I really want to start diving into a home lab but it is definitely a hard sell for the wife with the whining servers and the hvac additions 😄 not to mention I have pets and pet hair and dander are the mortal enemies of servers…
That's probably the best and most common way to start a homelab! Just watch out... soon you might end up with like 10 servers and a full rack haha. But really, for most people a 'server' (which is usually just a PC) with storage, and a device that can manage DNS/ad blocking, is about perfect for home use!
@@JeffGeerling me too, currently electricity bill is keeping me down... so i only have a raspberry pi 4 with a harddrive(actually that was my main system for a whole year, so you know i don't want my father to suffer with huge bills).... so my side job as support engg.. and collage sucking all time, but i managed to afford a computer ... :) so for now i am limited to raspberry pi...
I have converted my HPC (for gaming and productivity) into a proxmox server now have couple of them serving a lot like a real Data centre lol, hope it scales up even after I leave to States
Guys and videos like yours made me create my own homelab. I am scaling down because of energy bills but it's a great experience, and you learn a lot from doing it.
Sir, you discussed my home lab journey word for word. Even the part about the electric bill, lol. also, like I tell all my friends, " my greatest fear is, when I die my wife will sell my network equipment for the price I told her I bought it for." lol
If you switch to the Home Assistant Supervised Install you could unlock the full potential of that CM4 inside. or run the "Terminal" Home Assistant Integration and set up SSH keys internally. That should give you some control like updating etc.
Such a relatable video! My setup currently includes 1 Rpi for OMV (pihole, wireguard, some internal websites), 1 Rpi for Home Assistant, 1 Synology NAS with Plex and 1 custom PC for BlueIris NVR. Going to mount stuff on plywood this weekend :D :D Now I just need to ensure my wife never sees this video :P
Jeff, fellow IT St. Louisan here. I focus largely in MDM, Infrastructure (Azure & On-prem), and Security within Microsoft's land. I've tried several times to get into TH-cam but can't seem to get things going. Your videos are both fun, informational, and inspiring. Keep these up, I love watching them as a lot of this is new to me and the pursuit of knowledge has always been my thing. If you do end seeing this, I'd love to get your expertise on starting in the YT space as an IT professional and would love to pick your brain on how you make videos both entertaining and informational! I greatly enjoy all the videos you make and have been following you for a while now! You're awesome and stay awesome!
I use Ansible to manage all the server containers running my Pi4(8G) hypervisor (PiMox/ProxMox). Its super fun to tear down and rebuild my DNS server, Pihole, Presearch nodes, with ansible in seconds.
My lab is an old hp elite desk running windows, I have jellyfin running on it all the time, I'm planning on moving to truenas but not now, and a dell optiplex running as a Kodi box, and a pihole with my recursive dns address, it's really humble but I'm proud of it
You inspired me! Over the last couple of days I was able to install Ansible on Windows (it works surprisingly well using Cygwin) and write some playlist scripts to update the installed software on my Raspberry Pi's and backup Minix computers (all running slightly different flavors of Ubuntu). It took a lot of trial and error to finally get everything to work as much of the online documentation suffers from the general Unix/Linux problem, providing examples of niche special cases but with little or no attention to showing general principles and syntax options. I found debugging my scripts a real challenge since the errors never showed you exactly what the Ansible modules were attempting to execute at all. Never could get the "debug" stuff to work for me at all. Still, it's working and should save me some time down the road! Now if I could figure out everything I've forgotten about Docker, to see if I can use that for anything too! Keep up the good work, your channel is always interesting!
My home lab stretches my moving four houses. It started in my parents basement when I was in high school, upgraded a machine and my old machine ended up being a server of some sort. BBS, or, file storage, or whatever. Too long ago to remember. I then moved out on my own with my now-wife and slowly picked up discarded hardware from customers when I worked at the mom/pop computer store, or purchased my own hardware brand new, and slowly brought PC towers home to get them to do different things. This was back in the Pentium 3 or 4 days? After that, I got a job where I'm at now (15 years ago) and I've taken some more of this companies discarded hardware and put them in my rack. 48-port GigE switch, a pair of routers (Which are decommed due to age and their crap'n the bed frequently) and a pair of Dell servers running ProxMox each. Total of nearly 256gig of RAM between the two. I've got a single Drobo as my NAS and everything hooks into it. I still have several decommed work machines as well that are just sitting here (Pretty powerful at that) which may end up being more ProxMox machines that I just stuff under the servers. The only thing I'm not doing is running any kind of monitoring what so ever. The internet drops more than any of the software or hardware. I've got to figure out how to get backups going, even if its taking down VMs to do a full on VM backup (I'm not switching away from ProxMox) and then bring it up, and Ansible could do it by talking to the ProxMox servers directly, or, maybe there's a plugin already. Don't know, haven't looked. The only "production" value thing I have is sitting on a couple of VMs that run pfSense (Easy enough to rebuild, but, wouldn't mind getting a regular backup of haProxy settings) and one VM in particular which controls my static-DHCP settings (DHCP grants IPs based on MAC addresses, and I control that via a custom build web interface that's in need of upgrading, so any ideas from you guys on how to manage DHCP addresses based on MACs, I'm all ears!). Looking forward to the next 20 years of hardware stuffs!
I hope you are well. I'm virtualising everything with xcp-ng. I7-8700T and 32Gb Ram can handle a lot of small footprint VM-s. ansible control host, docker host, omv, pihole, pivpn, and other linux distros for multiple reasons. I have even a windows 10 vm too with gpu passtrough. Raid, backup plans, ansible playbooks etc, I learned a lot from you. The ansible book is masterpice for beginners and not so beginners too. I saw the whole ansible youtube series twice :).
As always great video, often looking at your repos/videos for inspiration for my own homelab. Just noticed you don't yet run a proper firewall? First thing I do is set the router to bridge mode and hook up my pfsense to handle everything. This allows me to properly separate my networks physically and virtually: running a dedicated IOT network/wifi without access to anything internal, separated management network etc. You can get some small, used Xeon-D Supermicros with 10G rather cheap now which are perfect for handling firewall/VPN/DNS blocking etc.
Since you're running the home assistant OS check out hassio google drive backup. Auto backups of your home assistant are sent off to your google drive.
Great vid as always Jeff. I really need to get your Ansible book, maybe I'll buy it as a Christmas present for myself. Already waiting in anticipation for your next video.
I've just got an Unraid server (sleeper style in an old 1999 beige Dell XPS tower) for storage (mostly for my wife and I's photo/video company) with a bunch docker apps that I play with.
