DB Tech's Featured Homelabs Ep. 1 - Mr. Colo

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https://dbte.ch/homelab

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From Mr. Colo:

I hope this email finds you well. It's MrColo here, and I wanted to take a moment to share with you the details of my homelab setup.

Hardware:

Starting with the hardware, let's take a closer look at the components from top to bottom based on the attached photo:

1. Iconic 3D Printer: I've made some modifications to my Anycubic I3 Mega S, including new stepper drivers and a custom fan duct.

2. Raspberry Pi 2B (x2): I've repurposed these as PiKVM units, housed in a custom 3D-printed case made from an old DVB-T decoder. The 3D printed front bezel accommodates the Pis and various connectors.

3. Temperature Controller XH-W3001: This handy device allows me to automatically activate a fan when a certain temperature threshold is reached.

4. Netgear GS-724T Switch: Surprisingly, I found this switch in perfect working condition at a landfill. lol

5. Main Storage Solution - Synology DS218+: Equipped with 4x Seagate Ironwolf 8TB drives in SHR and 2x NVME SSDs for caching, this NAS has been updated to DSM7.

6. Main Server - Dell T130: Powered by a Xeon E3-1220V6 (4C/4T), 32GB DDR4 ECC RAM, 2x 1TB MX500 SSDs Raid 1 ZFS for VMs and LXC, a 250GB Samsung 860evo for the OS, and an Intel i350-T4 NIC with 4x 1Gig ports.

7. AP Mikrotik cAP XL: A formidable access point.

Software:

I run Proxmox 7 as the hypervisor on my main server, where I have virtualized the following:

VMs:

• Sophos XG Firewall
• Windows 10
• Proxmox Backup Server (for server backups to the NAS)

LXC Containers:

• Octoprint (for remote 3D printer control)
• Docker with a stack including *arr applications, qbittorrent, jellyfin, plex, and heimdall, all managed by Portainer.

Networking:

My network revolves around the virtualized Sophos XG Firewall on the main server, which controls various VLANs, including:

• Server (for all servers)
• End Devices (for home family devices like smartphones and PCs)
• IoT (for home automation)
• Guest (for friends or guests)
• Media (for media servers)
• Security (an isolated network for security testing)
• DMZ (for exposing services)
• Management (for all management interfaces)

The Netgear GS-724T switch handles traffic distribution, and both the NAS and server utilize 2x NICs in LAG for increased bandwidth.

Miscellaneous:

To remotely access my homelab, I rely on Tailscale and have an OpenVPN setup on the firewall as a backup.

In terms of backups, I've virtualized the Proxmox Backup Server, which performs backups to the NAS via NFS. While I acknowledge the risk of losing the PBS VM if the server fails, the critical dataset is on the NAS, ensuring data integrity. Additionally, the NAS is backed up to an offsite Synology unit and an external hard drive.

My future goals include finding a more efficient setup, possibly creating a cluster to ensure network continuity (now if the main server goes down, the network dies). I also aim to securely expose services, though I currently lack the necessary security knowledge to accomplish this.

Some areas for improvement include cable management using a patch panel and considering more robust SSDs for both the NAS and the server, as the consumer-grade ones I currently use have already degraded to 28% of their original life after only 2 years...

I appreciate this opportunity to share the details of our homelabs.

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The hardware in my current home servers: ✔ Synology DS1621xs+ (provided by Synology): https://amzn.to/2ZwTMgl ✔ 6x8TB Seagate Exos Enterprise HDDs (provided by Synology): https://amzn.to/3auLdcb ✔ 16GB DDR4 ECC RAM (provided by Synology): https://amzn.to/3do7avd ✔ 2TB NVMe Caching Drive (provided by Sabrent): https://amzn.to/3dwPCxj

✔ TerraMaster F5-221 (provided by TerraMaster): https://amzn.to/3IfH2QD ✔ 5x6TB WD Red Plus NAS: https://amzn.to/3LnbPvC ✔ 8GB DDR3: https://amzn.to/3kfLTX3

✔ TerraMaster F4-423 (provided by TerraMaster): https://amzn.to/3kjUms5 ✔ 2x8TB Seagate Barracuda Compute: https://amzn.to/3xBAO95 ✔ 16GB TEAMGROUP Elite DDR4: https://amzn.to/3MzzFV9 ✔ 512GB Silicon Power NVMe Caching Drive: https://amzn.to/3MzkBae

All amzn.to links are affiliate links. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYMj1ZZnta0