I recently learned about the IKEA SKÅDIS series, which is a pegboard that supports a variety of extras. During my self-hosting journey having to figure out the best place for putting all my compute stuff to has always been at the back of my mind, especially due to limited floor space at my home. This pegboard gave me an idea.

Behold: the homelab on a wall!
Behold: the homelab on a wall!

Note that this idea also applies to other types of pegboards that you can find, I just went with the IKEA one for aesthetics (and the wife approval factor).

The layout was improvised during the assembly process, but in the end I’m quite happy with how this turned out. Everything is held in place with zip ties of varying sizes. The biggest ones I used are 360x4.5mm, which fit nicely due to the slot width of the pegboard being 5mm. Some of the zip tie ends have been cut off for aesthetic reasons, but most of them are intact in case I want to perform maintenance on this setup.

There are some improvements that I might implement to a revision of this board. The USB cables connecting the external SSD-s seem to be just small enough to be routable behind the pegboard. Other cables that are visible can probably be hidden on the other side as well, giving the setup a much cleaner look.

I also installed a second pegboard to have access to most commonly used cables and other stuff that I usually store on my table in a chaotic fashion. It’s a work in progress, but it looks very promising already.

The misalignment is a representation of my struggle to install the damn thing properly. I'll fix it eventually.
The misalignment is a representation of my struggle to install the damn thing properly. I'll fix it eventually.

Maintenance is not going to be very easy on this setup. Luckily the UPS should be maintenance-free for the next 2-4 years or whenever the battery dies, and with the ASRock Deskmini X300 I can unscrew the 4 screws on the back and slide the thing out without having to take off the whole pegboard. I hope that the external SSD-s don’t die on me soon, but if they do, then sliding them out of the zip ties should not be that difficult.

Those more familiar with my content might see echoes of the seedbox on a wall in this post.