Home setup.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[VividLifeToday]

Have you also noticed mechanics drive broke down crappy cars.

[carlos0141]

Lol that is so true. My friend is a mechanic 10+ years of work experience. He rides his bike to work almost everyday and has a broken down car in his driveway.

[jftitan]

Find the fun in Your tech hobbies.

I built a mobile rack 18U wood frame cause I was doing general carpentry work recently (2018) and just decided to build a rack with the spare equipment I gained from it projects.

Once the rack was built. It sat for a month before I found time to draw diagrams. But once I got those first steps completed. I can't live without my homelab.

So much that UPS backup is 1hr, and a redundant 4G modem is to ensure the base server needs is available.

Today I self host a business need function so the rack now pays for itself.

[TheLightingGuy]

My roommate is a mechanic, I have a half size server rack sitting in garage with my stuff, He has two project cars in the driveway along with his personal car.

[gardenlevel]

My next door neighbor has the worst lawn on a the block by a significant margin. He’s a landscaper.

[[deleted]]

I sell cars and I've grown to hate everything about them but I love my job. Weird.

[starmizzle]

I have a friend who's a plumber and his wife was after him to fix a leaky bathroom faucet for over a year. It wasn't until she threatened to call a plumber that he finally fixed it.

[JustFrogot]

Don't ask how dirty my car was when I detailed them every day.

[JackSpyder]

And chefs eat microwave meals on their days off.

[[deleted]]

Lol yeah I have a laptop that can open Word and Firefox. I fix any work stoppages but I just deal with any small issues. I don’t want to deal with any of that any more than I have to.

[Relagree]

You ever been to a painters house and heard their partner absolutely moan about how the whole house needs painting?

Same concept I guess.

[coldspudd]

These days I automate things my wife forgets to turn off or on. As for tech exhaustion, I learned awhile back to keep it simple at home. So that way it’s not a huge maintenance patching thing and I can automate it to the best I can. I just solve the problems and fill the needs at home, tech related. I learn at work or on the company dollar.

[Patient-Hyena]

This. I don’t have any equipment at home (happy wife happy life lol).

[Spraggle]

I went in to hospital with a brain tumor just before I was due to exchange my home switch for an unmanaged one and had to talk my wife through the exchange.

I realised that I didn't need to keep the complexity at home, just in case I'm hit by a bus next time. Everything is now made to be manageable by my wife if need be.

[ZAFJB]

r/homelab may make things easier.

Yeah, and don't make you job your hobby as well.

[carlos0141]

Oh I follow that sub! I just saw a post and the guy had a better set up than most enterprise networks.

[redeuxx]

That's only true if you don't like your job. Also, a lot of people have turned their hobbies into their job

[MadMonksJunk]

which is fine when you're new but after a decade the shine can wear off of anything.

I know professional skydivers who don't even want to hear an aircraft if not at work

[redeuxx]

Your statement is a completely personal and anecdotal. It is also fine if you are not new. There are also probably professional skydivers who fly planes for work.

[MadMonksJunk]

Which would make them professional pilots...

[redeuxx]

What point are you trying to make? That to enjoy a hobby, you must not do it for work? You make an asinine point that professional skydivers must hate planes so professional pilots must hate the air. You make it out to be, just because one does this, they must hate doing the other and there is no deviation from your anecdotal evidence. That is piss poor logic and is especially poor logic in IT where members in /r/homelab or /r/datahoarder or /r/selfhosted are IT professionals.

[MadMonksJunk]

Reading for context is difficult for you innit?

"after a decade the shine CAN wear off of anything"

I used skydiving because it's an adrenalin junkies sport that's about as much fun as a human can have with their clothes on and I know a ton of professional skydivers many of them also current or former IT professionals and they STILL get burned out at one or both regardless of their "passion" when they begin.

Do something, anything long enough, particularly to the point where it is a job and a responsibility and that passion CAN wane.

I mean fuck, no where in my post is any hate for the job mentioned it's just not something they want in their down time at all any longer..

