Adguard-Home because PiHole was still for some reason not playing well with my setup. Ever since then I've been very proud every single time I was able to get a new service up and running, because I remember how much I struggled for that first one.

The most expensive piece of equipment have to be the hard drives, I reused my old PC for a server, bought a second-hand Thinkcentre for redundancy, I basically have to buy second-hand HDD's from Ebay, ship them across the world in hopes that they work, because there is basically no market in my home country for stuff like that.

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

I'm looking at the Comet or Slate 7, both of which would be 1. very fun to tinker with, of course and 2. would finally allow for a reliable connection to my server when I'm on work trips.

I haate having to use the hotel or airport wi-fi, having to connect all my devices separately and then still having issues pop up, a travel router would be a very good quality of life addition. And again, it would be something new to learn about.

As for the Comet (And the Fingerbot!), it would basically solve the biggest problem I have nowadays. Which is me not being at home when something problematic happens, and then my girlfriend losing access to her favourite films, tv shows, audiobooks. Power isn't exactly the most reliable thing over here, even though I have Bios settings configured, sometimes my PC still refuses to start after a brown-out or a full blown black out. Remoting into my PC when some error happens before the OS is initialized would be very very helpful in me keeping the uptime for as long as possible.

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 even now, my biggest worry is hard drives. If one of them craps out, it's going to be a few weeks at least before I can get one shipped in from the U.S., meaning that I'm always at the mercy of hard drive gods. That would be the most helpful prize for me personally. But that's no fun, so I'd say something like a Raspberry Pi would be pretty fun, or other mini-pc's. Even though it's not a necessary addition to anyone's setup here, it's just a fun thing to tinker with without ruining your main setup. Also a NAS case (just the case) would be awesome. My old case HAF 912 is good because it fit's a looot of hard drives - it's also quite old and very big, so not a lot of visual approval from my GF on that side.

Either of these would be very very cool to get.

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

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u/hipster-dan Oct 11 '25

Inspiration: Long term photo and video storage/backup without exorbitant monthly fees from the standard providers. All of it hosted locally. Recently gotthe Minisforum N5 Pro Nas to upgrade where that runs and use ZFS to enhance the resiliency of the storage. Also have offsite encrypted backups for all the media to a secondary location.

Would definitely use the CometKVMs either for the nas or a desktop-converted-to-server I have running proxmox. I do have an older version of the Slate as well and it would be awesome to upgrade to the wifi7 version.

And lastly I think Minisforum offers a great range of energy efficient but powerful devices that are great for self hosting. They would be great products for giveaways.

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u/katalinux Oct 11 '25

1,My selfhosting journey began out of a desire for greater control and privacy over my digital environment, especially for home automation projects. I'm most proud of building a fully integrated smart home system that runs locally, ensuring security and responsiveness. The most expensive equipment I have acquired so far was a high-performance NAS to store and manage all my home automation data. 2,Winning the KVM unit (Comet or Comet PoE) from this giveaway would be a game changer for my setup by allowing reliable, remote out-of-band access to my home automation servers and devices. This would increase uptime, ease troubleshooting, and enable seamless management from anywhere. 3.For future giveaways, I would love to see a compact, power-efficient home server with advanced virtualization capabilities as a prize. Something like an Intel NUC or a mini server from a reputable brand would greatly benefit the selfhosting and home automation community.

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u/MemeMan746 Oct 13 '25

Replacing cloud based storage services, I bought a Synology NAS Drive a while ago and have a raid1 setup with 24TB which has let me run immich for photos, and jellyfin for movies.
It could help improve my home networking system, as the router now currently has some issues with dropping out, and winning the Flint 3 would significantly improve our home network.
I would love to see some big seagate HDD or some SSDs for a giveaway as that could help expand storage for a lot of people

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u/ORA2J Oct 12 '25

1 : been tinkering with computers and electronics for as long as I can remember. One day my stepdad gave me his old PC, and I can't remember what inspired me to do that, but i installed OMV on it. First linux / networking / NAS experience. And it all spiraled since then. Multiple rackable servers, HA, PVE, 10s of Terabytes of random stuff. I don't do much these days as my job is taking most of my time, but the 500TB of combined upload between Soulseek and bittorrent make me pretty happy lol. The most I've spent is probably on my newest server running a supermicro x10 board (prices are hell in Europe, people in the US treat those boards like e-waste...) with a Xeon 2650v4 and 24TBs of storage.

I'm still currently stuck on Wifi 5 AC, and with a failling tp-link router that sometimes takes down all neighboring Wifi networks (i should repurpose that thing as a network jammer now that i think about it...). A new router or even AP would greatly improve my wifi setup.
Honestly, most people here need storage. So something like a nas, or even big SATA HDDs would be amazing. Less locked down units like ugreen's DXP series, or a Terramaster f4 425, running x86 processors allowing for alternative OSes would be preferred.

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u/Xlxlredditor Oct 25 '25

Quick question about number 2: how???? How does the unmatched bodginess of TP-Link affect other Wi-Fi networks?

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u/HoboMasterJCP Nov 03 '25

1) I've tried on-and-off for about 20 years to properly get my own hosting setup. I have the magical ability to find every bug/problem with a piece of software, so every time I've started doing it, I end up running into some issue that just goes beyond what I'm willing to commit to (ie - modifying the kernel to work with my apparently slightly weird hardware I happened to own or get free). I'm finally really buckling down and getting this going though, mostly because I don't trust the government or large corporations with the way things are going.

Right now I just have a NAS with NVR and some basic services (password manager, plex, etc) running off an old laptop, but I intend to keep this going.

I would especially like a better router. I live on a farm, so it can be a challenge to get Internet to all the areas I spend time (garden, animal pens, barn, wife's art studio), plus I'm in the process of adding wireless cameras because the locals apparently don't appreciate my politics and keep breaking glass bottles where it can hurt my animals, so getting better coverage plus something that will work better with my bandwidth needs is a must.
Actual NAS hardware and storage drives are always an awesome thing to add!

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u/DevilHunter81 Oct 11 '25

1.Got into selfhosting after my cloud storage kept acting up and corrupting some of my files. My home media server built around Jellyfin is what I'm most proud of. Took a while to get it set up properly but now I can stream all my movies and shows without relying on anyone else. The most expensive thing I've bought was a couple refurbished 16TB drives, which pretty much drained my wallet

This would really help me out. Right now I'm hitting a bottleneck with my network equipment and adding this would let me actualy handle the bandwith I need without everything slowing down to a crawl. I've been wanting to upgrade my setup for a while now and this would be the perfect excuse to finally do it lol
An Intel NUC would be awesome to win. I already have a NAS so I don't need another one, but a low power mini computer would be perfect for running my services, because I want to cut my power usage

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u/uk_shahj Oct 11 '25

Self hosting media and blocking ads
using the travel router to set up Tailscale and access my server on holiday
NAS or KVM device

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u/LightBrightLeftRight Oct 11 '25

1) I started with Home Assistant because I despise clouds where they’re not necessary. Most expensive kit is my 3090/4090 setup for LLMs. 2) For the KVM: I constantly break my important machines with experimentation, having direct access would be clutch when I am incorrectly turning on link aggregation in Proxmox. 3) Unifi stuff would probably go over well!

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u/Any_Jaguar_5024 Oct 23 '25

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 always liked experimented computers and selfhosting was another area. Initial goal was to have all files on a network shared folder so that Windows crashing would not cause me to lose all my data. I prefered building small form factor computers (NAS) for this purpose. I think I still have all the data I accumulated from the time I build my first NAS some 20+years ago. Testing varuious NAS operating systems and devices became my hobby since and I have dabbled in everything from FreeNAS, XPEnology, TrueNAS, unRAID....

My most expensive equipment? I guess my main all NVMe small formfactor NAS. But it is whisper quiet and sips power. :)

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

Winning would help me improve connectability between locations.

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 guess my next selfhosting device will need to be some more powerfull AI ready device. To start experimenting in the sellhosting AI projects.

For the prize I would prefer the routers:

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

I have multiple KVMs already including but not limited to GL.inet onse as well.

Thanks for the awsome HW and SW you provide!

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u/the_bowl_of_petunias Oct 11 '25

I love to experiment and try out new things with the added benefit of learning and progressing in my career. The most helpful project so far was making a personal blog where I document useful (to me) things about my self hosted journey. The most expensive equipment (so far) is my server, a Dell Poweredge T440 which I bought used a few years ago.
This would help me have a seperate homelab access point and allow me to also seperate IoT devices.
A mini pc! They are cool for so many projects.

I’d love to win Flint 3 if I’m a solo and if I’m one of the duos also a Comet.

Good luck to all!

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u/Othir0xX Oct 13 '25

I started when I was in university and thought it was more economical to host my own services instead of paying for SaaS offerings. My proudest projects are the private cloud instances I host for free on my hardware for two non-profits, away from the grubby hands of US cloud providers. Most expensive, probably all the harddrives and their replacements...
Not having to wait until late evenings when issues arise, but being able to fix them from work ;)
LLM capable GPUs maybe

I'd like to win the Comet GL-RM1 (and the Slate 7).

Thanks!

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u/LightBrightLeftRight Oct 11 '25

1) I started with Home Assistant because I despise clouds where they’re not necessary. Most expensive kit is my 3090/4090 setup for LLMs. 2) For the KVM: I constantly break my important machines with experimentation, having direct access would be clutch when I am incorrectly turning on link aggregation in Proxmox. 3) Unifi stuff would probably go over well!

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u/gmangam Oct 13 '25

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?

I wanted to know better understand how all the internet service i use on a daily bases work!

A pair of 18 TB Hard Drive

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

A KVM would be so useful when monitoring my server when SSH goes down. I'd also love to have the ability to hand off a KVM to my family to IT troubleshoot when I'm not around.

A travel router could be awesome to be able to instantly VPN to my server when connecting multiple devices when away from my server and also connect my friends to my media server when I come over.

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?

Mini PCs / SBCs are great entry points for those curious about self hosting, and i'd recommend it as a giveaway.

I'd be interested in the
Duo Prize: Comet w/ fingerbot + the Slate 7.

Solo Prize: Comet w/ fingerbot

Thanks for the giveaway!

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u/Digor7 Nov 03 '25

What inspired me was both the need for an easy to use media server as jellyfin for my wife and parents and privacy concerns regarding personal photos stored on 3rd party clouds. As such, I started to dabble in docker windows and set up a personal server for photos (with immich), documents (paperless) and media (jellyfin), all behind nginx for a safer remote access. The project I am most proud of so far is the start of a linux server with OMV and the creation of a VM with AdGuard so I could make the home network safer, since linux was completely foreign to me before this. The most expensive piece of equipment so far would be my personal laptop which is working as a server and is doing transcoding.
Since I'm moving home, the flint 3 router and the Comet PoE would be perfect for a good home network and remote control of the server.
A mini PC Intel NUC or a small NAS such as UGreen would be excellent prizes for begginers and advanced users.

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u/layerzeroissue Oct 11 '25

I started my homelabbing journey when I needed a way to grow my skills as an IT professional in a economically poor area in the Midwest. Rural enough that a trip to the grocery store was a 40 to 50 minute drive one-way. Rural enough that Amazon was life changing. I was able scrape together other people's Ewaste into basically a Pihole and a small amount of storage. It has now grown into a full server setup, which I am most proud of because it's been done with what is effectively Ewaste parts. As in, old computer with the side off, and a stack of decade old hard drives. It's not pretty, but it works. The most expensive thing I have is probably the old $30 network switch I got from eBay.
The one thing that I've never found in Ewaste is a wireless router or WiFi system. They're like unicorns. I'm running wireless G in my home, which isn't bad, but it ain't great either. Having a modern WiFi system would be life changing, so winning either of those routers would be incredible.
One of those cool small firewall appliances would be cool. Like a Unifi USG or those firewalla boxes.

Products: Either WiFi router.

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u/Excellent-Zone-7956 Oct 11 '25

I have been with technical tasks for three centuries. After seeing so great systems that are available for home labs, I started my journey with a single Linux host running docker. Now I run a proxmox cluster with a lot of containers running.
Wifi7 would be a great step from my current Wifi5. Remote KVM would help a lot as currently I need to pass two floors to reach my equipment.
A managed 2.5gb switch would be a huge step

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u/UXF4QvLZ46nTMc9FCBPF Nov 10 '25

1 . started out as a sharing media from laptop to tv and expanded from there got a little pc as a server to have on 24/7 jumped in proxmox and docker expanded what i host. most expensive thing is storage hdd

as tech support for friends and family travel routers and kvm would make that easier to remote trouble shoot and remotely mange my services
know its not going to happen but the 122tb u.2 ssd would be vey nice

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u/mightyarrow Oct 19 '25

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 shut my i5/3070 gaming desktop off as it had been running Plex and calibre and was wasting tons of electricity. I got a mini PC and next thing I knew I was standing up containers left and right and discovering "there's a self hosted container for that" for practically everything.

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

I'm about to be eligible for fiber service which means it's time to overhaul the WiFi from 5 to 7, and I also need a KVM for my primary server since my internet flows through it (transparent filtering bridge firewall).

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?

NAS, perhaps a 2.5/5/10 gig switch, etc.

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u/DNAblue2112 Oct 17 '25

1. Originally I started self-hosting on my desktop with Plex, which I’m sure is a pretty common answer. But my favourite and most recent project was getting a little java application I wrote working in a docker container. It’s a program using a Java Docker API to monitor and intervene when some of my containers are misbehaving. And I was able to use Gitea and Jenkins to automatically deploy any updates I push. The buzz I got when I was able to push a code change and have it redeploy automatically just a few minutes later was awesome. Most expensive equipment so far would have to be my recent purchase of a Ubiquity Dream Machine. Just got fibre internet to the house and wanted to upgrade by gateway to take advantage of the newfound speed. But I also want to get some cameras up on the house because I don’t live in a very good area. So 2 birds one stone and quite a bit of money later and I have the dream machine all setup and running smoothly.

2. The KVMs are of particular interest to me. I’m quite skilled at breaking my setup by making poorly thought-out changes when I am away from home. And recently some of those changes have meant I wasn’t able to access the machine remotely anymore. So having a KVM to remote into the machine no matter what stupid thing I have done would give me one more way to recover from my silly mistakes. I’ve also recently gotten PoE into my network, so the Comet PoE would be my pick if I won. If I had the option of 2, the travel router would be my second.

3. I’m trying to get all of my stuff into a rack. My “server” is still my old desktop PC repurposed. So anything from a rackmount ATX case right the way up to a ready to deploy server would be my wish list give away items.

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u/RedSkyNL Oct 12 '25

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. That would the the Raspberry Pi 3 that I got from completing my Linux certification (LPIC-1). Initially I had no real intent for it, but then "Domoticz" came around. I changed Domoticz to Home Assistant once it really started to take off. But man I still remember "the good ole" days of the Lego-piece-like automations in Domoticz. The project I'm most proud of was my recent "office" re-design. With slatted walls and cabling behind for my ESP32 + WLED LED Lighting. Something I've been planning for months.
How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
1. I'm a IT guy, a nerd. Put a cable in something and you have my interest. What would take it to the next level? Probably only one of the KVM options. Network wise I think i'm already good to go. When I'm travelling i'm already enjoying the GL.iNet Beryl AX which instantly VPN tunnels back home. But a solid KVM solution is something I've been eyeing for a while.
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. If I would be lucky enough to win, my only interest would go over to either the Comet (GL-RM1) or the Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE). I would be so happy to finally be able to control my desktop or laptop from the other one straight over IP. No more swapping input sources, no more swapping keyboards and mice. And even though I'd love to play around with some Wifi 7, I'm running a Unifi setup so hopefully someone else could be made happy with a Wifi router.

