Projects

Home Based Enterprise Infastructure

I have an extensive home lab network that's constantly growing and changing. check it out!

Homemade Off-Set Smoker

I wanted a smoker, I didnt want to spend $1200. That's a challenging enough project.

Full mail server on a Raspberry Pi

There a lot of reason's this is terrible- but I wanted to do anyway.

The best way to learn is to do. and I love to learn! Welcome to the future home of my personal data center, the Compaq Model 9122.

But that comes much later. I need to get power and data into this little closet. For now here is the state of the lab:

So what do we have here?

Hardware:

Dell PowerEdge R620 (1TB SSD, 96GB RAM, 2 Xeon CPUs)
2x Synology NAS. 4TB each
Ugreen NAS, 8TB
iProda mini PC (1TB NVME, 16GB RAM)
Raspberry Pi 4 (1TB NMVE, 4GB RAM)

Software:
My Dell poweredge is my main machine, running Promox 8.x, with my iProda running Promox 9.x. The Ugreen NAS supports VMs as well, so I have a Proxmox Q-Device running here, so we always have Quarum for stack.

What VMs do we have here:

A web Server
MySQL
Mealie
MineCraft Server
Space Engineers Server
FreeBSD server
Ubuntu SSH remote access server
Windows 10 honeypot (for all those scam calls I get)

The NAS drives host all our photos, and backed up data from all the PCs in the house, as well as VM back ups. of course, in a 3,2,1 back up model, we still need off site back ups. I use Google Drive to keep our critical data offsite. I don't back up the VMs offsite, I calculate in a total loss scenario- I am not concerned if I need to rebuild from scratch.

Most of this would be useless without good remote access, which most homelabs accomplish with reverse DNS services. In my case, I have a business fiber connection with a dedicated IP address. that makes this setup even better! I manage everytinh with a UDM pro and switch sitting just below my fiber interface. I get symmetrical 2GB speeds consistently:

What's next? This 1U is a good starter, but I would love to get a MinisForum MX-01 with 96GB of RAM to replace it. why? because on a modern platform the same amount of RAM will go further, and use a lot less power.