My Homelab Setup | Hacker News Reader

My Homelab Setup

arslan.io

98 pointsenescakir78 comments

Isn't this more of a home network rather than home lab ? Lab would be where you can run software and hardware to actually experiment with things. Within a closed setup like Unifi you are hardly experimenting with anything if at all.

Cool setup no doubt because unifi does make some good bang for your buck hardware that is low maintenance if you want to mostly just set it and forget it. And this looks like one of those set it and forget it control from a panel things.

But this is less lab and more network imo.

> Lab would be where you can run software and hardware to actually experiment with things.

I used to push back against this, and I ended up getting really frustrated.

But then I realized that nobody else really cares, language changes, and I should just pay attention to other sources if I didn't like it.

At this point, to me, "homelab" means Plex, maybe some good organization of your stuff, and just enjoying setting something up that probably isn't really experimental. AKA production, but for the home.

I might be imagining it, but it seems like most people who are experimenting don't call it a homelab first, if they do at all. It's "the HA cluster I'm playing with" or "my AD setup for pentesting" or whatever.

Very off-topic but I’m glad you shared this. I get fixated a lot on language use and find it hard to accept that it evolves. Your approach to dealing with it sounds mature and it’s inspiring.

OP here: the rack is inside a small attic, where I also have my 3D printers and various other tools: https://imgur.com/a/pxSXvQH I just called it homelab, because the location was there and I've seen people use the names interchangeable.

It could just be the start of a network to play with and build on.

In a home, having this kind of a setup is akin to installing appliances that can be set, forgot, and relied on more and more. Everything can have a fast connection, and if enough people work from home, etc, it can be really useful.

There's always ways to make do, and have failover, or backup internet, but in reality, it can be worth it to look at plug and play for home like this to not rely on anything.

Ubiquiti has taken it's lumps recently, but their stuff is still generally OK for home. Other providers like TP-Link with their OMADA setup are quite decent too, it's always possible to go full pfSense, or better yet, as an appliance, just buy a Netgate switch that can do a lot relatively for great bang for the buck.

I have recently used a Ubiquity Dream Machine Pro SE, and it's super decent for any small office or home setup. It just kind of runs, and you can reasonably run and segment a fair bit. It's too bad the new hardware took a step back in what the software allowed but it looks like they're adding the features each release little by little.

A lot of hardware for homelabs can increasingly get into issues with licensing, updates, etc. Once we are beyond 2.5 Gbit fibre into most homes, the jump to 10 Gig equipment and beyond and how to slice and dice it has fewer options.

I would today, not purchase any 1Gbit or 2.5Gbit fibre network hardware. Speeds are increasing, too fast. My homelab might have an older switch one day that an handle multiple 10gig fibre runs, both inside and maybe coming inside.

Having a part of a homelab that is like an appliance (largely set and forget), it can let you have more time to experiment with the experimental.

Production grade in a homelab can be possible too, where others might rely on it. Don't want that getting in the way of homelabbing.

It is, but still quite an enjoyable read, especially the part about wifi coverage.

Not to be critical, but the homelabs I find truly impressive are the objectively unpretty ones. Those that resemble the OpenBSD build system - a menagerie of servers haphazardly racked in a basement, Ethernet cables strewn about, and a questionable UPS setup that might get a second glance from the fire marshal. It's a lab, not a museum piece. Even Apple's labs look more like any other thrown-together engineering lab than something for public consumption.

This might be the inspiration I need to write up my homelab. I think it's otherwise suitable for /r/cablegore

Gotta go for that Serial Experiments Lain look.

Just means that you're getting shit done.

If I see cable management, it just tells me that they spent more time doing that than labbing.

It was unpretty https://imgur.com/a/pxSXvQH (scroll down) :)

Looking badass but hear me out. You don't need any of these unless you just want to spend $2-3k+. A simple Sonicwall router + 2-3 wired devices are more than enough setup. For wifi, a cheap TP-Link mesh works well which only costs $30 to upgrade per room.

For commercial clients, we use the Unifi series and are very happy with it. I won't use Unifi for home because its strength is too high and I am very paranoid when it comes to signals blasting and penetrating more than a drywall. Wifi shouldn't be strong enough to be picked up outside of my house and I accomplish it with weak tplink per room mesh units.

I don't remember using more than 350 mbit data transfer over my ethernet since my internet speed is capped at 350 mbit. My NAS is connected to my SonicWall directly and can reach maximum read/write speeds (for cloud backups).

