homelab

We're renovating a house and I'm looking to add some smart home devices in the home. This gives me a perfect excuse to renew my current home network setup. I currently have a simple setup: my ISP router + an unmanaged 16port switch with 2 Unifi AC Pro APs (feed using PoE injectors). I want to give the 2 Unifi APs to friends of mine so I'm looking at a total newal of my network.

I have a homeserver which runs 25+ containers, some for home use and some that I expose to the internet as well.

Since I'm adding smart home appliances (most z-wave but I will have to use some Wifi devices as well) to the network, I'd like to isolate these devices and give them minimal access to the internet and my own network. Since this will require me to setup VLANs I also want to setup multiple VLANs for various needs (see below).

As I'm not a network expect (I have basic knowledge) I like SDN setups. I was doubting between Unifi and Omada, after reading many posts I've got the feeling that Unifi isn't the same company it was 5 years ago, the router solutions Unifi is selling don't really seem to fit my needs (dream router/machine). The older Unifi routers feel like a better fit, however I'm worried that they will becom EoL and will no logner receive security updates. After learning that the Omada APs support PPSK without RADIUS - which allows me to use 1 SSID and have clients added to a VLAN depending on their passphrase - I decided to give Omada a chance.

I want to buy a smart doorbell (reolink), I don't plan on recording 24/7 or having any security camera's however I do worry that if I do get them I might hammer my router since the traffic streams will have to be routed between VLANs. However L3 switches are way pricier so I'd like to try with my current setup and upgrade if need be if/when the time comes.

I read that Omada routers are also not that great (I would primarily be using it to configure the routing between VLANs). And was doubting between opnsense or mikrotik, I got the impression that the Mikrotik (while harder to configure initially) is more a set and forget solution with enough capacity for my needs.

I want to buy the following hardware (fanless is a must):

• MikroTik RB5009UG+S+IN
• TP-Link JetStream TL-SG2016P (16 ports will be enough, I expect to require 3 PoE ports)
• 2 * TP-Link EAP650 - I like their small form factor and PPSK

I want to configure the following vlans:

• VLAN 10: 192.168.10.0/24 - management vlan
  • Contains: pihole, VPN server, network devices, omada controller
  • Access to: all vlans
• VLAN 20: 192.168.20.0/24 - private services vlan
  • Contains: server containing 25+ containers and home assist server
  • Access to other vlans: 30
• VLAN 30: 192.168.30.0/24 - shared services vlan
  • Contains: chromecasts, printers, other services I would like to expose to guests and home users
  • Access to other vlans: none
• VLAN 40: 192.168.40.0/24 - smart home devices vlan (via wifi or wired)
  • Contains: smart home sensors/devices + home assist server
  • Will not have access to the internet
  • Would like to have client isolation if possible/feasible
  • Access to other vlans: none
• VLAN 50: 192.168.50.0/24 - smart home devices vlan with internet access (via wifi or wired)
  • Contains: hopefully nothing, devices that require internet access to function
  • Would like to have client isolation if possible/feasible
  • Access to other vlans: none
• VLAN 200: 192.168.200.0/24 - Home users (via wifi or wired, mac address whitelisted?)
  • Contains: home users
  • Access to other vlans: 20, 30, 210, 220
• VLAN 210: 192.168.210.0/24 - VPN users
  • Contains: VPN users Access to other vlans: 30
• VLAN 220: 192.168.220.0/24 - Guests users (wifi only or wired)
  • Contains: guests
  • Access to other vlans: 20, 30, 200, 210

I plan to assign 3 VLANs to my home assistant server so it can be reached by the smart home devices and it can be reached by home users, however there might be better solutions to solve this.

I'm also wondering if it would make sense to split my 25+ containers over multiple vnets (putting containers reachable from the internet in a seperate VNET).

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

I wish lemmy would allow for bigger images.

My setup:

• VPS: Wireguard and ngnix proxy

• Nanopi: Friendlywrt for the firewall

• Dell precision tower 3620: proxmox with lxc containers running caddy and WordPress. I also have a VM running docker which runs some services, truenas for storage and a Linux mint VM for gaming, machine learning and jellyfin in podman. The machine has a 590 and a standard power supply. I had to cut off some of the housing in the case and on the GPU to make it fit.

• Beelink mini PC: It also runs proxmox and has my VM endpoint for wireguard with another ngnix proxy. It also runs a VM with docker for some other services

• Raspberry pi 3: i2p for fun

Hi,

I am looking for building a NAS with used hardware, mostly for media, because my current Dell 7050 only has a 500gb hdd and I am tired of running low on space constantly.

