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Home lab beginners guide (2021)

haydenjames.io

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Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#81

Post by ReactiveJelly »

mcovalt wrote: post #6

This is fun. I'm more of a minimalist with my homelab setup. It's a laptop and an old NAS. I love it either way: running a homelab is a nonsensical and fun hobby in any case. I feel like we live in a world in which it's either racks or cheap VPSs. In reality, at home, we have some serious CPU horsepower just spinning billions of empty cycles per second. Consumer hardware is insane . I've handled 10's of thousands of…

> In reality, at home, we have some serious CPU horsepower just spinning billions of empty cycles per second.

To be fair they're not spinning every single piece of the CPU.

My desktop can play games from 2009-ish, but at idle it clocks down to like 30 watts.

It could play games from 2011 if I put the GPU back in, but the GPU's idle power draw is ridiculous...

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#82

Post by ghostly_s »

loudthing wrote: post #77

I've never understood why fiddling with IT equipment in your home is considering a "home lab" since you aren't necessarily creating anything (like a laboratory would do), you are just integrating together other people's industrial components to serve non business purposes. The most egregious factor of this hobby is that you are often buying equipment that costs enterprise prices with your own money, whether or not it…

It's a place to experiment with the skills you use in your profession. I don't see what you're struggling with.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#83

Post by atty »

loudthing wrote: post #77

I've never understood why fiddling with IT equipment in your home is considering a "home lab" since you aren't necessarily creating anything (like a laboratory would do), you are just integrating together other people's industrial components to serve non business purposes. The most egregious factor of this hobby is that you are often buying equipment that costs enterprise prices with your own money, whether or not it…

A lab is a place to experiment. The person conducting an experiment does not need to be pushing the envelope of human knowledge to enjoy and benefit from the process.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#84

Post by loudthing »

ghostly_s wrote: post #82
loudthing wrote: post #77

I've never understood why fiddling with IT equipment in your home is considering a "home lab" since you aren't necessarily creating anything (like a laboratory would do), you are just integrating together other people's industrial components to serve non business purposes. The most egregious factor of this hobby is that you are often buying equipment that costs enterprise prices with your own money, whether or not it…

It's a place to experiment with the skills you use in your profession. I don't see what you're struggling with.

I guess I'm struggling with why I would buy the same commercial grade equipment to play with at home when my profession should be fulfilling the needs of that skill set. Sounds like if you feel like you need to do so, you're more than likely unfulfilled in your current career.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#85

Post by zrail »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #61
heavyset_go wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> running a homelab is a nonsensical Depends, I get a lot of utility from mine, as it manages my media collection for streaming at home and on the go. I've tried using SaaS alternatives and managed hosting of the apps I run, but those experiences were both lackluster and relatively expensive. And since the apps I run and my media collection aren't locked behind proprietary systems or limited APIs that might disappear…

A media server is not a "homelab." One of the most irritating things about "homelabs" is that most people seem to think a "homelab" means "a rack of very expensive, way-overspec'd ubiquiti gear, an OTS NAS unit, and a docker container server running media server/torrent shit." I have a laptop running a dozen different containers - bookstack, torrent client, rss reader, and so on. I don't think of it as a "homelab."

I have a production hypervisor (HP EliteDesk 800 G3 Mini). This is where things run that my spouse cares about, in particular, Home Assistant. I don't generally mess with this machine.

I also have a lab hypervisor (Dell T30). This is where I feel free to experiment with VMs and accidentally on purpose have to rebuild it every once in a while, take it down to swap out hardware, etc.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#86

Post by pkulak »

loudthing wrote: post #77

I've never understood why fiddling with IT equipment in your home is considering a "home lab" since you aren't necessarily creating anything (like a laboratory would do), you are just integrating together other people's industrial components to serve non business purposes. The most egregious factor of this hobby is that you are often buying equipment that costs enterprise prices with your own money, whether or not it…

My "homelab" is only used for things that actually provide value to me. I host a Matrix server for chat, Home Assistant, a Minecraft server, plus a few hundred gigs of backups and photos/videos.

I don't really know if I qualify though. All that's on a 2011 Dell, a 2-bay Synology nas, and a UPS I found on Amazon. I have zero urge to go out and buy a rack; it works great as is.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#87

Post by noitpmeder »

loudthing wrote: post #77

I've never understood why fiddling with IT equipment in your home is considering a "home lab" since you aren't necessarily creating anything (like a laboratory would do), you are just integrating together other people's industrial components to serve non business purposes. The most egregious factor of this hobby is that you are often buying equipment that costs enterprise prices with your own money, whether or not it…

You sound worked up. Most people who seriously invest like fiddling around and creating their own networking structure. It's a feature that they don't have to worry about "serving business needs"!

I'm not sure what the difference is between this and any other moderately expensive hobby.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#88

Post by heavyset_go »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #61
heavyset_go wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> running a homelab is a nonsensical Depends, I get a lot of utility from mine, as it manages my media collection for streaming at home and on the go. I've tried using SaaS alternatives and managed hosting of the apps I run, but those experiences were both lackluster and relatively expensive. And since the apps I run and my media collection aren't locked behind proprietary systems or limited APIs that might disappear…

A media server is not a "homelab." One of the most irritating things about "homelabs" is that most people seem to think a "homelab" means "a rack of very expensive, way-overspec'd ubiquiti gear, an OTS NAS unit, and a docker container server running media server/torrent shit." I have a laptop running a dozen different containers - bookstack, torrent client, rss reader, and so on. I don't think of it as a "homelab."

Who said anything about the cluster being just a media server?

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#89

Post by noitpmeder »

loudthing wrote: post #84
ghostly_s wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a place to experiment with the skills you use in your profession. I don't see what you're struggling with.

I guess I'm struggling with why I would buy the same commercial grade equipment to play with at home when my profession should be fulfilling the needs of that skill set. Sounds like if you feel like you need to do so, you're more than likely unfulfilled in your current career.

People do this on their own time because they enjoy it! Why is this so hard to understand.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#90

Post by rhinoceraptor »

scandinavian wrote: post #79

I'm not a network guy, so apologies for the stupid question, but what is the patch panel for in this setup? It doesn't really look like it has a purpose from my view.

For network devices around the house, for example PoE cameras, wifi access points, or wall plate jacks. The patch panel is a clean way to terminate those cables in the rack.
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