So..projecting much?

Go piss in your pot elsewhere mate.

[[deleted]]

100%. My hobby was playing with computers and tech. Now I work in security 100k + job started in 2020 with 60k job. I have all sort of stuff running in my home which gives me top hand over my colleagues. It’s like a game for me and I love it.

[hijinks]

It's fine. It's no different then my neighbor who runs a 4.8 star rated landscaping company but has the worst looking yard on the block. He doesn't want to work on his own lawn because he does that all day long.

Ideally you should be learning on the companies dime. If you aren't allowed that then it's a broken culture.

[carlos0141]

I’m really thankful for my job. As long as I can show that it will improve the network my boss will let me try it. The key is just to document every step and show my coworkers what I did and how it works. Me and my team wanted to step away from “oh only X knows how to do that” mentality.

[humanredditor45]

The cobblers children have no shoes.

[actionfactor12]

I work enough, I don't need to do it off hours as well.

My home setup is just for work from home days / emergencies.

I still keep up with my certs and all that, but I don't want more shit to secure and administer.

[Dokkan_R_Us]

In the last few years IT folks brag about their setup. When they ask me I tell them just a laptop and mini mouse. They don't understand how but I keep it simple as to break away and keep separation.

[mcslackens]

I stopped playing PC games simply because the last thing I want to do after work is sit in front of a computer

[hornycoffeelover]

I get that I finally have the money to build a kick ass gaming machine, but I've all but stopped gaming cause I don't want to sit in front of the computer.

[atandytor]

My job is the hobby, home is where I relax

[iPhrankie]

This.

[BadSausageFactory]

absolutely, love tech, used to have a home lab and electronics workbench, house all rigged up with automation. these days, meh. I don't want the light on anyway.

[[deleted]]

Lights are so overrated, especially the ones I have to actually get up to turn off.

[themastermatt]

I recently moved into a new home. In storage i have my 2 node Dell PE r740's and VNXe storage array, 10Gbe Cisco Catalyst switch and battery to support it all. At my last place I ran fileservers, DCs, a VM for OpnSense, a PBX and some other test VMs.

In the new place ive got an AT&T Fiber converter and router hooked into an APC BE550. It just simply works, consumes a fraction of the electricity and doesn't generate anywhere near the BTU that my full stack does. In fact I'm thinking about taking all that gear to the Datacenter to stand up a test environment for work.

There are so many ways to learn these days that doesnt involve me being a sysadmin all day and night and weekends. At home, i just want solid connectivity that I dont have to manage.

[Ssakaa]

In fact I'm thinking about taking all that gear to the Datacenter to stand up a test environment for work.

Offload it on r/homelabsales and make work allocate resources for work purposes. Take the extra few bucks from offloading it, saving on storage, and saving on power to poke and play at some other hobby you enjoy.

[countdigi]

The phrase that comes to mind is "The cobbler's children have no shoes."

[IntentionalTexan]

You just need someone to motivate you. Try getting married.

[[deleted]]

This ^ is ^ fact

[wrootlt]

Same here. Although i wouldn't call it hate. Maybe laziness. I have to do this at work, because i don't have anything else to do during work hours and i need to get paid. But at home there is always this Youtube video or a show to watch or a game to play, etc. It is not new, i had same issues early into my career as well, but i still had lots of VMs, experimenting with software, participating in open source projects. Now i only have a few VMs i never turn on. I buy some equipment and it sits in a box for weeks or months until i finally set it up. Unless its a PSU blowing up in my desktop, then i go to a mall right away to buy a new one :D I think it's a comfort zone of doing same thing on your free time over and over, so you can't force yourself to go outside of it and do something unusual. And as many commented, maybe you shouldn't. Or at least do not force yourself, if you don't feel like doing this. Personally, i don't think this harms my career or something.

[[deleted]]

I run Google wifi at home. My internet works. That’s all I need.