I have a few questions:

• I am currently running containers for Jellyfin, Radarr and Sonarr, if I buy a new machine for NAS, it makes sense to migrate every media-related container to the NAS drive, correct? The Dell machine I have has a 7th gen Intel CPU, that is able to transcode H265 perfectly, which is a big bonus. So if I end up moving it, the machine I buy needs to do the same, I suppose.
• If so, then I guess using TrueNAS is not the way to go, and instead use a simple debian or ubuntu server distro for simple sharing?
• If TrueNAS is the answer, then I should aim for ECC ram. If that's the case, I am not aware of cheap/budget workstations that have ECC ram, but if you have recommendations for one, great;
• If you think I should instead buy something with an i3/i5/i7 or Ryzen processor, what kind of machines would you recommend?
• I was looking to find something for around 150/200€, excluding hard drives. Not sure if that is possible.

Thank you.

Just cleaned out mt garage, closet, and attic. No clue why I kept every single box of anything electronic/tech based in the last ten years. I just tossed boxes for phones I haven't had in years, old CPU and heat sync boxes, boxes for 100mbps nics, old modems I don't have anymore. I've never needed any of these and have brought them with me through too many house moves.

For the last 6 months or so I’ve been working on Pinepods. I have never been able to find the perfect self-hosted podcast app that I wanted to use. podgrab’s player is rather lackluster and misses a lot of features that I would like.

With Pinepods you can play, download, and keep track of podcasts you enjoy. It allows for searching new podcasts using The Podcast Index or Itunes and provides a modern looking UI to browse through shows and episodes. In addition, Pinepods provides simple user managment and can be used by multiple users at once using a browser or app version. Everything is saved into a Mysql database including user settings, podcasts and episodes. It’s fully self-hosted, and I provide an option to use a hosted API or you can also get one from the podcast API and use your own. There’s even many different themes to choose from! Everything is fully dockerized and I provide a simple guide found below explaining how to install Pinepods on your own system.

There’s also lots of modern features like MFA, self-service password resets, and some Podcast 2.0 functionality (more to come)

In addition to all that, I’ve built a client version of the app that can connect via API to your home server over something like a reverse proxy or tailscale.

Pinepods is currently a couple beta releases in with all the basic functionality implemented. Currently, you’re likely to experience issues, but I certainly invite pull requests or opening issues if you have the time. Even assistance with debugging/creating documentation would be unbelievably helpful. You can also get setup assistance on the discord server. I invite you to try it out!

Check out the official site here:

https://www.pinepods.online/

Github here:

https://github.com/madeofpendletonwool/PinePods

Discord server:

https://discord.gg/kCHuH6UH

After a few conversations with people on Lemmy and other places it became clear to me that most aren't aware of what it can do and how much more robust it is compared to the usual "jankiness" we're used to. In this article I highlight less known features and give out a few practice examples on how to leverage Systemd to remove tons of redundant packages and processes.

Especially for homelab owners:

Have you ever felt like there might be something wrong with your current approach to installing and managing your services? Have you figured out how massively bloated systems are becoming with Docker and tons of little "helpers" that at the end of the day have dependency issues, are hard to understand and modify? Maybe you just want to squeeze a few extra miles out of a memory-tight system such as a Raspberry Pi. Deep learning Systemd will give you an edge and a better understanding about how your systems work and improve your workflows.

And yes, Systemd does containers. :)

I previously (and sort of still do) ran my homelab on a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4GB of RAM. That lab still exists but I recently picked up an Orange Pi 5B with 8GB of RAM and have been building out my services from scratch.

This time I thought I would do it properly with a reverse proxy through Caddy and email notifications, neither of which I made use of before.

It’s improved my experience so much! Being able to access my services from beyond my network without necessarily having to be connected to my VPN is great. My goal is to spin up my own Mastodon and Lemmy instances but it’s sort of a bit daunting to work out hosting them inside of Docker like the rest of my services. If anyone has any good guides or suggestions I would be interested.

Also looking for suggestions on ways to add some mass storage to this setup, I previously used a Drobo 5N2 but a quick google will tell you the way that company went.

I recently obtained a Dell t620 that I've rack mounted, and I'm using to upgradey homelab. I'm also thinking I should upgrade my routernsince I'm having to reconfigure a lot with the new server(I have a 12 year old Netgear wireless router).

Any recommendations for a rack mounted router?

Basically, I'm building a home and getting it wired with Ethernet cabling. I didn't want to get too much into the technical details, so I just provided the builders with locations where I want RJ45 ports, along with one spot where I just said "24-port patch panel" (the number of ports located elsewhere being 22.

