Complete Homelab Tour! - Hardware, Networking, and Apps!

It's nearly the end of 2023 and as is tradition, it's time for a complete homelab tour! This time, we're taking the time and going deep into my ENTIRE homelab. From the physical hardware to the physical network topology and logical network topology, and down to the apps and services I'm #selfhosting! I hope this video inspires you and gives you ideas for your homelab and what you self-host, but also know that a homelab is what you make of it!
Special *THANK YOU* to our Discord user GregarousDude for the recommendation to make this video! You should join our discord and share your #homelab with us!
*REFERENCED VIDEO'S HERE*
'FrankenSense' Firewall Build: • I built a HIGH PERFORM...
ESXi Cluster & SuperSAN Storage Build: • TWO SERVERS IN ONE BOX...
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*TIMESTAMPS!*
0:00 Introduction
0:43 The physical hardware in my homelab
4:42 How I name my storage pools
9:24 My physical network topology
11:22 My logical network topology
13:32 What I'm running in my homelab
20:41 Closing and final thoughts!

[@zate251]

This guy is on another level. I'm over here with my 2bay Synology nas and a PFSense fire wall thinking I'm all that lol.

[@2GuysTek]

Hey now, your homelab is just as great if it's serving your needs!

[@LannisterKing]

couldn't agree more @@2GuysTek

[@FastHands1504]

This is exactly how it starts 🤠🚀🎯. Just keep learning.

[@juniornunes]

i started with an old gaming laptop and an hp elite desktop that i put proxmox on. now i have a 28U rack with a dell r730 with proxmox for dns and home autmation , a SuperServer 6028U-TR4T+ with 192gb ram for proxmox with unraid (had pfsense but moved it) speaking of pfsense thats on an old sophos utm220 that i put 8gb ram and a quad core cpu in from the orginal dual core with 2gb ram... plus my gaming pc and a battery backup. with my omada POE switch for the access points and thats all in a yr?? once that ball rolls it ROLLS! also slight side effect is getting a package and your wife asking what you ordered this time lol my 8 month old liked the pretty lights from my gaming pc (yes i left the MEGA GAMER RGB cause why not lol ) anyway it grows fast lol

[@rayk32]

Awesome video! I've been a network engineer for 25 years and I've always said, "keep the ACL's to a minimum ... let the switches switch, routers route and firewalls firewall". Obviously you'll need some ACLs on layer 3 switches and routing on some firewalls but these functions should be thoughtfully implemented as to not overburden your network devices. It was good to hear you say what you said about ACLs.

[@Prime0pt]

Yep, and use microscope instead of hammer for nailing 😁

[@Weirlive]

I've gone from a full 42u rack of power hungry devices to a couple NUC's. So happy I made the switch. Looks great and happy its working for you.

[@jonathan.sullivan]

I took the same journey, 100+ core monster pizza boxes. Now down to a 3 Intel NUC proxmox cluster now. It's all I need.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Excellent video, well presented!

[@Ozz465]

Dont currently run a homelab but man do I enjoy watching a welll explained breakdown of there set ups. Well done .

[@caizza3]

Superb explanation and very entertaining. Impressive video!!!

[@stang9806]

Makes me nostalgic for my time working in a data center

[@GregariousDudeGaming]

Amazing video! You guys are the best! Cannot stop recommending you guys enough! Keep up the awesome work and content!

[@Ultimaus]

I don't know how but this is exactly the homelab your I needed to get my head straight about how I should organize network topology for homelab. Your mention and reasoning of the layer 2 VLAN is a subtle nuance that's really easily missed for non networking focused people. 10/10. I don't know if you script your videos but us stats nerds would love to peer into your power usage and what not on the hardware you're using. Lots of us that are looking to buy the Broadwell power edge would like to know the month to month power consumption of something full of spinning mech drives and a nvme performance king. If it's too boring to post on video we would love just a link with a written form with some pics to please the algorithm.

[@mAcHiNeHeli]

Really Great Home Lap 👌🏻

[@JasonsLabVideos]

Looking clean ! Mines a huge mess because i keep adding / removing and testing and learning, oh wait, thats the whole purpose of the home lab !!

[@user-gg3mu3ki4t]

This is the stand. I haven't seen anything like this live in the last 10 years.

[@justy1337]

Cool to see your setup. I'd say only thing is some things related to performance could be improved from your routing to your monitoring stuff using TIG. Maybe try some HA setup with your services? I use a HA K3S (Kubernetes) cluster for most of my mission-critical workloads personally and when possible.

[@lewayneg9264]

Must be nice. I'd love to have my system up and running, but not having a home stops that. Anyway, I'm glad he got what he has. It's nice.

