As I rely more on my home lab server, I’m starting to worry more about it getting stolen. If someone breaks into my home, I think the server will be a pretty attractive target.
Do y’all just stick it in a closet? That seems not great for cooling…
One of my neighbors recently got broken into.
EASY does it: Experimental Autonomous Securitybot, Yellow.
May as well just rig the house to burst into flames
May as well just rig the house to burst into flames
That’s reserved for if they make it past the first three levels of security. EASY and pals are #2.
I doubt that a server would be an attractive target for common thieves. It’s heavy, bulky and not immediately clear how well it would resell and how valuable it actually is. So yeah… Just have plenty of other more stealable things lying around I guess 😄
I guess it’s a unique situation for everyone. My TV is huge, heavy, and requires at least 2 people (I used 3 people) to carefully move it out. Laptops are easy and fast to take. I don’t think one would stop there though. I don’t have gold n cash laying around like some other Lemmy users here, lol.
I’m not sure if I have anything else that’s valuable. No tablets. Not much tools. Uh. What else do people have that is sellable?
My home server is a smallish ITX box. I could see some idiot thinking computers -> gaming -> expensive -> money.
I build from ewaste and keep things deliciously trashy looking.
Security by trashcurity, brilliant!
Let me guess you don’t have cats
That nvme drive just hanging out next to the power cord is giving me a type of anxiety I never knew I had, thanks.
By living in the middle of fucking nowhere. I haven’t locked my front door in over a year.
No need to worry about thieves. They mostly don’t even steal laptops of TVs. It’s just not worth the work and the risk.
Yes need to worry about floods or your house burning down. That’s the real way to lose a home server.
Thankfully, I don’t think there’s ever been a flood where I live. House burning down is way more likely. But, break-ins do happen in my town. Actually, what prompted me to think about this was that my neighbor recently had their house broken into.
There never used to be tornadoes in my area. Now there are. With climate change, anything’s possible!
Door lock and house alarm, also mines at the back of the garage with plenty of more easily stealable things in front of it.
…mines at the back of the garage…
Holy shit, you are serious about your physical security!
Easily defeated by those who play Minesweeper.
Mantraps that use deadly force are illegal in the United States, and in notable tort law cases the trespasser has successfully sued the property owner for damages caused by the mantrap. There is also the possibility that such traps could endanger emergency service personnel such as firefighters who must forcefully enter such buildings during emergencies. As noted in the important American court case of Katko v. Briney, “the law has always placed a higher value upon human safety than upon mere rights of property”.[5]
EDIT: I’d add that I don’t know about the “life always takes precedence over property” statement; Texas has pretty permissive use of deadly force in defense of property. However, I don’t think that anywhere in the US permits traps that make use of deadly force.
Don’t want to ruin the fun but he missed an apostrophe in the sentence. His stuff is in the back of the garage. “mine’s at the back of the garage”
It’s also kind of squished on some racking, and with it been a 4u rack case full of HDD it’s quite heavy. If you have made it this far in to the garage, you not only have done well but passed the beer collection and numerous cordless power tools. It also has a sign saying beware of the leopard.
Backup and encryption. encryption prevents the thief to see my data, backup allows me to make a new server. Furthermore, as other pointed out, I don’t expect that a common thief will see a lot of value in a small black box on top of a shelf
Backup and encryption
Yeah, I guess this is the solution. Encryption I get. But where do you backup to? I currently have about 4TB of data and was thinking of at least doubling capacity soon. How expensive is it to backup 8TB of data somewhere?
The really important things (essentially only photos) are backed up on a different USB drive and remotely on backblaze. Around one terabyte cost 2-3$ per month (you pay by operation, so it depends also by how frequently you trigger the backup). You want to search for “cold storage” which is the name for cloud storage unfrequently accessed (in other words, more storage than bandwidth). As a bonus, if you use rclone you can encrypt your data before sending it to the cloud.
I put a tiny NAS in my parents’ house (cheapest ARM synology 2-bay). It backs up their computers (a first, of course, but the photos are safe now!) and my server sends its TBs to there too. Upfront is large because you need to put in two big drives plus a lil NAS. But no $/mo, thanks parents.