I only hope to build a lab like this one day. So far, I have multiple shrines all over my house... and many parts waiting for a new home. Got a couple 24 port managed switches w/ fiber links, 2 x Pi4's (one's running my cam/basic storage NAS atm), a rack UPS and surge protector strip (mountable). Next I am eyeing up a 2U setup, but I'm leaning more towards customizing the layout b/c I do not really want the traditional server rack anymore. I've seen variants running nice air cooled Noctua setups on dual Xenon's and I'm leaning more towards that now. Anyway -- awesome setup. Thx for the ideas and info 👍
If you want to automate a RouterOS device through the command-line (and thus through Ansible), take a look at scripts. Unless I'm very much mistaken, scripting is available to all RouterOS device. If not, just use the CLI on one device to SSH into the router with a keyfile. You should be able to make it so that the key is only usable from a specific MAC address behind your NAT/PAT or link local.
As a developer I run stuff like Gitlab, jfrog, kubernetes, keycloak, mainly just to learn how to do things, nothing “production like”. But I just have a big computer and a bunch of cables and call it a server XD How does ansible manage to work with your Mac Studio? does it have Linux and not macOS? Finally, I didn’t have the kind of relation you have with your father and I really admire it. I wish when I have a kid we can be like that!😊
macOS can either be managed using ansible's 'local' connection, or via SSH-since macOS runs a *BSD, it's pretty standardized and easy to manage local or remote!
@@JeffGeerling i see. Never thought on including my Mac into the workflow aside from developing. Does your ansible book includes a chapter on Mac or is there a video describing your workflow using it?
Waaay Baaaack in the dark days before virtualization I had a home lab with half dozen home built 386 PCs. I taught networking and email and needed a lab that could have inside nodes, external nodes, routers and email relays. Back then (early 90s) Fry's electronics would have their weekly ad published in the San Jose Mercury. In a corner of the ad would be super cheap PC components. $35 for a case and power supply. $99 for a CPU motherboard combo. $99 for a disk drive, still the average price for an entry level disk. $35 for a 10 Gb/sec NIC card. I started with one to install Red Hat Linux 4.2 on. I had a Sun Sparcstation on my desk with a 60lbs (27kg or 4.3 stones) 19" color monitor. Then over a couple of years I kept adding additional systems. Mother boards and CPUs would get upgraded as Fry's came out with more advanced combos for about $99. In the mid 90's I was teaching server side UNIX/Linux email in classes all over the country. I would travel with 3 laptops and a hub so I could demonstrate routing of SMTP email through a Sendmail email gateway. Then came VMware. I was a very early adopter with VMware 1.1 (?). Having lived with Sun diskless clients all my technical life, I was able to shrink 3 clients with 10 Mb root and 4 Mb swap partitions on my 120 Mb laptop disk. Remember when disk capacity was measured in Mb? My life became simpler only carrying one laptop on the road. Now you can do all of this on a Raspberry Pi. My $7 ESP32 has similar compute power and much more disk space than the $10k-$20k Sun Microsystems workstations I started on. My how times have changed.
The problem with rack full of equipment at home, is they draw A LOT of power. Best to have an electrician wire up some dedicated circuit breakers to protect your home and your equipment !
I really need to catch up on my data hoarding. You're way ahead of me. I've only got 4tb of storage and only about 1.5tb of it is being used. Mostly for TV shows and movies, but I've got some games and a few ISO's as well.
My home lab has grown. ML350G8 128GB RAM, bunch of storage / VMware / Bunch of Lab servers, two Pi-Holes on two Ubuntu VMs. A NUC running Volumio to play music outside. Four NAS's. Various Unifi APs. A Meraki MX75 on the edge. A dedicated Veeam Backup machine, which sends the backups offsite to Datto's File Protection service. All this lives in my garage with a 60Ghz Mikrotik Wireless link to the house, and they also run Zero Tier so I can access then outside of my network. Oh, and of course Plex. Im a CTO for a modest IT company, and not long turned 50. Im still learning. I also tell those whom come for job interviews that IT is more than a job, its a craft, and to be good at your craft, you need to invest in yourself.
I currently have an old Pentium E5400 dell pc running openmediavault with 6tb of network storage, pihole, complete with gigabit ethernet and a missing front panel. Luckily dell system back in 2010 were all standard parts. I tried to get into Ansible automation but i just couldn't wrap my head around it.
My homelab is pretty basic. A Dell Optiplex 7010 running TrueNAS with three 4TB drives in RAIDz1 for 8TB of usable storage, a Raspberry PI 3 running as my print server, a Linux machine made out of spare parts running as my processing power for Plex (reading media files from my NAS) and my Minecraft server, the combo Router/Modem/Wireless Access Point from my ISP, and an unmanaged gigabit switch. All sitting on an old metal shelf I had laying around.
Glad to see I'm not the only crazy one haha. I started a homelab back in college with a Dell PowerEdge 1850 I bought off eBay for $70. It was horribly underpowered, sucked power, made a lot of noise (1U rack server), and it smelled a little funny but it got me into homelabbing. Over the years I got tired of the "real" servers power bills so I switched to cheap AMD desktop hardware I bought from Microcenter to cut back on the power usage. In my most recent iteration, my NAS is my old desktop with 12 3 TB drives, my main Linux / Plex / Docker server is a 10th Gen intel i7 system, my KVM virtualization server is a 12th Gen Core i7 system which runs a VPN server, 3 Rancher kubernetes nodes, and my AD server, I have a Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF running as a physical K8s node, and I have a couple of raspberry pi 3's. They're running PiHole with a custom config for DHCP and DNS that I manage using gitea and drone CI that's running on my k8s cluster. One of the Pi's even has a GPS module installed and uses PPS to act as a Stratum 1 NTP server. What problems are you running into with NUT? I have it configured in my lab so that after 5 minutes, my physical servers all shut down to save the battery for the modem and network gear.
You can manage MikroTik remotely. Enable SSH, and you can automate that! IDK if Ansible supports that via SSH, but stuff like Fabric (or Paramiko) can send commands via SSH. Since winbox is just a GUI for MikroTik shell commands, you can comb through the docs a bit and configure it via shell. I prefer that on some older devices with RS-232 connector actually.
Ansible has a module for RouterOS but I've been running SwitchOS, which is a bit different, but more straightforward to configure. Should probably just switch to RouterOS.
Have you gone through the NVR and cameras in a video before? I don't remember seeing it, and I would be really interested in it. I know it can be a security risk to show camera positions, but maybe if you blurred the camera feeds?
Ah, how times change. When I was your age, the first thing to be setup was the Stereo. Now it is the WiFi router first. Kids (oops, young people) these days mostly listen privately with ear buds. Even among friends. Gone are the days that everyone would communally share music by having the stereo playing all day.
I still have the speakers I bought when I was a kid, hooked up to an amplifier in the workshop... though since I often use my AirPods for some noise cancellation, I think the last time I turned on that speaker set was about 2 years ago!
If there is no suitable Ansible plugin, you can use the Raw plugin. Just imagine that you have been connected via SSH and executing commands. You wouldn't get idempotence out of the box, but you'll be able to use Ansible for a wider amount of hardware.