I'd invest that money in the stock market and make money instead. But I get it. A hobby is a hobby.

You are future proofing, and it's not a bad thing.

I started with cable, then moved to fiber, and now planning to move to 10Gbps fiber with sonic, and for sure I use any bandwidth I can.

At 1Gbps, I do saturate a lot of providers for things I do, but for the ones I don't, it's helpful.

Well written, and timely for me to get inspiration from. I have been going back and forth between doing off-the-shelf vs using opnsense/pfsense in a rackmount router. Haven't made mind on it yet.

I will subscribe to 10gbps sonic fiber soon, that's what prompted me to look into this. Unifi seems to cap wifi 7 at 2.5Gbps, however.

I can throw in my vote for Unifi. Stuck the UDM and the rest of the gear in a rackmounted enclosure in my daughter's wardrobe and haven't needed to think about it even once in 2+ years. It just manages itself nicely.

My only issue is with aps. Their wifi7 is limited by 2.5g uplink.

I was considering TP-Link at point of purchase, since there are some options there with more throughput. Like everything, it's a tradeoff calculation and this time I favored the convenience

Why did you decide against tp-link?

I give UI a +1 for overall quality/integration and being an American company, but TPLink seems also well praised recently. With Tapo Cameras etc they seem to be going in the steps of UI too.

Honestly, it was a very close call.

I had two shopping lists written down, one for Unifi, one for TP-link. It was a combination of a couple of factors. It was actually a really tough decision, because they both seemed very good value for money. I wasn't factoring in cameras, just controller + switch + APs.

It was a combination of a couple of factors (this was in 2022):

- UI and integration

- Number of reviews and write-ups

- What I could find in stock

If I were doing it again today, I couldn't guarantee that my decision would be the same. It'd be a tough one...yet again.

Stumbled on his other article[1] on HN recently and I forgot to subscribe (RSS). I love the writings. Reading this article (Homelab Setup), I was thinking, that this is way overdone. Then, I quickly browsed around and love this guy’s life — Fatih has good taste. I'm inspired by the Homelab setup.

1. https://arslan.io/2024/05/05/braun-borse-2024/

Thanks a lot for the kind words. I agree that certain parts (such as the Rack building process) were overdone, but where I live and how I live impacted some of these decisions.

I agree with the OP, you have impeccable taste. I fairly recently watched a documentary on Dieter Rams and have been somewhat obsessed since, looking forward to going through your back catalogue of posts.

Whenever I get the urge to go full on homelab like this, I remind myself that my poor wife will have to deal with the whole thing if I pass away. I’ve sort of settled on just having a single small home Linux server that backs up otherwise accessible cloud stuff that my wife can manage. I can still appreciate your setup though…

Little is overdone for creating beginners who need to go slow the first time, and then pretty quick after that.

Ten years ago Ubiquiti offered commercial grade hardware at consumer prices. Now I understand it’s the inverse.

At least according to the disgruntled former employees that left sometime between the lifelogging wearable camera acquisition and the forced cloud/updates and the “massive” data breach.

What would be the 2024 version of how great UI was in 2014? Or what are your fellow hacker setups? Ideally something that does local first management, connection bonding, 10gbs, tailscale level of simplicity? I have the same setup as the author and uncomfortable with the Apple-ification of the product to something that looks pretty without meaningful root privileges.

Build your setup around an OPNSense router. Once you've got that setup, then add from there, whether it be a PoE managed switch from eBay, a NAS, camera setup, rack server, or whatever. But don't buy Ubiquiti or any other of these locked in ecosystems whatever you do.

I’d say Ubiquiti is still the best pro-sumer for home networking. They’re expensive, but they really do have a quality and ease of integration/setup/use that just isn’t matched, even when you get to enterprise level (go setup a Cisco without your CCNA and then come tell me about how great it is).

The main reason why consumer wireless APs fail is inadequate power supplies. Ubiquiti gear is solid in this respect.

I have to agree with this to a point. I went with Mikrotik a while ago, which delivers great bang for the buck but oh my god the UX is terrible. Not helped that I don't want to spend more time learning it fully (it would be more cost effective to trash it and buy something else).

TP-Link and omeda is probably an alternative, but after spending time trying to figure out what they offer and what their alternatives are for my needs I just give up with their confusing model numbers and half hearted explainations.

The problem I really have with Ubiquiti is when I look at their offerings and what I need I am immediately put into their Enterprise offerings and I am running 48 ports.

