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My Home-Lab | Update 2

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My Home-Lab | Update 2

It has been a while since I had documented updates regarding my home-lab. The last update that I had posted was back when I was just using a single tower PC and virtualizing both my NAS and pfSense router. I have since moved both those machines to their own servers as rebooting my main server would down my entire network.

Homelab with front door open
Homelab with front door closed

Ill go over what each part of my server does starting from the top of the rack.

The Rack:

All my server hardware lives inside of an old Compaq Rack 7000. It's been great so far! I was able to find the keys for the latches as well. It's entirely enclosed with a plexiglass front door with vents to pull in fresh air. The rear panel is all metal mesh to allow the hot air to vent. I talk about the rack some more here.

PDU:

Starting at the top of the rack is my StarTech 1U PDU. I choose this one because I enjoyed having the indicator lights on the front and the switch that I can use to cut power to the entire rack. The PDU is also connected to my Battery backup at the bottom of the rack.

Patch Panel:

The next item on the list is my Cat6 ethernet Patch Panel. This is pretty self explanatory but it's basically what distributes ethernet to the back of the server and connects everything to the network.

Network Switch:

Next is my network switch. It's a Mokerlink G24410GSM. This switch was a bit of a gamble as it boasts some very high performance stats but there was not much I could find supporting this outside of the product page. However for only $270 USD, it was hard to pass up. So far I have been using it for almost 2 years and it's been great! For my SFP+ LC fiber modules I was provided a few 10GB transceivers from OSI Global for testing. So far they have been fantastic! I will be writing about them soon.

1U Brush:

Next in the rack, and below my network switch is just an organizational 1U brush panel. It's simply there to allow me to route the fiber cables to the back of the server rack.

Proxmox Backup Server:

The next thing in the server is my 1U Proxmox Backup Server. It connects to my main Proxmox server and performs automatic backups every day. Eventually, this server will connect to a remote to provide an offsite backup for this server.

  • CPU - Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4
  • RAM - 16GB DDR4
  • Motherboard - Supermicro C7X99-OCE
  • Chassis - SuperChassis 512L-200B
  • 1TB NVME SSD
  • 1TB HDD (Upgrading Soon)

pfSense Server:

Next up in the rack is my pfSense server/router. It's a Dell PowerEdge R210 II. This server has an Emulex SFP+ 10GB NIC.

  • CPU - Intel Xeon E3-1270 v2
  • RAM - 16GB DDR4
  • Motherboard - OEM
  • 1TB SATA SSD
  • NIC - Emulex OneConnect OCe10100/OCe10102 Series 10GbE

Proxmox Server:

Next up is my main Proxmox server. This is an Intel R2000WT Family server. It's a 2U form factor server. I use my main Proxmox server to run most of my services that I test with.

  • CPU - 2x Intel Xeon E5-2697A v4
  • RAM - 256GB DDR4
  • Motherboard - Intel OEM
  • Storage:
    • Boot Storage - 256GB SSD
    • Boot Backup - 256GB SSD
    • VM Storage - 24x 1TB SSDs (ZFS Pool)
  • GPU - Nvidia Quadro P2200
  • NIC - Intel X540-AT2 10GbE x2

And of course these are the services I am running on my server:

NAS Server:

Below my main server is my 45Drives HL15 chassis that runs my NAS Server. I am running TrueNAS Scale as it's my preferred NAS software. Currently I am working on moving all my data to Pool 2 to slowly replace some smaller HDDs I have in my server that have been around for a while. I do not use my HL15 to host anything other than my storage needs.

  • CPU - Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4
  • RAM - 64GB DDR4 ECC
  • Motherboard - ASUS X99-A
  • NIC - Chelsio T420-BT
  • HBA - 2x Dell H200 SAS HBA
  • Storage:
    • Boot - Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD
    • Pool 1:
      • 4x Seagate BarraBuda 4TB HDD
      • 4x Seagate BarraCuda 8TB HDD
    • Pool 2:
      • 6x Western Digital Ultrastar WUH721414ALE6L1 HDD

VR PC:

The 4U server chassis below the HL 15 is my VR PC. I had a spare 4U chassis and I happen to have my VR setup next to where my server rack lives. I was able to route some cables out the bottom of the server that still lets me take advantage of my entire play space.

On the blank panel below I have my 3 Vive trackers mounted on the font to ensure connectivity range.

  • CPU - Intel i9-9900K
  • RAM - Teamgroup Elite DDR4 32GB (2x 16GB Kit)
  • Motherboard - ASUS Prime Z390
  • Storage:
    • Boot - WD 500GB NVME
    • Game - SK Hynix Gold 1TB SATA SSD
  • GPU - Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

Battery Backup:

Finally at the bottom of the server rack I have an APC Smart-UPS 1500. This is primarily a power conditioner for most of my servers. At some point I will need to get a second UPS to handle the load between all the machines but for now this does take care of any potential brown-outs I may get.