For a bit of context, decided on a career switch from video games to more networking/sysadmin thanks to the game industry state. Along with that I intent to build a bit of a homelab with savings to develop skills on top of the course. Currently got an Unraid server with a bunch of self hosted service with docker but no VMs, switching some drives in it which will give me spares for what I want to be a Proxmox Epyc build which will have a virtualized TrueNAS instance. (H12SSL-i/gen 3 likely). I’m in French Canadia (aka Quebec/Canada).
Couple questions on the top of my head I’d like to figure early in planning stage. I can think of right now:
I’ve got after the Unraid storage upgrade 4x4TB+3x8TB drives that will be available. I’m just curious how other people would set them up as? Currently thinking raidz2 for the 4s and raidz1 for the 8s which I understand just means 2 pools.
If two pools, does that mean each need special zlog/metadata cache drives? (or partition on those drive)
I’m still early on the networking side of the course, if I want to plug computer A to server B while they’re both on the house LAN, can I set it up so the PC prioritize the direct connection without having to use different IP in config?
Since I’m fairly sure 3 is a bust for simplicity sake, what’d be a good switch to get for having access to 10Gbps ethernet and SFP+/SFP28 port? All SFP+ would be a good options if I wasn’t seeing ethernet modules for 50$ plus each.
Also gonna be trying to get a small form factor PC as OPNsense router, suggestion welcome but not there yet so no hurry.
Bonus) Suggestion on stuff to mess with? Those are welcome, TrueNAS currently is to mess more with ZFS which I’ve done in the past but currently the big project is just to use it as a backup target.
That’s an interesting question. I’ve never tried it, but at first glance - and at least with IPv4 - I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to configure two interfaces on the same computer with the same IP address, and then use the routing table to ensure that only packets to server B’s IP goes via the direct interface, and vice versa. I might just be missing something obvious though.
Also, with IPv6 and auto-config of addresses I have no idea how one would set this up.
From my experience from Truenas Scale, I think both would need their own physical drives. I am not personally familiar with unraid so I cannot say for sure.
From my experience, it would depend on what is availalble locally or if ordering from Amazon or even aliexpress would make sense. ServeTheHome has done some good videos about homelab Switching. They might be worth a look
RN I am personally running a US-48-500W as my homelab swtich which does have two SFP+ (10GBit) uplink ports that I might deploy as a connection to my storage server and virtualization server. But I am going to say that at least for me, it would make more sense to go with SFP+ links rather than ethernet since the AOC/DAC-cables are way cheaper than getting the SFP±RJ45 10Gbit adapters.
And since the price differece between the SFP+ and RJ45 x520/x540-pcie adapters is around 10-15e, it ends up being cheaper for me to work with just SFP+.
I cannot say how much sense it might make for you though
Could you say how much traffic are you trying to pass through this network? I have personally deployed OPNsense as a proxmox vm but I am not 100% that I would do that for a production-ready system. I think the OPNsense side might be doable with maybe 1-2 threads and 4-8gb of ram, really depending on what you are trying to accomplish…
Hopefully I was clear, feel free to ask if I was not clear
oh… IPv6 could be a way to do it, from the little we’ve touched on it in class, felt like a haflway between IPv4 and MAC addresses. Gonna need to look more into that, thx for pointer.
I guess what’s the distance limit of SFP+ DAC cable to SPF+/Ethernet? Because while it’s not that big of an ask to replace 2-3 Ethernet NIC maybe, distance isn’t 3 feet which I recall being the type of length expected from DAC cables? Google says 10 meters but don’t trust google too much these days.
Probably nothing extreme, I understand faster router has nothing to do with speed bottleneck in the network just avoids stalling from too many PCs asking where stuff is at once. Currently got a PIHole setup on the Unraid server… I’m seeing like 4M queries per year, I don’t think that’s a great metric. Anyway the idea is to learn, I don’t think I need something real fancy but idea is to get something to install the network stuff on for the homelab like VPNs/PIHole and eventually use this as a main routeur for when I eventually move. I would probably set up a high availability solution just because “woo learning”.
I’m a single user so while it might be big traffic, I actually have physical media I rip myself, so it’s not like I have Sonarr/Radarr scouting the net 24/7 to trigger heavy usage. It’s mostly my use which is going to trigger heavy usage but it’s not like I can do 50 different things at once.
Right that jogs my memory from stuff I had to do at Square for managing the PS4 on the network.
Host file should exist on Unraid and linux in general right, it’s not just a windows thing?
I’ve never tried it, but at first glance - and at least with IPv4 - I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to configure two interfaces on the same computer with the same IP address, and then use the routing table to ensure that only packets to server B’s IP goes via the direct interface, and vice versa. I might just be missing something obvious though.