My homelab is still a rat's nest :P And I have your book too! I use it at work all the time. Helped a bunch to get things flowing (no water leak pun intended...)
I have been learning Terraform and have had success mixing with it with Ansible. Ever think about trying terraform out and virtualizing? You could pull it off with ESXi or Proxmox.
I wish I had room for a rack at home. As I actually do not cosplay as a sysadmin but (I am sad to say) work as one I get to scratch that itch whenever I like and do not like. Still, my homelab could use one, but not enough room...
My gear: 1x Dell PowerEdge T310 tower server (Intel Xeon X3470 CPU, 16GB Registered ECC RAM, 128GB SSD, 4x4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS drives), 1x Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB RAM), 1x TP-Link TL-SG1008P Switch, 3x Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC-LR access points and Cat.6 cabling throughout the house. On the software side of things: the T310 runs TrueNAS SCALE w/ the Seagate drives in a Raid-z1 pool (~10TB usable storage), the SSD runs boot-pool and Apps' storage - speaking of apps, the T310 currently runs Plex, Nextcloud, Syncthing and UniFi Network controller for my APs; the Pi has Ubuntu Server 20.04 aarch64 installed (didn't upgrade to 22.04, yet) and it runs Homebridge, WireGuard VPN server and BOINC. My Internet connection is a FTTH link from AS27699 w/ 200Mbps Downstream + 100Mbps Upstream and my entire network is Dual-stack IPv6 + IPv4 addressed (except for the NAS apps, I blame IX systems for not enabling IPv6 on the k3s-server inside TN-SCALE and the reason the Pi still runs my VPN server - "host networking" in apps is an option but that creates more problems than solutions for my actual needs, especially with TrueCharts which is another monster in particular but I digress). And everything is powered by a 600VA NHS Mini Senoidal UPS with NUT monitoring via USB interface (plugged in to the T310). The NAS is, besides the Plex server, a backup endpoint for the entire house: all computers and mobile devices sends their data to it - I built the NAS to replace the dedicated external drive every computer has but people here still prefer to use it as a secondary source than the replacement itself (not sure if they don't trust the server of myself with the crazy ideas I have but who knows :P ) but the crown jewel is the network itself: since I built my current system in 2017, the experience regarding the Internet itself came from "complaints in a daily basis" to "how awesome the Wi-Fi is". I wish I could use pfSense or Openwrt + pi-hole as my gateway to the outside world but I can't touch the settings on the ISP box or bypass the ISP box entirely in any way, otherwise the Internet + TV service goes down, forcing them to send a field technician and replace the unit entirely - fun fact: they have hundreds of millions of customers around the globe and, at the same time, they can't fix $h!t remotely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And... that's the resumed version of my setup.
@2:35 - That you would even consider what you're doing 'cosplaying as a sysadmin' speaks to the depth of imposter syndrome in our industry. I'm not prone to the hero worship I see a lot of the juniors around here engaging in, but I'd hire you for most any admin role in a heartbeat. You clearly have the chops, and that's before we even get to your publicly published code (playbooks and such). Chin up!
Heh, well I like to think of it as cosplaying as the type of sysadmin who runs around in a datacenter like in the movies. But so far I've never been inside a 'large' datacenter, just some cool rack rooms. If I ever build a real studio or some sort of evil lair, I'm going to make a really nice rack room and make it as much like a data center (minus the noise and high wind speed if possible) as I can.
Jeff do you ever go to any types of meetups in the St Louis area? I am a Systems Administrator in the St Louis area. Work in downtown by all the courts/Busch Stadium.
As per request: I have Gigabit Fiber to the Home, into the 'modem/router'. I have Gigabit Ethernet to several switches (TrendNet Green 24 ports) around the house. I use a Ubiqity ER-X 5 port to separate Personal, from Lab from Family and Security (each on a separate VLAN). On the Lab, I have a Ryzen7-1700/32GB/14TB/3Gb Ethernet ports running Debian 11 server as a VBox Host for 5 full time VMs (Serviio (DLNA Server), ADS-B, Ham Radio Scanner Streamer, Pi-Hole/Apt-Cache-NG, and a backup motionEye server/hub). I have several 'master VMs' that I clone (Debian 10 & 11 DT & SVR, Ubuntu 18, 20 & 22 DT & SVR, Fedora 36 DT & SVR, Arch DT and SVR, Win 95 and newer, DOS 3.3 and newer), and can toss up almost any OS or derivative in minutes. I have numerous Pi1, 2B, 3B & B+, 4B-4GB & 8GB, and too many PiZeros and W too count. I have several Lenovo M73s and a Circa 2009 iMac With High Sierra for testing. On the family side, too many devices to consider for them, tablets, phones, laptops, chromebooks, and RPis. Not to mention all other stuff... On the Security, a dual-purpose firewall (in and out) with Cameras, TVs, Home Automation, etc... Personal and Family have separate 11ac Routers. I used to emulate my work stuff, but now am using the setup to leatn things like Python and Ansible. I have a playbook for new installs of Debian based OSs, and RPiOSs. I use my Master images on the VBox or I use Pi-Gen (written by RPiFoundation) to create my custom images... Thoughts?
I love the idea behind Ansible, it's awesome in theory. In practice, it has many problems: - little details you need to remember: folder conventions, defaults, loading orders... - errors are usually unhelpful, and the problem is usually somewhere else - your favorite roles you build everything around go out of date and out of maintenance - managing inventories manually is tedious, but the automated alternatives are too complicated - doing a proper playbook usually takes more time than doing things manually - you need to read a lot of someone's else code if you want to know what the role you're using is going to do: config files locations, users it creates, etc
In consideration of the red hat Linux distro controversy, I am rethink whether to use Ansible or not, do you think they will change the opensource nature of it in the future or is it still the best alternative out there?
I have a pc with a tv en my livingroom, with hyper v, it was use for watch youtube mostly. recently i put more ram and ssd, 4 Nics, and i start to use pfsense for routing and failovering my internet with 4g and 2 vpn server. pi hole in a vm of ubuntu server, home assistant, and windows server 2022 labs with active directory. all in i5 7400 with 24gb ram, 2 ssd sata. i have 2 router tp link for ap use, and one extra with openwrt for auto-connect to my wifi hotspot phone (Wan tier 2 gateway in pfsense) sorry for my bad english, i'm from Argentina (here we have less access to technology that north america)
it’s good to see videos like this and inspire me that my homelab isn’t supposed to be a mini nasa datacenter in my house and me feeling terrible with my 2 pis dangling below my router, and that there is always progress being made 🫠
Your presentation was awesome at Ansiblefest! Thanks for taking the time to do this. It was great meeting you and hope to have the opportunity to meet again!
I am just getting started with Ansible, and your 101 series has been great. I'm just starting splitting out into roles since a lot of my servers are different yet related.
