Hardware setups

Hardware
1

My Network Configuration

At the last HLB meeting it was suggested that those of us with some experience in the home lab share our setups as it may be of assistance to new members. The following is my story. I am mainly interested in running and self hosting services and not so much into hardware such as home automation, 3D printing or building my own machines.

In the past I have run virtual machines under Debian using Virtual Machine Manager. These ran in both test and production environments. The hardware had 64 gig RAM and the virtual machines had 12 gig. These VMs supported up to 8 users in the production environment. Data was stored on 5, 6 or 9 bay QNAP NASes under iSCSI. The system was performant without being incredibly fast.

This was my configuration for over ten years. More modern approaches emerged but I stuck with my setup on the principle of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Eighteen months ago I retired and this gave me an opportunity to reconfigure my home setup. This was also the time that I embraced containerisation through docker.

My current configuration is a three node Proxmox cluster. This compromises one of the old servers with 64 gig RAM, an old laptop with 16 gig or RAM and a Geekom NUC running an Intel processor and 32 gig RAM. Proxmox has not been setup for high availability.

The storage solution back end is largely NFS on thin volumes with QNAPs although I do have a couple of iSCSI volumes for two machines in which performance should be optimised. I run the storage network on a separate physical LAN (although that should probably be changed to separate VLANs in the future.)

I currently have five non-docker vms but these now only have minimal resources. I also have five “docker” VMs - two with 24 gig RAM, two with 12 and one with 8. The VMs can be over-provisioned for RAM but I think I am still under.

I am running two QNAPs and they back up to each other over a 1 gig connection. Following last night’s meeting, and this video which came out today, I have decided to run up a Proxmox backup server and I am also looking at some faster NIC options.

In summary Brandon’s ten tips for 2025 for home labbers are:

  1. Mini PCs
  2. RAM
  3. Network adapter brand and drivers
  4. Network switch
  5. Storage
  6. Licensing
  7. Backups
  8. UPS power backup
  9. Open Source Software
  10. Documentation

I largely have his ten points covered but 7 and 8 need further attention. Those starting off in home labs may be interested in item 1.

HTH.

2

That’s very interesting. I’d love to learn more about what you’re doing, what you don’t like about it and what you’re going to do differently.

I have to remember those whiteboard markers at our next meeting. I reckon there’ll be a lot more drawing at those meetings now that we’re talking specifically about our home setups.

3

No problem. I can demonstrate that at the next meeting … if my tailscale works. :cry:

4

Also if people want to get their toes wet with docker running it in a vm on a reasonably speced laptop is fairly straight forward. I have experience with virt-manager.