How to Homelab Episode 1 - Tips on Getting Started

[@StephanLiebenberg]

This was the best explanation for a home lab I've heard. I'm super new to the IT world! And most people just assume you understand their jargon. Thanks for simplifying. - the guy who somehow has an IT job with 0 experience

[@markstanchin1692]

I would enjoy seeing a more hands on building a home lab from scratch series. For example if you would build your home lab up to where you are now from scratch with hands on tutorial videos with hardware that you currently use. Starting with how to plan and segment your network and then setting up VLANs configuring the different servers that you have such as Proxmox, truenas , Synology , ect . I know you have bits and pieces of all these different videos but it would be nice to see a complete series with more hands-on configuration. Thanks Jay.

[@sk8rdude981]

I did it a couple weeks ago and it’s been really fun learning from knowing only windows 10 to deleting it and switching to Ubuntu. I’m learning python to start out and I’m going back to college for my AS in cyber security this summer 😊 this stuff has been life changing !

[@richardglass6737]

Looking forward to this series, just started my own home lab

[@alexthelion335]

Me too

[@edwardcdg]

Same here

[@Jahman182]

I'm ready and waiting

[@Parendinate]

I'm angry to myself because i discovered that channel too late. I just Devour that high quality content. Thanks man, you are amazing

[@BrownMInc]

FINNNALLLY a clear entrance for a noob. I feel like so many people get caught up in the details that they forget or assume that going from not knowing to knowing is straightforward. Sometimes you can't even ask the right questions because you don't know what you should be thinking about in the first place!

[@mishrasidhant]

Awesome introductory video. I'm HYPED for the rest of the series. I'd personally love to hear more from you about: 1. Recommended tools/solutions to common components that make up your home lab 2. The design process, or your thought process behind deciding on how to connect/design the components of a solution that you're creating 3. The security considerations you keep in mind when you start a project Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge!

[@gollenda7852]

Yes, more please. I just started my homelab. Proxmox with Truenas running in a VM. I passed the LSI controller thru to Truenas. Still learning containers and how to deploy them

[@LearnLinuxTV]

That's a really clever way of going about that. I haven't run TrueNAS in a VM due to not having direct access to the hardware, but based on your description it seems you've definitely solved that part.

[@OdenKnight]

This is the practical guide to home server & networking. A must watch.

[@knightoftheoldcode1391]

Agreed. I’ve been running several RPis in production for a couple years now. I’m working on racking the 4 I have and adding another 6 into what I call my Rackberry Pi Cluster. :)

[@JoaoSilva-gs5jb]

yes yes yes yes, do more about it! not gonna lie, one of the topics I would like to discuss is about what linux distro to choose for servers, debian vs ubuntu vs centos for multiples things like, nextcloud, onlyoffice, netbox, zentyal, jitsi, jellyfin (opensource alternative to plex)! thanks so much !

[@huckleberry582]

Yeah, buddy! I've been looking forward to you doing a series like this. i enjoy listening to you teach.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Glad you liked it. I've been wanting to start this series since last Winter. It's been super busy for me lately with the book, which has delayed my content quite a bit. I'm glad to (finally) be on track for the most part. I am working on a separate video regarding another topic that's been a popular request, so I'm finally starting to catch up on things.

[@IPV-uu8kw]

I'm interested in making IT lab but, on a budget. The purpose of the lab is learning Linux as well as studying CCNA cert. I was thinking purchasing two cheap laptops but I'm not a 100% sure.

[@markburns5311]

Perfect timing just built my new Proxmox server

[@Ed-em6mf]

I have old Dell laptop and Raspberry Pi 4 and after listening to you, I should be all ready for network firewall home lab

[@Obi1kenobi10]

I've got an old Dell with a bad monitor. 1/2 the screen is dead. Once I figure out how to get it to ignore the monitor and boot to the 32in TV I have for it I'll be all set.

[@Obi1kenobi10]

@DarkStarrGaming tried that. All I got was beeping.....lots of beeping....God awful beeping....I'll try it again after the exorcisms.

