Homelab Tour 2023

Homelab Tour 2023
Tour of my homelab/home network in February 2023.
Patreon: / clabretro
Equipment in the rack:
- UDM Pro
- USW-Pro-48-POE
- USW-Aggregation
- UNVR
- Dell R720
- Dell R510
- Tripp Lite 14 Outlet Network-Grade Rackmount PDU: amzn.to/3zYc8cn
- 1U Brush Panel: amzn.to/3mExAA3
- 1U Patch Panel: amzn.to/41s3Uov
- StarTech 25U Rack: amzn.to/3mEB7hS
Note: The above are Amazon affiliate links. It doesn't cost you extra, but I'll receive a commission which will help keep the content coming. I only link to things I've personally ordered.

[@dirtyvinyl8817]

All that Ubiquiti gear makes my wallet sweat, and my eyes water like im cutting onions.

[@clabretro]

Ha, I know. I'm glad I bought all this stuff a long time ago 😂

[@admir0687]

😂

[@stefanbehrendsen330]

@@admir0687 not as badly as new cisco gear would. There's a reason there's so much ubiquiti out and about.

[@DanielMcGuire76]

his "unfinished" part of his basement is more finished than my entire basement 😂

[@elementarypenguin9]

Nice to see someone get to the point and show their own little tricks they've learned on the way.

[@TrueNAS]

We love the homelab! Thanks for sharing!

[@clabretro]

thank you!

[@jkpe]

As someone who is moving house soon and looking to setup my first rack this was super helpful. Thanks

[@chadwickzehner7766]

Nice setup.. also running unifi myself. Never knew they had lights, sad they discontinued them. KEEP going - home lab is NEVER over kill!

[@ronm6585]

Thanks for sharing. 👍🏻

[@anwar.shamim]

You Spend lots of money, need more organize, and I learn so many things, thanks. Keep posting a new video.thanks

[@RollerCoasterLineProductions]

I love these kind of videos. Wish I had a rack mount server w a patch panel, lol I love looking at the blinking lights

[@iosifgheorghe9718]

Interesting. Congratulations!

[@thibaultghesquiere]

Love your setup ! Neat workshop you have too !

[@clabretro]

Thanks!

[@kkelly10]

Great setup and thank you for your honest comments.

[@clabretro]

Thanks for watching!

[@brannancloward]

Nice dude, very clean setup!

[@BirdsPawsandClaws]

Thanks for the tour!

[@kdz5875]

Great Video

[@reznikovpaul6217]

😍Very Nice!

[@JasonsLabVideos]

Nice setup.

[@JiSat]

Excelent video! awesome setup

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@kevinhughes9801]

Great setup thanks for sharing. You should do a vid on your proxmox setup to

[@hippoage]

Great video. As ideas, you can put another patch gap into the spot for patch panel -- looks like you already have a lot of space in existing patch panels.

[@SavageScientist]

man this is a great setup love the old dell servers

[@clabretro]

Oh yeah, they're great.

[@NetITGeeks]

Good to know that keystones like you have here do not cause much of headache. I was on the fence about buying a patch panel with RJ45 pass through couplers but this video helped seal the deal. :)

[@clabretro]

haven't had any trouble!

[@artvandelayimports]

Love the tour! Been wanting to make my own little homelab setup just to have some more control over my own data. Still don't understand half the things you mention in this video but still enjoyed it lol

[@clabretro]

it's a journey. just dive in and get started!

[@sachasmart7139]

Love it. Jealous as well

[@JakeCovey]

Im inspired

[@superjamesworld]

Love the R720, running two at home myself as proxmox nodes.

[@clabretro]

great machine

[@robertclanin3148]

I remodeled my home in 2015, ran cat6 everywhere. Building my Homelab now. Thank you for the videos, a guy can learn a lot from you.

[@clabretro]

Very nice. This house has cat6 everywhere too, though I wish I had done more drops (you always do haha). Thanks for watching!

[@robertclanin3148]

I know what you mean, I'm still tracking cables that seem to disappear into thin air @@clabretro

[@libertine5606]

I have my "home lab" with all the old Cisco stuff on a Zigbee smart switch running Home Assistant. That way I can turn it off to save power and turn it on from the house to start them up. Then they are booted up by the time I go to the garage. Maybe you can get a more efficient 24/7 server and use those when you are playing around.