I did some Googling and figured the patch panel should cost at most $150 in hardware costs (I found plenty of sub-$100 options, but a couple of more expensive ones and would not have been . I didn't mention anything about needing a rack because I thought it would be something that could just go directly in the wall. (And then I could buy a switch and use it to connect pretty much all the ports from the patch panel to the router.)

The builder came back to me with an estimated cost of:

• $465 for a server cabinet: SEVCBN -6RU – 66WM
• $567 for a patch panel: NCO760242563
• $148 install charge

They gave me specific model numbers for the patch panel and server cabinet, but I can't find information about whether that's the actual cost of them, because the costs are locked behind having an account with the B2B retailers.

Does their proposed patch panel costing about 4x what I was expecting actually seem likely to give any value? Is there are explanation for that cost?

Secondary question: is having a wall-mounted cabinet worthwhile? How will it work in terms of installing a switch and connecting from the patch panel to the switch?

Thanks!

It scratches the surface of the most obvious stuff. I'd only add running apps in isolation (docker or adduser) and maybe fail2ban.

I bought a Eaton Ellipse Eco 650 USB DIN for my Homelab. I connected it to my nas which is running OpenMediaVault because OMV has a NUT Plugin. I conneced it, it got recognised and i thought i should test it. So i switched the breaker off and my nas turned off safely after my entered time. I then went to turn the breaker back on, but after a few seconds the ups shuts the power off all devices and applies it after a second. This only happens when the nas is connected via usb.

• is there a setting that i missed in nut?
• is my ups broken (i dont think so)
• what could be the problem?

Edit: Wow, the Eaton Germany Support is terrible. I called them multiple times and i think they dont even have a Call Center. I now submitted a Support Ticket. They could at least tell you that they dont have telephone support right now. If i get a response i will update this.

Edit2: It turns out, it was a issue with the integrated nut tools in OpenMediaVault. After removing them and installing them via apt and configuring it with the config files, it works without any power loss.

I'm just going to be vulnerable for a minute here. I met the first person in real life who had similar server-y linux-y obsessions to me and we'd send eBay links of systems to drool over to eachother. They ended up being a terrible person but hid it from me pretty well until they couldn't anymore and now I no longer have someone to chat with about those things.

So um, I guess I'm open for applications for the position of "nerdy friend who I nerd too hard with about network infrastructure and Linux packages" now

Edit: Autocorrect errors manually corrected

Hi everyone!

I saw this video yesterday (https://youtu.be/vjDoQA4C22c) showing a nice custom homelab build that's a lot of bang for the buck, and I felt that it was time to replace my tired old Asustor NAS with something more fun. But I would like your wise advice and experience. 😊

Purpose:

1. Torrentstation - automated with Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr via qbittorrent and through Wireguard VPN.

2. Media server - I am currently running Plex Media Server on the NAS, but it sometimes struggles. I can imagine moving over to Jellyfin.

3. File backup - standard, photos, etc. Local backup mirrored to cloud service.

4. Other bits and pieces such as Home Assistant, AdGuard/PiHole, tinkering with some Linux stuff [insert your best tip here]. 😀

In the video, he builds his own NAS based on an n5105 NAS motherboard. I'm looking at the new topton i3-n305 mini PC maybe, which is said to have slightly better performance (?). Both seem to be energy-efficient, quiet and very good value for money.

But I am open to other suggestions. Preferably as small a form factor as possible as I would prefer to hide it away in the small junction box cabinet or in the TV cabinet.

I've also been looking at an Intel NUC (i5 or something) and just throwing in my two NAS HDDs into a two disk Raid enclosure and connecting via USB-C. Yes/no?

Then OS and software wise. What should be the base on this thing? Ubuntu? As I mentioned I want to set up qBittorrent, Sonarr and Radarr like I have to today. Get them to work downloading the media I want and then run a Plex or Jellyfin server on the machine simultaneously that my Nvidia Shield Pro can connect to and run the media to my TV.

Thank you in advance! 😊

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/1236407

On the left, my first 'proper' rack. Specs - Router - Cisco 887VAMW Unmanaged Netgear switch Two laptops (Asus X550Jk and HP Pavillion DV6) both running proxmox which has Pihole, Nextcloud, Bitwarden, Roundcube webmail and Nginx proxy server. Both laptops have their batteries removed to avoid them swelling too much. A Phillips Hue hub and TP Link Deco M5 router at the bottom. On top is a mishmash of leftover parts which is currently running TrueNas and Jellyfin. This is going to eventually replace the D-Link sharecentre hidden in the back. Specs of the pc on top - CPU - AMD FX 6100 (An older model but still has it where it counts) RAM - 8Gb DDR3 (Plans to upgrade it to 16Gb at some point) GPU - GeForce GT 710 (Honestly just there so I can get an ouput) Storage 2x 1Tb WD Red drives (With plans to add 2x 4tb WD Red Drives from Sharecentre)