[@andrewr5357]

Thumbs up for the Mastering Ubuntu Server 3rd edition book. I didn't know you wrote books!!! Awesome.

[@lvan-MX]

Great first episode. Looking forward for next one. BTW, what model is the rack server behind you?

[@byranotieno]

Hey Jay, thanks again for putting out these amazing videos. In the series maybe you could talk about setting a firewall, virtualization servers, storage servers, backup servers and media centers. Thank you once more for the very informative and educational content you put out. I greatly appreciate.

[@WilliamHea]

When I think about getting a homelab started, I get overwhelmed with where to start investing my time and what to focus on first. What are the most fun or easy services to start bringing on premise?

[@rickycastro3210]

OUTSTANDING! GREAT INFORMATION!

[@RonaldMorrissetteJr]

thank you so much for starting this series, I am currently putting together a server on which I am running proxmox, and I plan on running trueNAS, Plex server, pihole, Minecraft server, and more. I'm very interested in how to configure all these things to run smoothly. thanks again for all you do!

[@williambarrett7108]

This is great I want to create a home lab also, but as of yet I am too clueless to attempt it. A dedicated series would be great! I would also like to know what would be best for pen testing. I will watch every video and wait for the rest with anticipation! Thank you so much for doing this!

[@w1man]

Just finished setting up my first Ubuntu server running Nextcloud. Your videos have been very helpful! Looking forward to more homelab videos👍

[@TheClembo]

Thank you so much for doing this series. I've been 'trying' to build a home lab for years but never sure if I'm on the right track. So watching this series with great expectations and hoping to learn a great deal. Cheers from the UK.

[@dermuschelschluerfer]

Im on the Journey of building a soundproof rack, got a cisco switch, one dell r210 ii as pfsense router and a hp proliant d170h g6 blade server with 4 nodes from ebay. Along with a wireless ap and some rpis its gonna be some coom projects

[@MarcinSkoczolek]

I'm with you on using laptops, that's what I'll be doing for my home lab. One of the main reasons I'm interested in setting up a home lab is to learn Linux. Looking forward to the series, your channel, and software recommendations. Thanks!

[@JeanFrancoCaringi]

Thanks for the video Can you please explain hoy tu use names instead of IP address across your LAN ?

[@LearnLinuxTV]

That should factor in soon. I have some topics I have to get through first, but I'm keeping an eye on these comments and if I end up missing anything I'll look to comments for direction going forward. I don't do anything complicated to achieve that, but it does deserve an explanation.

[@JeanFrancoCaringi]

@@LearnLinuxTV thanks I'll wait for it!

[@MrZen42]

Looking forward to these episodes ! Being in a flat, space and noise are big issues for me but the idea of extending the home lab in the cloud is clearly interesting. Especially solutions to ensure security and privacy.

[@henrymatos9551]

This is a great introduction! thank you. Perhaps a segment on types of OS distribution to use with laptops versus desktop and a separate episode on firewall/security considerations.

[@MelodicMethod]

Thanks for making a series of videos dedicated to this. I would love to know how you've integrated plex into your home entertainment system using your homelab.

[@ill_wicked]

My home lab has a bunch of similar hardware, plus Network infrastructure and voip. Also a networked rack power i can turn on remotely.

[@2d0list39]

looking forward to more of these man, im new to iT, actually found a passion and a serious drive in learning more in depth of software development on a rasberry pi, my older brother who i currently live with knows about all this and basics and etc, but for me on the other hand i want to master every topic you went over here on how to homelabs as a side quest, also since my macbook air uses a linux os im also going to be tuning in into your linux of sorts playlists, i appreciate your way of this because of the depth and technicality teaches me the actual fundamentals/aspects within each topic, once again man thanks!