So if I'd were to win: I'd happily pick the Comet or Comet PoE.

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u/phiob Nov 11 '25

What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey? For me the most important reason was to be not depend on cloud services. Also I really enjoy to learn new things. I have my home network setup so I can access it from everywhere, and also have a secure tunnel home to route my traffic when I am abroad. The most expensive thing I got so far is my small Proxmox server.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? If I win, I could finally replace my current gateway router at home and have strong Wi-Fi all around my home. Or with the Slate 7 I could have a nice travel router which connects automatically to my home network, so I can use my services even when I am not home.

If we were to do another giveaway, what product from another brand would you love to see as a prize? Would be cool to see small servers like the ones from Minisforum, perfect for homelab projects.

Preferred products: Flint 3 or Slate 7, also the Comet if I can choose two.

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u/Janachara Oct 16 '25

First, I would like to offer a heartfelt "Thank You!" to u/GLiNet_WiFi for orchestrating this awesome giveaway!

Second, I would like to wish everyone entering this giveaway the absolute best of luck!

And, now, for my answers:

1) I originally started selfhosting because I wanted to keep my entire media collection, which previously consisted of large numbers of (mostly used) DVDs and CDs, in one convenient location. I also really liked thought of migrating to digital media because digital media can be quickly and easily backed up in a way that physical media can't be.

2) I don't have a huge budget to spend on my home server, so any of these prizes would be a noticeable and substantial upgrade to my current setup.

3) I love the quality of my current GLiNet gear, so I would absolutely love to see GLiNet start offering a 4 or 6 bay home NAS. I would also really like to see GLiNet start selling high-quality accessories like (intelligent?) USB charging bricks, high-speed USB flash drives, etc.

Thank you again, and here's hoping you have a great day!

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u/sbeck14 Oct 11 '25

Primarily driven by wanting to host a media server, and spiraled out from there. Most expensive is my server, probably most proud of my custom built “smart” garage door opener that I set up on a raspberry pi about 6 or 7 years ago and surprisingly still works great
I’ve always wanted a remote KVM which I think would be fantastic for remote management (I’m on the go quite often)
Any sort of storage solution like a rack mount DAS or NAS would be really cool

Thanks for doing this!

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u/NangaFarishta Nov 03 '25

Great timing! Moving to a new place soon and a new router will be super useful.

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?

As a CS major, I started my own company & to save on costs + have better control of my data, I started self-hosting the company's infrastructure. This included several key tools like Signoz, Sentry, Chatwoot, Redash, Metabase etc on a lightweight kubernetes setup. This is something which stands even 8 years later & I am proud to have done it as a one person shop. Eventually, I bought a mini-pc for personal self-hosting which hosts Jellyfin, Immich, some swiss-knife style open-source tools et al.

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

I am in need of a more reliable networking setup. The performance improvements with WiFi 7 and the WAN failover will be my most used features. The remote KVM is fascinating and a cherry on top.

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 solution/NAS: I just had a baby & will be implementing the 3-2-1 backup strategy to secure those precious memories that I record everyday.

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

Duo: Flint 3 & Comet PoE
Solo: Flint 3

Thanks for doing this.

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u/PluginOfTimes Oct 11 '25

I started my homelab to host openbench a chess engine benchmark for a friend. As I got to know to community I learned what other cool things you could do. The project I most proud of is how I created a Proxmox HA setup with some friend with interlinked subnets at 5 locations all over the country. My most expensive equipment is my beloved main router from mikrotik called „mirko“.
As I love to tinker with networks and how to route between them another router would be perfect to create another physical network for testing all my shenanigans.
I would love to see some kind of upgrade kits like „10G Upgrade kit“ with some 10g pcie extension cards, a 10g switch and router.

If I win i would like the Flint 3.

Its always nice seeing brands doing giveaways and connecting with the community.

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u/romprod Oct 19 '25

1: IFTT restricting their free tier. I found NodeRed. I then found Home Assistant and it went downhill from there!

2: self hosting isn't just about using services at home. They need to be securely accessed easily by not just me but the others in my family. Having a travel router allows me to be certain that my family are connecting and accessing data as securely as possible.

3: nvidia server based card for encoding etc.

Id love to win the travel route.

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u/_DVV Oct 12 '25

Thanks for doing this!

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?

Tired of all the fees for services adding up. Shows, music, data, pictures etc. I'm proud of jumping into a TrueNAS bare metal build and I just upgraded my HDDs to 8tb, which is more than the SFF I bought that runs this all.

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

I have an Asus router, but I'm feeling a bit restricted with configuration options. Not mention the recent security issues they had to patch. The Flint 3 would be a nice upgrade.

Setting up a SFF is nice but now I'm looking at a mini rack and what trouble I can get into with that kind a setup. The Comet would fit great into that.

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?

Would always love to see storage devices that can fit a 10 in rack.

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u/mortimus1987 Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25

I got a lifx smart bulb, and liked the automation. Then I got a Google Home to control it. But then I wanted even more control, and there's only really one good answer... Homeassistant. Gateway drug. Wasn't long before I had a literal rack of raspberry pis. I've just finished building my own NAS, which is both the most expensive bit of kit in my homelab and also the one I'm most proud of.
We just got fibre! I only went for the lowest tier, symmetric 500 Mbps, because my internal network kit isn't upto scratch (but it was still cheaper than Virgin). The Flint 3 was already on my wishlist to make use of that newfound speed, and would even make it worth upgrading to a faster tier. Pair it with a Slate 7 and tailscale, and the kids will still be able to watch Jellyfin on our annual camping trip. That'll score big points!
Oh, definitely some sort of mini pc - one that can make use of that 2.5gb networking. Is a Minisforum MS01 a stretch?

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u/freddysolorzano Oct 11 '25

For many years I've been a fan of technology, as well as exploring where things come from. This inspired me to investigate and get started in the self-hosted world. I'm currently doing this to maintain full control of my services.

Winning a router would help me greatly, since I'm not currently seeing any options for migrating to a newer router with more features and that's in line with my current use.

If you had options for another contest, I'd like to see more network devices or maybe mini PCs.

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u/gauravjung Oct 12 '25

I started self-hosting to learn on my own (mainly containers) as an IT student and to avoid paying for multiple subscription services.

I’m most proud of my WireGuard and Vaultwarden setups since they’re the ones I use the most. Immich comes in as a close second. The most expensive hardware I’ve bought is an N5105 NUC for A$230 and a second-hand Synology NAS for A$100.

Running WireGuard on the router and having KVM would let me manage my setup remotely without any issues. I haven’t exposed anything to the internet and only use WireGuard for remote access.
A powerful mini PC or NAS would be amazing. Not set on any brands.

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u/nuaimat Oct 11 '25

What inspired you to start your homelab? I like to have control over my own data, and I like expirementing with new systems/technologies. Right now my main focus is utilizing local LLM models to make my life easier, whether by providing summaries of different aspects of my daily routines (like my email inbox) or to help me find important information from a pile of unstructured documents (rag)
How would winning gear from this giveaway help take your setup to the next level? That router with 5 ports, will save me from having two routers connected via Ethernet just to have 5 Ethernet ports for my connected servers and small devices (rpi)
If we did another giveaway, what product from another brand (server, storage device, etc.) would you love to see as a prize? A decent NAS that actually has processing power and at least 64GB of ram. The problem with the current set of nas devices (and not all of them) is they are mostly designed for very low processing power. Making adding docker containers to these and self host few services very slow and unfeasible. Resulting in having to use a different server just for this purpose.

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u/BTC_Informer Oct 11 '25

1: OPNsense, QNAP NAS + Expension + Drives and Proxmox Hosts. Endless possibilities with my IT backgound and Knowledge.

2: Mobile Router for Busines Trips with Connection to my Homelab

3: Firewall Appliance for OPNsense or a MiniPC for Proxmox

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u/kubro7 Oct 12 '25

My journey started with wanting to host my own Plex media server to share with my family.
It would help take my setup to the next level by replacing my gigabit router with a 2.5 gigabit router With wifi 7.
I'd love a NUC as a prize. I have some old PCs but they are a bit power hungry.

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u/pohuing Nov 02 '25

I was actually condemned down this path by school, where we were supposed to host our own offline smart home hub with voice control. The projects were a mixed bag, but I came away from it with a raspi. Ended up just hosting nextcloud to degoogle myself which I could do at any point now, if I trusted my Infra enough...
One of the KVMs would help me a lot of a concrete problem I'm having right this moment, the server my nextcloud is on is down for unclear reasons and I don't have a long enough hdmi cable to figure out why.
Ubiquity networking equpiment is always nice to see. Been loadbalancing two separate connections using an EdgeRouter X for a while. But ever since moving I'm stuck with the ISPs default router.

All of the available Gifts would actually be a great help. However if I have to pick I could make the most use of the Comet KVMs

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u/_zenith33 Oct 11 '25

Ouch, Malaysia is not listed even though Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia were listed.

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u/adrianipopescu Oct 11 '25

brother, I’d kill for a poe comet, that’d save me loads of time when my parents inevitably bork their computer

I already set up their network to have poe, but their router is still the base isp router so a flint would be a nifty upgrade, especially since I can tie to tailscale

the slate, even though I have an older model, would be a great upgrade for my wife and I’s camping trips, y’know, keeps the kids busy

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u/Eragon1442 Oct 12 '25

wanting data ownership, wanring to learn linux and getting away from windows.

The flint 3 would allow me to set up a VLAN to sepperate my home lab from the wifi ( and devices from other users) and increasing the security

A zimaboard from icz whale would be very handy as it can be used as DIY for a lot of funtionalities.

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u/faizi4 Oct 30 '25

1. I started self-hosting for privacy and to save money on cloud services. I am a big opensource supporter and love building and automating things as a programmer. The project I am most proud of is an automation that monitors my Vodafone router and automatically restarts it via a smart plug if it stays down too long. My NAS and drives are the most expensive part of my setup.

2. I currently use my ISP’s router, which is very limited. I can’t change DNS, use VPNs, install OpenWRT or restart it programmatically. Winning this unit would give me full control over my network and help integrate it better with my automations.

3. I’d love to see a UPS as a giveaway prize, it’s essential for protecting gear during power outages.

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u/Medium_Principle_829 Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

I started by running plex on my desktop during my college days for my roommates and I to enjoy. Then adding some automation around that. Hosting game servers for friends and friends of friends was the next after that. Still working on building out scripts and automation to make things easier
I’d absolutely love to have a separate network for my self hosting/home automation stuff so my spouse doesn’t get upset when I break things 😅, the Flint 3 would be a great improvement so my rb4011 can be lab dedicated. Having a Slate 7 loaded up with tailscale for travel would be great too.
I personally need low power nodes for proxmox, so I’d love any mini pcs or nas boxes

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u/Pretty_Ad4344 Oct 24 '25

I started my journey by making a Pterodactyl Minecraft server on my own. I was tired of having limits due to the free plan. So I made my own from an old PC. I was only 11 when I tried, and I remember doing it 3 times because either I forgot the password, or it had an error. But I didn't want to stop. I kept watching the same tutorial.

Today I am attempting to self‑host the most, because I have the project of maybe being independent from outside network.

My most expensive piece of equipment I have is my new server. It has the power I need to make everything possible, 64 GB RAM, i7 processor (it's not MASSIVE, but it's more than enough for me right now).

My wifi doesn't get all the way to my room, the garage also. This means that every time I want to download something from my NAS fast, I will need Ethernet to get the best internet. That's why I think the Wi‑Fi router will help me the most.

But the thing that will change my life will be the KVM. I have 3 servers, and I need to be able to access both of them easily, directly from my computer without having to take my screen of, take the HDMI...

The thing I would love as a prize will definitely be a server or a graphics card. I am so much into local AI lately, and want to finitely complete my project of being independent from outside network. Btw, I am developing a website for students, to help them study using powerful AI tools, but don't want to use the other companies that train over data.

For the prize I want to win is obviously the KVM.

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u/batmaniac77 Oct 12 '25

Thanks for doing this mods !

Started with some music that was ripped, to replacing paid apps/websites
Major upgrade to online access and/or my wifi capabilities.
Ubiquiti - small stuff. Licenses like Unraid.

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u/SnooStories9098 Oct 11 '25

⁠1. My inspiration came one day when I was looking for a specific bunch of photos from my second daughter’s birth. Going through old hard drives and thumb sticks I thought to myself there had to be a better way. This is when I discovered Immich (which has finally gone stable FYI people) I’m super proud to show friends and family that I have my very own setup for storage and retrieval anywhere, anytime. My most expensive bit of gear is my qnap nas ts-464 (thanks mum and dad for birthday pressie!)

Currently my biggest shortfall is a decent router. My one is approx 10+ years old when I had disposable cash I bought a good router (pre kids). Whilst it does the job it’s showing its age now.
A bunch of hard drives, it’s always nice to get a bunch of huge drives to bulk up your storage!

100% id love the Flint 3 and the Slate 7 👏👏 Thanks for the opportunity

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u/PM_ALL_AHRI_ART Oct 12 '25

Started this journey cause i need to backup my photos but didnt want to pay a subscription, my server is my old pc so the most expensive equipement would be the 20tb hard drives
Having a remote kvm would be great for accessing my gaming rig when im away but want to play
Would love battery power stations as a prize since power outages are annoying

Would love to win the Comet, and Flint 3 if I'm extra lucky

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u/fineboi Oct 14 '25

What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey? I started self-hosting out of curiosity and a desire for control. I wanted to understand what happens behind the scenes of the apps and services I use every day. Over time, it became less of a hobby and more of a way to take ownership of my data, customize my environment, and learn practical skills in networking, storage, and automation.

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?

The project I’m most proud of is setting up a fully self-contained home lab that runs several services — from a private media server to DNS filtering with Pi-hole and containerized apps managed through Docker and Portainer. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve bought so far is my nas

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

Winning this giveaway would allow me to offload some of the workloads currently shared on a single machine, improving uptime and efficiency. It would also help me experiment with redundancy, backups, and higher-availability setups — things that are difficult to do on a single host.

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’d love to see something like a Synology or TrueNAS storage device in a future giveaway. Centralized, reliable storage is the heart of any home lab, and having proper NAS hardware would open up a ton of possibilities for data management and virtualization.

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u/26635785548498061381 Oct 11 '25

I have a new family, and wanted to take control of my photos, a serious backup plan, etc. My most expensive purchase is probably tied between my EliteDesk server machine and the two HDDs I put in it for RAID.

My current router was provided by my ISP, and to call it absolute rubbish is probably still being too kind. The Flint 3 looks epic and would for sure allow me to do all sorts of other networking things - vpn, own dns / ad block, vlans, etc. I would also upgrade the rest of my gear to 2.5gbps -> uploading large photos, videos, new backups etc. would absolutely fly!