[@clabretro]

Nice! Clever idea. Yeah eventually I'm gonna have to get more efficient servers for 24/7 use and power these old guys up on-demand.

[@EzekielPrellus]

Rarely does anyone bother to state the power circuits they are using for their home labs. Thank you for mentioning that you are using (2) non-dedicated 15A circuits and are considering a dedicated 20A. Are you going to stick with 120V or jump up 240V? How much power (watts) does that rack draw at peak usage?

[@clabretro]

Initially I'm going to put a dedicated 20A just for the rack (I'll probably run two dedicated 20A lines while I'm in there for the future). But I'm slowly getting into older and older gear (not to run full time, just for tinkering and historical interest), so I'll tackle a 240V if I ever need it. I'm embarrassed to say I haven't measured the power yet! I've only had this rack off once or twice in three years, I tell myself every time I'm going to throw the kill-a-watt on there each time but I always forget. Planning to do that next time I need to power off the whole rack.

[@ecu8r]

Now that's my definition of a true man cave, I would keep it a little bit neater but still I'm jealous of all that space you have.

[@clabretro]

Haha thanks, yeah I definitely don't keep things as neat as I should.

[@crazycoastie]

really liked the video. im a unifi geek myself. constantly looking to add/upgrade and expand. wish i bought the unifi ceiling lights a few years ago....bummed they are no longer available. - just subbed, keep up the vids bro!

[@clabretro]

thanks! yeah I hope they revive the LED line, they're really nice. and you can actually run the LED controller software on the UDM Pro which is pretty cool.

[@FrancescoCarucci]

Nice video. I don't feel good running a power hungry server 24/7/365 until I install solar at my place.

[@clabretro]

Yeah totally agree!

[@teddymutterperl5492]

We need more unifi videos like this! Can you show us your protect setup including where each of your cameras are located!?

[@clabretro]

definitely planning some videos like that!

[@dama_alt]

I am now studying to get into the industry and am currently building my first home lab. You setup is giving me some inspiration.

[@clabretro]

Awesome!

[@Platoface]

Pretty much same setup I have. I also run an older Blue Iris with 5 cams and my Protect has 8. Your cabling is much better than mine. I use my 10 yo home built atx computer for my Truenas and I bought a QNap for redundancy. It’s all about redundancy.

[@clabretro]

yeah been eyeing qnap as something I could back the TrueNAS up to, or maybe go your route and build a cheap machine to run a second TrueNAS instance on.

[@vitalyustalov3813]

Just came accross this vid, i was about to decommission and sell my r720, cause constantly travel for work and in combination with another r720XD - they swallow electricity like graboids. Will wait for tour of ur VMs etc.

[@clabretro]

Yeah great machines but they're real power hogs. Might have to face the facts someday and build some more efficient servers.

[@prottentogo]

those white soft walls do resemble NASA a bit 😄

[@clabretro]

😂

[@BDBD16]

Thats a gang of Dreamcasts

[@clabretro]

gotta stay stocked up 😎

[@shawsplace-876networking5]

Nice setup using old Tech I will be looking to see a video a few mounting the P Supply on your rack will you also be doing besides looking forward to that

[@clabretro]

That's the plan!

[@lancefrombk4594]

Nice set up!! Any chance on future videos showing how you did the NAS and more on the home automation??

[@clabretro]

Thanks! And definitely. There's tons of excellent TrueNAS tutorial videos out there, but I was thinking about doing an overview video of my particular setup and how I use it.

[@gjohannes1344]

@@clabretro How have you liked TrueNAS. I went the lazy approach and did a Synology NAS, kind of love it and hate it at the same time and eventually need to expand it.

[@clabretro]

Just made a video going over my TrueNAS setup: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5akYniBfsyCfbM I've liked it a lot and it's rock solid, but definitely more involved than something like Synology or QNAP. I've been tempted to get one of those to back the TrueNAS up to.

[@gjohannes1344]

@@clabretro Thanks for the response. Watched the TrueNAS setup video and subscribed to the channel!!! Thanks for the awesome content.