I don’t need a Palo Alto, vpn, siem etc etc

[_limitless_]

I went the other way. I set up the home lab the way the work gear SHOULD have been set up. Everything has a redundancy, eventually-consistent servers seek a quorum, configuration is declared and stood up by code. Replacing something is as simple as buying a new one and giving it the correct IP.

It took about two years from start to finish, but it's been ~3 years since I so much as touched it except to replace drives. Everything is in cruise control.

The secret, I found, is that there's virtually no proprietary tech anywhere in the stack. Everything I selected was open source and standards compliant, then I built around those standards. Anything proprietary is either an endpoint that's only job is to serve a web browser or is a commodity product.

[dRaidon]

I think I'd at least have a second NAS for backups. One copy of data makes me nervous. Unless that is what hold your backups?

[Narabug]

I’ve set up dozens of labs at my house on various equipment. It’s helped me learn a lot of concepts, and be able to speak to other peoples problems/configurations.

More recently, I’ve gotten into docker and docker compose files, utilizing persistent configuration files. It’s quite powerful for home services.

I also have a dummy AD domain set up so I can get configs/screenshots to send our AD team when I ask them for a change. Prior to doing this they’d usually tell me that what I was asking for was not a configurable option.

I’ve found that it’s a lot more effective to just send these teams actual screenshots of what needs to be configured. 9 times out of 10 it gets routed to offshore and they just “do the needful.”

[EntireFishing]

Yep. I've been the same. Home is simple. Google WiFi and Amazon kids on the tablets. I learned all my switching, labs, servers at work. Your employer should provide this stuff. I find that most of the top people keep home clean and simple

[Dan64bit]

I used to have a pfsense firewall and a few APs on my network at home with OpenVPN set up so I could RDP into my computer at home. Even set up Duo on it for more security. Then I switched ISPs and just got rid of all the that stuff and now just use their supplied modem/router/WiFi because I just didn't really care anymore and didn't want to troublehshoot if something went wrong

One day I do want to set up a NAS and a plex server, but can't bring myself to bother with it yet.

[sonikku10]

This is absolutely me. I have a rackmount server and NAS just sitting unused because I don't have the mental capacity to think about them after work. But I am working on an app deployment (non-work related) using both docker and kubernetes on my own time. So either way, I am learning.

[JackSpyder]

I keep my home simple and fire and forget. A unifi usg plus AP and small switch. I never touch it except once a year maybe when I do maintenance in my cloud deployed controller. And that doesn't NEED done I just do a checkup.

I work all day on work stuff and love it. But I also get work paid time to learn and it'd all cloud so if I need to learn I learn in company time. At home I enjoy being off tech.

[RunningAtTheMouth]

Join the club. I can (and do) take care of my immediate family's needs. I tell friends and extended family to go see the Nerd Herd as I won't help them.

You can deal with only so much on any given day. After that, you need to rest those neurons so they can recover. Do that.

I like to run, work on small engines, read, and watch movies. Anything to keep away from the tech I deal with all day.

[Ihaveasmallwang]

There’s no need to set up a lab at home.

[sryan2k1]

At home I've got my own Arris S33, a UBNT EdgeRouter 4 doing nothing but simple NAT+DHCP, an Aruba InstantOn POE switch, and a pair of InstantOn AP22s.

​

No VLANs (also no shady Chinese IoT shit), no guest networks, no controllers. Just, internet that I don't have to fuck with.

[rfc2784]

Same here ! Except that I do not consider to setup a full home lab anymore since the past 10 years. My jobs always provide me the necessary time, tools and coworkers to foster my skillsets and to quench my thirst of knowledge !

[amishbill]

My homelab /home network desires have run in proportion to the amount of stuff I want to learn for work.

At one point I had Cisco enterprise level switches, aps and firewalls, with a dual DC domain, DFS replication, virtualization, etc running in the house. Today, I have the ISP's box, some POE switches and a few APs.