Thanks for sharing Jeff! Homelab is around EdgerouterX, Proxmox on a HP EliteDesk, storage on a Synology NAS, lot's of VMs, LXCs etc, some IoT. And yes, Ansible to automate things and have stuff done correctly.
Recently went from a laptop and some rpi's to a rack with an 11th gen i3 running unraid and dockerizing everything. Home assistant docker was a small ordeal without the addon store, but ultimately I like it a lot more as I always found Home Assistant OS kind of mysterious.
Do absolutly the same. HA is pretty easy in Unraid. I have a lot of dockers and around 80TB runing on a i3 9100, just the firewall has its own physical device. I just have a pi for my 3d-printers, but everything else runing on unraid, and a backup synology but just for data.
My home lab is a mess. I mean it’s not dirty just a bunch of machines all over. My home is about 30 years old and running any cabling from top to bottom is a real pain. I really want to segment my network. Keep the work computer separate from servers or dmz. I’m even using Ethernet over power lines because running cables is difficult. It’s also really slow even though it’s gigabit. So frustrating for sure. I think you should wall mount your rack. Get it off the floor.
Is there a specific reason why you use a Hue bridge rather than a Zigbee stick with HomeAssistant? Total new to the whole world of networking, IoT, and home automation but I‘m eager to learn!
I have both, and the only reason I still have the Hue bridge going is because a while back I set up all 15 or so bulbs and 5 switches with scenes / automations via Phillips Hue, and later on added Home Assistant. At some point I'll move all the Hue stuff directly into Home Assistant and ditch the hub! Just a matter of getting some time :)
I've loved my Firewalla Purple, best router by far I've ever had with amazing performance/stability and a ton of features. The WAN failover using the Purple's built-in Wi-Fi is flawless. Check them out!
I used to homelab, but I actually work as a sysadmin, and I just don't have the energy to do the same thing in my free time as well. Also, what even is a homelab? For me, a lab means a way to learn and experiment, something you can mess up and destroy at any time with (almost) no negative consequences. If you're running pihole, a mediaserver or stuff like that, it must be up or the internet stops working or the wife gets angry. To me that's not a lab, that's a production environment in your home.
Well I can still run multiple routers so I can have a lab attached to the homelab ;) But yes, if I were a sysadmin at $dayjob I might view the time differently!
I am also using Shinobi at home, and now also for some other buildings but currently looking into frigate and doubletake, because face detection is kinda fun. Before shinobi i was using zoneminder, but im happy with shinobi and some nice 4k cameras.
I started off with a Raspberry Pi running OMV, and made a Plex NAS. Then after discovering You, Network Chuck, RAID Owl, Techno Tim, and Lawrence Systems I've got an Optiplex w/Pfsense, and an old gaming PC w/ Proxmox VM w/TrueNAS Scale, Pi-hole, Plex, and currently working on Ansible scripts for upkeep. I followed your internet-pi tutorial and have a visualization of Comcast screwing me. I have spent way too much money, but it's still so much fun to play pretend as a Sys-admin! Thank you.
I have two main servers. First is a SuperMicro 2U that has dual Xeon X5690s. Got that off ebay for 200$ with a slower E5 processors (don't remember which) and a 3gb/s HBA. I added a LSI 6gb/s HBA and faster CPUs for about $150. It has 80tb of raw disk space running Unraid. Next I have a old Dell workstation with a i7-4790 running Proxmox, with the most important VM being pfSense. Runs great using PCI passthrough with a Intel dual port nic. Also have one Pi4 running pihole and a few monitoring scripts. Connected to the internet with 1gbps symmetrical fiber which the pfsense box has no problem maxing out.
Proxmox is great, I just don't run it right now, but it seems like one of the most common things people use once they graduate from 'a storage NAS and a Raspberry Pi'. Nice work getting that server going and upgraded!
Over here in Germany at 0,35€ per kWh I have...... an external harddrive :D I actually have a couple of them and I am really interested in building a NAS/Server but I only have a Pi 1 right now - all the Pi's are almost not available and if they are extremely pricy and yeah ... At the current electricity prices it wouldn't make sense at all ... So I hope for better days to someday build my own small server :D
![[TH] FS vs BME - VCT Ascension Pacific - Lower Bracket Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wnygqsR2Fig/mqdefault.jpg)
My home lab is just a bucket full of things I salvaged from e-waste
The most economical approach! Just watch the power consumption ;)
Same here: 30$ mini ITX for pfSense, 60$ mini ITX for Home Assistant, 0.5$ "broken" NVR for security camera 😊
I really want to start diving into a home lab but it is definitely a hard sell for the wife with the whining servers and the hvac additions 😄 not to mention I have pets and pet hair and dander are the mortal enemies of servers…
@@JeffGeerling thanks
@@queenannsrevenge100 Heh, that is part of running a homelab!
You actually made me to make a homelab. Currently have a old pc serving as a nas and a raspberry pi 3 running pi-hole
That's probably the best and most common way to start a homelab! Just watch out... soon you might end up with like 10 servers and a full rack haha.
But really, for most people a 'server' (which is usually just a PC) with storage, and a device that can manage DNS/ad blocking, is about perfect for home use!
@@JeffGeerling me too, currently electricity bill is keeping me down... so i only have a raspberry pi 4 with a harddrive(actually that was my main system for a whole year, so you know i don't want my father to suffer with huge bills).... so my side job as support engg.. and collage sucking all time, but i managed to afford a computer ... :)
so for now i am limited to raspberry pi...
And then it starts....
like if you know what I am talking about
I have converted my HPC (for gaming and productivity) into a proxmox server now have couple of them serving a lot like a real Data centre lol, hope it scales up even after I leave to States
Guys and videos like yours made me create my own homelab. I am scaling down because of energy bills but it's a great experience, and you learn a lot from doing it.
Sir, you discussed my home lab journey word for word. Even the part about the electric bill, lol. also, like I tell all my friends, " my greatest fear is, when I die my wife will sell my network equipment for the price I told her I bought it for." lol
Love seeing your dad participate in your projects. Makes me wish I had a cool dad lol
Thanks Jeff, makes me feel better about my collection of hardware and computers. Always learning something new.
If you switch to the Home Assistant Supervised Install you could unlock the full potential of that CM4 inside.
or run the "Terminal" Home Assistant Integration and set up SSH keys internally. That should give you some control like updating etc.
Such a relatable video! My setup currently includes 1 Rpi for OMV (pihole, wireguard, some internal websites), 1 Rpi for Home Assistant, 1 Synology NAS with Plex and 1 custom PC for BlueIris NVR. Going to mount stuff on plywood this weekend :D :D
Now I just need to ensure my wife never sees this video :P
Hope you had a good time in Chicago! I can't imagine going there on purpose! -STL 😅
Heh, I made sure to get a hot dog with ketchup!