[@daillengineer]

@@gjohannes1344 i went with synology a few years ago with a simple DS220+. Then i added a 418 for backup of the 220. Then i needed more data storage so i got the 1621 two months ago. And a few weeks ago i build a machine for TrueNas and Proxmox. TrueNas is great for raw storage but i still like the synology more for its software. I use the TrueNas build with three PCIe gen 3 NVMe drives to edit pictures off of. That now backs up over 10Gb to the 1621 and the 1621 backs up to backblaze as well as the 418 synology. Lots of redundancy. My 1621 has four 4TB SSDs in raid 5 and two 16TB in raid 1 for cold storage of stuff i don’t really access much. To save on cloud storage i only back up my most important of photos and videos to backblaze. So pretty much just family photos and videos that are priceless to me.

[@TVJAY]

Nice setup. Your basement/home has an interesting layout. Is it a custom home?

[@clabretro]

Thanks! It was a new build and there were several plans to choose from, but our only real flexibility was with finishes (cabinets, flooring, etc) throughout the house. The irony is I spend tons of time down in this unfinished portion 😄

[@HyRax_Aus]

Have you measured your rack's consumption with a meter? Depending on how often they are idle vs busy, you might be surprised. My own rack with similar Unifi gear, KVM and an R710, R720 with 24-bay external drive chassis only consumes 5kWh per day. Our setup is also offset by solar, which definitely helps, but even if we didn't have solar, it's not super expensive on its own - at a general cost of 30c per kWh, that's roughly $1.50 a day (plus the daily supply charge you can't avoid regardless).

[@clabretro]

I haven't yet, I actually got kill-a-watt just for this purpose but haven't gotten around to trying it out yet. That's actually really encouraging to hear about your similar setup.

[@shadow.banned]

Pretty massive server for a little Minecraft.

[@clabretro]

I should probably run like 20 of them 😂

[@andreasnilsson997]

can recommend backblaze B2 as a backup destination

[@clabretro]

I've heard good things, I'll check that out!

[@Polkster13]

In your video, you called the NVR a UNVR Pro. Actually that one is just the UNVR. The Pro version is 2RU with 7 drive bays.

[@clabretro]

You're totally right, my mistake. I was excited when the pro came out, but I don't even have the UNVR maxed out with drives yet 😆

[@TinyBricks2014]

Great setups look forward to doing a unifi homeland myself Though I don’t understand why so many people have unfinished basement rooms and thousands of dollars of gear. Would simply invest some in finishing the rooms.

[@clabretro]

heh, I like the unfinished look. I probably spend more time in the unfinished parts of my basement than the finished parts 😆

[@tcasex]

@@clabretro why waste the money if it works. ha

[@RichardSwift]

Very nice setup. I'm shocked at how closely our Server setup is. I highly recommend that you get that battery backup though. Get yourself a Tripp-Lite, it would be a good addition.

[@clabretro]

Which tripp-lite do you recommend? Battery backup is definitely next on the list.

[@RichardSwift]

@@clabretro I got the Tripp-Lite SMART1500LCDXL back in 2020 and I'm very happy with it.

[@samphire]

Damn 11:36 I feel sorry for those drives and the ones spinning above. Nice setup though.

[@clabretro]

haha they're tough (so far). thanks!

[@DesignerDigital]

Love the dells XDs. What is your security system that can connect to your synology drives?

[@clabretro]

Same here, they're great machines. I'm using Unifi's NVR for security + footage storage, and that Dell R510 is a NAS running TrueNAS. No synology stuff yet!

[@DesignerDigital]

@@clabretro You are using Unifi NVR software to manage the recordings? Or is it an specific unifi equipment with cameras? I have the NVR night owl 4k Security cams and trying to understand how to unite it with my r820 properly, for storage and hopefully some better software to control them.

[@clabretro]

Yeah the NVR runs Unifi Protect and acts as its own RAID server, so my particular camera setup doesn't actually interact with or store anything on my Dell servers.

[@zapa1972]

Nice setup . can you show what are you running in proxmox? please

[@clabretro]

Starting with TrueNAS, but I'll get a proxmox video up too kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5akYniBfsyCfbM

[@zapa1972]

@@clabretro yeah i saw that, ty

[@wirelesspizza]

Whats that TV stand in the beginning of the video, looking for something similar.