On the right is the mess that is yet to be fixed. On the top shelf is a selection of cisco switches and routers which are being used as a lab for me doing my CCNA (Hence the mess there). On the bottom is the same Lack rack as on the left just with slightly different components. Specs - Router - Cisco 887VAMW Switch - Some managed Netgear switch from 2004 (It's on it's way out and will be replaced very soon) First Dell Poweredge R420, with two Xeon E5-2403, 80Gb RAM and about 3Tb of Storage. This is my new Proxmox host. Second Dell Poweredge R420 with a single Xeon E5-2403, 64Gb RAM and 7Tb Storage running TrueNas. On top is an old AMD Bulldozer machine I only use for ripping and encoding DVD files.

Bonus pic of my bottom rack.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1081037

Pretty happy with how my homelab is coming along!

Hi I got a very specific recommendation request:

I would like to build a fanless rackmount NAS for my homelab. Fanless because I am sleeping next to it. So to achieve that I don't want any moving part, hence SSDs and fanless cooling. Rackmount So I can neatly store it in my rack. Ideally I want to run Truenas on it and be not fendor restricted so I cam expand and modify it myself. So I thought about getting a maybe 2U maybe higher case. But here starts my trouble: I want it to support at least 6 external drives and consumer tower PSU because industrial server PSU are not build to be silend. I hope you guys can follow me.

TL;DR: I need a 2U rackmount case with 6+ (4+) external drives and supporting consumer PSU (fanless Design) for a NAS. No pre-build or at least easy modifiable.

Please ask any questions or ask for any infos you need :) Thank you for your time.

Just want to share some love about Seagate.

My new DIY NAS is idle most of the time so I want to configure it to be as power efficient as possible.

I spent a couple of evenings trying to make my new WD Red Plus drives go to standby (spindown) after 30 minutes of inactivity, without success. I read about WD not respecting hdparm commands, interpreting them differently and tried all suggestions, again without success. I even read about WD support saying they don't support Linux. Strange as most of the available consumer NAS systems are based on Linux.

I then decided to try my 2nd choice drives: Seagate Ironwolf. On the first attempt they also didn't go to standby after configuring with hdparm. Then I found this: Seagate offers an open-source suite of tools named openSeaChest, which lets you configure and test your drives in any possible way including firmware updates and ... tada, power settings. After enabling idle_c and standby_z and configuring the timers the drives now do how I configured.

I returned the WD drives. Now Seagate is my top choice for future drive purchases 🧡

Made from an old filing cabinet.

Hi all, long time reddit lurker, first time lemmy poster here.

This is the current state of my tiny homelab. I use it for learning and self hosting some services.

Top to bottom:

IPS modem / router

• only used as cable modem
• all other functionality is disabled

HP Elitedesk 705 G3 Mini

• Proxmox VE Host
• 4C/4T - 16GB RAM
• 128GB SSD for Boot
• 500GB NVME SSD for VMs
• replaced 2 Pi4 and still gives space for experiments
• Services: NodeRed, InfluxDB, Grafana, PiHole, Uptime Kuma, Observium

Kobol Helios64

• ARM-based NAS running Armbian
• 6C/6T - 4GB RAM
• 128GB SSD for Boot
• 3 x 1TB HDD as raid5 for storage
• Services: personal Nextcloud instance, that I use for file sharing and synchronization between my devices and also as WebDAV target for Joplin

4-Port Firewall-Appliance

• runs pfSense CE
• 4C/4T - 4GB RAM
• 128GB SSD for Boot
• manages VLANs, DHCP and reverse proxy (HAProxy)

not in picture

• managed switch: TP-Link TL-SG116E (looking to upgrade to a switch with some 2.5G Ports)
• UPS: Eaton Ellipse ECO 650

All together this pulls around 60W from the wall. Happy to answer questions.

Right now I am looking at NZ's second hand marketplace TradeMe. But there are not very many options. Are there any other places I could look to buy? Or is it better to use a couple of Orange Pi 5s? My budget is $800 NZD or around $500 USD.

Server

• Lenovo M700 Tiny Mini PC i7 6700t / 16GB RAM / 256GB M.2 + 1TB SSD
• OS - Linux Mint
• Hosting - Plex, qbittorrent, SMB, Minecraft, Terraria

"Core" Switch

• TP-Link 5 Port Gigabit Switch

WIFI and Internet Router / Firewall

• Ubiquity Unifi Dream Machine