Jeff, fellow IT St. Louisan here. I focus largely in MDM, Infrastructure (Azure & On-prem), and Security within Microsoft's land. I've tried several times to get into TH-cam but can't seem to get things going. Your videos are both fun, informational, and inspiring. Keep these up, I love watching them as a lot of this is new to me and the pursuit of knowledge has always been my thing.
If you do end seeing this, I'd love to get your expertise on starting in the YT space as an IT professional and would love to pick your brain on how you make videos both entertaining and informational!
I greatly enjoy all the videos you make and have been following you for a while now! You're awesome and stay awesome!
I use Ansible to manage all the server containers running my Pi4(8G) hypervisor (PiMox/ProxMox).
Its super fun to tear down and rebuild my DNS server, Pihole, Presearch nodes, with ansible in seconds.
My lab is an old hp elite desk running windows, I have jellyfin running on it all the time, I'm planning on moving to truenas but not now, and a dell optiplex running as a Kodi box, and a pihole with my recursive dns address, it's really humble but I'm proud of it
You inspired me! Over the last couple of days I was able to install Ansible on Windows (it works surprisingly well using Cygwin) and write some playlist scripts to update the installed software on my Raspberry Pi's and backup Minix computers (all running slightly different flavors of Ubuntu). It took a lot of trial and error to finally get everything to work as much of the online documentation suffers from the general Unix/Linux problem, providing examples of niche special cases but with little or no attention to showing general principles and syntax options. I found debugging my scripts a real challenge since the errors never showed you exactly what the Ansible modules were attempting to execute at all. Never could get the "debug" stuff to work for me at all. Still, it's working and should save me some time down the road!
Now if I could figure out everything I've forgotten about Docker, to see if I can use that for anything too!
Keep up the good work, your channel is always interesting!
My home lab stretches my moving four houses. It started in my parents basement when I was in high school, upgraded a machine and my old machine ended up being a server of some sort. BBS, or, file storage, or whatever. Too long ago to remember. I then moved out on my own with my now-wife and slowly picked up discarded hardware from customers when I worked at the mom/pop computer store, or purchased my own hardware brand new, and slowly brought PC towers home to get them to do different things. This was back in the Pentium 3 or 4 days? After that, I got a job where I'm at now (15 years ago) and I've taken some more of this companies discarded hardware and put them in my rack. 48-port GigE switch, a pair of routers (Which are decommed due to age and their crap'n the bed frequently) and a pair of Dell servers running ProxMox each. Total of nearly 256gig of RAM between the two. I've got a single Drobo as my NAS and everything hooks into it. I still have several decommed work machines as well that are just sitting here (Pretty powerful at that) which may end up being more ProxMox machines that I just stuff under the servers.
The only thing I'm not doing is running any kind of monitoring what so ever. The internet drops more than any of the software or hardware. I've got to figure out how to get backups going, even if its taking down VMs to do a full on VM backup (I'm not switching away from ProxMox) and then bring it up, and Ansible could do it by talking to the ProxMox servers directly, or, maybe there's a plugin already. Don't know, haven't looked.
The only "production" value thing I have is sitting on a couple of VMs that run pfSense (Easy enough to rebuild, but, wouldn't mind getting a regular backup of haProxy settings) and one VM in particular which controls my static-DHCP settings (DHCP grants IPs based on MAC addresses, and I control that via a custom build web interface that's in need of upgrading, so any ideas from you guys on how to manage DHCP addresses based on MACs, I'm all ears!).
Looking forward to the next 20 years of hardware stuffs!
I hope you are well. I'm virtualising everything with xcp-ng. I7-8700T and 32Gb Ram can handle a lot of small footprint VM-s. ansible control host, docker host, omv, pihole, pivpn, and other linux distros for multiple reasons. I have even a windows 10 vm too with gpu passtrough. Raid, backup plans, ansible playbooks etc, I learned a lot from you. The ansible book is masterpice for beginners and not so beginners too. I saw the whole ansible youtube series twice :).
Love your videos! Wish you all the success. Please keep up the videos, they are fantastic!
I've had that book for years... Never knew it was you!
As always great video, often looking at your repos/videos for inspiration for my own homelab. Just noticed you don't yet run a proper firewall? First thing I do is set the router to bridge mode and hook up my pfsense to handle everything. This allows me to properly separate my networks physically and virtually: running a dedicated IOT network/wifi without access to anything internal, separated management network etc. You can get some small, used Xeon-D Supermicros with 10G rather cheap now which are perfect for handling firewall/VPN/DNS blocking etc.
The rat's nest was clearly automated.
Since you're running the home assistant OS check out hassio google drive backup. Auto backups of your home assistant are sent off to your google drive.
Great vid as always Jeff. I really need to get your Ansible book, maybe I'll buy it as a Christmas present for myself. Already waiting in anticipation for your next video.
I've just got an Unraid server (sleeper style in an old 1999 beige Dell XPS tower) for storage (mostly for my wife and I's photo/video company) with a bunch docker apps that I play with.
You are Jeff Geerling and you are my hero!
man you inspire me a lot to learn new things
You are right, if I did backup my movies in the NAS , i could have collected many since now.
I only hope to build a lab like this one day.
So far, I have multiple shrines all over my house... and many parts waiting for a new home.
Got a couple 24 port managed switches w/ fiber links, 2 x Pi4's (one's running my cam/basic storage NAS atm), a rack UPS and surge protector strip (mountable).
Next I am eyeing up a 2U setup, but I'm leaning more towards customizing the layout b/c I do not really want the traditional server rack anymore. I've seen variants running nice air cooled Noctua setups on dual Xenon's and I'm leaning more towards that now.
Anyway -- awesome setup. Thx for the ideas and info 👍
If you want to automate a RouterOS device through the command-line (and thus through Ansible), take a look at scripts. Unless I'm very much mistaken, scripting is available to all RouterOS device. If not, just use the CLI on one device to SSH into the router with a keyfile. You should be able to make it so that the key is only usable from a specific MAC address behind your NAT/PAT or link local.
As a developer I run stuff like Gitlab, jfrog, kubernetes, keycloak, mainly just to learn how to do things, nothing “production like”. But I just have a big computer and a bunch of cables and call it a server XD
How does ansible manage to work with your Mac Studio? does it have Linux and not macOS?
Finally, I didn’t have the kind of relation you have with your father and I really admire it. I wish when I have a kid we can be like that!😊
macOS can either be managed using ansible's 'local' connection, or via SSH-since macOS runs a *BSD, it's pretty standardized and easy to manage local or remote!
@@JeffGeerling i see. Never thought on including my Mac into the workflow aside from developing. Does your ansible book includes a chapter on Mac or is there a video describing your workflow using it?