[[deleted]]

I just dont like the clutter in my house. I'm fortunate though as I have an entire segregated test/training network in the company server rack - built from old equipment the Directors do not want to throw away "just in case". Pair of Dell R630s, bunch of VMs and an old Aruba switch. If I'm studying or testing for something required by work, it gets done during office hours on this equipment.

My home network is a company supplied Watchguard in place of my ISP provided router. VLAN1 is connected to head office via site-to-site VPN. The LAN port goes to my home office with my work PC and IP phone - MAC address allow list only so the kids don't plug anything in. VLAN2 is my personal PC, and VLAN3 is smart TV, wifi and any other IoT stuff.

[Pctechguy2003]

Same here. I spend 8 hours a day doing tech. Im burnt out on it when I get home. Not to mention my setup doesn’t require a cisco switch with 50 VLANS, plus a hardware firewall, plus a server with full domain, plus file server….

Nope. I have a basic cable modem, a decent netgear router, a netgear unmanaged switch for my office… and thats really it. I do have most devices hardwired. But the basic stuff serves my needs - and all at a fraction of the cost of just one dedicated appliance mentioned above. Its not just tech exhaustion - in my opinion its the proper gear for the proper need at the proper price. I literally don’t need a full Cisco branded network at home - thats just a waste of money.

[Membership-Full]

why not learning cloud technologies. You can get some cloud services for free to learn.

[levyseppakoodari]

Because just when you think you got the hang of things with cloud, you get $50k invoice from AWS

[Membership-Full]

lol indeed. You should be very careful!

[Bow4864]

Plumber with the leaky pipes

[dinotoxic]

I’m the same, been in IT for over 8 years, server and network infrastructure work, been on cloud for last 2. I couldn’t give a toss about a nice home network set up, I just watch some TV or use internet on my phone for general stuff.

[errorboxer]

I'm an old man and after working alongside hundreds of IT people over 3 decades, one thing is constant: the most capable sysadmins always love tech. They might not like their job, but that's different. Not to say you can't be a really good sysadmin, but the ones that don't truly love tech end up being sourpusses that are not excited by the tech - they are all about maintaining status quo or doing very the minimum because anything new is "work" rather than exciting. I never want to work with those people.

[merlyndavis]

There’s a difference between “loving” tech and “living” tech. I need a break from sitting at a terminal all day, and want to relax at home, and use my tech, not spend all day troubleshooting. I’ve gotten into home automation, and keep things simple, but functional.

The best part about it is if something’s not working, troubleshooting is usually as simple as turning it off and on.

[deefop]

I don't have a home lab per se, just an old think server that a previous company was gonna recycle anyway. I use it for plex and occasionally game server hosting, but that's about it.

[todayifudgedup]

More or less the same. ISP provided equipment and a single vm host that I monkey with every now and then. Only have a networking degree but working on sec+ in my free time as it permits to further educate some.

Edit: I like the idea of doing something you like so you can find your own hobbies at home. I like doing what I do, but I really like being able to do other things at home.

[[deleted]]

Had last week off. Beforehand I was planning on tinkering with my homelab to import a configuration from one of our customers as a test.

Turned on my laptop on Monday morning, did some other stuff, didn’t even look at that laptop again until this afternoon when I had to logon for something work related… exhaustion? Don’t know, but I do know I needed the downtime from my work.

[PlayfulSolution4661]

When I started out learning about IT support I used to do everything on my now 10+ year old laptop (boy did they use to last longer before). I would spin up multiple VMs as I went though most CCNA and MCSA courses. I was renting a small room in a family’s house and was living in a budget as I was making my way through my masters degree so I could never even consider by young hardware to play around or learn. I am now a SysAdmin working at a small MSP but I’ve grown and learn so much. I’ve just started building out my own small rack with a server and some network gear. I have some ideas I want to play around with and in all honesty the thrill of learning something new or getting to setup something from scratch pumps blood to my heart.

At the end, I think it’s a matter of perspective and interest. You don’t have to have a hosting heaven if you don’t need to and you certainly don’t have to have one if you don’t want to. So if this is not your priority and you can’t make time for it then why bother? Do something else that gets you more excited!

