As a long-time dabbler in Linux, server administration, and system management, I have always been interested in building my own more complex homelab. Over the years, I have acquired several pieces of hardware and equipment, and I am proud to say that my homelab is fully operational and running smoothly, for now. I started off with a Microserver N40L and soon after bought a Microserver Gen8. At first I was struggling with the Gen8 with all it’s enterprise features, but am now loving the iLO4 possibilities that I have. Recently I decided that I want a more complex home network and invested into some network equipment as well as some further Gen8 Microservers including hardware upgrades with used (CPU & RAM) and new (SSDs) hardware.

Now I have three HP Microserver Gen8 machines, each with an Intel Xeon E3-1260L CPU, 16 GB of Unbuffered ECC RAM (UDIMM), and a 256GB SSD as a boot drive, as well as 3*512GB SSDs for storage. The machines are running Proxmox VE in a cluster configuration and local ZFS Storage. Technically the machines are all booting from the microSD card that has GRUB and the boot partition installed, which then boots from the SSD installed in the optical drive port.

The machines are connected to a TP-Link SG2210P Smart Router via an LCAP Bonded Ethernet Connection, which allows for fast and reliable 2*1 Gbit/s networking between the servers and the router. This doesn’t really allow me to do anything but was a nice exercise in network management and something new to learn for me. In addition to my Microservers, I also have a BananaPi R3 running a snapshot of OpenWRT as my main wifi router. This device connects me to the internet via a 1GBits fiber line and also serves as a central hub for my homelab network. The homelab network as well as the management network for the iLO4 UIs are on seperate physical networks. The wifi, the guest wifi, the homelab and the homelab management are also on different logical networks with different subnets, but no VLANs.

homelab-overview.jpeg

Maintaining a homelab can be challenging, and I have certainly experienced my fair share of issues and obstacles. Debugging the network and setting up the LACP Bonded Ethernet Connection between the servers and the router was especially challenging, but I was able to overcome these challenges with some help and googling. I also use my homelab as an opportunity to learn new skills and technologies, and I enjoy the process of troubleshooting and problem-solving. Altough nerve wracking from time to time, the reward is often endorphine enducing.

In terms of future plans for my homelab, I am currently focused on tidying up the physical setup and making it look nice in my living room. I have also considered using my homelab for offsite backup and disaster recovery purposes, as well as giving some compute power to projects like SETI@Home.

Overall, building and maintaining a homelab has been a rewarding hobby for me. It allows me to fiddle around and do things that you normally can’t do, going so far that it has even impacted my professional development and career growth. It is a great way to learn new skills, experiment with new or old technologies, and have fun in the process.