[@clabretro]

It's this one: www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-46-in-W-x-24-in-D-Steel-Adjustable-Height-Solid-Wood-Top-Workbench-Table-in-Black-HOLT46XDB12/301809931. It's actually adjustable but in practice I've never moved it up or down after I set it where I wanted ha.

[@pachjo123]

I am in the process of doing this and just got the udm pro se a few g3 flex mini wifi indoor cameras and a 24 port poe switch. I have the same cabinet as you for my networking stuff and I have been trying to figure out what to do with it since it's a mess and has 110 punch down blocks because the cat5e cable was split for telephone which no one uses anymore. I might redo the ends with key stones and feed it directly into the 24 poe switch I just got. The previous homeowner didn't know what he was doing so I don't think I can put a patch panel in my rack once i find one. I inherited someone else's problem. I am getting multi gigabit fiber this summer from the city so I am getting ready for that. I am also looking for a rack and dont know what to get.

[@clabretro]

yeah you could definitely get the ends of the drops into keystones and go from there. I'd recommend a temporary setup for awhile without a rack, that way you can run everything and decide what you need.

[@pachjo123]

@@clabretro I finally replace the punch down block with keystones when I upgraded to multi gigbit internet and replaced the old equipment with Omada. Before doing this for some reason I still dont understand why but I was stuck on 400 mbps even with the new equipment and my poe switch could not provide poe to supported devices. I replaced all 16 connections from the punch download to keystones and everything started to improve a lot. Not only that but on Omada I started to get thousands of associations errors before the switch over to keystones now I basically have 0 errors. I think the original owner bought the cheapest punch down block ever because once all that was done it has worked perfectly at 1.2 GBPS. Not only that but thanks to Omada I have 100% coverage on Wi-Fi in a 3500 sqft house and no matter where i am on supported devices I get at least 700 mbps on wifi. I also got ipv6 working on Omada with Xfinity and I get 18 out of 20 on ipv6 tests so for people who are wondering omada does support Xfinity ipv6 actually I got a higher score then my old equipment.

[@balla2172]

Question why patch to a patch? Going directly into keystone patch you can also take keystone out and move

[@clabretro]

Good question, I definitely could've done punch downs on the patch panels in the rack. My thinking at the time was having the most flexibility, and this way I can pull those 15 footers out and use them as-is. But obviously it'd be pretty easy just to crimp some connectors on them as needed, so it was probably overkill to do everything patch to patch like this. I do really like having the drops from the house go into those pass-through keystones though, it's been nice to be able to reconfigure certain drops with minimal effort. If I remember correctly I also did it this way because I just wasn't quite sure how I was going to build everything out.

[@Polkster13]

You should also get UniFi's patch panels, OCD brush panel, OCD blank panels, and OCD vented panels.

[@clabretro]

ha, but then they wouldn't match the power edges!

[@EmperorShang]

Cloud

[@happy9955]

super

[@MarkJay]

I also refuse to punch down

[@dodegkr]

how much power do you use? what's the kWh price in your location?

[@clabretro]

I believe it's around $0.15/kWh. these use a lot of power... the R720 alone pulls over 200 watts (at least according to the power info in the IDRAC). I'm planning to throw a kill-a-watt on the rack next time I take it down for maintenance, but it's only ever been taken down a few times in three years so the chances are few and far between ha. Not the most efficient setup, I'd love to augment it with solar one day. But I think I'll have to face the facts and move to some more efficient servers eventually.

[@valeenoi2284]

Why doesn't anyone buy CAT8 to future proof their wires/bandwidth for the next 15 years?

[@clabretro]

Yeah just cat5e for me right now... 1GB feels like more than I'll ever need, but I'll regret that soon I bet.

[@valeenoi2284]

@@clabretro 45 Gb bandwidth is just about around the corner... alright... I don't know what I'm talking about. But it's always fun to mindlessly future proof your own networks when you are on a 300 Mb bandwidth from your ISP but everything else in your network is setup for Gb+. I tried to buy CAT8 for my small setup at home (ranging from 10ft to 15ft, 8x), and it cost me $250 last year. All made in the U.S. though.