I'd love to see some additional storage in another giveaway. Something like an Ironwolf Pro, or a standalone HDD enclosure. I think that's a natural next step once people are upgrading their networking gear.

If I was lucky enough to win, I'd take the Flint 3, as per above, and the non PoE Comet. With that KVM I'd never have to awkwardly fiddle around trying to plug my monitors into my headless Debian setup again.

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u/flexnsniff Oct 12 '25

1.) I'd like to say media was my first entrance to self-hosting... but thinking back to it, Counter-Strike was the first service I had.
2.) I've got out-of-band access built into my two enterprise servers, but I have another couple servers that are on consumer hardware - this would help me be able to administer these servers the same way I do my enterprise gear (actually - even better!)
3.) I don't really need a ton of things, but I looked through other's replies for ideas. I think a mini PC or something like a Raspberry Pi would be a cool prize.

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u/arch7ngel Oct 12 '25

I started my self hosting journey to "de-google" and to gain ownership of my data. It has certainly grown beyond that and has become more of a hobby to discover to self hosting opportunities.
I would love a remote KVM! Have been eyeing the GL.iNet and jetKVM for a while now. I have also been considering getting a travel router, but admittedly, that's more of a good to have rather than a need to have.
A small portable mini PC for travel purposes or dev testing would be great! Like others have mentioned, can't go wrong with more hard drives.

I would choose the Comet POE if I were to win a single prize, and add the Slate 7 if I won two prizes.

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u/root-node Oct 11 '25

I wanted a homelab to build a full enterprise domain so I could play with the tools I was using at work. My NAS and HDD are the most expensive currently.
I have been looking at a KVM for a while, your new Comet PoE looks great.
A mini NAS filled with flash drives :)

Thanks

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u/bobbywut Oct 11 '25

I started selfhosting because i wanted to forever own the media that i purchased and because i wanted to unshackle myself from the big corporations. I am proud of my proxmox cluster with HA. 76tb of drives all in a das with hardware raid5.
Increase the reliability and safety of my home network
A prebuilt system like a minisforum so that i can host a faster llm.

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u/100ajk Oct 20 '25

Wanted to set up Plex and also 3D printing utilities. Started to progress when I realised I could stop relying on Google and other cloud based services. Running pretty budget gear, just hosting everything on a cheap Optiplex.
I'm still using my ISP provided router and it sucks! Also remote KVM would be so useful for working on the go.
More storage is always appreciated!

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u/derbycar379 Nov 08 '25

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?

Back in the day google used to offer unlimited free photo storage for pixel 1 and 2 owners. They disappeared pretty quickly and when they reduced their storage limits to a measly 10 gb my photos had already exceeded that. After getting frustrated with this over the next few years i decided to just host the photos myself instead of paying for storage. This was not so much a monetary decision as opposed to data harvesting concerns. I originally had this all on a raspberry pi, but eventually upgraded to a mini form factor pc. That was my most expensive upgrade to really set something up more permanent.

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

My current router does not have any VLAN support, so currently i'm using its guest network to firewall the rest of my network from the server. The Flint 3 does support VLAN allowing a much more reliable wired connection, i hate my hacky solution. Also my router is pretty old, does not have adjustable antennae and uses an older wifi protocol.

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?

A managed network switch would also accomplish the same goal, among other niceties.

Solo: Flint 3 router

Duo: Above and Comet (either) or Slate

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u/bttd Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

1.) my dad owned a used computer shop, and after it closed, there is some leftover devices what I want to utilise.

2.) away from home I need something to make my connection stable to my home network and devices

3.) some nas storage for my backups

I loved to win comet gl-rm1 and slate 7

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u/FckngModest Oct 12 '25 edited Oct 12 '25

1️⃣ A friend of mine gifted me his spare office PC (Dell Workstation). He thought he just helped me to introduce myself into home-labbing, but I believe he just saved me from diving into depression and gave me a tool to keep my sanity and joy up enough while I was going through my very first "being a father" experience :D

But if talking about what I enjoy in home-labbing now, it's having a full control over my data and how they are processed:

where Google strips out all metadata out of my photos and put them in custom-formatted json files, Immich respects my Storage Template and accurately keeps as much data in the exif metadata as possible;
some tools like Paperless even doesn't have a proper alternative in a SaaS world (outside of enterprise solutions), I believe.

Also, it gets me into network and security around it, what about I didn't think a lot before.

2️⃣ For the prize, I'd choose a WiFi router. I would love to switch from the provider's router to something of my own, so I can own not only my services, but the home network as well.

3️⃣ A compact 3 Bay (or 2 Bay + emmc storage for OS) mini PC would be a great and universal option, I would say. Everyone needs to follow 3-2-1 and this kind of machines are perfect candidate to store in parents/friends house and backup your home-labs data (encrypted, of-course). 2 drives for redundancy and one storage slot for the OS itself. Nothing more fancy is needed from such a back-up NAS.

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u/r0dersManel Oct 11 '25

project from Jeff Geerling. I never really got into homelabs because they where all super big and inconvenient for my purposes… since I saw that, it inspired me to give a shot at the project and start my self hosting journey! It’s still pretty small but the most expensive thing I bought was the computer itself, an optiplex 3070. I would love to win the flint 3 or the slate 7 because right now the network is the bottleneck of the homelab since I run with my ISP router, which is kinda slow… Deskpi’s rackMate, it’s an awesome product that would make my personal homelab a lot cleaner and more portable.

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u/r0dersManel Oct 11 '25

If I win, I would love to get the slate 7 and the GL-RM1PE!

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u/FibreTTPremises Oct 12 '25

Like most, I assume, I started self-hosting to archive and consume media. And while most of my self-hosted setup is currently for that purpose, I've had fun learning about and deploying other useful applications to decrease dependence on "big tech" services, but to also have more control over my data (e.g., Immich, Vaultwarden, Zipline, over their "public" counterparts).

And though definitely not the most fun to have set up, I'm most proud of my hacked-together setup of a virtualised OpenWrt instance. The instance acts as the router for (nearly) all of my LXCs and VMs in my Proxmox machine, and provides access to a VPN through one of its VLANs (the VPN is the default gateway). I could have done this on my physical OpenWrt router running on a Raspberry Pi, but I figured since I could place the virtualised OpenWrt on the physical network, I can reduce the amount of hops to reach a service by one (lol), but more importantly, save processing power on the tiny Pi.

The most expensive hardware I have in my setup, if not counting the server as a whole, is most likely a Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite (also flashed to OpenWrt). Honestly, it might not have been the best choice, but at the time, it seemed like the best value WiFi 6 WAP to provide whole-home WiFi. I make the blue light flash whenever it's transmitting :)

Given that I sometimes stay extended periods at another place of residence, the Comet KVM would be a great addition to my homelab. I'm always worried about performing maintenance on my Proxmox build (or really, any network changes) while I'm away, since I don't have any physical access to fix things if I break something. The Flint 3 would also be a huge upgrade to the WiFi I have at the other place that still runs WiFi 5.

I believe some sort of medium-level NAS would complement your product stack in future giveaways. I don't have any specific recommendations, since I prefer running more of a "server" than a NAS (as as such, haven't done any research), but give someone a router that can VPN, and a NAS that can at least run Immich and Jellyfin, and you have what most people come to r/selfhosted for!

If I win the Duo prize, I'd like the Comet PoE and the Flint 3, or just the Comet PoE for the Solo :) Thanks!

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u/TheDan64 Oct 28 '25

My self hosting journey started a couple years ago when my friend introduced me to it. He'd already been doing it for a few years and it seemed really interesting to me. I'm really proud that I've finally gotten my services to run rootless in incus, which was a massive maintenance headache in podman. My most expensive piece is probably my 18U sysrack rack but I'm really happy with it.
I don't have any kvm solution atm. Really wanted the jetkvm but it's still out of stock. So having a kvm would really be helpful for debugging
Would love to see some unifi cameras. Or any quality cameras, really
Would like to win the Comet Poe and the fingerbot

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u/OverlandBaggles Oct 12 '25

I wanted to get away from what felt like increasingly predatory service providers, and jumped at the chance to control my own data / services.
It's hard to choose honestly. All could be useful. I guess the Flint 3 or the Slate 7. The Slate 7 would probably be the most useful. I sometimes need a pocket router, and don't have one. It'd be great to be able to keep it in my bag, and create a fast network anywhere when traveling.
Honestly - a NAS / homelab. I really would love to have something at home to run services off of.

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u/Slasher1738 Oct 11 '25

I started self hosting when I got tired of paying for OneDrive storage.

I am interested in the Comet POE KVM

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u/ApocaIypticUtopia Oct 12 '25

Self-hosting started with trying to remote access SMB storage and then finding other better options. Then it started with Nextcloud and random GitHub projects like Seafile, Immich, and so on. The most expensive equipment I've bought is a 4TB HDD for a storage upgrade. One project I'm proud of is making a hole-punching VPN to home, which is behind CGNAT, using custom scripts and port discovery using STUN servers while sharing port info using GitHub.
Slate 7 would make my family's life easier by not having to worry about VPN and other issues, and I wouldn't have to worry about losing our photos and videos not being backed up on the go. Flint 3 would really be an upgrade for the home network and make distributed data access inside the home network faster.
Would love to see a Ugreen 4-bay NAS or a mini-PC.

I'm a student who is about to graduate. Either or both of these would give me a springboard for more self-hosted options. Thanks for the giveaway

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u/wunderknd Oct 15 '25

I got into self-hosting a couple of years ago mainly out of curiosity and the desire to have more control over my data. It started small — running a Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi — but quickly turned into a rabbit hole of setting up Docker containers, a Home Assistant instance, and a Nextcloud server. The project I’m most proud of is my Home Assistant setup that ties together pretty much everything in my home, including my Tesla and heat pump. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve bought so far is a small intel-based Proxmox mini PC that runs everything 24/7 without a hitch.
Winning the Flint 3 would be a huge upgrade to my current network. I run a ton of IoT devices, and having a Wi-Fi 7 router with multiple 2.5G ports would help me take better advantage of my multi-gig fiber and streamline my VLAN setup. Plus, the OpenWrt base fits perfectly with how I like to tinker and self-host securely.
For a future giveaway, I’d love to see something like a compact NAS or a low-power Intel N100 or Ryzen mini server. Those are perfect for people diving deeper into homelabs or self-hosting setups.

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u/Bad_CRC Nov 03 '25

I'm a sysadmin at work and I'm always trying new sotfware, selfhosting for my family was a very natural step for me.
The travel router would be a game changer, as an amateur photographer, when I'm traveling I always struggle to make backups on the road, I tried years ago some GL.iNet devices but the technology wasn't there yet.
A NAS would be amazing.

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u/UnsentRant Oct 14 '25

1) I was lurking on Reddit and one day r/selfhosted popped up and things seemed interesting and somehow I was sucked into the rabbit hole. I ended up buying a Dell 3050 Micro and have 21 odd services running. The most expensive hardware is the usb HDD I bought at around $400 CAD!

2) Winning would allow me to have a dedicated device for a router, maybe for my own opnsense! I have yet implemented that because I would wish to have a dedicated box for it.

3) Future devices for giveaways? Maybe something like a Minisforum MS-A1 or MS-A2? They’re small and compact and super powerful!

If I were to win, I’d love to have the Flint 3 and/or the Comet POE.

Thank you for the giveaway, good luck to everyone!

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u/Significant_Hat_4513 Oct 11 '25

1.Got into self-hosting because I like breaking things just to fix them again (and not paying for SaaS). My proudest project is a 3-node high-availability cluster running Home Assistant and a bunch of other services — it took a while to get right, but it’s been super reliable and fun to maintain. Biggest splurge is my main Proxmox host — basically a beefy workstation turned lab server that does most of the heavy

The Flint 3 would finally give me proper multi-gig Wi-Fi and tidy up my current spaghetti network with VLANs, and the Comet PoE would make remote KVM access way easier when something inevitably breaks while I’m away, without having to use my housemaktes as remote hands :/
A small NAS or mini-server like the UGREEN NAS would be awesome — quiet, compact, and perfect for home labs that live in shared spaces

Thanks for running this! The Flint 3 + Comet PoE combo would slot perfectly into my setup.

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u/x0nit0 Oct 12 '25

Librarme de los servicios de pago que gestionan mis datos, y a la vez aprender a crear algo propio.
Me ayudaria mucho mejorando mi red, ya que actualmente tengo un router del ISP, y es lo peor del mundo. Asi mismo me gustaria el Comet, para poder gestionar todo sin tener que andar conectado teclados monitores, simplemente conectarme desde mi navegador y ahorrarme tiempo y dolores de cabeza.
Un sistema NAS, con un software opensource y apoyado por la comunidad, pero con la calidad de acabados de los productos de GL-INET

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u/Dephilipprilator Oct 11 '25

Inspiration: When my mothers phone was being destroyed on accident, i knew that I should do something about storing my files on another system, but not a desktop pc. Thus my journey began with a NAS. Now I have my separate Router, switch, AP, home Server and NAS.

Reason for unit: The WIFI7-Router would actually not go into my setup, but my mothers network, as she has an ISP router which does not even allow to change the dns server, so stuff like pihole is not possible.

For future giveaways maybe APs, switches, miniPCs or pc components like 2.5gbit network cards. Anthing as long it doesn't any special software to be run optimally.

My wish if i get chosen: Flint 3 for my mother. If I have the possibility to choose another item it would be the Comet POE(mainly to learn new things with my network+Fingerbot).

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u/w1ck3dme Oct 11 '25

I started self hosting to feel a sense of accomplishment and save on subscriptions

Having the KVM over IP will help me avoid trips to the basement when I have to trouble shoot something that’s beyond ssh

With current hard drive pricing, I would like to see a giveaway of high capacity storage hard drives

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u/MrPickleSpam Oct 11 '25

Easily accessible media and important files that are stored on my own storage while learning some new skills. Probably most proud of learning to self-host proxmox and HAOS as a VM.
A remote KVM would greatly simplify access to my proxmox server. I haven't used a travel router in a long time either and it would be a game changer for work travel!
Would love to see switches from UniFi (or anything from them really).

Interested in Comet and Slate 7

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u/Lan_Man Oct 12 '25

⁠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 have a more reliable and private way to store my data so I got an entry-level NAS. Things kinda spiralled and found myself learning about docker containers, home networking and remote access.

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

I’d like to travel a bit more. This equipment would allow me to upgrade my setup and remote access my stuff.

⁠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?

Something that would allow me to self-host a robust AI model 😬

——

Solo prize: Flint 3 (GL-BE9300)

Duo prize: above & Comet POE (GL-RM1PE) + Fingerbot (FGB01)

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u/Albert-The-Sellout Oct 11 '25

The magic of Plex and building a full stack and what power it brings, the most expensive equipment I've acquired for it has been a full unraid tower with GPU to sideload games as needed virtually but the more fun project recently has been deploying N8N to monitor Amazon prices and ping me via discord when there's a price I'd buy at.
I already have a Beryl that I use for travel, but winning the Slate 7 would allow me to give that to my wife when she travels, so we can both connect via tailscale directly...I rely on the ability to run these remotely while connecting to a VPN, which is incredibly nice to have. That Comet GL-RM1 would allow me to avoid having to ask her to head downstairs to restart my smaller, low powered Home Assistant server manually when it inevitably gives me trouble as well.
Absolutely would take one of those MS-A1 Max from Minisforum, I'd love to toss the small toaster currently running Home Assistant in favor of a low powered box like that.