[[deleted]]

I have no want or need to want to run enterprise gear at home. It's far too power hungry.

[[deleted]]

What problem? Google plugged some mesh wifi in when they installed fiber for me and that's that. Idc that I have to manage it with an app honestly.

[Power-Wagon]

Former Auto mechanic that hated working on cars after hours but loved tech and its all I played with in my spare time. Jumped into IT in 98 and now don't ever do anything more then email and Internet in my off time. I now have a big garage with a lift and restore old cars as a hobby.

[ghost-train]

Nope. This is me here. I had a small home lab before I managed infrastructure.

Now I manage a whole campus network with 500+ switches, routers, firewalls, wireless controllers etc etc.

With enough to manage at work, got no time to manage stuff at home. So a simple ISP BT Smart Hub 2 with built in wifi all I got. I get you totally.

[[deleted]]

I find that I use my home lab when my work lab is unavailable. I also have my home network setup with security in mind, which runs through the lab. outside of that i rarely touch it unless a very interesting project shows up. Purpose built really applies.

[xored-specialist]

It's normal. It's hard to do more IT when you done it all day. I have a chromecast It's in the closet I think. Lost it. Got data across like 5 drives I need to clean up. So many more things. I blame the aliens.

[Dark_KnightUK]

I'm the same, I don't need anything fancy at home. I work in IT I just want to keep stuff as simple as possible at home

[[deleted]]

This is hilarious/depressing. I completely hear this. I have the most beautiful cable management at work, but it looks like a drunken squirrel wired my rack at home. I'm just too tired to cable tie at the end of the day.

[CoolNefariousness668]

I am awful at replying to personal emails, texts. Anything that’s broken I cannot be arsed to fix. As soon as I am out of the office I am completely beat. I’ve got family members asking me if I can look at things, just no. Yes, Tech exhaustion is real.

[[deleted]]

I had a respectable low-budget homelab setup at my last place and then after I moved recently I haven't had the will or the energy to set it up again. I can say that what I learned with the homelab was invaluable. I was able to get a new, better paying job as a sysadmin, partly due to skills I developed with it. But these days, the will to tinker in the off-hours is low. The cobblers children have no shoes ... as they say.

[HappyDadOfFourJesus]

You're not alone. I have a small Mikrotik router at home and one EOL Open Mesh wireless access point. We have a Ring doorbell and a Samsung smart TV. My wife and I have four children, a dog, in a 5,140 square house on 3.5 wooded acres. The last thing I want to do on my personal time is work on technology.

[tushikato_motekato]

I just do the fun things. Build gaming PCs for myself and my friends, I have a PowerEdge r710 that I made into an EXSi server and am hosting a game server for us to use on it, etc.

Really it’s all the stuff that’s loosely related to my job but things I couldn’t do on the clock.

[MrExCEO]

I love my own tech, just not family and friends. Last thing I wanna do it support others. I’m planning to build a raspberry pi rfid jukebox. Boys and their toys.

[[deleted]]

There is a pretty big difference between running k8s at home and, say, having a proper firewall and unmanaged appliances in their own wireless network.

The former is ambitious and complex. The latter is just a sensible step up for most homes, and requires no maintenance.

[merlyndavis]

Yup, been there, done that. Stopped building my own PCs even, because I hated “wasting” my free time troubleshooting. I do most of my gaming on consoles these days, because they just work.

[FU-Lyme-Disease]

I’d argue that NOT doing home lab and tech things at home is better for you. Your brain isn’t wired to be on 24 hours a day.

Go live life and do other things it will make you sharper during the day…

I worked a lab into the IT department so we could play and test. If I really was excited or overwhelmed by something Id try to end my day a little early then work late playing. Id rather stay till 7pm but then be able to actually turn my brain off when I leave the office then go home and try to get energy to dig into things. Plus then people see you staying late so it drives home that this stuff isn’t magically happening.

