Homelab Overview

The purpose of this website is to do two things: document my homelab and share it with others.

By documenting what I've done and my thoughts on why I've done it, I can look up and remember decisions made, the rationale behind why they were made, and the actual configurations and steps to get there.

If you happen to be here because I have shared the link, behold! My homelab in all of its wonder!

Finally, to round things out: this website is not designed to be a tutorial, guide, etc. You can feel free to copy the things I publish here, but that is not the express intention nor how the documentation will be presented.

Network Topology

Both virtualization hosts, the NAS, and my gaming "server" are all connected to a MokerLink 9 port switch. This is then connected to a Ubiquiti Unifi 24 port PoE switch which connects everything else in the network including the WAPs.

pve1

For the primary workhorse server I am using an Acemagician 5700U.

It has an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U with 8 cores and 16 threads and boosts up to 4.3Ghz. I have upgraded the RAM to 64GB with a 2x 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 kit. Lastly, I added a 1TB NVMe ssd for local storage. These upgrades allow me to run plenty of VMs on this host as can be seen in the diagram above.

This computer has 2 built in network ports: a 2.5Gbps and 1Gbps ethernet ports. I currently have the 2.5Gbps port connected to the MokerLink switch while the 1 Gpbs port is connected to my ISPs ONT.

I chose this particular model as it was on sale when I was looking. It had the ability to upgrade to 64GB of RAM, dual NICs, was small, and was a low power machine.

When it eventually comes time to look for a replacement for this, I will likely try and find an Intel CPU based system as it has better video transcoding abilities than Ryzen CPUs.

This machine is running Proxmox and currently hosts all of my main VMs, with the exception of a VM dedicated to running tdarr.

pve2

This is a leftover from my previous configuration where I had 3 of these in a Proxmox cluster. Now, only this one unit remains.

This once again runs proxmox, however this machine exclusively hosts a single VM with tdarr in docker that is responsible for transcoding my media library.

It has a 6 core i5-8400T and 16GB of RAM. There is a single 256GB NVMe gen 3 ssd which is more than plenty.

compy486

This is the only Windows machine I have running in my house. This is solely used as a gaming server which I use Steam Link and Parsec to access.

This unit has an Intel i7-11800H CPU, 32GB RAM, an RTX 3070 laptop GPU, and a 2 TB NVMe Gen 3 ssd. This runs headless with an HDMI dongle to simulate a 4k display.

handyNAS

HandyNAS is a Synology DS1618+. It is currently populated with 4x 10TB and 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf hard drives. It features 4x 1Gbe ethernet ports, however I have used the PCIe slot to install an Intel X520-T2 10Gbps NIC that is connected to the MokerLink switch.

I went with a Synology NAS for mass storage as the ability to upgrade storage space is very easy using the Synology software RAID. I can simply plug in a new, larger hard drive and rebuild it, and then expand the storage to use the entire disk in the web GUI. It also provides disk checking abilities that will notify me if there is an issue with the drive via email. There are ways to achieve this otherwise, however it comes out of the box ready to go with minimal configuration necessary.

This unit currently provides all mass storage for my media library, backups made by Proxmox Backup Server, as well as network storage for documents, pictures, personal videos, etc. All of the important, irreplacable data is backed up to Synology's C2 cloud storage as it is very cheap and (obviously) works well with Synology products.

MokerLink Switch

This MokerLink 2G0811GT is the "backbone" of my network. This interconnects all of my important, high speed devices as it has 8x 2.5Gbps and 1x 10Gbps RJ45 ports. All devices considered servers are connected, as well as my desktop workstation.

It was the most reasonably priced multi-gig switch I could find that was managed. I run a VLAN for both my local networrk as well as one for guest traffic.

Unifi Switch

An Ubiquity USW-24-POE connects everything else on my network. The PoE provides power to 2 Ubiquiti Unifi UAP AC Lite access points. This switch is also configured for the VLANs listed in the section for the MokerLink switch.

Unifi APs

These are budget friendly WiFi 5 APs. They do the job and I haven't seen a need to upgrade them yet. One is located in the center of my house which provides coverage to the entire house. The other AP is placed at the back of the house (still indoors) to provide covereage to the back yard.