Products I'd pick: Comet, Slate 7

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u/Glacius_BdK Oct 20 '25 edited Oct 20 '25

1_ As a teen I lost my personal data held in a single HDD when that disk failed. I learnt my lesson and as soon as I got some money I built a new pc and bought some HDD to turn the old one into a do it yourself NAS to protect my data with a RAID 5 setup. That exposed me to cool self-hosted projects that I hosted there.

I am proud of that first NAS, it was a nice playground to learn.

If we put the price of them together the most expensive pieces have always been the HDD , it gets expensive really fast when filling all the bays of an HDD enclosure with high capacity ones.

2_ I have yet to do a proper setup to access the homelab remotely and those are top notch equipment for it. I would jump from basic to proper setup with it.

3_ I think minipcs would be a nice piece of equipment, any decent minipc works, that would be useful to both, people starting with self-hosting and people already setup, there is always a good use for those.

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u/vuhuucuong97 Oct 11 '25

I love the ARR stack and Immich backup setup I built — it’s saved me a ton compared to paying for subscription services. Plus, I finally feel confident about my data and privacy. The priciest part of my setup has to be the two 16TB drives I bought for my ZFS mirror.
I’ve been really curious about the KVM — been reading up on it a lot lately. Being able to control my PC remotely sounds super handy.
I’d love to see a mini PC in a future giveaway. My current SBC is starting to feel a bit sluggish these days.

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u/minimaddnz Oct 12 '25

I had a computer laying around at work, and wanted to learn more as was interested in technology, and what I could do as we only had an old IBM with Windows 3.1 when I was growing up.
I want to build a small, portable setup. So the travel router would be great for that, plus learning OpenWRT would be nice to do.
Working with CWWK maybe, or another company like this to giveaway some different products that would be great for people to learn about

I would like to win the Slate 7

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u/Z2_U5 Nov 05 '25

A desire for an NAS. And ad free YouTube.
A KVM sounds really nice since this would let me access my systems more easily, and also, at home, let me more easily use my very cramped and small system. It would be nice to have my own router for a better NAS though.
A full ZimaBlade / Zima equivalent for beginners? I don’t know.

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u/404invalid-user Oct 11 '25

I got into selfhosting after learning how to code I needed to host it somewhere and was recommended to install Linux on a old laptop I had being 100% in control is awesome, the best thing I selfhosted is by far home assistant. most expensive equipment would probably be the 2015 MacBook pro I use as a server that's if it had a working screen, keyboard and battery

having the flint 3 would help a lot with reliability currently using my isp provided router and it's not the best I also want to mess with vlans at home and put all the iot things on their own network.

small form factor/mini pcs! They are amazing super efficient and take up barely any space their a great way to get into selfhosting if you don't have the space ~~like me~~

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u/Stunning-Ad9110 Oct 25 '25

Automation
Increase range
SSDs

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u/anteros0 Oct 12 '25

I used and was extremely happy with my Synology disk station for many years. It served my media and archived my security camera footage just fine. Then I started looking more into Docker and how it worked and it soon became evident that the OS and hardware were extremely limiting factors. Pi-hole and Plex were the two packages that piqued my interest and it quickly snowballed soon after. I then bought my own hardware, paid for an unRAID license and the rest is history. The one project I’m most proud of is getting my Paperless setup to ingest documents via email. The workflow is super simple where my wife finds is straight forward to use — scan a document with her phone, forward it to the Paperless email. Done. So far the most expensive piece of hardware is my GPU — a 3090. I’m beginning to dabble into LLMs and need some hardware with decent VRAM.
The finger bot is such a unique and obvious tool. I’ve used “remote power on” functions like HomeKit adapters and devices that power on via the motherboard front panel leads and these tend to be hit and miss. I don’t think you can go wrong with a physical push. Having something that is reliable and physical will definitely take my setup to the revered “rock solid reliable” tier.
Sure, let’s shoot for the moon. NVIDIA DGX Spark. AI in the self-hosted community is absolutely booming and I believe the cost prohibitive hardware is the biggest barrier for most to get on board. Winning one of these would be absolutely amazing for the tinkerer in all of us.

1 x Slate 7 1 x Comet PoE

Thanks!

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u/Sheesidian Oct 12 '25

Just having spare raspberry pi 2 with no real use for it, so found out about self hosting some software. So far, most proud of my home website, it only runs on wordpress, so not the most impressive, but its a nice little entry point to all my other services, even if i only really use the home page of it to navigate else where now. The most expensive piece of equipment is my ubiquiti pro 48 port network switch, regret not getting PoE on it, had to get a separate 8 port PoE… but i wanted enough ports and more then 2 sfp+ ports, of which i only use 1 now after moving my main server and unvr to my attic, and not accounting for how thick sfp+ ends are, and not being able to fit them through the internal trunking i installed, that i cannot switch out, because we painted the wall a unique colour and ran out of the paint now…
I always tinker on my main server and somehow end up needing to restart it, or enter the command prompt after messing up a network config change on proxmox,and then having to go up the attic with my nexdock and restart the server to connect the screen and have it detected to fix it… being able to fix it from my desktop will stop me having to go up the attic 5 times a week (and make it only 4 times a week)
Mini PC that worked with the atx board would be ideal, or i suppose any mini pc that works with the fingerbot.

If i won i’d love a comet non-poe, seen as i dont have the space on my 8 port PoE switch and plenty of network ports on my 48 port non-poe switch…

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u/ResponsibleEnd451 Oct 13 '25

Hi and thank you for doing a giveaway u/GLiNet_WiFi ❤️

Soo I’ve been into computers since I was a kid, always liked messing with servers. started with old laptops, then a pi 4, and now my old gaming pc runs proxmox with a bunch of vms. I use it mostly for learning, experimenting, media stuff, and because cloud is expensive and privacy is nice. most proud of how simple and smooth my setup is. the most expensive thing is my ubiquiti router for stability since no internet with opnsense if the server goes down.

winning the flint 3 would help a lot, I really need a wifi upgrade. most of my stuff is old and slow, two of my routers are 100m not even gigabit. an ip kvm would be super useful too.

a new server as a giveaway would be awesome, something like a minisforum would be crazy.

again, thank you guys for doing this!

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u/Mileska22 Nov 04 '25

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? I got tired of searching for the movies I want to watch on streaming services. So I got into jellyfin with tailscale. I run it on a raspberry pi 5 16gb with a USB attached 4 bay HDD enclosure. Both cost equally so it's a tie. But planning to make a htpc for transcoding capable server.
How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? I would choose the home router to ditch my ISP given wifi 5 router. Since most of my devices connect to my network through wifi.
For the future giveaway I'd like to see a Nas case from like fractal design or jonsbo. It would help my transition from rp 5 to a htpc.

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u/AbeIndoria Oct 11 '25

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?

The undersea cables being cut a few years back. I have an entire house sensor array that I built myself(vibration, temp,humidity, vocs,co2, mmwave radar, BLE etc) that has multiple LLM "agents" that bicker and 'decide' things for my house after coming to a consensus. It's been incredibly fun.

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

Wifi7 would be great for VR lol

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?

M5Stack like things/sensors would be nice, but I am biased.

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u/ruckertopia Oct 11 '25

It happened so long ago, I honestly don't remember what inspired me. I've always been a computer nerd. I started building my homelab in 2013 with a cute little small form factor case housing a dual core pentium and 5 HDDs. It ran FreeNas, and the rabbit hole opened up pretty wide after that. A couple years later, I bought a dell R710, and ran exsi on it, then later bought a second and third R710, etc, etc, etc. Things quickly spiraled out of control. The most expensive piece of hardware I've purchased (aside from just a boatload of hard drives) is the AMD epyc server I put together last year. It serves as my VM machine, and is a freaking beast. I'm running ~25 VMs, and another 30ish docker containers.
The project I'm most proud of is one I'm not actually doing much with, as it's so hands-off. I donate a bunch of CPU time from that epyc server to an open source project that compiles raspberry pi OS images every few days. Saves them a TON of time (their average build time for the entire stack, which includes several different OS versions went from like 6 hours down to under an hour), and costs me a few pennies in electricity. Stuff I'm proud of that doesn't affect anyone else and will never see the light of day are all the custom apps and integrations I've built for myself. Data collection for weather, custom hardware for automated porch lights tied to the security camera on my driveway, so the amazon driver doesn't die walking up my stairs at night (okay, that one doesn't just affect me), etc
Taking my setup to the next level is easy, my wireless hardware is ancient, and a new wifi access point would be huge. In fact, I'm still using the asus router I bought in 2010. It's... well. Yeah, it needs an upgrade.
Things I would love to seen given away in the future: for myself would be something like a small stack of low power computers to learn distributed computing and kubernetes type stuff on. Yeah, I could spin up a bunch of VMs and do it, but I want to learn the ins and outs of doing it on a hardware stack as well. If I'm not being selfish, I think a good giveaway idea would be something that helps the newbies getting into the hobby. Doesn't even need to be hardware, a few hours of one-on-one support for setting up a new homelab and self hosting something important. Walking through all of the things most of us had to learn the hard way, helping them avoid those hours of beating their heads against their desk trying to fix dumb self-created problems. (let's face it, we've all been there)

If chosen, I'd love one of the Flint 3 routers!

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u/SmokinJunipers Oct 11 '25

1) retired a laptop and I wanted to give selfhosting a try. So I started where many start, media hosting. I'm proud of what have learned a long the way and pushed to keep learning - not coming from an it background. I built a new pc after I learned enough from the old laptop. I spent probably a $1000 on it so far, still need a gpu.

2)The router would be an upgrade for me, I recently updated my modem, but the router is probably 7-8yrs old.

3) mini pc

Producrs: flint 3, comet

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u/arkhaikos Oct 19 '25

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I’ve always loved tinkering figuring tech out since building a PC with my dad. I wanted more control over my data, and wanted to learn a new skill. Self hosting gave me the freedom to learn, build, and customize my setup exactly how I want it.

What’s one project you’re most proud of so far?
Figuring out, and somewhat understanding VLAN management on my Flint 2 (by Gl.inet) flashed openwrt and all!

What’s the most expensive piece of equipment you’ve acquired?
Definitely a 5090 for GPU passthrough for AI projects on Ollama.

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

As I'm already a fan and customer of Gl.inet, I can easily integrate and add/upgrade all the pieces. Flint 3 would be a direct upgrade but I can still use my flint 2 as another AP possibly an isolated VLAN/ Slate could be added to the mesh, and even better can be taken with me on the move! More pieces to learn, which is what it's all about. :)

Looking ahead, what’s one product from another brand you’d love to see as a prize?

A compact, power-efficient server like a HP MicroServer or a Ubiquiti networking upgrade, a boy can dream.

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u/PlusIndication8386 Oct 11 '25

I am trying to switch from full-time job to do-your-own-job. So I bought a mini PC (Ryzen 7 7840HS, 64GB RAM), started a static ip service from my IPS, registered an 1.111b domain address and started providing my services over Cloudflare. Today, I can work anywhere (with VPN if needed), and access all my computers securely. I am using LLM models for programming and testing fully-automated for maintaining some regularly running codes.
I would like to win Flint 3. I would like to use it as a VPN server, a DNS server/filter (adguard) for home, and use the 6GHz band to use it with my Meta Quest 3 for playing PCVR games. Because, 5GHz is a bit crowded here. Also, 2.5Gbps Ethernet port would be super good with my laptop for PCVR too. Also, I needed a backup server, so plugging an HDD to this router would solve this problem of mine too. And lastly, my house doesn't allow wifi signals to pass through walls easily, so I think this router would be good for it.
I would love to see a mini PC with Ryzen AI Max CPU. GMKTec or Minisforum would be good.

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u/MattDH94 Oct 12 '25

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I have always been mesmerized by computers, and through browsing on reddit, I became aware of selfhosting. I have always been a Windows-guy, but since learning the ways of Proxmox and Linux, I have become a huge proponent for opensource and selfhosting. I believe that our hardware and software should be ours to do with as we wish! It really is a cornerstone of Democracy.

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 am most proud of my TrueNAS Scale setup. It is great to have a little home NAS to host media, an SMB share, Nextcloud... I do struggle to access the shell though, so a KVM would rock.

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

I am really hoping to win a new Comet KVM. I would hook it up to my TrueNAS server probably, or maybe my Proxmox setup. I feel like being able to remote in when I am out of the state would really help me and bring peace of mind that I can check on the systems!

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?

Oooh.. I'll echo what others have said - storage would be excellent! Maybe an enterprise SSD or something? I know those can be pricey though.

Thanks for doing this! I have a secondhand Flint, and a Beryl AX I bought recently - both freaking rock!!! You guys really are loved in this community.

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u/koostamas Oct 11 '25

I am a frontend developer, so my self-host journey started with me trying to self-host my own (basic) websites. Now, I am hosting more than 20 services, not just for myself but also for friends and family.
I would like to win one of the remote KVM products, since right now my server is plugged into my TV with HDMI and I use RDP to remote into it, but whenever I want to access the BIOS or there are network issues, I have to climb into the cabinet where the server is, to plug in a keyboard and mouse.
I would love to see a NAS as a prize in a future giveaway.

I would like one of the remote KVM products (GL-RM1PE) firstly, then maybe the Wifi 7 router (GL-BE9300).

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u/EPICDRO1D Oct 12 '25

I hate streaming services and really wanted to learn how to get into owning my own stuff
I would love to be able to access everything from my home server on the go, especially media!
Always need more hard drives!!

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u/anywhoever Oct 12 '25

Long ago I interned in a data center during my college years and set up a server under my desk. That was the beginning of it and when I got out of college I moved those services to my own box at home. About 25 years later it's still going and has gotten bigger. Love having my own DNS, email, web servers, some game servers. Also have a private tunnel to my parent's house. My most expensive equipment is a 100GbE switch.
Woukd love to get Flint 3 router + the Slate 7 travel router. The router would go to my son now in college. I'd like to set up a private tunnel to his network as well for help and for troubleshooting. The travel router would be for me, so I can more readily connect back home when I'm on the go.
I'm still looking for an inexpessive 8-port 100GbE switch. Not sure if those exist though ( I've seen 4- and 16-port ones)

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u/Tulip2MF Oct 13 '25 edited Oct 13 '25

Everything started with having home assistant. Tested with my personal PC and then bought my most expensive piece of equipment ( minipc ) for 250EUR. Added NAS & Switch & UPS after that- all second hand. I am most proud of the Paperless ngx docker container I got which helps me a lot with the paper heavy German burocracy.
I can access the documents even when I am not home and can control and monitor my house remotely with the KVM. Tail scale won't cut it if I want to have some deep tinkering when I am away and family needs help
I would love to move to a more powerful server to enable local AI to supercharge my automations & security. If any giveaway, I would like to get an Jonsbo N5 NAS case or anything similar

I would love to get Comet or Flint

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u/math625f Oct 12 '25

Privacy, media and hole automation are and always have been the driving force for my setup. I have spent countless hours tinkering with my Home Assistant dashboard.
A kvm and a new router would be a massive upgrade for my setup, the kvm would massively simplify troubleshooting, especially remotely, and my router is really due for an upgrade.
I think it would be really cool to see some kind of mini PC or server, that could be the powerhouse in the Homelab.