[@elcolin_]

Why not UDM SE? Vs Pro, I mean. I'm just curious. I am leaning towards the SE for the PoE funcionality. But then again, it's just me, by my lonesome in a 1`bdrom apartment. Talk about overkill for most of this stuff lol but ya gotta learn somewhere

[@clabretro]

SE wasn't out yet when I picked up the Pro. I haven't used the SE but based on the POE alone it'd be the better route to go, makes the Unifi Protect capabilities make a lot more sense. And yeah, it's all overkill but I guess that's half the fun haha.

[@balla2172]

3 4 gb survallance hdds damn that is alot of syorage.. you can. Save what 15min?

[@clabretro]

haha yeah didn't notice that until I uploaded. meant to say three 4 terabyte drives 😂

[@user-hy3oy7wv2y]

Nice setup, but it must be expensive to run all the equipment 24/7

[@clabretro]

Yeah, need to eventually phase out those power-hungry Dells.

[@Nick-tv5pu]

13:37 Be careful! it might be code where you are that you need drywall blocking off the area under the stairs. You can probably just add some sheets to the bottom of the stairs (the ceiling in that little room) to meet the requirements

[@clabretro]

yeah true, I suspect the builders left it enclosed for whatever code reasons.

[@dawn1berlitz]

honestly you would laugh at my server though its a backup/plex server but mine is a old Dell PE t320 with a12gb of ram, 1 250gb crucial mx500, 2 2tb Seagate contellation es2 or 3 i cant remember at this time, 2 2tb wd blue drives oh and the cpu is a xeon e5-2470 (upgraded from a 2403)....i actually salvaged this server and made upgrades to it none of the drives are in raid but i started off with no drives the crucial drive was new while the seagate drives i bought used and the wd drives was moved from another build i have like 3 empty drive bays for harddrives i may use those slots in the future to make a backup of the boot drive and the backup drive in the future though

[@clabretro]

naw that sounds great! i've always wanted one of those power edge towers.

[@leonardotoschi585]

R510 kinda old takes so much power for less cores

[@clabretro]

Yeah, I like running it and playing around, but someday I'll make it into a backup NAS that I only power on periodically.

[@sagarchamlagai]

What's the depth of that rack?

[@clabretro]

it's adjustable but I have it set to about 30 inches.

[@amithimani8163]

Where is the UNVR PRO, I only see UNVR!!

[@clabretro]

Yeah whoops. Kept calling it pro accidentally

[@AtGnat8]

BRO! The Unifi LED Panels?! Very glad I stayed through the end. Is much changed in 2024?

[@clabretro]

not much different! the panels are sweet but I'm gonna regret it, unifi has totally deprecated them haha. only a matter of time before the controller software stops working I suspect

[@AtGnat8]

@@clabretro another side lab time capsule to run some lights 🤷‍♂️

[@gabrielporto.mikrotik]

Great lab bro. Congratulations. Very neat. I have a lab my self too. Check my videos when it’s possible.

[@clabretro]

Thanks! Impressive setup. I've been wanting to try out some MikroTik gear too.

[@Alan.livingston]

To be honest I hardly click on these videos anymore because it’s always some dude just showing a rack of the exact same ubiquity gear. No shade, I think they are a great product fit for the market, there’s just nothing to learn unless they have interesting cabling or something else novel.

[@clabretro]

Yeah, this setup is pretty typical. Made a lot of sense a few years ago, but if I was to rebuild today I'd explore other brands like MikroTik.

[@Alan.livingston]

@@clabretro It's a great setup you have. The nice interface Ubiquity give you is pretty hard to go past. I'm going to steal your idea of using the keystones just in case I have to lift & shift my gear at any point.

[@DonaldMolter]

I’d say it’s because it’s not only fairly easy to configure the gear but the cost is another factor. Ubiquiti gear Vs other enterprise gear that’s new or fairly recent has a much larger price tag

[@svgmateYT]

you got your rack in with a furnace? will that not be too warm in there?

[@clabretro]

I was worried about that at first but it actually hasn't been a problem. it's definitely warm in there but way below the allowed operating thresholds for any of that equipment, and definitely under what they'd experience in an actual data center I think.

[@svgmateYT]

@@clabretro That's good then, you'd think it would be too WARM LOL! and i have been inside a data center, its like being in a sauna