[@stanmoore9171]

Jay, this may be a little long-winded but, hey, you asked for feedback. I think an interesting question is which hypervisor to use. I know you prefer Proxmox and Tom Lawrence prefers XCP-ng. Since I started watching Tom first (I think I learned about you from him), I ran XCP-ng for most of a year. I like the ability there to do incremental backups of VMs. But I've just switched to Proxmox after continuing frustration with Xen Orchestra. First, I had much difficulty downloading it in the first place (now many months ago). However, the free version doesn't do VM backups at all. So I built it from sources, another hassle. With the "from sources" version, there is no notice of updates. So I ran both, the "from sources" version for backups and the free version as an easy way to check on updates. I also lost a port on my server and a port on my switch because of the strong recommendation of a separate network for the management interface. Finally, Xen Orchestra is unable on the GUI to establish NAS storage on QNAP NAS's. They're working on it, but it's not a high priority. It's only a minor annoyance though as other protocols are available. Anyway, I thought I'd offer my two cents on the comparison I also have a question based on future plans that you might consider addressing. I currently have three Proxmox "servers" and use HA. But they're not really servers: an old Dell laptop, a Protectli box with an Intel i3, and a Dell 3060 with an Intel i8500T. My plan is to add a "real" server at some point in the future and justify the cost by using it as my main computer and not replacing my very old Windows computer. I'd like to run Windows on it and pass through the video and audio ports and USB for keyboard and mouse to the Windows VM. From my beginning research, it does'nt look easy. That idea could be of interest to multiple viewers. So you might consider showing us how to do it on one of your servers using Proxmox.

[@syedh2649]

Video starts 2:30

[@lamorega]

I have a Ubiquiti AP and struggled to set up the controller on both Windows and Ubuntu. I found a tutorial for raspberry pi and was up and running in no time!

[@SimionChis]

So excited for this. Looking forward for the next episodes

[@thedoeweb]

Went from refurbished HP ProLiant DL severs, to SuperMicro mini servers to now using Intel NUCs. Lower power, support 64GB and I7 core processor. Lower power and footprint.

[@fvgoya]

This is an amazing series!!!! Waiting the Part ll. Thank you!!

[@lis6502]

What i am missing in this video and all alikes is safety. While genuine servers don't combust in regular fashion, these handcrafted might and a fan blowing 20L/s of air will happily feed up flames. Personally i do have fire extinguishers nearby my locations, however this needs to be automated because many of homelabbers are using VPN to be with their machines while physically being outta town. Sure that your setup (having nice metal rack with glass doors) is more sustainable to isolating burning inferno from your basement, especially considering my toys are running in wooden cabinet (due to need minimum Wife Acceptence Factor level ;p), however it's still a serious risk which no one addressed so far. Smoke sensor should be obligatory in such builds if not some automated power-cutoff system with at least air latches that stops fresh air from feeding flames. And i seriously think that this topic deserves separate episode. As for hardware - there are niche device types which are getting more and more affordable, while delivering decent amount of homelabitty to your home labs :) i am talking about terminals, like HP t610 which runs my proxmox lxc containters. It's thin, light on power, somewhat expandable (usb3, SATA connector, ddr3 slots) and personally i found them somewhat between raspberry pis and laptop from scrapyard. Another thing worth mentioning is a router. Personally i rely on Mikrotik, while messing around OpenWRT in different subnet. However i wanted to have reliable network core, so i began to master MT.

[@patrikwyde2265]

More more more, we need more! 😀👍 Thank you very much for this!

[@naughtmis]

I have loved all of your homelab content so far. I'm excited to see this new setup. I'm especially anxious to see the Pi setup. Thanks for making great content!!

[@demanuDJ]

I'm using macbook pro a1286 and a1278 laptops as a home servers, works pretty well for my needs, both running proxmox. Both has hard drive adapters instead of CD drive and 16GB of ram. I'm going to add a Thunderbolt 1Gbit NIC to a1286 to run pfSense or OPNsense on it. Also I'm going to build third server for NAS but this time I'm going to use a special motherboard with mobile i7 2630qm for it. All my servers are very power effective, small and best of all: very quiet. If somebody wants, to try, all you need is to find laptops with broken screens, they are very cheap. Only disadvantage is there is no many ports, only 2 slots for ram and of course: no PCI slots

[@martyb3783]

Great video! I am excited to see more.