Ubiquity sure does make some pretty gear, but I will never trust them with my firewall. Makes me sad that so many homelabbers do. Can't quite put my finger on why that saddens me.

Why wouldn’t you trust them?

- proprietary

- closed source

- cloud connected

I can think of several enterprise brands that are also all three of those.

I'm sure I don't trust them either.

thanks for the reply

OP here: Thanks for all the comments. The Rack is inside a small attic, where I also have my 3D printers and various other tools: https://imgur.com/a/pxSXvQH

I just called it homelab, because I've seen people use the names interchangeable.

Happy to answer any questions not explained in the blog post.

Nice work, thanks for showing.

> I knew my concrete home would be a big challenge if I didn't deploy multiple APs to every floor or room. Concrete walls cut out Wi-Fi signals more than dry walls.

We're building a house, moving from an apartment. I ensured that we get a fiber line to each room, and 2 to open spaces where I might want to extend wifi networks. Then CAT 6 cables to where cameras will be. I have a Nest wifi with 2 router extensions and a wireless one, so I've prioritised where I'll place those (and their eventual replacements).

My setup will be simpler, because I'm not really building a home lab (I agree with other comments that this isn't really a homelab). I just want to move noisy devices like a NAS and switches to the garage. My home office has space for a long rack if I desire one, but I think I'm going to make it a hybrid glass-door display cabinet that also houses the desktop so I don't hear fan noises.

This is a good write-up still because it's giving me ideas of what I might need for networking.

Fibre to each room?! Nice, is that a common thing to do these days? I've been starting to plan wiring cat6 (or cat7 or whatever) around my place, but I didn't even know fibre is something people use throughout the home (I always thought of it as "you get fibre to the home and then ethernet within"). Interesting... I imagine there is quite the price difference though, among other differences. More to research I guess!

I just did that. Pulled single CAT6A along with a duplex single mode LC to each room, terminating at the wall port. On CAT6A I'm looking to attach now AP that preferably also has UTP ports (looking at something like U6 enterprise in-wall but ideally 10G) and fiber is there for future-proof non-POE needs. Ran CAT6A separately for camera ports as well. If you're running a cable like ethernet already, it adds practically nothing to also run fiber line along with it at the same time. Cable is cheap and you're pulling it already.

nice, that's awesome! I'm intimidated by the prospect of doing it but there's no reason I cant, just a matter of facing the challenge (and planning in detail). Are there any good guides/vids/etc. you followed or otherwise found useful? No worries if not, just figured I might as well ask!

There's nothing I followed. Basically, the house already had CAT5e in certain places through conduit, in others only conduit, etc. If there's a conduit, and if there's a any cable inside whatsoever (even electric) you can use the existing cable to pull on the new one - which I did for CAT6A (no reason to run anything else, but that's a different topic) and I also tied duplex LC UPC to it so both were pulled together. Sometimes there were either bends or whatever in the walls which lubricant solved. Only advice there is is to get a good electrician and either assist him doing that or have him do it. Single person cannot do it. Aftewards run tests on the cables. Tester you need are like 10-20 bucks each for UTP and for fiber (VFL). Terminate all to a a keystone onto a wall mounted plate and that's it. I have those plates that fit multiple things in it so it's a single plate with all connectors. My only "regret" is that all the conduits I have in house from various rooms all lead to a crawl space in attic. It's fine, and it's big enough to fit a small rack, but I'd prefer to have it all terminate to a basement for full rack and larger ventilation. I couldn't run everything from rooms to the attic and then through a single conduit to the basement, just no option to do that as such. I ran both UTP and fiber because UTP gives me POE and no need to wrangle transceivers.

Fibre cables are not expensive, they are even cheaper than Cat6. Transceivers are a bit expensive, but got a lot cheaper than they used to be, still they are really cheap compared to other house build/remodel costs. The only issue is that you can't do power over fibre so it's inconvenient for putting wifi APs, cameras, and other powered devices.

Lol hell no it's not common. Cat6a to every room, it can do up to 10G or can be used for poe. Fiber used for links between buildings or as a link between redundant systems on separate power infrastructure (its like surge protection for your backhaul).

I don’t have it to each room personally, but I do have it to my garage, and between floors for connecting switches together. Oh and to servers.

Fibre is cheap and you can get it cut to whatever lengths, and it’s somewhat future proofed.

I think it's a good idea, it's generally more price reasonable than 20 years ago.

Hell, there was probably a time where ethernet was too expensive to put into a house.

