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Lee Hanken
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Episode: 4215
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Title: HPR4215: My home lab
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4215/hpr4215.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:31:36
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4215 for Friday the 27th of September 2024.
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Today's show is entitled My Home Lab.
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It is hosted by Lee and is about 15 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is about setting up a rack mounted home lab.
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Hello I'm Lee.
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Today I'll talk about my experience building a home lab.
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It's a first a bit of history.
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I'd already been running network attached storage and experimenting with home servers for
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quite a few years.
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So when I was living at my parent's house I had set up the family and network attached
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storage device.
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First when I think was manufactured by Lacey and the next one by QNAP.
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These were great for storing files but not that good if you wanted to run your own custom
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my services on the network, both in terms of the difficulty of hacking them and their
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limited processing power.
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I did set up a small server manufactured by and I'll be careful how I pronounce this
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Thecus which ran a cut down version of Windows Server called Essentials.
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And later a more powerful home server which was an HP ProLine microserver.
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And this still is in use at my parent's place where it hostsplex access remotely by my
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sister as well as Rx and it provides an always online backup file storage used by my dad.
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So I'll just talk about my motivations here.
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First I always seem to have spare hard disks left over as well as spare computers of
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various descriptions.
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It seemed repurposing them as servers was an obvious thing to do.
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However, at the same time I was slightly neurotic about leaving computers on 24-7 because
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of the power they consume and the noise and also the space they take up, especially if
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they were going to be just sitting there and I would only be using them once in a while.
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The most obvious reason for having a home server is to store files for daily use as well
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as archives that might only want accessing once in a blue moon.
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This is certainly more tidy and easier to manage than having stacks of DVDRs which was
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at one time my chosen option for backups.
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However with the advent of cloud storage and specifically my case Dropbox I found there
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was less need to use the local file server since everything got automatically synced
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to every device I used.
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Now although it might sound like I'm repeating myself I'll mention offline backups.
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These are actually a different kettle of fish from the archives I just mentioned since
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they backed up on demand rather than synchronously and typically to an external hard drive or separate
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network attached storage device then that device is switched off when not in use.
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A few years ago I took a scrap and old for this buffalo from my employer and was able
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to resurrect it and set it up for my dad to do offline backups.
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Now a few years ago I was itching to really start building my own sort of server lab.
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Although at the time I don't think I had even heard the term home lab.
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I'd even started fabricating something out of aluminium sheets and a no mother board
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and some hard drives which I set up on my parents' place.
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Although this didn't last long since there was a fire in the room caused by dodgy heat
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or a haste and I had not bought any malfunction of my Frankenstein server.
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The present incarnation of my home lab came about around 2021 to 22, mainly after seeing
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what other people had built on the home lab subreddit.
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I recollected having encountered very server cabinets or offices over the years and my
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thought was I want one of those.
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By then I'd moved into a bedset and in the centre of the flat there was a very small
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sort of room stroke closet originally meant for hanging coats.
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It did not have any power outlets and someone had put in some rickety wooden shelves.
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If I was going to have a home lab of any description this was the only feasible location.
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First I needed power so without asking my landlord I drilled a hole into the closet room through
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the back wall of the adjoining room and fed a mains extension cable through having taken
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the plug off which I then wired back on again.
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It was a bit dodgy to say the least but later I was able to use my questionable charm
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to persuade a visiting electrician who was doing some rewiring in the flat to do the
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job properly and fit a set of sockets in the cup as well.
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Second I needed a network connection.
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My router was in the opposite corner of the main room in my bedset so I ran ethernet cable
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around the skirting board keeping it in place every 15 centimetres with a cable tacker
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gun and I fed it through yet another hole I drilled through the wall into the cupboard
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room.
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By this time I had mastered the basics of wiring an ethernet socket box with a punch down
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tool so networking was now sorted.
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Thirdly I needed a rack and quickly worked out that while the space in the cupboard was
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wide enough for a standard 19 inch rack it was now only deep enough so I would have to
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get a slim rack of something like half the normal depth.
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Consequently all my equipment would also have to fit this form factor.
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I got a suitable rack delivered from a bridge company called All Metal Parts for under
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100 quid.
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To accommodate the rack on the ground in the cupboard I removed the low shelves from
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the aforementioned set of wooden shelves and it just squeezed in between the legs they
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tried to get rid of the wooden shelves altogether.