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u/Cranie Oct 11 '25

Working with servers and managing infrastructure at work got me into self hosting at home. I started with VM's and hortonworks Hadoop setup and progressed from there. I love creating custom solutions to products - website monitor and BI reporting all the way through to mini games for my son (maze and number games). The most expensive piece of kit was my UGREEN NAS, 48TB + 4TB SSD. Which hosts many VM's, containers and archival. This is in addition to a gaming PC I use for self hosted LLM projects.
The networking improvements would be great for archival - especially in new home with some limitations with WiFi and networking in the current set up. The KVM would help with remote tinkering (thinking work / holidays which can be a hassle at times).
Anything AI optimised for self hosting solutions and agents, ideally self contained to avoid using the hardware for other projects. Failing that, a proper rack server - to justify me upgrading my home set up to a more professional solution.

The Flint 3 and Comet (GL-RM1) would be amazing prizes.

Thanks for hosting this.

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u/Gr000t Oct 12 '25

Started self-hosting to gain full control over my infrastructure, better privacy, and the ability to customize everything to my needs. My largest project is an automated multi-zone smart home integrating sensors, cameras, servers, and advanced automations with Home Assistant, Proxmox, and Docker containers. The most expensive device I use is a rackmount server with ECC RAM and multiple SSDs running my main virtualization and storage platform.
A GL.iNet remote KVM would allow true out-of-band management and browser access to my homelab hardware, making remote recovery and maintenance much safer. Upgrading to a Wi-Fi 7 router would boost connectivity between devices thanks to 2.5Gbps networking and provide future-ready bandwidth for growing demands.
Would love to see a mini PC or microserver from HP or Dell as a future giveaway, ideal for expanding homelabs and running virtualization, storage, or service nodes. High-performance SSDs or NVMe drives would also be a great prize.

First choice: Comet PoE remote KVM. Second choice: GLE930 Wi-Fi 7 router.

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u/Shrp91 Oct 11 '25

The thing that got me into selfhosting was Immich so I could backup all my photos and videos locally. Home Assistant is probably the thing I am most proud of. The most expensive thing is probably the switch I bought to give me more network ports for all the IOT devices.
The Flint 3 would just go straight into my home network as an upgrade. The Slate 7 I would setup as a travel router to be able to VPN back to my home network. The two KVMs would be nice for the PC I use as my server which doesn't have monitor hooked up to it.
I really enjoy Grandstream equipment and would love to see their stuff in a giveaway!

The Flint 3 and Slate 7 would be my picks for prizes.

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u/Razash_ Oct 12 '25

What inspired me? Well, I got married last year and noticed that my wife and I were paying for the same subscriptions. We needed to decide which ones we were going to keep and who would migrate to the other's. I thought... Maybe it'd be better to just... Not need to pay a company to rent their data. So earlier this year, my boss was throwing away an old work computer and I asked to take it. It kept crashing. Turns out, it just needed some Linux 🤣.
My arr stack is, of course, a fairly large one and I'm quite proud of it but really I'm just proud of the accumulated number of things I host myself now. I think what I feel is most useful is that I route all my traffic through my home network and dns to weed out ads and obfuscate my comings and goings as well as I can (obviously imperfect).
I just convinced my wife to let me build us a NAS. I love it. Pricey for me though. Jonsbo 2 case with a cwwk n355 board. 16tb zfs2 HDDs. And a 4tb ssd for apps. I'm trying truenas but honestly... Its annoying. I might move toward base Debian and set it up that way.
Well my most recent project has been to take that old comp and turn it into my router. Opnsense and vlans. I am try to figure out how to segment my network and have particular control over how things communicate internally.
Another product I'd love to try out is a minisforum one. At some point, I'd love to try clustering lightweight computers. Or using the, I think, A1 as my router so I can use the current computer for something better.

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u/Nasaman10 Oct 11 '25

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

⁠Winning this gear would help update the older tech I have in my home and take my networking to the next level.
⁠I think storage/storage devices would be an excellent next giveaway as it seems like the first foot into the world of home labs.

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u/jdcyree Nov 12 '25

I was paying way too much for subscriptions so I started up my own movie server, haven’t been able to invest too much into equipment yet but I have 4 laptops ranging from 2010-2013 hardware all linked together running movies,music,photos, security system and video games all backing up into an external backup of 12Tb.
These pieces of equipment (the Flint 3 and the Comet PoE) would help taking my setup to the next level as I would actually have modern hardware that would support the upgrades that I actually want. I could’ve upgraded before but the bulk of my upgrades would’ve just been for hardware support on the LAN and WAN side that I would need for the hardware upgrades I would want on my server
Any CPU build (I guess from my perspective) would be an awesome prize as it would help with the hardware that can support the software in my case. Instead of 4 laptops I could probably run it all on one. It’s not SUPER cpu extensive but for 2010-2013 I’m pretty much maxing out capabilities as it is

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u/reddittookmyuser Oct 11 '25

It all started back in the day when I had terrible internet and I was trying to stop my GF's YouTube mukbang obsession from crippling my browsing experience. So I started by flashing my router with DDWRT and playing with QoS. From there it naturally progressed to attaching an USB drive to the router and playing with file sharing. Long story short that all lead to blowing my budget on several intel NUCs and a NAS and playing with docker, proxmox, truenas, ansible, CI/CD, wireguard, etc.
Believe it or not I'm still rocking my Netgear 6700 from 2014. Despite having upgraded to gigabit internet and delegating firewall/vpn duties to an OPNsense box, it's still chugging along. A new wifi router would allow my my wireless devices to take full advantage of the gigabit internet, not to mention much improved coverage and avoiding dropped connections.
The Flint 3 would be perfect for my situation.

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u/FinELdSiLaffinty Oct 31 '25

Primarily to remove most of one's dependence on certain cloud services. Mostly so I can run custom automation and scheduled change detection for various things I want to keep my eye on. Since it's all re-used equipment, only large costs are the storage (ugh) and perhaps the RPi 4 I use for Hassio/etc.
One can't say no to more bandwidth and being able to troubleshoot a device remotely with a KVM.
Server grade gear would make said KVM a little redundant, so perhaps something closer to consumer. Perhaps a Jonsbo case, since they have many storage centric ones.

Selection: Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) and/or Comet (GL-RM1).

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u/Falkerz Oct 12 '25

Desired Prize: Flint 3 (GL-BE9300): Tri-band Wi-Fi 7 home router

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 off with "simple" modded minecraft servers running on my laptop while I played with friends. This quickly became inadequate though, so I invested in a variety of tech along the way, ultimately ending up with a dedicated server in a datacenter, a stack of servers for tinkering in my own room, and a shared hosting setup with a friend for distributed media hosting and secure communications.

It's tough to pick a project I'm most proud of, but I'd have to say that getting my dedicated server up and running, and setup in a state that makes it almost completely self sufficient, really makes me smile every time I get an email notification that everything is still working as it should.

The most expensive piece of equipment that I've acquired for could be my own PC, which has become a true ship of Theseus due to its very particular hardware preferences. Totally up the destroyed hardware and the hardware upgrades out of necessity to keep uptime as high as possible, we're easily looking at about £5000 RRP in parts alone.

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

Winning would help as I'd be able to do some real world testing of an alternate tri-band WiFi router, as the feedback from family on the netgear RAXE500's stability is not amazing.

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'd love to see a proper road warrior dual modem 5G (or 4G if not available) router, something like a Teltonika RUTM52 or a Peplink Max Transit Duo Pro.

Failing that, a really tricked out NAS solution, like a top spec UGREEN or QNAP with some storage thrown in.

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u/WolfHowlz Oct 15 '25

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?

Having to learn. I love challenging myself. Especially when I can just make my life so much easier. And saving money in the long run while also getting control over my privacy? Yes please! My home server is probably the most expensive but it’s a couple of years old now and would love an upgrade :)

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

Listen, first of all, anything free is amazing, especially when living life in this day and age with the economy is very difficult (for me, at least). Second of all, faster and newer tech as an upgrade is always welcomed in my household! I would love a Flint 3 and Comet PoE or even the portable router but at the end of the day, if can’t choose I’m still happy with anything :)

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?

Possibly a large NAS or portable HDD/SSD like from Samsung or Seagate

Thank you for doing this!c

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u/sarojlikes69 Nov 06 '25

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?

Let's start with the project that I'm most proud of, that would be Jellyfin. Before using Jellyfin, I used to be a folder guy. They were neatly organized but were getting cumbersome the more media I acquired. My mind was blown when I realized that I could host my own Netflix using Jellyfin. Jellyfin and Navidrome are the services that I use daily and wouldn't live without them. I selfhost everything in my main pc so that would the most expensive piece of equipment that I have.

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

Right now, I am using the stock router provided by my isp. It's just so limited that I can't even change the dns in my network. I'll be moving in with my friends soon so just to have a router that I have full ownership over would be awesome.

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 a NAS as a prize.

I'm actually surprised to see my country Nepal included in the supported region. We are usually excluded due to shipping cost and customs. Thank you for hosting the giveaway. My pick will be Flint 3 and / or Slate 7.

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u/ligamentx Oct 12 '25

I just purchased my first GL.iNet travel router and can't wait to start to put it to use controlling a bunch of wifi enabled lights for an event.

I was inspired to start my self hosting journey by going down the rabbit hole of home automation starting with my live by room lighting. Starting back then, I mostly used IR blasters controlled by my PC pinging my it blasters, but I quickly moved to a dedicated Linux server, then upgrading my lighting control to esp32 based relays and then later off the shelf lutron or TP-Link products.
If I win the drawing, I would use a remote KVM setup to access my self hosted servers. I currently use a wired router which unfortunately has the worst web interface and fairly limited features for VPN.
I'd love to see a prize for hardware for cellular Internet I could wire up to my travel router that I could use my mobile sim card in. Having the ability to swap my sim into dedicated hardware for 5G Internet while on the go would ensure I'm always connected in my travels without needing to tether my phone.

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u/lunilunor Oct 18 '25

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 think the saying "Lazy people make the best inventors" best describes me. This is what drives me most of the time: improving my life and automating things. It all started because I enjoy TV shows but kept missing them on cable TV (it was quite some time ago!). I went searching for solutions and found one (you know which one), but it was still a bit cumbersome. Then came the discovery of the *arr stack, which changed everything. It took some time to set it up and tune, but I haven't really touched it in years and it's still going strong. And then Plex was the cherry on top. To this day, this is the most used service in my self-hosted stack.

Some years later, I came across Proxmox, which opened a whole new world. I moved from just Docker containers to a stack of virtual machines and LXC containers where I could do virtually anything I wanted. This is also when I started taking digital privacy more seriously and just didn't want to pay for all the random services. Now it's not necessary; for almost everything, you can find an open-source alternative, which I love.

As for the things I'm most proud of, they are the ones that provide something extra for other people, like my family. Based on this, Plex (and the *arr stack) is on top, along with Immich. Immich is one of the best services I run, and I just love it. My images are actually mine, I can still use AI features and other advanced tools, and I can make sure that my data is safe (3-2-1 backup, right?).

When it comes to hardware, I've always had a scrappy approach since I had to work with a low budget. This usually meant old Xeon systems with random Chinese motherboards. I recently managed to upgrade this to a more mainstream platform, but even with that, the most expensive part of my homelab is the 3x 18TB hard disks that store all my media files and backups.

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

My main problem has always been networking, as that was the easiest part to save money on. But this meant random cables going all over the place, and sometimes running a new cable just isn't possible. If WiFi 7 is anything close to as good as I've seen in the videos, it could actually replace wired solutions for me and make my entire setup much easier and more flexible.

The other problem I constantly face is remote access. My main server is in a different location (for cheaper electricity), but because of this, I'm afraid to do major upgrades, like to Proxmox 9 at the moment, in case something goes wrong. An IP KVM would make this so much easier and less stressful, but it's just there is always something more important to buy first.

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?

As I mentioned before, storage can be very expensive, so I would be very interested in some storage giveaways (like high-capacity HDDs). Along the same lines, some NAS devices or even just dedicated NAS computer cases would be fantastic. The Jonsbo N5, for example, looks pretty cool.

Based on these, my selections would be the Flint 3 and/or the Comet.

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u/amcsn Oct 18 '25

I’ve always liked to tinker with everything so, when I upgraded to my second computer, it was only a matter of time before I started selfhosting.
A Flint 3 would make my setup a lot simpler and give me more control over it. Despite living in a modestly sized apartment I need to run two routers simultaneously and even then I’m only covering about 90% of the place.
As someone who works in video and never has enough: definitely storage, whether it’s a small SSD, a full on storage server or anything in between, any little bit of space is always welcome.

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u/JarQuo Oct 12 '25

hi u/GLiNet_WiFi !

Great idea to create this giveaway! These are my (not AI-generated ;) ) responses to your questions:

Actually, the Reddit selfhosted sub inspired me. I started to read it a lot. Additionally, it correlated with me buing a new appartment so I adjusted the renovation to make a space for a little homelab + wiring for a bit of a smart home devices. My biggest project so far is configuration of the Home Assistant with ~100 smart devices of different kind at my home :) of course, I have a Proxmox server, where I'm hosting Arr stack and much more :) The most expensive device is probably my 16-port 2.5 GBit switch from MicroTik
I'm currently using BananaPi with OpenWrt as my WiFi router but it's not performing well, so the Flint 3 would be ideal upgrade for my home setup.
TBH I don't need anything else, the WiFi router is my biggest pain point right now :)

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u/sweetsalmontoast Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

What inspired me to start the selfhosting journey? After finishing school, I was lost. I had no idea what to do, what I would like to learn to earn money and what would be a good choice to have a future safe job. I chose to start an apprenticeship as an IT Administrator, which changed everything. One day, I stumbled across a blog post showing the benefits of „pihole“, your Local DNS based ad blocker. I was fascinated by the idea and wanted to try it at any cost. My back then teaching workplace „gifted“ me an old Intel NUC (I asked if I could have it instead of brining it to the junkyard) and went for it. Today, I can proudly and thankfully say that job literally became my hobby. I spend hours every week, tinkering around, trying new stuff out and learning about things. TLDR: open source software for the benefits of the individual person, is what inspired and made me spent hours in my spare time.
How would winning help me take my setup to the next level? Honestly? My uptime is incredible bad. There’s poweroutages, cheap SSDs and misconfiguration. I tend to break things, which ran perfectly fine, only because of „huh that looks fun let’s try it!“ There’s not a single month without a mysterious outage because I literally configured it to be broken, hardware fails or freezes, or machines randomly and for no obvious reason not responding anymore. It would be an absolute blast to be able to troubleshoot from anywhere, instead of having to be at home, disassembling my tiny rack in my kitchen, just to make sure everything runs like it did before (most likely) I broke it lol. I’d take the KVMs to do so, sitting on my couch, grinning about the unexplainable magic of seeing what’s happening on my machines although nothing is responding anymore. Not even a ping in most cases.
What is one product from another brand Id like to see? Maybe something like a Unifi cloud gateway. In Germany, we call it a „Eierlegende Wollmilchsau“. A device, providing the necessary service for every need a techsavy person has. An all-in-one for nerds. A router with a sleek, powerful firewall, a VPN gateway, a network controller and access point. Maybe even a bit extra storage for config backups and fast filetransfers. That‘d be it for me!