I have cat6 running to every room. Because most things need ethernet, wouldn't fibre just mean having switches throughout the house?

For example, I have some rooms with WiFi access points and things like scanners or Sonos speakers. Adding another PoE switch would be overkill.

I'd recommend cat6 that you can power if needed and fibre just where you think you'll need the speed.

My home wifi setup is one AP in the ceiling.

Mine is the ISP provided router, but with nothing plugged into the WAN port and the DHCP/whatever services turned off. Next to an upstairs TV that we never turn off.

Everyone's got what they're interested in; mine is definitely not radio voodoo.

Yeah, looking at this guys site he's amazing at making stuff look good and has some interesting hobbies. Unfortunately his hobbies are out of my price range but he must have done well to get where he is.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510422

I'm curious, how do duplicates make it to the front page? My experience in submitting links that are less than a year old, the submission gets rejected and you are pointed to the previous submission.

Let me get this straight, you spent a bunch of time and money on a 12U rack, a bunch of Unifi switches, and a bunch of cameras, and you're just now realizing that you need to set up VLANs and firewall rules? That's not a "homelab project", that's just a bunch of stuff you bought and now you're trying to figure out how to make it work.

And what's with the obsession with aesthetics? You spent a bunch of money on fancy cable management and patch panels, but you're still using a bunch of ugly, exposed cables. It's like you're trying to make a statement about how much money you have, rather than actually building a functional network.

And don't even get me started on the DNS settings. You're using a custom domain name for your Synology NAS, but you're still using DHCP to assign IP addresses. What's the point of having a custom domain name if you're just going to use a dynamic IP address?

I'm not trying to be mean-spirited, but this post just reeks of "I have a lot of money and I want to show it off". If you're actually interested in building a functional home lab, I'd be happy to offer some advice. But if you're just looking for a way to justify buying a bunch of expensive networking gear, then maybe you should just stick to playing with your toys.

I somewhat agree. The priorities just seem off for a large percentage of homelab creators. If you are starting new, a more reasonable priority list would be:

1. Get a hardware firewall (opnsense/pfsene) and learn to use it (1-3 years)

2. Get a virtualization server and learn what the separation of concerns principle means (1-2 years); (this includes adding vlans)

3. Add the first Smart Home tools that are critical to you (e.g. monitoring of electricity consumption/production or automation of activity scenes for burglar defense) (6 months)

4. Work on a resilient backup solution. This includes offsite backups, so you will need to add a second server in a second house somewhere else. This _should_ come earlier, but you may have some backup solution in place already when starting at (1), so now is the time to do it properly (e.g. ZFS, automated syncoid pull-mode snapshots etc.) (1-2 years)

5. Try to improve individual pieces, maybe buy a larger rack, a UPS etc. (3 months)

6. At this time, you have a fully functioning Homelab. Now it is time to improve the look.. but doh, you have no time left anymore!

(above is basically my history.. started in 2017 and I am now after 7 years at stage (6), but otherwise overall pretty happy with my ugly looking setup)

Note: the latest OpenWrt on rack-grade routers is significantly more secure than proprietary, backdoored firewall appliances. I haven't really used Netgear/pfense but I reckon it wouldn't be much of improvement.

VLAN are perhaps the most important aspect of a network, and honestly I would start with it: tag the ports, bonding if necessary, and figure out IPv6-PD and resolve topology for it all, so that downstream DNS is easily configurable.

Do you mean pfsense/opnsense with "proprietary, backdoored firewall appliances"? I don't think so (if we are talking about OPNsense or the CE variant of pfsense).

Otherwise, I slightly agree that for the regular user, OpenWrt is simpler and less of a hassle than pfsense/opnsense, but still offers enough features. Personally, I enjoy having full control over all and every detail in my FW, which is only possible with the latter.

Thank you for the hint towards IPv6-PD/resolve topology - my migration to IPv6 is still on the ToDo list!

I guess this is a sort of meta comment rather than a reply. You seem like someone who hasn't had an account for a long time and upon clicking your profile I see that is in fact the case. It seems plausible that you haven't read the site guidelines, so I'll be that guy and point you to them. I like this place largely because of the good moderation. I hope you come to like this place for the same as the years go on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Good message, still the best measure is just to down vote bad posts

I disagree, but mostly just in the present. Sometimes I take an active approach to getting unconstructive communication out of where my eyes naturally go. It's rare. It's a feeling in a moment in a context as kind as I can possibly be. This has been net positive, but sure we agree in this context it's just a forum on the internet and I click my share of downvotes like any other.