[@samuelitooooo]

What's the difference between a homelab, a [home] [media] server, and a NAS? How can I figure out which one of the above I want?

[@bob84409]

The biggest issue with using raspberry pis for homelab, especially k8s is the arm64 arch. Many distros are still not multi-arch and it's a giant pain having to work around it. I have a 10 pi cluster at home.

[@siddharthrawat7431]

Amazing video. Please continue this series.

[@LCCoxOfTexas]

I run 70%+ of what you do as well and would love to see how you have built things in detail compared to mine. Looking forward to much more content in this mini-series!!

[@siyam.88]

Great series. I am very excited about this. It will be very helpful if you make a video on setting up a server on laptop

[@Theferg1]

Looking forward to MANY MANY MORE!!

[@jforbush]

this series..yes, yes, yes!

[@rudrapednekar1644]

Ive read his book mastering ubuntu server. Its pretty informative! Its good

[@anthonysantana4278]

This is pretty cool, I am interested in port management, I have several servers at home but I am having issues with port forwarding and poking holes in my firewall

[@stefannilsson2406]

My first server reflects "loud and powerhungry" very well. I bought a dell poweredge r810 with 4 130W Xeon E7 8837 cpu's for just 89,99 GBP.

[@ForrestRhoads]

Great video, and great subject matter. I really appreciate the quality of your channel. Is appreciate a segment on tying in with home security systems.

[@alphabanks]

I'm a big fan of using tower servers in my homelab. If I had a basement I would go with rack gear imo its just too loud to have in your home office.

[@SteveM0732]

It would be great if you can cover how to back up the Promox server, FreeNAS server, and the laptop servers. Mostly how to aggregate it all to one on-site location from which you can either encrypt and push to a remote server and/or swap out a HDD and sneaker net a periodic backup offsite.

[@pkasetti]

Underrated series!

[@S0K0N0MI]

Could you tell me the name of the frame youre working in around 6:12 ? I have a very shallow rack (max depth 450mm) and that frame looks like it would be a lovely shoe-in for that.

[@thomasburns1846]

Looking forward to more home lab videos. I have two Raspberry Pi computers that run bind9, Music Player Daemon, Forked Daapd, Samba, and NFS. They are perfect for my modest needs. The Pi running Music Player Daemon has a HiFiBerry DAC and is connected to my vintage Yamaha amplifer.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

That sounds amazing! I set up Volumio for that purpose lately, but it's not using really cool hardware like yours is.

[@ggyun]

love this series.

[@Sheikh_Yerbouti]

I am looking forward to this series as well. Late life career changer here and feel I have a lot to catch up on, so went all in and racked up. Then I realised... now what??

[@brandongraham3509]

Thanks for putting this out there. I'm underway with converting to Linux and better computer usage. This is helpful for a non computer science/systems person. I'd love to see how to set up a more advanced network and firewall beyond a simple consumer router in order to handle these servers.

[@brianlongoria3263]

Looking forward to more please.

[@Applepie931]

Very into the idea of this series, hope to see more!

[@arkangel7330]

I am looking forward to watching your homelab videos. I still want to build my own.

[@theena]

More please. This is great for non IT people like me.

[@princesaharan9515]

Great look forward for the series, I like you calm voice

[@christophjahn6678]

Thanks for the video! One small addition: You highlight the CPU's TDP on the Intel site when talking about power consumption. The TDP in and of itself is only an indicator of the maximum(!) amount of power the CPU can pull. For non-data center use the idle power consumption is the relevant piece. And this only has a very loose relationship to the TDP (less with newer CPUs). I run an old Intel Xeon E5 2670 (Sandy Bridge) with a TDP of 115 W, but the server idles at 50 W and that includes a lot of memory and a storage backplane. So unfortunately, it is not a trivial topic. Again, thanks for your videos!

[@woxit6107]

Thanks for your time and effort.