Waaay Baaaack in the dark days before virtualization I had a home lab with half dozen home built 386 PCs. I taught networking and email and needed a lab that could have inside nodes, external nodes, routers and email relays. Back then (early 90s) Fry's electronics would have their weekly ad published in the San Jose Mercury. In a corner of the ad would be super cheap PC components. $35 for a case and power supply. $99 for a CPU motherboard combo. $99 for a disk drive, still the average price for an entry level disk. $35 for a 10 Gb/sec NIC card. I started with one to install Red Hat Linux 4.2 on. I had a Sun Sparcstation on my desk with a 60lbs (27kg or 4.3 stones) 19" color monitor. Then over a couple of years I kept adding additional systems. Mother boards and CPUs would get upgraded as Fry's came out with more advanced combos for about $99.
In the mid 90's I was teaching server side UNIX/Linux email in classes all over the country. I would travel with 3 laptops and a hub so I could demonstrate routing of SMTP email through a Sendmail email gateway. Then came VMware. I was a very early adopter with VMware 1.1 (?). Having lived with Sun diskless clients all my technical life, I was able to shrink 3 clients with 10 Mb root and 4 Mb swap partitions on my 120 Mb laptop disk. Remember when disk capacity was measured in Mb? My life became simpler only carrying one laptop on the road.
Now you can do all of this on a Raspberry Pi. My $7 ESP32 has similar compute power and much more disk space than the $10k-$20k Sun Microsystems workstations I started on. My how times have changed.
The problem with rack full of equipment at home, is they draw A LOT of power. Best to have an electrician wire up some dedicated circuit breakers to protect your home and your equipment !
Love stuff like this thanks man
I really need to catch up on my data hoarding. You're way ahead of me. I've only got 4tb of storage and only about 1.5tb of it is being used. Mostly for TV shows and movies, but I've got some games and a few ISO's as well.
My home lab has grown. ML350G8 128GB RAM, bunch of storage / VMware / Bunch of Lab servers, two Pi-Holes on two Ubuntu VMs. A NUC running Volumio to play music outside. Four NAS's. Various Unifi APs. A Meraki MX75 on the edge. A dedicated Veeam Backup machine, which sends the backups offsite to Datto's File Protection service.
All this lives in my garage with a 60Ghz Mikrotik Wireless link to the house, and they also run Zero Tier so I can access then outside of my network.
Oh, and of course Plex.
Im a CTO for a modest IT company, and not long turned 50. Im still learning. I also tell those whom come for job interviews that IT is more than a job, its a craft, and to be good at your craft, you need to invest in yourself.
I currently have an old Pentium E5400 dell pc running openmediavault with 6tb of network storage, pihole, complete with gigabit ethernet and a missing front panel. Luckily dell system back in 2010 were all standard parts. I tried to get into Ansible automation but i just couldn't wrap my head around it.
My homelab is pretty basic. A Dell Optiplex 7010 running TrueNAS with three 4TB drives in RAIDz1 for 8TB of usable storage, a Raspberry PI 3 running as my print server, a Linux machine made out of spare parts running as my processing power for Plex (reading media files from my NAS) and my Minecraft server, the combo Router/Modem/Wireless Access Point from my ISP, and an unmanaged gigabit switch. All sitting on an old metal shelf I had laying around.
My little home lab is a pi 4b with 8GB :)
Though I also have a vps hosted somewhere that I experiment a tiny bit on
Glad to see I'm not the only crazy one haha. I started a homelab back in college with a Dell PowerEdge 1850 I bought off eBay for $70. It was horribly underpowered, sucked power, made a lot of noise (1U rack server), and it smelled a little funny but it got me into homelabbing. Over the years I got tired of the "real" servers power bills so I switched to cheap AMD desktop hardware I bought from Microcenter to cut back on the power usage.
In my most recent iteration, my NAS is my old desktop with 12 3 TB drives, my main Linux / Plex / Docker server is a 10th Gen intel i7 system, my KVM virtualization server is a 12th Gen Core i7 system which runs a VPN server, 3 Rancher kubernetes nodes, and my AD server, I have a Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF running as a physical K8s node, and I have a couple of raspberry pi 3's. They're running PiHole with a custom config for DHCP and DNS that I manage using gitea and drone CI that's running on my k8s cluster. One of the Pi's even has a GPS module installed and uses PPS to act as a Stratum 1 NTP server.
What problems are you running into with NUT? I have it configured in my lab so that after 5 minutes, my physical servers all shut down to save the battery for the modem and network gear.
You can manage MikroTik remotely. Enable SSH, and you can automate that! IDK if Ansible supports that via SSH, but stuff like Fabric (or Paramiko) can send commands via SSH. Since winbox is just a GUI for MikroTik shell commands, you can comb through the docs a bit and configure it via shell. I prefer that on some older devices with RS-232 connector actually.
Ansible has a module for RouterOS but I've been running SwitchOS, which is a bit different, but more straightforward to configure. Should probably just switch to RouterOS.
Have you gone through the NVR and cameras in a video before? I don't remember seeing it, and I would be really interested in it.
I know it can be a security risk to show camera positions, but maybe if you blurred the camera feeds?
Not yet, but yes, I plan on doing at least one video on NVRs sometime probably later this year!
Ah, how times change. When I was your age, the first thing to be setup was the Stereo. Now it is the WiFi router first. Kids (oops, young people) these days mostly listen privately with ear buds. Even among friends. Gone are the days that everyone would communally share music by having the stereo playing all day.
I still have the speakers I bought when I was a kid, hooked up to an amplifier in the workshop... though since I often use my AirPods for some noise cancellation, I think the last time I turned on that speaker set was about 2 years ago!
If there is no suitable Ansible plugin, you can use the Raw plugin. Just imagine that you have been connected via SSH and executing commands. You wouldn't get idempotence out of the box, but you'll be able to use Ansible for a wider amount of hardware.
"Do you enjoy taking you rwork home with you?"
Some mechanics work on a car project at home, it's all about what motivates you.
Try vyos for the router, you can manage the config with git/ansible, and I think the newest version of vyos allows for docker containers too
This is my favourite youtuber ❤
My homelab is still a rat's nest :P And I have your book too! I use it at work all the time. Helped a bunch to get things flowing (no water leak pun intended...)
Taking work home? To me, it sounds like you get paid to pursue you passion, you are living the dream!
currently my homelab is kinda good. i have a dual 6 core dell r710 and i will be getting a deskmeet x300 or b660 for a security server
I have been learning Terraform and have had success mixing with it with Ansible. Ever think about trying terraform out and virtualizing? You could pull it off with ESXi or Proxmox.
I want that shirt.
I wish I had room for a rack at home. As I actually do not cosplay as a sysadmin but (I am sad to say) work as one I get to scratch that itch whenever I like and do not like. Still, my homelab could use one, but not enough room...
Can’t wait for the video on the router with 4G fall back!