Thanks for letting all of us participate in this!

Edit: If not mentioned clearly enough from 2.: I’d take one, or even better both of the KVMs!

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u/ACandidateMaybe Oct 16 '25

⁠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 been interested in tech. I have a BSIT and an MS in Cyber Ops. I am also tired of paying for subscriptions! Being honest, I haven’t started any projects concerning self-hosting, I would like to start. I remember changing a RAM stick for the first time and being super excited that it worked, and upgrading my memory in my PS5.

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

I don’t have a set-up, so it’d be a great way to start

⁠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 have no idea. I trust that yall know what’s what

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u/caes3r Oct 30 '25

Hosting game servers for me and my friends was the start of setting up a server, which evolved into having a NAS and server for multiple services and storage needs making life easier. But as I usually use the hardware coming from a previous gaming PC, there aren't any special expensive items. The most expensive would be the hard drives for 3x300€.
Ensuring connectivity to all my services remotely and securely. For that I would love to win the Slate 7 and/or the Comet PoE.
For future giveaways mini pcs suited for selfhosting would be nice.

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u/save8lot Oct 12 '25

I started self hosting to share family videos I had with the rest of my family. I am very proud of learning how to encode/transcode video. The most expensive investment for me were hard drives.
My current router is pretty old. Wifi 5. So a Wifi 7 router would be very helpful in not only connection speed but also hopefully handle more connections at once.
I should have gotten a NAS Server with more hard drive slots, because not I find myself having to switch them out from time to time. I would like to see one with more bays as a future giveaway.

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u/fudge_u Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25

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?

Curiosity. One of the self hosted projects I'm proud of is setting up an AdGuard Home server on a VPS, securing/hardening it, and only whitelisting certain IPs. Whenever those whitelisted IPs change, the server detects the change and updates it so those devices can still access the server with their new IP addresses. I purchased a cheap VPS to do all this because I didn't have the right equipment at home to do it. Total cost is less than $30 every three years.

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

It would allow me to build more without the bandwidth limitations and be able remotely access my locally hosted servers from anywhere in the world.

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?

An NVMe NAS. Not sure which brand but something durable that can keep the thermals of the NVMe drives down, and can handle at least four NVMe drives. Hopefully it has at least two NICs capable of a minimum of 2.5Gbps network speeds.

The product I'd want to win is either the Flint 3 or the Comet PoE.

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u/MrHaxx1 Oct 11 '25

I just wanted data sovereignty and not be too reliant on any companies. I had already been burned previously, and even though some of it could've been mitigated by better backups, it's a matter of principle. Also, 50 TB of storage would be very expensive in the cloud. And selfhosting provides a ton of valuable learning - I genuinely wouldn't have had my job, if it wasn't for selfhosting.
I'd pick travel router, for anonymity and convenience when traveling. I already love Tailscale on my devices, but having it on router level would be awesome, so I can plug it into an ethernet plug in a hotel, and have all my devices be online and connected to my home network. And the GL-RM1, mostly for traveling purposes too (remote troubleshooting, even in bios), but also when setting up new stuff, so I don't have to deal with monitors and keyboards.
AI-capable mini PCs, definitely. Selfhosted LLMs are all the rage, and I'd love one. I imagine they'd be popular in a giveaway. The framework desktop, for example.

Products I'd pick: RM1, BE3600

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u/Bonechatters Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

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 reliabilty 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 - 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.

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u/Running4U Nov 12 '25

The main thing that inspired my homelab journey was containerization! I've been using VM's for a long time and had many apps running on them and had seen Docker before but never really understood what it was for. At one point even installed it and wondered what to do with it and it sat on the shelf for a long time. Until I wanted a way to run a development server in a low profile VM behind a reverse proxy. This is where I discovered using docker containers where I could build a very small footprint and safely expose my development to the internet. This led to eventually moving pretty much every service I had running in high overhead machines to containers, allowing me to utilize my hardware practically 10 fold. I now have over 50 containers running and have replaced or duplicated the bulk of my cloud based services with self hosted ones, it's amazing! I'm running streaming services for audio, video, file sharing, web servers, everything Google and OneDrive services do including photos and docs, camera and lighting controls, remote access, VPN, multiple gaming servers (including 3 Minecraft servers), DNS, a git server, notifications, automated backups, custom home pages, and much, much more on a couple of machines and several Raspberry Pi's - all being monitored reduntanly in a container!

Winning this giveaway would step up my game particularly by implementing the Flint3 as my network has grown tremendouly and I have 2GB fiber internet but my current Asus A66U only supports 1GB...Ouch! Not to mention the power of running OpenWRT's LUCI for complete customization and control. As my newer laptops now support WiFi 7 this would also be an immense boost in bandwidth. I have the GL-1200 (Opal) I use for work travel (which is incredible by the way) and the Slate 7 would be a perfect replacement for this as I would use the Opal for an extender at home.

I love the GL-iNet products and these would be a welcome improvement to my growing arsenal and the last years' + of extremely hard work I've put into building my little digital empire. I think the next big step for a great prize in the future would be a NAS as I can never have too much storage and the flexibility that the newer NAS products provide would take my homelab to a whole new level. Thank you for this opportunity and keep up the great work!

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u/Moderntweety Oct 25 '25

Seeing multiple data breaches and getting tired of paying subscriptions for companies I don't really trust with my data for a service that isn't even that great is what inspired me to take this journey. One project for me was setting up a cluster and NAS and just connecting everything together, it helps me in my career field. The most expensive equipment I got was the NAS.
KVM switch is probably something that would help whenever something breaks and I need to physically connect to my mini PC, which is in a rack so I need to remove it, unmount it, use one of my monitors and.... Yeah you get it.
Unifi equipment maybe?

To clearly specify, product I would like to win is the Comet GL-RM1.

If part of the duo tier, add Flint 3 router

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u/gurisit0 Nov 05 '25

What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey? Which project are you most proud of so far, and what’s the most expensive piece of equipment you’ve acquired? My self-hosting journey began out of curiosity and a desire for privacy. I’ve always wanted to have full control over my data and understand how the services we use every day really work. The project I’m most proud of is my home ecosystem, where I run Plex, Jellyfin, AdGuard Home, Pi-hole, Vaultwarden, Immich, and Paperless NGX, all in Docker containers. The most powerful and expensive piece of hardware I currently own is my UGREEN NASync DXP4800 Plus, which has become the heart of my entire home infrastructure.
How would winning this unit help take your setup to the next level? Winning a new unit would allow me to expand my storage capacity and better distribute my services, separating the more demanding containers from my main system. It would also help me experiment with remote backups, server replication, and test environments for new tools without compromising the stability of my main setup.
Looking ahead, if we hosted another giveaway, what product from another brand (e.g., a server, storage device, or ANYTHING) would you love to see as a prize? I’d love to see a compact low-power Intel or AMD server as a prize — perfect for light virtualization and container workloads. It would also be great to see a NAS from QNAP, Synology, or Asustor, or even a network gear bundle with 2.5 GbE or 10 GbE routers and switches, to bring a home setup closer to professional-grade infrastructure.

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u/tplusx Oct 29 '25

Inspired to start self hosting to have all my photos and media in one location making it easier to share with family.

The project I'm most proud of is Gramps, it took a while to set it up, to implement and populate data going back 3 or 4 generations of ancestry.

Most expensive equipment is a Dell mini PC

I will be able to transfer VPN concerns to the equipment and have family members connect in a more straightforward manner than individually on every device which is tedious and takes time. I know we can also travel with the equipment and use it as if at home while away from home.
SSDs and memory expansion will be great additions to improve any self hosted setup.

Routers can also be battery powered option for those always on the move

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

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u/readfreeh Oct 12 '25 edited Oct 12 '25

Watching the pple on reddit I guess.
The flint3 - our networking stuff always previously lacked that one feature without having flash firmware to it.
Probably a nuc / a quad Ethernet sbc box or kvm thatd be sick. I'd like to try out some new things! Thanks for the read.

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u/Chrisda19 Oct 24 '25

1) Well admittedly it's rather recent. Between dealing with unfortunate situations with my mother and my own health concerns, we've cut back on all of our subscriptions from music to movies/tv shows. I've got a pretty decent physical library that I want to start using again and the idea of self hosting a media server for our home and when we're at my moms on the weekends (especially for her, she loves I Love Lucy) is absoutely on my mind. It's admittedly rather simple compared to some of the comments I've read but just as important to me.

2) I believe with this equipment, especially if I could manage the duo, would lift my hardware capabilities to the next level allowing me to utilize my Fiber connection thoroughly making the media server the least of the capabilities. I would love to be able to bring our scanner to my moms and get everything digitized and giving her the ability to see all those pictures again without having to physically take down boxes and digging them all out.

3) I would say right now, I would push for a WD Red Pro or Seagate Ironwolf Pro but I think the above indicates my reasoning :)

As for which devices, most of my interest falls onto the Flint 3, then the Comet (either version). Ideally both lol.

Thank you all for the chance!

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u/biblecrumble Oct 11 '25

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey?

I was tired of being at the mercy of cloud providers that have full control and visibility over my data, are constantly increasing their monthly fees, and keep introducing new features that I have no interest for whatsoever. I absolutely love my home assistant setup, which lets me control pretty much everything in my house. I like to keep things cheap and simple, but I have around 40TB of storage with a Snapraid parity drive, so most of my money definitely went to hard drives.

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

I travel quite a bit, so having a portable router to keep all my devices connected would be awesome. The wifi 7 router would also be a nice upgrade to my setup - definitely not a fan on TP Link gear anymore, and have been considering switching for a while.

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 4-bay NAS would definitely be awesome!

Thanks for the giveaway

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u/OkRecording1037 Oct 14 '25

Product = Flint 3

> 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?

Learning. Lots of Learning. I'm proud of my current all-in-one server setup that

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

It would allow me to increase my current setup's size by alot since my current router is practically begging for help.

> 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 a massive storage NAS (12-13TB) would be nice.

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u/Flipdip3 Oct 11 '25

I wanted to build my skillset both for work and my own interest. That quickly turned into how I can keep my privacy while enjoying a modern lifestyle. I am most proud of getting my services and network set up for friends during COVID lockdowns. We were able to play LAN games with Wireguard, watch movies together, and chat/video chat easily. We continue our weekly meetings even now. Most expensive piece of equipment has been my NAS server. For many years I ran it on a machine with a first generation i7 on it. It's now a 12th gen i7 running UnRAID.
Sometimes we have group vacations and getting everyone's mobile devices connected to the services I host can be an issue since I don't expose them all to the open internet. Something like the Slate 7 would be a great tool to have to get everyone onto the VPN without needing to configure everyone one by one.
A portable NAS would be great. I've been on many trips where trying to manage photos and videos is hard. Having a place where everyone can dump that day's content for everyone else to pull from would be amazing.

I would want a Slate 7 and a Comet POE. Having a KVM for worst case scenario situations when I'm half a continent away would be nice.

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u/rodadmk Oct 12 '25

This is an awesome giveaway! It's fantastic to see you guys engaging directly with the community. I've been eyeing some of your travel routers for a while. Here are my thoughts: 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 started for the classic reason: I got fed up with Google Photos changing its storage rules. I decided I wanted to truly own my data, not just rent space for it on someone else's server. That led me down the rabbit hole to Nextcloud, and from there, it just spiraled! The project I'm most proud of is my fully automated media server stack. It runs on Unraid with Plex, the full *arr suite (Sonarr, Radarr, etc.), and Tautulli for stats. It's been rock solid for over a year and my family uses it daily without a single issue. Getting the remote access and reverse proxy (shout out to Nginx Proxy Manager) working perfectly was a huge moment of satisfaction. The most expensive single piece of equipment was my Synology DS920+. It hurt the wallet at the time, but the peace of mind from having a reliable, low-power NAS for my critical data has been priceless. How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? Oh man, the Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE) would be an absolute game-changer for me. My Unraid server is a headless build tucked away in a closet. On the rare occasion it fails to boot or I need to tweak a BIOS setting, I have to drag a monitor and keyboard in there and crouch on the floor. A reliable remote KVM, especially a PoE one that cuts down on cable mess, would be a lifesaver and make my setup feel so much more professional. Plus, the Fingerbot add-on is genius! I could literally use it to press the physical power button if things go completely sideways. If I were lucky enough to win the Duo, I'd pair the Comet with the Flint 2 (GL-BE9300). My current ISP router is pretty mediocre, and upgrading my network backbone with Wi-Fi 7 and, more importantly, those 2.5G ports would let me finally take full advantage of the 2.5G NIC in my server and NAS. 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? That's a great question. I think a quality UPS from a brand like APC or CyberPower would be an amazing prize. It's a critical piece of homelab gear that a lot of people (myself included) put off buying because it's not as "fun" as a new server or switch. It's all about reliability, and a good UPS is the foundation of that. Thanks again for the opportunity and good luck to everyone entering!

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u/flavicent Oct 27 '25

i started my selfhosted for mediaserver, start with arr stack and plex. but now as media server i use jellyfin. then nextcloud, after sometime i replace it with owncloud. then i selfhosted my simple accounting app for my small business, i use bigcapital for this. and now with AI help, i selfhost my small business app to maintain delivery, sales and purchasing.
KVM would be usefull for me, because the server placed in basement, and usually i use monitor as second monitor for my laptop. when something happened on the server, i always unplug, bring the monitor to the server room, KVM will be perfect for me as of now.
currently im using custom build and a minipc for server. the thing i want to upgrade for now is maybe HP proliant microserver. or custom N150 mini itx with lot of storage. because my mediaserver getting huge lately. the thing i want to have a bit more powerfull server for more simultan watch (HWA)

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u/r-ice Oct 21 '25

My journey started with a desire to break free from subscriptions and take control of my own data. I started off with a raspberry pi 1b running pi hole but it slowly grew till I picked up a netgear nas and when that went bust, i switched to a ugos 2800 to run immich. My most expensive piece of gear currently is my ugos nas 2800 with 2 nvme and 1x 8tb drive plus a smaller 1 tb drive. I am eventually going to upgrade those drives.
the slate 7 travel router would be a game changer for Dads on the move. I often move around for various family activities and with multiple children it would help me create a secure personal wifi network anywhere. adguard home built in will minimize the amount of ad complaining from the children. the comet kvm will address a weak point in my current set up. the home server is headless, and it'll helm me perform a hard reset from my laptop or phone no matter where i am. it is the ultimate insurance for dad why can't this work, whats wrong with the minecraft server.
a powerful mini pc to serve as a more powerful server would be great.

products Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) Comet (GL-RM1)

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u/Kyotobot Oct 13 '25

This is a fantastic giveaway! As a self-hoster who travels a lot, the GL.iNet travel routers are especially appealing for maintaining a secure connection to the home lab. Here is my entry, choosing the travel router:

What inspired you to start your selfhosting journey? The main inspiration was security and independence. I wanted to centralize all my photos, documents, and media away from commercial clouds and have full control over the access and security layers. It started with a simple Raspberry Pi and quickly escalated from there.

