Current Homelab 2024

Finally, getting to reveal my home lab. As always this is not the final product. It is an ongoing developing project. My home lab has gone through a lot of revisions, trials, testing, and a few setbacks. The home lab has definitely changed since its first inception. The original project started off as a spare windows computer with network file share. Currently, the home lab has grown a lot bigger with a few projects still left to be tackled.

Having worked at a few jobs. None, had a test environment to further hone one skills, try out new services, test out certain changes before implementing them. I found reddit forums where techs were making their own network/server racks. For the purposes of further learning and expanding their knowledge. Having found this very interesting, I embarked on my research and investing in hardware and software in 2018. My main concern was noise levels, heat, and electricity bill.

After setting up my initial test network at home. The idea transferred over to my previous job . I was working with a team of interns. The higher level tech was not to keen on letting the interns mess with the live running servers. There was an empty rack and we started to cobble our test network. Having the interns rack mount servers, a switch, setting up raid, configuring Windows Server with services and connecting them to laptop to get Addresses. I did not allow them to connect the server to the active network due to NOT wanting to cause IP Address conflicts. You can see the look of excitement on the interns faces light up when they actually got the equipment working. One of my interns took over my position when I left. Another intern found a job out of state and life is going well for him. The last tech found a job at a local school district and has been moving up.

• Version 1 – The rack included a used Dell R710 I purchased on eBay. The noise when powered on, sounded like a jet taking off. Also the heat being generated was great during winter not during summer.
• Version 2 – Dell r710 was retired. Purchased a 3D printer and printed a 2U, 12 slot Raspberry PI 4 rack case. Each Raspberry Pi would have a Pi POE Hat (Power over ethernet). I had 4 Rpi (raspberry pi) setup and working. Noticed the microsd cards were being worn out to quickly. Noise and power were great. The Pandemic and trying to purchase a Rpi was nearly impossible.
• Version 3 – Just as lock downs/restrictions were being lifted. I purchased x86 hardware and setup 2 servers along with a Network Video Recording computer. Upgraded the network switch, consolidated devices, and reworked the entire software stack.

Here is the video that better explains what I currently use….