Home Lab v4.0…ish

When do you upgrade your home lab version? New hardware? New arrangement? I’m not really sure, so we’re going to go with v4.0.

This post is really just an overview of what the lab currently looks like and some of the functions it performs. A lot of it is more production than lab, so…labduction?

There she is, up there, in all of her cobbled together glory. And trust me, I’m cleaning up the cabling this weekend! I wish I’d known when I started what I know now, but I suppose that’s part of the reason we do this!

Overview
Top Shelf (Left to Right)

• Old junk monitor for the random times I need to actually see something.
• NETGEAR GS108Ev3 – It’s somewhere back there.
• HP Color LaserJet Pro M252dw Printer shared to the network through a Windows Server 2016 server with a print server installed.
• There’s also a Vornado Zippi ultra high tech cooling system zip tied to the top shelf and pointing down at the Qotom, Zotac, and switch. What can I say, I wanted them to be cooler.

Second Shelf (Left to Right)

• Qotom Q355G4 w/120GB Kingston M.2 SSD and 8GB Kingston RAM – pfSense Router, Currently Running 2.4 Nightlies¹
• Zotac CI323 w/8GB Crucial RAM and 120 GB Kingston SSD – Windows Hyper-V Server 2016 running lightweight virtual machines such as Seafile Pro, a domain controller, and a Caddy &  NodeJS server.
• NETGEAR CM600 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem
• Behind the Qotom and Zotac, is a NETGEAR GS724T v3 24-Port Gigabit Switch – The lab core switch. It’s nothing fancy, but it supports LAGG for the servers I use it on.
• Intel NUC5i5RYH w/16GB RAM and 256GB SSD – Windows Server 2016 providing active directory, DNS, NPS, and Veeam Backup & Replication.
• Mac Mini 2011 (under NUC) w/8GB RAM, 240GB SSD, 500GB HDD – Mac High Sierra running Apple’s Server app. Provides MDM services for iOS and macOS devices.
• Raspberry Pi – Running Homebridge
• SmartThings Hub (under Raspberry Pi)
• Apple 2TB Time Capsule (under SmartThings Hub) – Provides backups for MacBook Pro 15″ Touch Bar and Mac Mini server.

Third Shelf (Left to Right)

• Lenovo TS140 ThinkServer upgraded to Xeon E3-1246v3, 32GB RAM, mirrored 120GB SSD drives for OS (Windows Server 2016), Storage Spaces w/8x Seagate 4TB NAS drives for storage and 3x SanDisk 240GB SSD journal drives.
• Sans Digital TR8X 8 Bay SAS/SATA JBOD Storage Enclosure passed through to a LSI SAS9207-8E controller in the TS140.

Bottom Shelf (Left to Right)

• APC Smart-UPS SMT1500R2X180 UPS
• Dell OptiPlex 790 w/24GB RAM, 480GB SSD, 500GB HDD – Windows Server 2016 with Hyper-V running other virtual machines (DC, Pi-Hole, Duo Authentication Proxy, NGINX Reverse Proxy and Web Server, Virtual Windows 10 Client

So, what’s next? That’s a good question! I’m hoping the process of writing this blog and hopefully some feedback from readers like you will lead me to some new and interesting things! Send me your ideas!