151–160 of 191 posts
This is really cool. I’ve been wanting to build my own lab, but I’m a bit worried about power consumption. If I do build something, then it would probably be something I power up and down as required. That said, are there “Cloud” versions of this? Can I get my feet wet that way?
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…
That’s not a “HomeLab”. You can create a Plex Media server with a $249 Nvidia Shield and some low cost USB hard drives.
It's time to update this kind of guides with at least 2.5GbE networking. I suspect most FTTH ISPs will start defaulting to 2 or even 5 Gbps soon (mine already offers theses speeds in PNW, but at premium costs). There's very few consumer options at 2.5 / 5 GbE; you can usually pick up cheaper 10 GbE gear (but on older standards, non-multi-gig compatible).
The areas this sort of thing is available is way too scarce to matter. I'm in a major metropolitan highly competitive area, and 1.2Gbps non-symmetrical coax is the fastest option. Most PCs where I work run through 100 Mbps switches. Your experience is very far from the average.
They also have a 2-Gig ($120/mo) and 5-Gig ($300/mo); I'm waiting for those to drop in price and I'll definitely jump on-board (most of my home network is on 2.5GbE with a few 1Gb segments).
Anyone else annoyed at how narrow the term Homelab really is relative to what it could be? Any scientific or maker hobbies could take place in a "home lab," from breeding seedlings, to soldering and electronics work, to 3D printing. But it really means just networking and servers? Seems too narrow to me.
I don't think anyone would object to wider usage, it's just that the sysadmin community is the only group to have adopted the term so far.
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.
It grew over time to serve many purposes, has seen many stopped/failed attempts, has had many lives (I mean, recreate from scratch to learn X, Y or Z).
There's not a particular day or a particular addition or a particular level of complexity when it became a homelab, I think of it as such from day 1.
This is really cool. I’ve been wanting to build my own lab, but I’m a bit worried about power consumption. If I do build something, then it would probably be something I power up and down as required. That said, are there “Cloud” versions of this? Can I get my feet wet that way?
You can have a homelab with just one or a few raspberry pi’s. Power consumption would be negligible.
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.
It looks to me that rolling your own media center is something to experiment with and learn something from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Consumer hardware is insane. With less technical management, I've had repeated, and bewildered, conversations trying to get them to understand that our one "computer" sitting on my desk is many many times faster than the "server" our IT team provides. "But it's a server!".
Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it takes up 4-6x more space than it needs to in what is likely the most expensive commercial real estate the company owns/leases. Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it can't be remotely lights-out managed and its hardware monitored using standardized tools (or at all.) Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't have redundant PSUs. Many times faster doesn't mean shit…
Unless you're hoping to monetize that spot on your desk, the real estate market means nothing in terms of cost.
> Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it can't be remotely lights-out managed and its hardware monitored using standardized tools (or at all.)
What stops you from "using standardized tools" on a box you own?
> Many times faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't have redundant PSUs.
What leads you to believe that all those 9s are relevant or even not comparable with cloud alternatives? In fact, I'm not sure that the latest rounds of outages at AWS allow it to claim more than 3 9s during the past year.
> Also, the computer sitting on your desk is not "many many times faster" than a current, or even few years old, server.
Actually, it is.
2U server with 6 4TB drives (ZRaid 2 leaving 16TB of usable space) running on an Asrock Rack WSI 246 mini itx board, a Core i3 9100T (35w, can be configured as a 25w part) and 32GB of ECC DDR 4.
It idles around 20w and going full pelt with all disks running at around 40-50w.
This is running UrBackup for the computers in the house to backup to, SeaFile for the phones, a Minecraft server for the kids, Plex, Wireguard (for remote access) and InfluxDB for collecting metrics.
Whilst playing with ex enterprise kit would be fun, the noise, and the power consumption, just isn't worth it to me.
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…
In the end though, I got fed up with my consumer gear (Orbi mesh system) never being very reliable, so had the house wired for Cat 6 and shoved a UDM Pro, USW-Pro-48-Poe and 3 U6 Pro access points in and it's been far more stable and problem free than the Orbi, to the point where the kids have stopped telling me "Dad, the wifi sucks!" and needing to reboot the whole thing, which I had to do at least once a month previously.