Ok, I am creating a new topic for this because everything is so much different now. This is the current homelab setup. I will be documenting all hardware, services and a total cost. There will be a couple notes on quirks if someone would like to do something similar.
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Router - This is the HP Desktop in the right corner. I found it on marketplace and added a cheap 2-port gigabit NIC. It is running PFSense with very basic configurations. DDNS through the Cloudflare API, and port-forwarding a Minecraft server.
PC - $40
NIC - $38.99 - Amazon.com: 10Gtek 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet Converged Network Adapter (NIC) with Intel 82576 Chip, Ethernet PCI Express Network Card, Dual RJ45 Copper Ports, PCI Express 2.0 X1, Compare to Intel E1G42ET : Electronics -
Switch - A Cisco Catalyst 2960XR 24-TS. I highly recommend buying a refurbished Cisco Catalyst switch over Brocade or Unifi. It has 24 gigabit ports with 4 standard SFP uplinks, and some layer 3 capabilities. This model does not support PoE, but there are a million versions of the Catalyst switches that are being decommissioned and sold refurbished for DIRT CHEAP. I have a lot of experience with Cisco IOS CLI from school, but there is documentation in troves online for free. The default spanning tree settings will give you some problems with virtualized NICs, but the solution is as simple as turning on “portfast” and “bpduguard” on the port facing the hardware.
Switch - $54 - CISCO WS-C2960XR-24TS-I 24 PORTS - MANAGEABLE - 24 X RJ-450 (Refurbish – Inteleca -
ProxMox Server - Another Marketplace find. Sold me 2 of these HP EliteDesk SFF computers for $120. I probably overpaid, but they were 5 minutes from my house. They came with 4th Gen i5s and 8GB of DDR3 SODIMM. This is just running an Ubuntu VM running and AMP game server. I had Navidrome running on this, but I don’t really want to rip all my CDs right now.
EliteDesk #1 - $60 -
TrueNAS Server - The other EliteDesk here is paired with 4 4TB WD Red drives in a Cenmate DAS enclosure. I swapped out the old memory for 2 new 8GB sticks. Running it in RAIDZ1, and not utilizing any of it yet. I will setup a media server of some description soon. It’s also running a PiHole container.
EliteDesk #2 - $60
Memory - $15
DAS Enclosure - $98.73 - Amazon.com: CENMATE 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure with Cooling Fan for 2.5/3.5" SATA HDD/SSD with USB A/C 3.0 Cable, Tool-Free HDD Enclosure, 3.5 Hard Drive Enclosure Support 80TB, Hot Swappable(NO RAID/NAS) : Electronics
Drives - $375 on Prime Day - Amazon.com: Western Digital 4TB WD Red Plus NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" -WD40EFPX : Electronics
*Rack/Patch Panel - A true marketplace gem. A 24U network rack with a patch panel, powerstrip, shelf, and cable organizer. Completely worth the 2 hour drive.
Stuff - $50
By my count the total is $791.72.
Not bad.
Thank you for reading!