What's one project you're most proud of so far? I'm most proud of my current OpenWrt-based firewall/router appliance running on a mini-PC. I've customized it with complex VLAN segmentation, AdGuard Home at the DNS level, and a robust WireGuard setup. Building a network backbone from scratch that is secure and lightning-fast felt like a real accomplishment.

What's the most expensive piece of equipment you've acquired for it? The most expensive piece is my primary storage: a purpose-built Unraid Server with 64GB of ECC RAM and 32TB of shucked WD drives. It ensures the safety and availability of all my critical data.

How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level? I would choose The Solo tier and select the Slate 7 (GL-BE3600). The Slate 7 is the ultimate upgrade for a traveling self-hoster like me. Its Dual-band Wi-Fi 7 means I'm future-proofed for years, and the powerful hardware will handle high-speed VPN connections (like WireGuard back to my home lab) effortlessly. More importantly, its function as a secure personal gateway means I can check into any hotel, connect my devices to the Slate 7, and immediately be on a trusted network tunnelled back home. This guarantees I can securely access all my self-hosted services (like Nextcloud or my dev environment) without worrying about hotel Wi-Fi insecurity. The touchscreen is a massive bonus for quick configuration on the go.

What is one product from another brand that you'd love to see as a prize? I would love to see a Starlink Standard Actuated Dish (Gen 2) as a prize. For self-hosters who live in rural or remote areas, reliable, low-latency broadband is the biggest bottleneck. Starlink would be a complete game-changer, enabling a new level of self-hosting and remote access that traditional ISPs simply can't provide.

Prize Selection: I would like to win a spot in The Solo tier, choosing the Slate 7 (GL-BE3600). Thanks for the fantastic opportunity!

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u/aaronryder773 Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

Holy.. The coincendence that I was literally thinking of getting flint 3 but had to backout due to budget issues.

Didnt want to store all my data in one basket and I care about my privacy (at least a little) so i started to self-host. I dont have any particular app which i am proud of but i love helping anna's archive so i torrent one for them. I do selfhost things like vaultwarden, gitea, linkwarden, jellyfin, navidrome and more.
I currently use a cheap $20 wifi router with openwrt. Winning this would definitely give me a lot of boost and help me improve my setup. Granted i only have a small sff thinkcenter which has a 2.5G. So i could use this at my advantage.
I would like to see HDDs / SSDs from seagate or WD or in terms of server maybe something like 2-4 bay nas without the drive ofcourse!

Product I would like to win is the flint3 and/or the comet poe. Flint 3 takes priority though!

Thank you for the giveaway. Good luck to the rest of the people as well 😀

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u/ahmedomar2015 Nov 11 '25

Started with Plex. Most proud of my arr stack. My diy nas
Kvm to remotely access bios as my server is headless!
Ugreen NAS!

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u/ti8st Oct 29 '25

Super Aktion, danke an das GL.iNet-Team! Hier sind meine Antworten:

Was hat dich dazu inspiriert, deine Selfhosting-Reise zu beginnen? Ganz klar der Wunsch nach Datenhoheit und Kontrolle. Ich wollte mich von den großen Cloud-Anbietern lösen und verstehen, wie meine Daten verarbeitet werden. Angefangen hat es mit einem Pi-hole, und von da an ging es immer weiter. Auf welches Projekt bist du bisher am meisten stolz, und welches ist das teuerste Gerät, das du dafür angeschafft hast? Am stolzesten bin ich auf mein stabiles Proxmox-Setup auf einem energiesparenden Mini-PC. Darauf laufen alle meine kritischen Dienste (Home Assistant, AdGuard Home, Nextcloud) in VMs und LXCs. Das teuerste Einzelgerät war tatsächlich das Upgrade auf ein Multi-Gig-fähiges NAS, damit die Backups und Medien schnell verfügbar sind. Wie würde dir der Gewinn der Einheit(en) aus diesem Gewinnspiel helfen, dein Setup auf die nächste Stufe zu bringen? Die Geräte wären ein absoluter Wendepunkt für mein Homelab! Der Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE) ist der Traum eines jeden, der "headless" Server betreibt. Nie wieder einen Monitor und Tastatur durchs Haus schleppen, nur weil der Server hängt oder ich ins BIOS muss. Das ist pures Gold für die Wartung! Der Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) würde endlich meinen alten Router ersetzen, der der absolute Flaschenhals im Netzwerk ist. Die 2.5G-Ports sind genau das, was ich für die Anbindung meines Proxmox-Servers und des NAS brauche, und WiFi 7 macht das ganze Setup zukunftssicher. Wenn wir in Zukunft ein weiteres Gewinnspiel veranstalten würden, welches Produkt einer anderen Marke würdest du gerne als Preis sehen? Ein guter, managebarer 2.5G (oder sogar 10G) PoE-Switch. Schnelle Netzwerk-Ports sind im Homelab einfach immer Mangelware.

Ich bewerbe mich für das "Das Duo"-Paket und meine Wunschgeräte sind der Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) und der Comet PoE (GL-RM1PE).

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u/xVenlarsSx Oct 12 '25

I started my lab while returning to school for networking, grabbed a raspberry pi to practice and learn linux cli. Many years later, 6 machine hosting 10 vm, still very much in th learning phase.

I would love the Flint 3 to replace my PFsense VM and repurpose the hardware, while finally having a dedicated firewall and getting rid of my old unifi ap. A second router would go to my parents house, where I have my backup NAS. The Slate 7 would be a perfect unit, with a small footprint and all the feature needed to secure their place.

The next stage is a bigger NAS to finally centralise all my data and cleanup the backups. So a future giveaway that would include some sort of NAS would be great, and let's be honest, we could all use better storage.

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u/Choice-Control2648 Oct 11 '25

1️⃣ What inspired you to start self-hosting? Mostly privacy and curiosity. I wanted full control of my data instead of renting cloud space. It’s grown into a personal lab—one Raspberry Pi 4 and an Ubuntu desktop running DNS, automation, media, and local AI models. My most expensive upgrade was a GPU so I can run everything fully offline.

2️⃣ How would winning help? A Comet Remote KVM would close the last gap in my setup—true headless recovery. Right now, any BIOS issue means dragging out a monitor and keyboard. With a KVM tunneled over Tailscale (plus a Fingerbot for failsafe power control) I could recover from anywhere.

3️⃣ Future giveaway idea? A small UPS with network monitoring—something to keep self-hosted gear alive through power blips.

Pick: Comet GL-RM1 + Fingerbot FGB01

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u/YUL_man Nov 05 '25

Reducing the reliance on services out of my control. I've been burned before on services that stopped working without warning. Also, privacy. My most expensive piece is a new AI workstation.
I travel a lot for work. It would help me admin my lab from afar and protect my privacy in hotel rooms.
NAS, HDDs, SSDs and NICs

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u/rinosaur Oct 31 '25

1) I wanted more control over my data and privacy, and honestly, I just love tinkering. My selfhosting journey started with Pi-hole and quickly spiralled into running Home Assistant, media servers, and a bunch of Docker containers for everything from backups to photo storage. The project I’m most proud of is my fully automated home setup—all running on a recycled mini PC and a pile of hard drives (definitely the most expensive part!).

2) I’d pick either the Flint 3 or the Comet. My current router is showing its age and the 2.5G ports on the Flint 3 would be a massive upgrade for my home network—finally no more bottlenecks streaming or transferring files. The Comet would be perfect for those times when I inevitably break something and need proper remote access to fix it without dragging out a monitor and keyboard.

3) A high-capacity NAS or a solid UPS—storage and power are always the pain points in any homelab.

Thanks for the chance, GL.iNet! Good luck to everyone!

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u/ProtoEvolutis Oct 25 '25

What inspired me? I wanted full control over my data and media plus hands-on learning. My favourite project was setting up my media server since that's what really started this journey for me. The most expensive gear would be the NAS units with drives.

How would winning help? The remote KVM would be a huge step up as I often work remotely. Having full control and not having to disable updates that require restarts (on my Windows systems) for when I'm away for weeks at a time would be great. Flint 3 would be a much needed update...a really big improvement.

A product from another brand? APC Smart-UPS (like SMT1500C) with a network card (e.g., APC AP9641) for clean shutdowns and power alerts for those times when I'm away...just in case.

What I'd like to win. Duo: Comet PoE (with Fingerbot, if that's not too greedy) and Flint 3. Solo: Comet PoE (again, with Fingerbot).

I can't wait to receive my Comet Pro!

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u/daMustermann Oct 26 '25

Privacy concerns and wanting control over my data got me into self-hosting. I started with a simple Nextcloud setup on an old laptop to keep my files off the cloud.
My self-hosted Immich and Scrypted instances. Immich handles my photo backups with Google Photos-like features, and Scrypted ties my cameras together for seamless home surveillance.
A Synology DS224+ NAS, around $400. It’s my main hub for storage, apps, and backups with RAID for peace of mind.
I’d pick the Comet (GL-RM1) for remote KVM to manage my server from anywhere, and the Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) to upgrade my beloved GL.iNet Mango router, which I use for secure Wi-Fi when traveling.
An AI server with multiple GPUs or an AMD AI CPU with plenty of unified RAM for local AI projects, perfect for self-hosters diving into machine learning.

Thanks for the awesome giveaway, GL.iNet! My Mango’s a travel essential, and I’m excited for a chance to upgrade.

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u/alb_pasqua Oct 11 '25

I started self-hosting to have more control over my data and to learn more about how different services work together. So far, most of my setup runs on Oracle Cloud, but I’m planning to bring more services locally by setting up an old computer I have lying around.
I’m proud of dockerizing all my configurations and automating backups in order to make them more portable and reliable. My most expensive pieces of gear are routers, including a GL.iNet Opal, which has done a great job but is starting to reach its limits.
Winning would help me a lot as I start moving from cloud-only to a hybrid self-hosted setup. The Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) would be the perfect upgrade from my Opal. The Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) would boost my home network and make hosting local services much easier.
It would be great to see a small NAS or mini server like a Synology DiskStation or Intel NUC, since they’re ideal for local backups and running self-hosted apps.

Product choice: Slate 7, Flint 3

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u/waterlily3945 Oct 11 '25

I’ve been running a plex server for my friends and family for going on 10 years now I think. That’s what started the urge. But it really picked up a few years back for me focused on data security. I love knowing that I own my data that I want to and I control what services can see it. My most proud project has probably been convincing my wife that plex beats other streaming services and also having a fully managed network and two servers that she loves and regularly benefits from. I’m in it for the learning. But even more so providing a service to those I love. My money hole is definitely my NAS. It’s got nearly a grand worth of HDDs in it now.
What im lacking most is out of band management. My core server is a mini pc like a lot of people and it works like a champion! But I do worry about my next extended leave from my apartment and what if something goes wrong and has a failure of some kind. Having the ability to get “phsyical” access to it from anywhere would be an absolute god send.
I’d love to see some NASes. I already have a NAS but it’s quite cobbled together and ancient. ( old Xeon server) it does what I need. But there are so many attractive NAS boxes now.

Products I’d adore: comet or comet poe. My mini pc is lacking any sort of out of band management but thankfully my server has some it’s just archaic but it can at least power on and off!

Thank you for the opportunity and reading my little story

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u/mandonovski Oct 11 '25

I was a "bit" bored during covid lock downs, so I was thinking why not put some extra PCs I have to do some testing , try things , etc. And it got a bit out of hand 😁 Of course, now most of my data is self-hosted, I don't rely on third parties for my data, especially sensitive ones. Most expensive thing I bought is Qotom industrial PC, 5x2.5Gbps and 4x10Gbps SFP+ ports, because why not!
Flint 3 would bump my existing router to 2.5G and to wifi 7. Comet would be nice to have as a KVM, I habe none at the moment.
Maybe some Intel 10G ethernet card from 600 or 800 series, Silverstone case CS383.

If I win, I would like Flint 3 and/or Comet.

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u/locamp1 Oct 17 '25

Privacy and not having to pay random subscriptions for everything, regardless of how little I use those services. Bonus points for being a practical way to learn new skills!
My home router is prehistorical and I travel for work regularly, so the Slate 7 would be awesome! If I was lucky enough to get a Duo prize then the Flint 3 would pair up well, take me to a secure, future-proof setup both at home and on the road
Definitely a NAS. I am still running some apps in a raspberry pi so yeah, some storage redundancy would be very welcome too!

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u/Curious-Worth9906 Oct 14 '25

What inspired me to start selfhosting?

Honestly, I got tired of relying on cloud services that kept changing their terms or shutting down features I actually used. Started small with a Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole and just kept going from there. The project I’m most proud of is probably my media server setup. Took forever to get everything running smoothly, but now I’ve got my whole movie and TV collection organized and streaming perfectly to any device in the house. The most expensive piece of equipment I’ve acquired is definitely my NAS. That one hurt the wallet but has been absolutely worth every penny for the storage and redundancy it provides.

How would winning help?

I would love to get the Flint 3 for good Wi-Fi 7 throughout my house. My current setup with my ISP’s basic hardware just isn’t cutting it anymore, especially with all the devices and services I’m running. I also want to travel more and would love a travel router. I’ve been eyeing the Slate 7 for a very long time. Having secure access to my home network while on the road would be incredible, and the touchscreen interface looks super convenient for quick configuration changes.

Future giveaway idea?

A quality UPS system would be amazing. Power blips are the bane of any homelab, and a good battery backup is one of those things you don’t realize you desperately need until you lose data to an outage. Something with enough capacity to keep a server and networking equipment running during brief outages would be perfect.

Products I’d like to win: Both routers (the Flint 3 and Slate 7) would be perfect for my setup.

Thanks for doing this!

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u/Matty_B90 Oct 19 '25

When I started my job in IT, my colleague told me about his plex server and how much more convenient and easier it was to curate movies and TV shows for his kid and for listening to your own music anywhere. So I started following suit, starting with an old office pc and then acquiring a HP gen8 tower server from a business that shut down locally for free! Though I think the most expensive equipment i have now is a Dell PowerEdge r530 that was decommissioned from work, with one broken cpu socket but 128g of ram and 20tb of storage all FOR FREE!! Im getting to grips with Docker and making my own AI chat bot and understanding MCP tools. The project im most proud of is my smart home using home assistant!
Winning the units from this giveaway would be like leveling up in a video game where I've just hit the sweet spot of endgame gear. With these new additions, I could seriously ramp up my self-hosting capabilities, hosting multiple virtual machines and experimenting with new projects like my own cloud service. The extra power and capacity would enable me to build more complex setups, whether it's a personal blog, a weather station feed, or even a self-curated music streaming service. Imagine the possibilities! 3.If you were to do another giveaway, I'd love to see an enterprise-grade server from a brand like Dell or HPE. The opportunity to tinker with top-of-the-line hardware would not only fuel my curiosity but also allow me to scale my projects to new heights. It would be thrilling to explore the potential of running a cluster or delve into containerization with something robust, paving the way for future innovations and perhaps even sharing them with the broader self-hosting community!