[@tonyperez2690]

Could you create a video about TrueNas ? I want to try and make a home lab with a couple of dell switches and a R720. I got them used but i hope they can be used for that purpose. Thank you

[@Мемерони]

I can’t find a video that really explains how to start a home lab. I’m studying for my ccna and wanna set up a lab to get experience troubleshooting and all that. Do I connect it all to my current wifi modem from my isp. What do I need a computer for with my net work?

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Jay.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

My pleasure.

[@Bonemanwalkin]

Always like your vids technical but approachable as well.. I have a homelab dell poweredge, I kind of ran into a wall after getting OMV set up and a samba share going, I didn't know what else to do, and I just kinda shut it off . Maybe you can make some next step videos or ideas for services for home

[@Frangoose]

Looking forward to more! Thanks for the videos.

[@RaulVelasquez-s6b]

Yes I would love it

[@mayurchavhan8590]

Nice.. I think building DIY NAS is pretty awesome...

[@LearnLinuxTV]

It's very fun.

[@davidvasquez7927]

Great video, looking forward to the next

[@eloquenthillbilly]

More please. I wanna see a >$200 options for NAS/PLEX and other things to play with. Whatever you do I'm sure it'll be at least partially applicable to what I want.

[@miretrotaller]

Great idea for a series 😊

[@thomasmiller5502]

I am in the process of building a Raspberry Pi oriented Home Lab. Waiting for Pi 4 Clusters to ship etc.

[@RoadRunner1980]

This is great! I'm using a Synology NAS now and a desktop PC for a onsite backup and virtualization but I would love to build a more professional and flexible lab. So I'm looking forward to the next video's.

[@avion5760]

Hey there, I got a question though. How to structure it properly? Do you Setup i.e. proxmox and then create a VM and on that VM you install trueNas? Or do you recommend to have two physical servers, one with ProxMox and one with trueNas ?

[@edff6890]

Gonna pick the book up! Thanks for the info!

[@squalazzo]

i bought 2 days ago a refurbished lenovo p300 sff with i7 4790, 32gb ram and 240ssd for 390€, to create my home test lab to study k8s, so very interested in this kind of video, already seen most of your previous one :)

[@PeterBoling]

I can't quite understand what you are saying when you describe the left hand side Raspberry Pi stack that runs a tool for network monitoring. Sounds a bit like "smoke thing"? I can't hear it well enough to be able to google and get closer... Help!

[@nenadpesic3763]

Thanks for this. I hope this series continues! :D

[@gadooze]

I have a cheap home lab---an old laptop that I am using for file and media servers, running with OMV and docker.😀

[@drwhowhogrub3908]

Hi, good content thanks! I may is missed it but what do you do for power? Can you plug everything into the UPS? I always seem to be running out of power sockets. I don't have a UPS by the way. Cheers

[@justinlafontaine1516]

Love this series!

[@patrickwingert2018]

I am living in a small apartment and only have six plugs in the whole apartment. This places a strict limit on the total number of electrics I can have including smart devices and home entertainment as well. I also am required to have a floor-standing air conditioner due to safety regulations. Balancing power usage and not blowing breakers requires detailed knowledge of what in use and where. I can't for example run my AC unit and my hairdryer as they are on the same circuit and trip the breaker. So, I need a setup that sips power. I will never be able to run twenty servers in a rack. But I look at some of the entry-level Epyc servers and realize I am getting a significant power boost that would allow me to run one server to replace up to eight or nine older power-hungry servers. the HPW Microserver Gen 10Plus has enormous potential for a small to medium-sized lab implementation. While these are not low-cost purchases, they off significantly advanced in computer power per watt in space and electrical contained environment. But in return you need a realistic budget of a couple of thousand dollars to get a functional setup.

[@saidneder41]

This series is amazing!

[@reason2008]

I like the idea of this series. Can't afford much hardware, so maybe you could include ways to build a lab with virtual machines.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Good point. I think I'm going to mention relatively soon to start with what you have, before buying new stuff. And then replace components as you go. It will probably be talked about in episode 3, but I should've talked about that sooner though.

[@reason2008]

@@LearnLinuxTV Sounds good! Thank you.