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So then I got my first server chassis.
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It was an in-win one new short depth chassis which was silver and 25 centimetres deep so
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I thought about building my first server into this chassis and although I had quite
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a supply of parts including a spare PC it was hoping to serve a rise.
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I soon realised my existing stuff was not going to cut the mustard and was going to need
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to buy more bits specifically for the lap.
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For one thing even if I could reuse a motherboard there was no way a standard processor fan was
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going to fit in the one new high chassis.
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The chassis had front fans that blew air through the thing like the winds of hell, these
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fans screamed, they really did.
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These could obviate the need for a dedicated CPU fan but in order that I would not receive
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complaints from my neighbours and be able to sleep at night myself in an adjoining room
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I decided they had to go.
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I realised for such a server you need a small low power high efficiency components for
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the processor lots of cores and low profile memory chips.
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So while I was figuring all that out I still wanted to use some of the desktop grade
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components I had.
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So I was on the hunt for one or more cases that would be told or at least to you in order
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to accommodate these bits.
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What I ended up with was a couple of chassis one that was only stocked by a company in
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Germany and fitted quite well the other I ordered was actually 2D when I received it but
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thankfully my father even at the age of 8 he is still handy with an angle grinder and
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I got him to cut it down to size for me.
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So before I go on to describe the home lab in its present form I've just mentioned a
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few things I discovered or became more familiar with during the whole process.
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These are really just my personal preferences and are not necessarily the right way of doing
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things or better than doing things in a different way.
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Firstly hard drives I've been using almost exclusively Western digital reds or the red pro
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range.
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These are lower power and meant to be always on for many years.
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In fact if possible I'd advise never switch them off as I think switching them off and
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on is when they're most likely to fail although that could just be superstition.
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Another thing about hard drives is for my use case I prefer to use fewer high capacity
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drives rather than lots of lower capacity drives.
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I think this is not so great if you want to have some redundancy and easy replacement
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when there's a failure which you'd get from ride but I decided this on the basis that
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fewer drives probably use less power and I get redundancy from having data distributed
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in more than one place anyway.
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For mounting components in the rack, clip nuts are hit and miss in times of slot in the
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min.
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I think there's some tool that makes insert in the mezier but I just struggle through
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since you only really have to do it once.
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Similarly I found sometimes the screws going easy and sometimes they do not quite align
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and are really fiddly.
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I don't really have a solution for that but what I would recommend is getting rack brackets
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that support the serve for both of the front and the back.
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I know in principle network equipment is held in by screws at the front but heavier
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items then slide down at the back due to gravity which I don't like so a bracket really
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helps.
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Cooling is another issue when running several servers in a confined space.
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When one of my hard drives failed within warranty I rightly or wrongly suspect overheating
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might be an issue so I wanted the temperature in the closet and found it reached 30 Celsius
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and that was not even in summer.
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My research told me 25 Celsius would be a better temperature to aim for and at that
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point I did some serious design work how I would have fans and ventilation system for
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the cupboard.
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Then when I mentioned these plants to my notoriously demand avoidant neurodivergent
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friend and neighbour he came up with a classic bit of advice, just cracked the door open.
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So after all that that's why I did and overheating was no longer a problem although I'd
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met there is a fraction more decibels in the whole way than before.
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Now to describe my home lab in its present form.
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At the top is a silver one-year case which houses what I refer to as my NAS or network
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attached storage.
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It's because it's powerful enough to act as a file server and provide some lightweight
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networking services like Git Repositories but it's not much good for anything too memory
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or process for Inchensive.
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I ended up putting an Intel nook in this case.
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It connects to a single 10 terabyte Western Digital Red Tire Drive.
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System is running a Ubuntu and stuff is shared via Sambo or SSHFS and it stays in sync
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with other servers using Resilio Sync, formerly known as BitTorrent Sync.
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For while I did not have this on 24-7 but I warmed the idea of doing so just act as
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an always in sync back up after one of the hard drives died on my other server and I lost
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quite a number of files albeit non-essential ones.
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Keeping it on does not use that much power, pandas to my superstition about knock power
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cycling hard drives and adds to the overall redundancy of my health setup.
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Below that is a black 2u case.