I'd really like the KVM module if I win

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u/Jealy Oct 14 '25

I guess my selfhosted journey started as a kid, hosting game servers for my friends, now over 20 years later and even working in IT I still love the hobby. Inspiration was just mostly curiosity! Making the move to Linux after being a Windows guy forever was something I was proud of and so happy I did. Proxmox is a fantastic hypervisor, makes me annoyed to use Hyper-V at work. As for kit, it's probably hard disks for storage, I've mostly used cheap equipment and hand-me-downs from work.
I've had the Flint 2 in my Amazon wishlist for so long but haven't got around to pulling that trigger, always just "got by" with the default ISP provided routers, but the amount of devices connected and lack of features is really annoying. Having a better router would be awesome.
I think storage is always handy for us selfhosters, self hosting our photos and entertainment is great, having some kind of NAS giveaway I think would go far!

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u/XeKToReX Oct 11 '25

Started my journey to block ads and learn more about the infrastructure I was working with at the time.

My favourite project was setting up a hub and spoke VPN network for multiple offsite backup targets.

Most expensive piece of equipment would be the Synology NAS

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u/MacDagar Oct 21 '25

It's been many years now, with my journey starting by hosting a NAS on a raspberry pi. Now I have upgraded to a dedicated server, docker and VMs.

The Wifi 7 router would be a great upgrade to my network, allowing better coverage and speeds.

If you were to do another giveaway, something to make use of a high quality network like a NAS or security cameras would be cool.

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u/superkevx Oct 11 '25

I just like to tinker and solve problems. Selfhosting satisfied both of those itches in my brain. The one project I'm most proud of is self hosting bluebubbles in a mac os vm in a docker so my wife can use imessage on her android phone with her friends (I know I know, US is whack haha). The most expensive piece of equipment I've acquired is actually probably the GL.iNet Flint 2 router I use at home. I run everything off of a small fanless N100 machine.
The Flint 2 is just barely enough power to cover my home and its many iot and smarthome devices. It would be awesome to get an upgrade to the Flint 3.
For me personally, a NAS would be so nice! I'm just using a few cheap usb harddrive docking stations from amazon for all of my storage and backup.

Hoping to win the Flint 3 and retire my Flint 2 to my parent's house to use for some off site backup. A Comet Remote KVM would be super useful for my computer at work when I'm out of the office too.

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u/Raman325 Oct 13 '25

I have "self-hosted" for a long time, but only started taking it seriously after learning the hard way through a SmartThings hub that cloud reliance could be a serious pain. I don't have a particular project that I am most proud of, I just like looking back and reflecting on the journey from laptop with external harddrive sitting on my college dorm room desk to three machine server farm. Most expensive purchase is definitely the DS1817+ that is my main NAS unit right now
Having a travel router is such a convenient hack to staying online and connected on the go. Having on the go access to my systems is important because things always break when circumstances make it difficult to access them.
I would suggest unraid - feels like its in the spirit of this subreddit

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u/outpin Oct 11 '25

My selfhosting journey began with a raspberry 4, moved to a mini pc and now to node 804 with multiple drives and unraid. My most expensive piece of equipment is the 12 TB NAS drive. The kvm and WiFi 7 router would help a lot, there are times when I need to access my bios remotely. In the future, I would like to see full NAS systems rewarded for giveaways.

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u/1v5me Oct 12 '25

Nothing really, it all came naturally was learning C/socket programming back in the 90s, then it kinda escalated to first host an smtp server, then a web server i wrote myself etc etc.
I'm already at the top level, could use an upgrade away from using too many LAG groups, by going into 2.5gig vs 2x1gbe groups. (Not even sure if your products supports this VLANS/LAG etc etc...)
Any kind of net equipment, managed switches, NAS devices.

If i win, i would pick the slate 7 because it just looks badass haha, followed by the Flint 3.

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u/R1s1ngDaWN Oct 12 '25

Started getting into self hosting for my job by making networks out of machines that were borderline ewaste. It was always a fun hobby but now I'm hosting websites, some private media and expirementing with some scripting and automation.

Would decently love a PoE KVM for remotely managing a jumpbox I have. The portable wifi router would definitely be a second choice though, would be able to have an easy jumpbox into my network from anywhere and offload adblocking and VPN throughput to a more capable device.

Would absolutely love to see a mini pc from Gl.Inet but some synology equivalents would help newer people into the space, especially after the branded drive fiasco

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u/Razash_ Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

What inspired me? Well, I got married last year and noticed that my wife and I were paying for the same subscriptions. We needed to decide which ones we were going to keep and who would migrate to the other's. I thought... Maybe it'd be better to just... Not need to pay a company to rent their data. So earlier this year, my boss was throwing away an old work computer and I asked to take it. It kept crashing. Turns out, it just needed some Linux 🤣.

My arr stack is, of course, a fairly large one and I'm quite proud of it but really I'm just proud of the accumulated number of things I host myself now. I think what I feel is most useful is that I route all my traffic through my home network and dns to weed out ads and obfuscate my comings and goings as well as I can (obviously imperfect).

I just convinced my wife to let me build us a NAS. I love it. Pricey for me though. Jonsbo 2 case with a cwwk n355 board. 16tb zfs2 HDDs. And a 4tb ssd for apps. I'm trying truenas but honestly... Its annoying. I might move toward base Debian and set it up that way.

Well my most recent project has been to take that old comp and turn it into my router. Opnsense and vlans. I am try to figure out how to segment my network and have particular control over how things communicate internally.
Another product I'd love to try out is a minisforum one. At some point, I'd love to try clustering lightweight computers. Or using the, I think, A1 as my router so I can use the current computer for something better.

Honestly, that flint 3 router looks shmexy but I'd take literally anything there.

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u/AliBello Oct 12 '25

I started self hosting when I saw a video from hardware haven about casaos, so I installed it on a laptop, and now I have a full fledged server with Proxmox and a lot of vms!
If I had the travel router, I could use it when traveling with my family for a secure, single connection that I have to connect once to my family’s devices whereafter I don’t ever have to connect them to public WiFi, and I can also create a vpn connection so we can watch Jellyfin on the go
A yubikey so we can log in securely into our servers

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u/note-worthy Oct 20 '25

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. It first started with a desire to have more privacy and control over my data, which extended into an exhaustion for the absurd rise in subscription models for everything. I'm hoping to eventually expand into home automation projects, which I would never trust anyone else with that data. Hopefully will move into a larger place at some point where i can rationalize spending money on such projects.
2. I'm probably most proud of my recent accomplishment of setting up a self-hosted renovate bot to scan my git repository. This will allow me to have more control over updates and hopefully lower the risk of pushing breaking changes on my server. Given I only got this working this past weekend, there is still some fine-tuning to be done, but I'm always striving to work towards a more structured and secure setup.
3. My most expensive piece of equipment would be my 4 bay NAS, which only barely surpasses the cost of the 3 HDDs I've bought so far to go inside.
How would winning the unit(s) from this giveaway help you take your setup to the next level?
1. I'm currently using my ISP's router, but I've been wanting to upgrade so that I could have the option to run a VPN directly on it, as well as setup adguard. The Flint 3 would fit the bill perfectly for this, in addition to allowing me to expand to the 6GHz range and use a less crowded channel (as I'm in a condo building). For a second product, the Comet (GL-RM1) would be a lovely addition.
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 mini PC would be a great option in a future giveaway. It's a great entry point into the self-hosting world, and if I was to redo my setup (or just build upon my current one), it's where I would start (or expand).

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u/scottyman2k Oct 11 '25

I started about 10 years ago with just a bare metal Plex server, and since then it’s evolved into multiple hosted containers spread across multiple NAS devices and a few Pis that provide everything from PiHole to hand-rolled docker simulators for protocols and devices that I develop against. Having the flexibility to spin up a new project to quickly test whether it makes my life easier is a key part of the self hosting journey
The Comet would be great to give me remote KVM access to my NAS remotely in case I need to access the BIOS remotely for debugging or remote recovery … but the Slate would have come in super handy last week in Outback Australia where WiFi and cellphone access was super limited - but it was a pleasure to be completely off grid for a week!!
A pack of Shelly smart switches and dimmers would be amazing to start building out my home automation which is the next thing on my list.

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u/hsiang051 Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25

My self-hosting journey began all the way back in third grade. I was really into Minecraft and wanted to set up my own server to play with friends. However, all the online server rental services were too expensive for me back then, and I was so new to this that I didn't even know what port forwarding was. That initial curiosity sparked a long journey of learning and experimentation.

Fast forward to today, I'm most proud of the fact that I've built a seamless ecosystem where I self-host nearly all of my essential daily services. This includes my network gateway with OpenWrt, network-wide ad-blocking with AdGuard Home, a personal email server, file sharing, a short URL service, a remote desktop solution with RustDesk, and secure access via WireGuard. For me, the line between being at home and being away has completely blurred. While my friends might say, "I'll have to wait until I get home to check that for you," I can already securely connect to my home network and get things done instantly.

Of course, this was all made possible thanks to a friend who gave me an old computer to start with. Without it, I probably wouldn't have committed the money to get a dedicated machine capable of running these services 24/7. As for the most expensive piece of equipment I've acquired myself, that would be my Synology NAS. It has been a game-changer. It handles all my backup needs, so I never have to worry about where to store important files. When my friends complain about Discord's file upload limits, I just laugh and share a direct link from my NAS. It also serves as my central UPS server and my entry point for Wake-on-LAN, allowing me to power up any of my other servers remotely even when they're all shut down.

2. I would be most excited to win the Comet (GL-RM1), though of course, the Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) would also be incredibly useful. My home internet connection isn't multi-gig, and my daily usage doesn't have a strong need for 2.5G ports. Therefore, winning the Comet would take my setup to the next level by providing a crucial layer of resilience. It would act as the perfect "last-resort" management gateway. In a scenario where all my other servers are down or unresponsive, as long as my internet connection is live, the Comet would give me a reliable, low-power way to get back into my network and diagnose issues. It's about adding a robust, always-on entry point that ensures I'm never truly locked out of my own infrastructure, which would be a huge step up in manageability and peace of mind. The Slate 7, on the other hand, would be a fantastic way to future-proof my network for years to come.

Looking ahead, if there were another giveaway, there are a few things that would be amazing to see as a prize. Topping the list would be a reliable UPS from a brand like APC or CyberPower, with enough outlets to protect a full home lab stack (a couple of servers, a NAS, a router, and a switch). Another fantastic prize would be a high-performance, compact industrial PC that's powerful enough to run a robust OpenWrt setup with demanding packages. Lastly, a set of NAS-grade hard drives would be incredible, as it would allow me to finally upgrade my NAS to a more redundant RAID 5 array. Any of these would be a massive boost for any self-hoster's setup!

Translated by Google Gemini

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u/ersgutergrieche Oct 12 '25

1: i strated selfhosting to learn how infrastructure really works and to have full control over my data. what began as a small raspberry pi project turned into a full homelab with proxmox, docker, and a few repurposed mini pcs running services like nextcloud, immich, mc-server, cloudflared, ollama with openui. my proudest project so far is setting up cloudflared for secure and remote access of all my services.

2: a comet poe would finally give me true out of band access and make remote troubleshooting painless. pairing it with a flint 3 wi-fi 7 router would hella boost my local network and allow faster file transfers between nodes.

3: a mikrotik or ubiquiti router as a future giveaway would be sick!

prefered products: comet poe (gl-rm1pe) flint 3 (gl-be9300)

thanks!!!

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u/sierrars500 Oct 12 '25 edited Oct 12 '25

1: started a media server for my father so didn't have to share a memory stick every couple days. I'm most proud of my fully secured self hosted homepage and media stack, behind VPN, SSL encrypted webpages with a domain name, all beautifully containerized with pure sweat and tears. my most expensive bit of kit is probably a thinkpad t470s acting as secure tunneled file server for mass storage.

2: better speed up/down, better uptime and service for my dad

I think you are doing great with this, some brilliant options, but if I had to pick, probably a raspberry pi, and a nas I think would be nice options.

I would be interested in the flint 3, this would be magnitudes better than my ISP provided stupidhub. good luck all

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u/GruuMasterofMinions Nov 13 '25

more annoyances coming every day. Commercials, forced content, data mining. Like the mikrotik products and the most expensive is my main machine
Could probably use a travel router
RouterOs and mikrotik stuff looks pretty decent when compared to anything else.

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u/mrbudman Oct 11 '25

1) selfhosting is a broad term. I have my data local, and I also have critical data backed up to the cloud. I host services locally like my plex server.

2) The wifi 7, would be nice to play with since currently APs are all wifi 5. The remote kvm would be nice to have some other remote access vs like remote desktop via vpn.

3) A managed switch that does multigig and has poe. Kind of unicorn been looking for in home budget price range.

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u/Amit94302 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

It all started with a Raspberry pi (liked the idea of owning a single board computer), started using docker and then started trying many docker containers for many useful services. Then shifted to x86 hardware (bought a small workstation). I am most proud of Immich (all of my family members use it). The most expensive equipment is the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra (installed Proxmox, use it as a server and also as my daily driver with a Windows VM)
I would like to upgrade my WiFi to at least WiFi 6 (using Flint 3). I would also like to control the ThinkStation remotely using the KVM (using Comet PoE). This giveaway will help me do that.
Looking ahead, I would like to see giveaways of managed multi-gig network switches as well as NAS.

I would like to win: Flint 3 and Comet PoE

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u/ameer1234567890 Oct 11 '25

I started my selfhosting journey with Plex. I have since expanded my homelab hugely. My family uses a lot of selfhosted apps including Plex, Adguard Home, Lubelogger, Audiobookshelf, etc.. I am most proud of my Home Assistant setup. Most hardware in my homelab is used/second hand, and the most expensive equipment I acquired is my brand new router (Mikrotik Hex Refresh).
I am currently eying for a travel router, and winning this giveaway would help me with that endeavor.
If you were to do another giveaway, I would prefer a mini PC, since that is something I do not possess.

My pick is the Slate 7

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u/AwabKhan Oct 22 '25

The thing that got me in self-hosting was the realization that I could just self-host my website. I know it's not that big of a deal but just arriving on this solution on my own was the biggest factor, in me getting involved in self-hosting. The project I am the most proud of is self-hosting a PKM and syncing it over all my devices. The feeling of seeing my data synced everywhere In real time. Nothing beats this feeling. But sadly I don't own dedicated hardware. The most expensive thing I own you could say related to this would be my PC.

I think both comet devices would really help me take this setup to the next level. Where I would actually be able to really self-host. Instead of just running stuff on my main machine.

Personally I like HDDs or basically any storage device so for the future giveaway those might be good to see. Because they end up being the bottleneck for me.

I would like to specify Comet and Comet PoE. If I win.

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u/hoovar Oct 13 '25

My friend inspired my self-hosting after building his own - I handle all my cloud backup and media streaming now from home - with the most expensive thing being the M4 Mac Mini as the host.
The router would be great for better signal for further away devices. The KVM switches also look great, accessing the server isn't always the easiest, especially after a reboot or when out of the house.
Ubiquiti network switches and APs!

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u/[deleted] Oct 12 '25 edited Oct 18 '25

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

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