[@popquizzz]

Twinax as in IBM Type 1A cabling Twinax?? I had no idea that was still a thing. When I worked at Mod-Tap back in the 80s that was a thing for converting onto UTP cabling. There was also WangNet which used dual coax to which we had dual-coax baluns for but this shook me to my core the mention of Twinax.

[@VauntedSeer]

I respect home labbers. I have a large lab at work so i stay minimal at home. My 12TB freebsd server is enough for me.

[@dirtyminerapparel]

I have a dual cluster NetApp FAS if you’re interested. It’s in a new NetApp 42U and has several fabric Cisco switches and a UCS with PDUs as well. It’s running Clustered OnTAP

[@PatrickDKing]

Well that was a lot more than I thought it would be. I didn't know what half that stuff is. Feel free to make a dedicated video on everything lol!

[@2GuysTek]

Was there anything in particular you'd like to see more info on?

[@BilatSlayer]

Im gonna copy this

[@stmusil]

great video. great Homelab setup. I have similar setup at home, but not as clean as you have ;) I am also using vCenter, several ESXi hosts, Mikrotik routers and switches, APs + Zyxel switches.. What I am little bit missing as I am "more" technical person are details about VM's configuration like cpu, ram, disk.. Thank you for the video. Great job.

[@2GuysTek]

Sounds like a good idea for a follow-up video!

[@Calvin420GetRektM8]

I've my self a Supermicro cse826 (modded with Ryzen and my playground, since normally you would not get a BGP session there for announcing my own asn.

[@TantissTheEmperor]

Also team 42U homelab here. I use it pretty much for the same services. Difference are, I orchestrate everything with ansible and terraform and docker host is a k8s cluster. Apart from APs I don’t use Ubiquiti but enterprise used gear only (Aruba, Arista, HPE ….) I found it was around the same prices and closer to what I use at work. But as said homelab is not about the hardware but what you are doing with it and if you enjoy it. To bad the team “low power” tends to judge all big setup and talk NUC all the time…

[@2GuysTek]

GO TEAM 42U! Thanks for sharing!

[@user-um9sl1kj6u]

I have been thinking about a home lab for a very long time, but there’s a lot of stuff you need for that. Not just for the server

[@lucidlx]

It’s easy to get started by installing Proxmox or ESXi on an old PC. You can build at your own speed from there. It just depends what you want from a home lab. Everyone is different.

[@eman0828]

You don't need enterprise hardware for a home lab esp over kill hardware for a single person. I built an ESXi server out of regular Desktop PC hardware and moved it into a 4U Server Chassis with ICY Dock swap bays. It only idles around 55Watts currently running 15 VMs. I have another 4U box for my True NAS storage.

[@Silent1Majority]

Thank you, excellent video. Any chance I could request a how to/setup video regarding your "Monitoring VM" (AKA TIG Stack)? Please 🙏🙏🙏

[@2GuysTek]

Great suggestion!

[@MarkJay]

What's the power consumption on that setup?

[@DigiDoc101]

Nice video! Can you walk us through how you built your 10gb networking accross your nodes? Did you use a switch or direct attachment.

[@2GuysTek]

All nodes connect directly to the 10G switch as trunk ports with multiple VLANs.

[@JairoRizzoitalcol]

Great video, quick question ..where does your red internet cable connect to? the one leaving your unifi usw ent 24p switch.

[@2GuysTek]

My ISP hands off my 2Gbps Internet as Ethernet. So I bring it into the Ent 24p, tag it as an internet-only VLAN, and then it's in my network. From that point I hand it off from the Pro Agg to the FW as a 10Gbps DAC connection. The reason I don't go direct into the FW using an SFP+ to Ethernet transceiver is because past experience has taught me that Ethernet transceivers can be a bit temperamental, and bringing it into my network means I could (if I wanted to) expose the Internet to a VM if I ever wanted to test or go back to a VM firewall.

[@sadoveca]

a lot of computing power for a handful of VMs, what else are you doing ? :)

[@gregoryharris1622]

Is a homelab suitable and safe for small companies hosting their own Odoo servers? Odoo is an open-source ERP where I can host my own ecommerce site and accounting system etc.

[@randomjoe1131]

Video on self hosting Wordpress securely! Please please please 🙏

[@nycolassantos6330]

better than in my job

[@SpookyLurker]

Which Transmission container do you use? I love rhe interface vs. what I have running here.

[@2GuysTek]

I’m using an alternative UI for Transmission called Flood.

[@sauliusjuozaitis15]

Like always thanks for a great video. I noticed you are running esxi/vmware ver 8. I have dual SuperMicro server with X9DRF-HF motherboard and running in compatibility issues even with esxi version 7. Do you have any advice?