Agreed, addressing the bully directly allows them to see they are wrong. The HN “just downvote it” is passive aggressive and disincentivizes interaction. It may work well for Apple related threads or other noisy topics to help cut the noise down but you’re still basically telling people to “shut up” which feels bad if you’re on the receiving end. Some people are just emoting even if it’s off-base.

Responding to cruelty with more cruelty, breeds cruelty.

Hey why not just offer the advice instead of commentary about money? I’m all for critiques of why 12U rack might be a wrong or right choice, and if the author is such a snob they can’t handle some nice advice then there are plenty of people here to discuss it with. If you’re happy to offer advice, please do. Your post comes off as elitist and diminishes your trust. Delivering the actual advice is more valuable than an attacking rant. Computers are often a consumer hobby, so it’s ridiculous to complain about money.

Yup, if the dissemination of advice is gated behind passing some judgement test of purity, that's just gatekeeping and a toxic attitude. Just share the knowledge (or other worthwhile discussion points) or scroll past. "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it".

> What's the point of having a custom domain name if you're just going to use a dynamic IP address?

Registering DHCP leases in the DNS, maybe? There's nothing contradictory between a custom domain and dynamic addresses.

> And what's with the obsession with aesthetics?

Aesthetics are important! Especially for home use, where you might be looking at your systems all the time.

honestly, I've always thought the focus on aesthetics was a bit... superficial. I mean, who cares what the thing looks like as long as it gets the job done? But the more I think about it, the more I realize that's a pretty utilitarian view. If I'm going to be staring at this thing for hours a day, shouldn't I want it to be visually appealing? And let's not forget, a well-designed system can actually make troubleshooting and maintenance easier. I've seen some beautifully cable-managed rigs that make it a joy to work on. Maybe I've been wrong to dismiss aesthetics all these years... you've got a point, aesthetics maybe matter.

> who cares what the thing looks like as long as it gets the job done?

Aesthetics (or lack thereof when things are messy) does have some direct unconscious cost to mental load, and a direct tension between cleanliness and horror vacui.

https://ignorethecode.net/blog/2014/11/11/horror_vacui/

> And let's not forget, a well-designed system can actually make troubleshooting and maintenance easier. I've seen some beautifully cable-managed rigs that make it a joy to work on. Maybe I've been wrong to dismiss aesthetics all these years... you've got a point, aesthetics maybe matter.

That's where we start talking about "design" instead of "aesthetics"! Dieter Rams's 2 to 6 would definitely apply:

https://www.vitsoe.com/gb/about/good-design

Who cares if he bought a bunch of stuff and is figuring out how to make it work? It's a great learning opportunity and he's getting some real practical use out of this stuff. In reality it's his money to spend and I'm glad to see someone sharing their "build" and sharing a bit of experience and whatnot. If he did some stuff "wrong" who cares? There's nothing useful in being judgemental and derisive. I learned a few things from his post and I think others will too -- and the author himself will surely be learning more as time goes on. It's all good.

It's possible to give constructive feedback without being mean-spirited.

Yes, he has a lot of money. But I see quality of work that he is putting in. I am very much impressed with his work (Hardware setup and his blog as well). However, am going to take what I can and use my RPi based home server to make to anywhere close to what he has achieved in terms of aesthetics and output.

This seems fairly overly critical, especially when you are complaining about thing like DHCP assigning dynamic addresses when the intention is started in the article itself, (the lease is reserved in the DHCP server config.)

Yeah, I don't use a dynamic IP. The IP is fixed and reserved. I wonder if he misunderstood it.

Different goals for different people. Some people want to make the best looking network setup they can. Some will appreciate the beauty that creates and others won't. That's fine.

It felt somewhat like that to me too, I had just thought "categorized under dude posting their W".

Quality comment. Somebody needs to remind these lamers what home-computing is all about. I don't know why people are upset, it's a really accurate assessment of OP.

Not really. People are upset because it's contains a super shitty value judgement on how someone else spent their money. If you don't have anything nice to say, you can just not say it.

What's shitty about stating the obvious? Or do you really think that being "nice", i.e. giving lamers pointless validation that they don't deserve would make anything better?

People need to learn, and Internet culture has a real good way to teach.

Love my Ubiquity setup. Nice post OP showing people at of the possible. Have fun learning the setup!

Thank you for the kind words.

The first rule about your home network is…

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