For over a few TB Hetzner and the like really hit hard (€21/mo for 10TB at Hetzner storage box). Depends how much disposable income you have/want to ensure data is good. Now-a-days €21/mo is like 1 Disney/Hulu/bullshit, that price is obviously over inflated but it makes you feel less bad about spending it on cold, hard, remote backups of your big ass data.
Server equipment is not on any normal burglar’s list of items to nab. It’s such a low risk I think it’s completely not worth worrying about.
It’s incredibly unlikely they’ll know what they’re looking at in the first place, and won’t be assed to carry out heavy switches and PC gear “just in case” to look it up later. They want to get in, check rooms and closets, drawers, etc and GTFO before you come home or a neighbor notices. Computers aren’t as expensive as they used to be. Gaming laptops might look attractive, but other than that you’re fine.
They want jewelry, cash, guns, good tools, silver, modern game consoles, expensive bicycles, etc. These are all things that are easy to carry and pawn or sell well on the street. Nobody is selling switch gear at a pawn shop or to random people, so even if they know the value of what they’re looking at (extremely unlikely) they’ll leave it because it’s too hard to fence.
If you’re that worried about theft then set up good full disk encryption and have off-site backups of your data (should do that anyways) but you don’t need to worry about physical security at home, at least not specifically in regards to your home lab.
Businesses are at much higher risk for hardware theft, from employees or from others that are targeting the locations specifically because they DO understand the value and have a way to offload the gear, but those same people won’t be randomly breaking into people’s houses hoping they’ve got Cisco gear in a closet somewhere.
Same way you protect anything else valuable in your house - by locking the door and potentially installing (selfhosting) security cameras. I’d completely disagree that a server will be a target for a common thief. What are they gonna do with that? Who is gonna buy that from them? What can they buy with that? It’s useless garbage for them.
I always thought this was an argument for properly racking everything. If it takes more effort, more time to remove, maybe they won’t bother.
My understanding is that for most individuals, theft is mainly
- Targets of opportunity. Lock your door and make sure nothing expensive is visible
- Smash and Grab. The goal is to act fast and not care about what you break, so anything harder to smash (without tools) or that causes delay is good.
I do have outside cameras but they’re not as useful as you’d think. Maybe they have some deterrent value but they’re not going to alert anyone fast enough unless they’re already in the house and you’re not going to identify anyone even if you catch a good shot of their face. If the do catch someone, perhaps the video is enough to say, yep
What are they gonna do with that?
Steal it.
Who is gonna buy that from them?
People on eBay who buy used computer parts, like me.
What can they buy with that?
Money can buy many peanuts.
I don’t.
If you’re stupid enough to carry out my stuff, good luck getting anything for it.
My setup is a small-form-factor desktop, a NAS, and 2 other modest systems. Easy enough to carry away, but all worthless from a pawn standpoint, because it’s all old, as in long past support dates from the vendor.
I guess you’d need to understand what a burglar in your area steals, and what homes they target.
I doubt they steal systems.
Install a floppy drive. No one gonna steal a computer with one of those.
Considering I stole most my stuff from work it would be fair if someone else nicked my setup.
Just put a big sticker on it signifying it has a tracker inside.
Even if they would want to steal it, it might just make them doubt enough to leave it be.
Mine is in the utility room, which is in the basement. There’s no way in or out of the basement except for the stairway from the living room on the main floor.
That room is where all of the CAT5 and coax cables are distributed to each room (demarcation point?), and also where the furnace and water heater live. It’s fairly well-ventilated, too, which is nice.
Haven’t seen anyone say this so I will: if your home isn’t Fort Knox or a billionaire bunker, then presume it will be broken into. If they don’t steal your shit, they might just smash it for funsies. If you’re running home lab, you probably don’t have the money to turn your home into Fort Knox, but even if you did you’d probably be better off removing the need:
- back important data up to another site automatically: Friends house, family, cloud, etc. Preferably far away.
- encrypt everything that’s got private data on it, both onsite and remotely.
Then you don’t have to worry about theft or damage or fire. Congrats, you’re doing better than probably 50% of businesses-grade setups.