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This is the one that had to be cut down to size and I refer to this as my DVR server since
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its primary purpose is to act as a digital VJ recorder since it runs Jelly Finn and open
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source media server software package and is constantly recording television mainly films
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broadcast over the air and received by an HD home run box that is on the same land.
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There is 2 Western Digital Reds totaling around 40 terabytes of storage.
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The system is a 12-quad Intel jobby with 16 gigabytes of RAM.
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I use some of the spare hard drive space to also keep a Ubuntu mirror on the server I
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guess in case my internet is down and I want to install some package on my main PC.
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This used to be an arch mirror but practical reasons forced me onto a Ubuntu a few months
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ago.
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Underneath that I have a rudimentary unmanaged Cisco switch and I have nothing more to say
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about it than it does the job.
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In case I also want to run my own Wi-Fi network also have the talk talk route to resting
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atop the switch and I did use this for a while but then found it was more error prone than
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using the Wi-Fi of my main router and in any case I did not really have a use for it.
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Then below that is an ancient Cisco router I was playing about with this when learning
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Cisco is part of a corresponding study course but it lacks some of the modern features
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you'd really want if using a Cisco router seriously, things like proper encryption for
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example.
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I did think it was quite cool with a bit of hacking to feed it the IP addresses of all
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the major advertising sites on the internet and then use it to block them but it was only
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a Mickey Mouse project since to do it properly you'd need to keep the list constantly updated.
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On the ground floor of the rack is a second to you server but first I'll mention the
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Mac mini resting on top of it.
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This is a quad core i7 thing with 16 gigabytes of RAM running Manjaro but it has very
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limited non-agreable internal storage that's not much use for anything I can think of.
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At the bottom two you server I call my Proxmox box, it has an 8 core AMD Ryzen motherboard
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and CPU which originally came from a desktop PC, has 64 gigabytes of RAM so can run a number
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of virtual machines simultaneously without any problems.
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This box I keep switched off except when I'm using it.
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I haven't given it too much hard disk space, something like three terabytes as its
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roll is not storage but mainly setting up random VMs and containers.
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For anyone not familiar with Proxmox it's a very reliable and easy to use sweet specifically
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made for doing virtualization on your own server.
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I'll mention it does cost a bit of money for that license which is renewed annually.
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At one point I had not used it for a while and the license expired but the system basically
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still worked and when I got back to using it again I renewed the license and upgraded
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it to the latest version.
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Most recently I used the Proxmox server to provision a Windows server instance and set
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up a custom development environment I could potentially use when remotely developing software
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for one of my clients, although to be honest in the end I never found an occasion when
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I needed to do that work remotely.
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To finish off my home lab the piece of the resistance is a spare Android phone resting
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on top of it all, an old Samsung and this runs HTTP SMS.
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I use this to collect all my two factual authentication SMS messages and relay them so I can
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get them directly on my computer.
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My main mobile keeps switched off most of the time so I don't work well with distractions
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doing this so I don't have to keep referring to my phone every 5 minutes whenever I log
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into something or ever.
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So at the end of the day was it worth having a home lab, I don't know, energy prices are
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high here about and I worry about my contribution to CO2 emissions.
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Then I think of all the electricity my heating uses in winter and realise that the two servers
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I keep on only use a tiny fraction of that and I rationalise the servers at actually helping
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keep the flat warm at least apart from in summer when they're not really helping.
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On the plus side I get to play with cool things like self-hosted software and have a fancy
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little dashboard of all these services.
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The tool for doing that is called dashy.to although to be honest in the end I gave up on my
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tanking and dashboard and I just go to the web address directly which 99% of the time
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is jelly fin and it's nice to have a server or two I can always remote access into wherever
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I am typically when I'm round up my parents I use 0 tier which is a software based VPN
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that lets you do just that.
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So like me you like to hear wearing equipment as you walked through your hallway or don't
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want to be tied to the cloud and entirely dependent on your internet connection or fancy
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installing open source software to provide services you otherwise be dependent on corporations
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for or practice skills at home that you can use to get a better job and then building
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a home lab might be something worth considering.
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If you already have a cool home lab no not yet recorded an episode of Hacker Public Radio
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then again that's something to consider.
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Anyway enough from me thanks for listening and bye for now.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org today's show
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was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording podcasts
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and click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
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Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com, the internet archive and
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our sings.net.
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On this otherwise status today's show is released on their creative commons attribution 4.0
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