[@oso2k]

You said Registered RAM and I think you meant to say ECC RAM (Error Correcting). Most servers require ECC RAM but some also require/can use RDIMMs (Registered or Buffered), UDIMMs (Unbuffered), FBDIMMs (Fully Buffered), LRDIMMs (Load Reduced, aka, Low Power Registered). FBDIMMs and UDIMMs are now less common in server hardware the last 10 years. There are low end server systems that can use less expensive Desktop RAM. Non-server hardware (desktop, mini PC, etc.), workstation hardware can sometimes use ECC RAM but usually require "Desktop" RAM instead. Desktop RAM can also come in Registered, Buffered, and Low Power variants as well. Though, they sometimes lack the hardware fault detection features of ECC RAM and always lack the Error Correcting features of ECC RAM.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

You're right, I use those terms interchangeably and it's a hard habit to break :(

[@oso2k]

@@LearnLinuxTV No worries. Keep coming up w/great content!

[@nikoonk]

Sound like an awesome series!

[@MichaelAMalone]

I've looked a bit into get a used server, being in Thailand makes things more expensive... I will watch you build video.... 2 pi 4 8gb are within reach so we will see.... love your tutorials, I should add that I am leaning toward the amd cpus and not intel

[@Techonnoisseur]

As Google Photos is ending the free tier, I am exploring alternatives. I am confused between 2 concepts: a NAS and my own Nextcloud. Are these both viable options to replace G-Photos? What's the fundamental difference between the two.

[@StephenC050]

What timing... so I just installed Ubuntu sever on an old Mac mini and installed Plex. I don’t leave it on as I’m waiting for your book so I can get it secured against the outside world, but it’s great when it runs. When I get your book I intend to try adding a nextcloud service aswell. Any tips on actually planning an efficient network? I just have the server plugged into the router and not sure of the topology of the whole thing is correct.

[@alexandrosbampounis-tsatso2630]

Hi, what backup solution are you using for your systems? I have several physical hosts that i want to backup over network plus some VMs on a Proxmox node and it would be interesting to know which software you think is most reliable. Thanks!

[@malcolmanderson6735]

Is love to see a series of network basics and home network setup on a 4 - 6 stack of raspberry pi's. I'm a developer with an a+ cert, but the network+ kicked me in the face (repeatedly). That was the years ago and I know that there is a ton I have forgotten. So if you had a series of "the top 15 services to get a home lab started using a 4 - stack of raspberry pi's" I would be ALL over that.

[@youtubeoneverything4581]

Lookin forward to ubuntu server on laptop videos

[@DJ-Daz]

I've literally just ordered a new desktop PC for my homelab/webserver/plex/Nextcloud server, then your video pops up! A Ryzen 5 1600 and a spare GT1030, total power of around 200w including drives and mobo. 65w CPU 40w GPU (literally just for a POP! OS desktop) Mobo 30w 2x 500GB SSD - negligible 2x 4TB mechanicals. To be honest, I have no idea how much power mechanical drives actually use 500GB NVMe - Negligible So it should be nice and cool, especially the CPU as I'm using my spare Ryzen 7 2700X wraith cooler. It cooled my desktop that could run at well over 150w. So 65w should be no problem. Nobody ever said you must use rack servers, especially at home. The noise is incredible from these things. That said, I have a rack-mount 24 port gigabit switch minus 2x 4cm fans 😆 Raijintek Metis Plus ITX Gaming Case - in Green Aero Cool Integrator 400W 80+ PSU ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac AMD Motherboard AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Zen+ CPU Spare parts: 16GB DDR4 3200mhz (YES I know spare 16GB of RAM) drives mentioned above Spare GPU Spare Apple Keyboard, spare wireless mouse, spare 48" 4k TV. This kept the build price down, but the 4TB drives are quite old and probably not to far way from failure. But I have backups on my main desktop, so I'll RAID 0 them and sod the risks. The SSD's are also well used, but well within their writes and are error free. Total spend last week was £300 I can't wait for it all to arrive and start playing.

[@DJ-Daz]

There is no world wide hardware shortage, it's all here!