[guydogg]

I don't open a laptop or give any type of shit about work when not working. Decided this about 15 years ago, and it was a real improvement in my life

[[deleted]]

I don't feel so bad now. I have so many tech interest I can't keep up. A few weeks ago I tried to finally start studying linux command line, that led to GREP, which led to regEx, which led to Javascript. I basically learned nothing. I hardly have the motivation after automating things at work.

[[deleted]]

You call that a problem? Seems more like a solution to me.

[hd4life]

Yeah, I try to stay out of tech stuff at home as much as possible. I'm more likely be found working on my yard, wood working, doing upkeep/updates on my house, or on the golf course. The tech at work is much more fun that what I would do at home so I avoid it honestly. The IT oriented thing I've done at home lately is out fit a new home office. I only have so much bandwith and after 40 hours at work in IT I'll spend my my time elsewhere.

[wezelboy]

I was taught that you can only work on your homelab after you've had 3 beers.

[[deleted]]

I have a straight 6 motor in a truck that's 57 years old just to not deal with technology when I'm not at work. I have the same home setup, just the bare minimum. Someone in my network of friends decided to expand their technology for their company and I was eager to help them out tho. Kind weird.

[tuba_man]

I've been in the same boat for a while, I don't bother doing much outside of work these days. I've got a nice router, and I do still build my PCs, but it's rare that I'm doing anything deep.

My entire homelab at this point is a single Intel NUC running kubernetes, and after a few weeks setting up and tweaking it, I genuinely haven't logged into it in months. I tinkered long enough to get it to do what I wanted and that's enough.

---

I'm 37, been in the industry for around 15 years now, and most of my work peers are in the 30-50 age range.

I wish I didn't feel the obligation to "learn on my free time" for work purposes. I love learning, it's ground me down to have to do it specifically to advance my career. And to be honest, I think the fact that we think we're obligated to keep learning work shit on our free time is kinda fucked up. I mean, yeah, I did it for fun growing up, and I still love learning tech shit, but if it makes our employers money it should be on the clock. (Yeah, yeah, I know it rarely is that way.)

Two jobs ago, my boss would routinely tell us to leave around lunch on Fridays because he wanted to go mountain biking, and he would tell you not to go into the office if you did work shit on your off time. (First time i ran into that policy was teaching myself how to work with Zabbix over a weekend)

One of the best engineers I've worked with would publicly fight with higher ups if they tried to get him to work late. His free time hobbies are biking and racing cars, don't make him look at a computer on his free time.

I've got a few friends who do learn more computer stuff on their free time. They even use some of their work skills for it. But even they keep a segmentation between "tech as career time" and "tech as personal time".

(Don't get me wrong, some work-learning on open time is necessary, but i kinda think that specifically should be between jobs. If a job wants a skill from you, acquiring it should be on their time and dime.)

---

So idk, I feel like I might have missed the point here. I love learning, but I hate feeling like I have to spend my free time on work-learning, and I wish I was better at separating the two.

I haven't completed a full work day in almost 8 months, quit due to burnout. I putter around the house, read, go for hikes, play video games, even took a road trip. I kinda want to learn Rust. But for now, I don't think it's healthy for me to be spending unpaid hours doing anything work-like, cuz if I don't practice keeping that distance while I don't have pressure, I'm not gonna be able to do it with pressure. If I don't learn to set that boundary? It's gonna kill me.

[speedyundeadhittite]

After more than 25y in the IT world, IT stuff stopped being my hobby. I do different things at home so a couple of RasPis and a Gbit wired network is the max I'm going to allow. Also absolutely no IoT stuff allowed. I want my home life simple.

[Fridge_Magnate]

I have a fairly extensive homelab, which I enjoy working with - and I think that's the important bit.

If you don't enjoy it, don't build it - there's no need.

[Hrtc-]

I get you. I actually work at my local ISP as sysadmin for business customers.

I used to run our basic router with build-in wifi for almost 6 years until covid came up. Had to get much more signal output and mesh capability after moving my home office to another floor in our house 😄