Home lab beginners guide (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#121

Post by mikewhy » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #113

noitpmeder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you trying to gatekeep what is or is not a homelab. Just because it isn't sufficiently complex doesn't mean it doesn't fit the definition.

A home lab was generally seen as something to experiment with and learn something from. Setting up a Plex server is literally installing one piece of software on anything newer than a Core 2 Duo.

They mentioned one aspect of their setup and you're the one assuming that's all they have.

Not to mention even if it was just a Plex server, that still meets your criteria.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#122

Post by dvtrn » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 1:47 AM UTC

loudthing wrote: post #95

noitpmeder wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the phrase "homelab", I suppose. Why not call it "Home IT" or "Home Data Center" or "Home Network Infrastructure". Calling it a home laboratory sounds like enthusiasts are trying to escape some preconceived notions about the topic. I digress...

I actually refer to mine as my “residential command and control center”, or “RCC”.

:)

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#123

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 1:51 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#124

Post by loudthing » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #101

loudthing wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the same reason why people like woodworking. Why buy a piece of furniture when you could spend 3x as much and do it yourself?

But do woodworkers consider their home workspace a "lab"?

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#125

Post by mulmen » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 2:01 AM UTC

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…

Meh. My motorcycle is ostensibly for use in endurance racing. I use it to go out for coffee and sandwiches.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#126

Post by cosmiccatnap » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

Am I the only one who just slaps a few vms together on an umanaged switch? I don't need to tag anything and the two vlans I have are for the wifi and the house. One vm runs openwrt, another openmediacault, and then I have arch for my dev projects. Psu hanging out sure but all that is just on a fold out table under the stairs and it's been rock solid for 3 years.

Don't get me wrong it's nice to do this stuff and I'm not knocking people for spending so much time on it but when you spend your day at work logging into systems and fixing broken junk the last thing I want to do is come home to a dead network or vm issue to solve.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#127

Post by teh_klev » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 2:20 AM UTC

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…

> I've never understood why fiddling with IT equipment in your home is considering a "home lab" since you aren't necessarily creating anything

To paraphrase the first item in the HN guidelines:

"anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."[0]

You can get to explore configurations and scenarios you might never be able to do at work. But it's not about work, it's about scratching an itch.

> The most egregious factor of this hobby is that you are often buying equipment that costs enterprise prices

If you know where to look you can pick up enterprisey kit cheap. It may not be the latest and greatest, but it's probably good enough to play with.

Just because you don't understand the attraction of this pastime (or any pastime) you don't get to judge or complain about folks who enjoy tinkering.

Once upon a time I built out a home lab to run a piece of software called Zebra to learn about BGP4 and CIDR. It was about scratching an itch. If energy prices in the UK weren't so utterly bonkers at the moment then I'd love to build out a new lab to mess about with some stuff. Again, to scratch a curiosity itch.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#128

Post by teh_klev » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

loudthing wrote: post #124

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same reason why people like woodworking. Why buy a piece of furniture when you could spend 3x as much and do it yourself?

But do woodworkers consider their home workspace a "lab"?

Why not? They might use it to experiment with different techniques to bend wood, test structural integrity of different joint types, well anything.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#129

Post by cwiggs » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

cillian64 wrote: post #4

I’m always sad that 10”/10.5” racks aren’t more common for this sort of thing. I have my “homelab” in one and it’s the perfect size for a home router, an 8 port switch, a Raspberry Pi, a Thinkcentre tiny, and a 1-bay NAS. Basically nothing actually rack-mounts in 10.5” so I currently have things cable-tied to shelves, but I’m planning to 3d print some adaptors. My setup: https://i.postimg.cc/xTpLPFQD/image.jpg

IME it's very difficult to find hardware for 10" racks in the US.

Re: Home lab beginners guide (2021)

#130

Post by binkHN » Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

runjake wrote: post #63

I manage a network of a few hundred multi-layer switches, several routers, and a couple thousand wireless access points across a couple dozen campuses. My home network is an Eero. The network engineer’s kids have no homelab, as it were. Occasionally, I get the urge to build out a proper homelab but quickly realize I don’t want to come home and deal with the same stuff and put the Eero back in. It’s not that I don’t l…

I'm in a similar boat as you, but it's across numerous various clients. HOWEVER, I REFUSE to use consumer-class equipment at home when possible. I spend A LOT more, but within some sense of reason, to buy similar business-class equipment at home. Why? Because consumer-class equipment often has bugs I can't easily resolve. On the other hand, business-class equipment has the debugging and logging capabilities that I need to quickly pinpoint and resolve an issue.

In the end, my network at home works better, has higher availability and, for the times that it doesn't, I can quickly resolve the issue and get back to the enjoyment of my home versus being frustrated as to why some consumer-class thing is not working yet again.