[@2GuysTek]

What issues are you experiencing? Don't hesitate to jump on our Discord and share your experiences there and maybe we can help!

[@sauliusjuozaitis15]

@@2GuysTekThe lsi 2008 controller is not supported from ESXi ver 7. I can install ESXi on SATA-DOM but no additional disk will be showen.

[@brycedavey1252]

Why don't you use a unifi firewall? I also use Pfsense and was just wondering why you never change.

[@strsmoketheroads764]

Just wondering why you don't run a second pfsense in ha mode? And what you doing for remote access when your away from home?

[@2GuysTek]

The short answer is because I don't have the need for HA at home and for proper HA I'd need 3 public IP addresses (and I only get 2 from my ISP.) In terms of remote access, I was a big fan of OpenVPN, but recently I've been experimenting with Tailscale and I'm _kinda_ in love with it. There's a tailscale package for pfSense so I have it installed once and all my remote tailscale clients can get to anything in my network.

[@Infinitay]

Do you have a tutorial on setting up your logical network for security? I am a complete novice to homelabs and the only thing holding me back is my fear of exposing everything to hackers.

[@2GuysTek]

This is something we could do!

[@naoehbemassim]

How much watts this consumes?

[@nadtz]

I have to ask, is there some reason the switches and patch panels are in the front? After some thinking about it my guess was just ease of use and/or the back of the rack is less easy access but I've noticed this with a lot of homelab setups but don't think I've ever seen it in a datacenter (not counting racks that are all networking equipment) so it made me curious. I'm more a hardware guy than a networking guy but I've picked up enough over the years to know the networking setup on this is as nice as the hardware/software setup, nice tour.

[@2GuysTek]

Yes, there are reasons in my case! When you mount network switches in cabinets in a top of rack scenario, you have to take into account how the switch cools itself. Everything in my cabinet is setup to cool itself front to back, meaning the cool-side of my rack is the front of the cabinet, and the fans exhaust out the back. My switches are passively cooled, but many higher-end switches have active cooling (fans) to keep the ASICs inside cool while they do their work. When you buy switches for a specific application, you have to take into account the cooling concept for your server gear. If you put a switch in the front, you need make sure the fans in the switch pull air in from the front (cold side) and exhaust out the back to the (hot side). If you're mounting a switch in the back of your cabinet, you want to make sure the fans in your switch run in reverse to pull from the backside of the switch and exhaust out the front which is facing the rear of the cabinet. HTH!

[@nadtz]

@@2GuysTekGotcha, thanks for the response.

[@Zxarr]

How does that little UPS run your rack for 60 minutes?

[@2GuysTek]

2200VA@50% load. Depending on what's going on, it's 45-60 minutes of runtime.

[@DanielTekmyster]

Sounds like my network, except I have a 40gbps switch, 10gbps access switch and 10gb next gen firewall. Cone see @ the FB page Extreme Home Networks

[@DigiDoc101]

Are you planning to pay for TAC lite pfsense license with the recent licensing changes?

[@2GuysTek]

Great question! At this time I'm thinking about rolling back to CE - I don't feel like the yearly cost is worth the product's features. If that price were _half_ what they're charging, I'd genuinely consider it.

[@proeatalk]

How loud the UPS is?

[@2GuysTek]

The UPS is silent.

[@socwatchman]

What do you think of the Omada system?

[@2GuysTek]

I prefer Ubiquiti and UniFi over TP-Link and Omanda.

[@socwatchman]

@@2GuysTek just bought a house last year and will start placing Ethernet cable soon but have never set up a from start to finish network. Will have a literal home lab room but will be doing runs to every room. Thanks for the advice!

[@2GuysTek]

@socwatchman join our discord and share your progress with us!

[@TazzSmk]

so much power draw O.o

[@2GuysTek]

😂

[@byteblaster_ee]

... and here my pool is taz...

[@jj-icejoe6642]

Electricity bill ?

[@2GuysTek]

The whole stack adds around ~$70/mo to my electric bill, which is not for the faint of heart but pretty affordable for a passion/obsession.

[@sherwinm]

For… Linux ISOs 😏

[@TheDropForged]

How come there are only 6 likes???

[@MalikEmmanuel]

If you are stil looking for a good home for that server node. Look no further, for I am here.

[@bogy5259]

you pay licence costs for esxi?! holy shit u have to be rich

[@2GuysTek]

ESXi is free for a single host, so you can start using it now without having to spend a dime. VMUG Advantage allows me to get all of the enterprise licensing so I can do the really cool things like clustering, fault tolerance, and high availability.