My gear: 1x Dell PowerEdge T310 tower server (Intel Xeon X3470 CPU, 16GB Registered ECC RAM, 128GB SSD, 4x4TB Seagate IronWolf NAS drives), 1x Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB RAM), 1x TP-Link TL-SG1008P Switch, 3x Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC-LR access points and Cat.6 cabling throughout the house.
On the software side of things: the T310 runs TrueNAS SCALE w/ the Seagate drives in a Raid-z1 pool (~10TB usable storage), the SSD runs boot-pool and Apps' storage - speaking of apps, the T310 currently runs Plex, Nextcloud, Syncthing and UniFi Network controller for my APs; the Pi has Ubuntu Server 20.04 aarch64 installed (didn't upgrade to 22.04, yet) and it runs Homebridge, WireGuard VPN server and BOINC.
My Internet connection is a FTTH link from AS27699 w/ 200Mbps Downstream + 100Mbps Upstream and my entire network is Dual-stack IPv6 + IPv4 addressed (except for the NAS apps, I blame IX systems for not enabling IPv6 on the k3s-server inside TN-SCALE and the reason the Pi still runs my VPN server - "host networking" in apps is an option but that creates more problems than solutions for my actual needs, especially with TrueCharts which is another monster in particular but I digress).
And everything is powered by a 600VA NHS Mini Senoidal UPS with NUT monitoring via USB interface (plugged in to the T310).
The NAS is, besides the Plex server, a backup endpoint for the entire house: all computers and mobile devices sends their data to it - I built the NAS to replace the dedicated external drive every computer has but people here still prefer to use it as a secondary source than the replacement itself (not sure if they don't trust the server of myself with the crazy ideas I have but who knows :P ) but the crown jewel is the network itself: since I built my current system in 2017, the experience regarding the Internet itself came from "complaints in a daily basis" to "how awesome the Wi-Fi is". I wish I could use pfSense or Openwrt + pi-hole as my gateway to the outside world but I can't touch the settings on the ISP box or bypass the ISP box entirely in any way, otherwise the Internet + TV service goes down, forcing them to send a field technician and replace the unit entirely - fun fact: they have hundreds of millions of customers around the globe and, at the same time, they can't fix $h!t remotely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And... that's the resumed version of my setup.
@2:35 - That you would even consider what you're doing 'cosplaying as a sysadmin' speaks to the depth of imposter syndrome in our industry. I'm not prone to the hero worship I see a lot of the juniors around here engaging in, but I'd hire you for most any admin role in a heartbeat. You clearly have the chops, and that's before we even get to your publicly published code (playbooks and such). Chin up!
Heh, well I like to think of it as cosplaying as the type of sysadmin who runs around in a datacenter like in the movies. But so far I've never been inside a 'large' datacenter, just some cool rack rooms.
If I ever build a real studio or some sort of evil lair, I'm going to make a really nice rack room and make it as much like a data center (minus the noise and high wind speed if possible) as I can.
@@JeffGeerling But will you be invincible? th-cam.com/video/v2vCAm09xio/w-d-xo.html
My home lab is so much less well managed. But it works!
Jeff do you ever go to any types of meetups in the St Louis area? I am a Systems Administrator in the St Louis area. Work in downtown by all the courts/Busch Stadium.
Used to go to all the Ansible STL meetups, did some Javascript and AWS meetups too... that was all pre-pandemic. Would love to do some again someday!
I keep waiting for raspberry pi's to come back in stock!
You and me both! Hopefully next year...
As per request:
I have Gigabit Fiber to the Home, into the 'modem/router'. I have Gigabit Ethernet to several switches (TrendNet Green 24 ports) around the house. I use a Ubiqity ER-X 5 port to separate Personal, from Lab from Family and Security (each on a separate VLAN). On the Lab, I have a Ryzen7-1700/32GB/14TB/3Gb Ethernet ports running Debian 11 server as a VBox Host for 5 full time VMs (Serviio (DLNA Server), ADS-B, Ham Radio Scanner Streamer, Pi-Hole/Apt-Cache-NG, and a backup motionEye server/hub). I have several 'master VMs' that I clone (Debian 10 & 11 DT & SVR, Ubuntu 18, 20 & 22 DT & SVR, Fedora 36 DT & SVR, Arch DT and SVR, Win 95 and newer, DOS 3.3 and newer), and can toss up almost any OS or derivative in minutes. I have numerous Pi1, 2B, 3B & B+, 4B-4GB & 8GB, and too many PiZeros and W too count. I have several Lenovo M73s and a Circa 2009 iMac With High Sierra for testing. On the family side, too many devices to consider for them, tablets, phones, laptops, chromebooks, and RPis. Not to mention all other stuff... On the Security, a dual-purpose firewall (in and out) with Cameras, TVs, Home Automation, etc... Personal and Family have separate 11ac Routers. I used to emulate my work stuff, but now am using the setup to leatn things like Python and Ansible. I have a playbook for new installs of Debian based OSs, and RPiOSs. I use my Master images on the VBox or I use Pi-Gen (written by RPiFoundation) to create my custom images...
Thoughts?
Of course you start with a router! How do you order water, food or a bed without an internet connection? :)
Quite true.
This guy in the video has a lots and lots of pi thus making a shortage in the market.. ha ha. I love watching your videos
I love the idea behind Ansible, it's awesome in theory. In practice, it has many problems:
- little details you need to remember: folder conventions, defaults, loading orders...
- errors are usually unhelpful, and the problem is usually somewhere else
- your favorite roles you build everything around go out of date and out of maintenance
- managing inventories manually is tedious, but the automated alternatives are too complicated
- doing a proper playbook usually takes more time than doing things manually
- you need to read a lot of someone's else code if you want to know what the role you're using is going to do: config files locations, users it creates, etc
First it was ZFS project for photography and video project and then become DNS and mysql and rest is history.
In consideration of the red hat Linux distro controversy, I am rethink whether to use Ansible or not, do you think they will change the opensource nature of it in the future or is it still the best alternative out there?
I have a pc with a tv en my livingroom, with hyper v, it was use for watch youtube mostly. recently i put more ram and ssd, 4 Nics, and i start to use pfsense for routing and failovering my internet with 4g and 2 vpn server. pi hole in a vm of ubuntu server, home assistant, and windows server 2022 labs with active directory.
all in i5 7400 with 24gb ram, 2 ssd sata.
i have 2 router tp link for ap use, and one extra with openwrt for auto-connect to my wifi hotspot phone (Wan tier 2 gateway in pfsense)
sorry for my bad english, i'm from Argentina (here we have less access to technology that north america)
Unit at 2:44 looks like a shipping container unit.
My homelab is my cellphone. I gotta turn on my hotspot if i need internet on my laptop.
As long as you have a good data plan!
Also I'm sure Home Assistant Yellow includes a ZigBee antenna. Why do you have your Hue Bridge when you can use zigbee2mqtt?
