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Home Lab Beginners guide

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Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#141

Post by Arelius »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #100
cloudripper wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use nix btw. I totally agree. It (nix and nixos) is/are such a pain so often. But, wow... when you get things to work it is glorious. Quickly and easily syncing system/user/application configurations across multiple devices is incredible. The declarative approach means that the often laborious effort it takes me to get things to work pays off when I finally figure it out and realize I never have to do that again -…

I just feel it doesn't have to be this way. We can get the benefits of nix without the hardness of nix. It's just someone hasn't taken the time to make this "thing" yet. It's annoying enough that I won't use nix personally. I've used it at work so I'm quite knowledgeable with it.

IMO, this thing is Nix, it just needs better UI and a lot better documentation.

The problem I've realized is that for many core Nix developers, the source is the documentation. Which doesnt scale.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#142

Post by tonymet »

I'll go against the grain and recommend running your lab on Windows 11 Pro and Hyper V (often included with reclaimed PCs). Hyper-V is a very capable hypervisor and Windows hardware compatibility is excellent. Remote mgmt can be done over RDP, SSH or WMI

Nearly everyone has a spare PC lying around collecting dust, and within an hour it can be running a dozen VMs . Reclaimed HP & Dells are cheap and include a Windows Pro license. otherwise they can be had for $20

I recommend Alpine for the guest OS. It's fast to set up, natively supports Hyper-V hosts and compact (about 1/10th the size of a debian guest).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualizat...

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Hyper-V_guest_services

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#143

Post by treflop »

I run a more mundane setup using the most possible boring choices (lol) and it's been reliable. I occasionally restart random things and pull network cables to fuck with it to make sure that it can recover.

* Hardware: A regular but small (SFF) computer + Synology NAS

* Software: Ubuntu distro + Docker containers bare

* Configuration: Git-versioned Dockerfiles and docker-compose.ymls

* Storage: The NAS with Synology Hybrid RAID

* Backup: TBD... haven't figured out a cheap and automatic way to backup 20 TB of data off-site

I run cameras, a media server shared with friends, a shared place to dump project files, a DNS server (just in case the Internet goes down so that everything local still works) and supporting services.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#144

Post by aaronax »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #107

A bit of a tangent but I want to sing the praises of Proxmox for home servers. I've run some sort of Linux server in my home for 25 years now, always hand-managing a single Ubuntu (or whatever) system. It's a huge pain. Proxmox makes it very easy to have multiple containers and VMs on a single hardware device. I started by just virtualizing the one big Ubuntu system. Even that has advantages: backups, high availabili…

And a huge win that it makes it so easy to have distributed storage. Ceph is built-in and works well. Being able to add disks as needed is bliss (no RAID planning up front). And the rebuild situation is better than any RAID. Performance is adequate for homelab even on a 1gbps network. I have about 10 SSDs mixed 1TB and 2TB across 5 hosts (old Optiplex units).

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#145

Post by ashtonian5 »

jrm4 wrote: post #130

At the risk of yucking others' yum; I wish there was more of an effort to get people to do this sort of thing without buying new equipment (including perhaps the reduction of of the idea that you need/want a "rack") There are just SO MANY perfectly good computers that are bound to be e-waste that would be good for this.

Most people don't buy "new" hardware. Power efficiency has changed drastically to a point anything before ~2016 is not worth plugging into the wall, and sata to NVME drastically improve responsiveness which didn't become the base standard until 2018ish. Most people use an old desktop or buy old server equipment on ebay.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#146

Post by buybackoff »

tonymet wrote: post #142

I'll go against the grain and recommend running your lab on Windows 11 Pro and Hyper V (often included with reclaimed PCs). Hyper-V is a very capable hypervisor and Windows hardware compatibility is excellent. Remote mgmt can be done over RDP, SSH or WMI Nearly everyone has a spare PC lying around collecting dust, and within an hour it can be running a dozen VMs . Reclaimed HP & Dells are cheap and include a Windows…

You could use this built-in OEM license from a Windows VM in Proxmox. Just search for that on Proxmox forum.

Hyper-V is very limited in hardware support, you won't be able to pass-through stuff. And you always pay for VM layer, while in Proxmox you could use containers which give almost the host performance.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#147

Post by k8sToGo »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #107

A bit of a tangent but I want to sing the praises of Proxmox for home servers. I've run some sort of Linux server in my home for 25 years now, always hand-managing a single Ubuntu (or whatever) system. It's a huge pain. Proxmox makes it very easy to have multiple containers and VMs on a single hardware device. I started by just virtualizing the one big Ubuntu system. Even that has advantages: backups, high availabili…

Combining that with Proxmox Backup Server is awesome.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#148

Post by globular-toast »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #107

A bit of a tangent but I want to sing the praises of Proxmox for home servers. I've run some sort of Linux server in my home for 25 years now, always hand-managing a single Ubuntu (or whatever) system. It's a huge pain. Proxmox makes it very easy to have multiple containers and VMs on a single hardware device. I started by just virtualizing the one big Ubuntu system. Even that has advantages: backups, high availabili…

Obviously you could have just run containers on that Ubuntu system. And nothing stopping you backing it up either. But you might as well start with a hypervisor on a new server, though. It gives you more flexibility to add other distros and non-Linux stuff into the mix too (I run an OPNsense router, for example).

I use xcp-ng rather than Proxmox.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#149

Post by lloeki »

> Location

For a few years I put mine inside an IKEA FRIHETEN sofa (the kind that just pulls†).

    Pros:
    - easy access
    - completely invisible save for 1 power wire + 1 fiber (WAN) + 1 eth (LAN)††
    - structure allows easy cable routing out (worst case you punch a hole on the thin low-end)
    - easy layout/cable routing inside
    - noise reduction for free
    - doubles as warming in winter a seated butt is never cold
    - spouse enjoys zero blinkenlights
    - spouse didn't even notice I bought a UPS + a disk bay

    Cons:
    - a bit uncomfortable to manipulate things inside
    - vibrations (as in, spinning rust may not like it) when sitting/seated/opening/closing
    - heat (was surprisingly OK, not worse than a closet)
    - accidental spillage risks (but mostly OK as design makes it flow around, not inside the container, worst case: put some raisers under hardware)
    - accidental wire pull e.g when unsuspecting spouse is moving furniture around for housecleaning (give'em some slack)
† https://www.ikea.com/us/en/images/products/friheten-sleeper-...

†† that I conveniently routed to a corner in the back then hidden in the wall to the nearest plugs, so really invisible in practice.

Re: Home Lab Beginners guide

#150

Post by haunter »

tonymet wrote: post #142

I'll go against the grain and recommend running your lab on Windows 11 Pro and Hyper V (often included with reclaimed PCs). Hyper-V is a very capable hypervisor and Windows hardware compatibility is excellent. Remote mgmt can be done over RDP, SSH or WMI Nearly everyone has a spare PC lying around collecting dust, and within an hour it can be running a dozen VMs . Reclaimed HP & Dells are cheap and include a Windows…

Not sure why are you downvoted, Hyper V is perfectly fine

Hyper V Server 2019 is also free you don’t have to pay for anything https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-...

And you can install a full GUI too https://gist.github.com/bp2008/922b326bf30222b51da08146746c7...

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