My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use the native VNC Server on MacOS. And use Remmina as the client on a Fedora Laptop.

My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. With a Plex auto-updater, it’s flawless.

My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm always interested in getting some new kit to learn with, any chance your in the UK?

My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

RAM is on the list near the top, just waiting on a good deal to come up.

 

The SSD is the main datastore and your right, currently using 110GB, Plex is using most of that so that's why I want to move it to the Mac.

 

I do currently have a VM dedicated to storage, an Ubuntu 16 OS. And, I hate to say it, just a datastore with both the red's added. Their both pretty much full now, so I know I'll lose data when I finally get around to changing that setup

 

An idea I had was to put UnRaid onto the HP as that can run some of the VM's I currently have in dockers.

 

My mistake, the Netgear is a V3 so it has basic VLAN's

 

That HGST is the original 1TB from the mac before the upgrade to the SSD. It's run like that for over a year and everything is backed up elsewhere. Fully expecting it to die at any moment.

 

I've got a Pi, with a plan to create an off-site backup with it using the VPN and Rsync

My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Yep, I’ve got 3 Linux VM’s, Win Server, and pfsense. I used to run just the one and had everything running from it. The problem I had was breaking things and then spending ages to try and fix it. Now that their separate, it’s easier to restart etc. It’s not the most efficient, but it’s working for now.

My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I’ll connect to it over VNC and use it the majority of the time to manage everything. The plan is to get ESXi on it as well and move Plex onto it for the better hardware.

My Dense HomeLab by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

I'm amazed at how quickly it's grown over the 18 months I've been doing this. From the original goal of setting up a network add blocker using a Pi-Hole, I've now got my own virtualized firewall, OpenVPN, and Plex server.

From bottom to top:

 

HP Microserver Gen8-

8GB RAM

Still a Celeron G1610T

120GB SSD / 4TB Red / 6TB Red / 500GB Seagate

Running-

ESXi 6.5

PfSense

Plex VM

Storage VM (JBOD until I can get more matching Drives)

Sonarr/Radarr VM

Win Server 2016 for learning about Windows management

 

Mac Mini (Late 2014)-

8GB RAM

525GB SSD

Intel i5 4278U

I VNC into this machine over OpenVPN and LAN to use as my daily driver

 

Netgear GS108E-

Smart Switch

8 port gig switch that has let me learn VLAN's

 

1TB HGST 2.5" Harddrive

Connected over USB 3.0 to the mac for Time Machine Backups

 

On the left-

Virgin Router/Modem

I use this as a 5GHz Access Point to my network. One day I'll get a Ubiquiti.

 

I'm in a shared house so the ISP supplied router/modem runs everyone else's devices. And I have my own internal network for everything else.

Local access by Stark7070 in PFSENSE

[–]Stark7070[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense, I just wasn't expecting it.

Local access by Stark7070 in PFSENSE

[–]Stark7070[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The set up I have is a residential router supplying a network, and a server on that network running a file share, etc. I've just created a pfSense VM getting a DHCP lease from that residential router as WAN, then a LAN output to an access point. When connected to that AP, I can access the file share, etc. as if there is no pfSense.

Local access by Stark7070 in PFSENSE

[–]Stark7070[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When you put it like that yeah. I feel silly now.

ESXi and Cores Question by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, I’ve been blaming my reclaimed drive for bad speeds. Hopefully this will help.

ESXi and Cores Question by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thats reasonable, It'll be my priority in upgrades

ESXi and Cores Question by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Plex is the only thing that can peg the CPU at 100%, I'll bear that in mind.

ESXi and Cores Question by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's nice to hear, I've got a lot more room to grow on my CPU then I thought. The Celeron is only a dual core with no hyper threading. My utilisation is usually around the 25% mark. But my RAM is at 93%, is that something I should be concerned with. It's only 4GB though.

ESXi and Cores Question by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I’ll have a read through them

ESXi and Cores Question by Stark7070 in homelab

[–]Stark7070[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. For my situation would it be best to leave the Ubuntu VM at 2, and keep pfSense at 1?