I think you need taller casters!
it’s good to see videos like this and inspire me that my homelab isn’t supposed to be a mini nasa datacenter in my house and me feeling terrible with my 2 pis dangling below my router, and that there is always progress being made 🫠
A Homelab's a Homelab, no matter how small!
i have a 2 TB SSD and cant fill it up. What type of data are your storing? Movies?
Ansible should be handling Mikrotik APIs just fine, but you need to poke around its scripting for a while
you rock, how's your health doing?
Not worse, which is good. Hopefully will be getting better soon! Thanks.
0:11 Every home lab has a story.
It was DNS.
it’s always DNS
mine was DNS :')
it was DNS, now it's everything
Heh
Mine was media server. Who else?
Amazing video! Your homelab content got me interested in learning Ansible and building my own homelab
And with this video, I still don't have any useful information on Ansible
Your presentation was awesome at Ansiblefest! Thanks for taking the time to do this. It was great meeting you and hope to have the opportunity to meet again!
Good to meet you too!
I am just getting started with Ansible, and your 101 series has been great. I'm just starting splitting out into roles since a lot of my servers are different yet related.
Thanks for sharing Jeff! Homelab is around EdgerouterX, Proxmox on a HP EliteDesk, storage on a Synology NAS, lot's of VMs, LXCs etc, some IoT. And yes, Ansible to automate things and have stuff done correctly.
Now I know why we really have a Pi shortage… Red shirt Jeff bought them all. 😂
There.s nothing finer than to find someone who loves what they do and make it contagious.
An official home assistant ansible integration would be pretty cool
My stupid ISP maxes out at 35Mbps even at their Gb tier, nothing else in my area. Offsite backups turn into a whole ordeal.
Yeah, and you have to bandwidth limit the backup so it doesn't make Internet slow for hours!
Your father looks so young! I lost mine in 1997, spend all the time you can have with him, while he is with you.
Recently went from a laptop and some rpi's to a rack with an 11th gen i3 running unraid and dockerizing everything. Home assistant docker was a small ordeal without the addon store, but ultimately I like it a lot more as I always found Home Assistant OS kind of mysterious.
Do absolutly the same. HA is pretty easy in Unraid. I have a lot of dockers and around 80TB runing on a i3 9100, just the firewall has its own physical device. I just have a pi for my 3d-printers, but everything else runing on unraid, and a backup synology but just for data.
My home lab is a mess. I mean it’s not dirty just a bunch of machines all over. My home is about 30 years old and running any cabling from top to bottom is a real pain. I really want to segment my network. Keep the work computer separate from servers or dmz. I’m even using Ethernet over power lines because running cables is difficult. It’s also really slow even though it’s gigabit. So frustrating for sure. I think you should wall mount your rack. Get it off the floor.
As much as I appreciate your videos I won't be buying your book... because I've already got it 😁
The very first frame of the video is a very confused looking man with a shirt that says "It was DNS." and it doesn't get any better than that.
noticed the fading "It was DNS." t-shirt
my shirt has not started to fade yet, but any advice?
This one's made it through about 12 washings... wish it lasted longer. It seems like sometimes the Teespring printing is better, sometimes worse :(
@@JeffGeerling Ah, thanks.
I got the motivation to make a homelab now
"And your significant other begins to wonder why the electric bill shot up so quick?"
Had me rolling. Yup she noticed.
Is there a specific reason why you use a Hue bridge rather than a Zigbee stick with HomeAssistant?
Total new to the whole world of networking, IoT, and home automation but I‘m eager to learn!
I have both, and the only reason I still have the Hue bridge going is because a while back I set up all 15 or so bulbs and 5 switches with scenes / automations via Phillips Hue, and later on added Home Assistant. At some point I'll move all the Hue stuff directly into Home Assistant and ditch the hub! Just a matter of getting some time :)
I've loved my Firewalla Purple, best router by far I've ever had with amazing performance/stability and a ton of features. The WAN failover using the Purple's built-in Wi-Fi is flawless. Check them out!
I used to homelab, but I actually work as a sysadmin, and I just don't have the energy to do the same thing in my free time as well.
Also, what even is a homelab? For me, a lab means a way to learn and experiment, something you can mess up and destroy at any time with (almost) no negative consequences. If you're running pihole, a mediaserver or stuff like that, it must be up or the internet stops working or the wife gets angry. To me that's not a lab, that's a production environment in your home.
Well I can still run multiple routers so I can have a lab attached to the homelab ;)
But yes, if I were a sysadmin at $dayjob I might view the time differently!
I am also using Shinobi at home, and now also for some other buildings but currently looking into frigate and doubletake, because face detection is kinda fun. Before shinobi i was using zoneminder, but im happy with shinobi and some nice 4k cameras.
I'm currently testing both Shinobi and Frigate-Shinobi so far was the easiest to get up and running on my Pi.
@@JeffGeerling have a look at your github issue, i commented some info i collected.
I started off with a Raspberry Pi running OMV, and made a Plex NAS. Then after discovering You, Network Chuck, RAID Owl, Techno Tim, and Lawrence Systems I've got an Optiplex w/Pfsense, and an old gaming PC w/ Proxmox VM w/TrueNAS Scale, Pi-hole, Plex, and currently working on Ansible scripts for upkeep. I followed your internet-pi tutorial and have a visualization of Comcast screwing me. I have spent way too much money, but it's still so much fun to play pretend as a Sys-admin! Thank you.
Ansible for home lab was an amazing talk, thanks for coming!
Glad you liked it!
I can’t speak for everyone but I’d love to see what kinda stuff you get up to in home assistant, what with all the impressive hardware you have
I have two main servers. First is a SuperMicro 2U that has dual Xeon X5690s. Got that off ebay for 200$ with a slower E5 processors (don't remember which) and a 3gb/s HBA. I added a LSI 6gb/s HBA and faster CPUs for about $150. It has 80tb of raw disk space running Unraid. Next I have a old Dell workstation with a i7-4790 running Proxmox, with the most important VM being pfSense. Runs great using PCI passthrough with a Intel dual port nic. Also have one Pi4 running pihole and a few monitoring scripts. Connected to the internet with 1gbps symmetrical fiber which the pfsense box has no problem maxing out.
Proxmox is great, I just don't run it right now, but it seems like one of the most common things people use once they graduate from 'a storage NAS and a Raspberry Pi'. Nice work getting that server going and upgraded!
You get more awesome every video I watch lol. Good thing you have a significant other that doesn't choke out that creativity 👍
Over here in Germany at 0,35€ per kWh I have...... an external harddrive :D
I actually have a couple of them and I am really interested in building a NAS/Server but I only have a Pi 1 right now - all the Pi's are almost not available and if they are extremely pricy and yeah ... At the current electricity prices it wouldn't make sense at all ...
So I hope for better days to someday build my own small server :D
i hope you can make a separate series called ansible night once a week would be perfect