I’m a total beginner when it comes to enterprise gear and don’t know what the heck to do with it.
I want to create a home lab. I don’t know exactly what I need, or what I’m doing to with it once it’s done. All I know is that I want to learn skills that make me employable.
I have some disposable income, but I aim to be frugal and only buy what is necessary.
What I have so far:
25U server rack
Dell R710 12c, 48GBs RAM, HBA card
An old SuperMicro 1U chassis with 8c 16GBss DDR2
24 port gigabit un-managed switch
RBPi 2, and a Lenovo thin client
My PC, Ryzen 5, 32GBs RAM
Everything besides my PC was second hand and relatively cheap.
Things I want:
Robust file storage
Virtualization
PXE boot server
Thin client server
PBX server
Someting that requires VLANs for the sake of learning VLANs
A web server, so I can learn to be secure against the onslaught of the internet.
I'm open to other ideas. I'm looking to mirror real world problems/solutions.
I should add that my current plan is to pick up another Dell R710. I can get it on ebay for $270 US. Initially, I was thinking use one for storage and one for virtualization.
I have successfully virtualized FreeNAS, but I’m actually not sure if that the safest thing to do for data preservation.
For long term I would not have my backup system virtualized. Everything else just start playing with it. VLANS and such just start making it happen. Lawrence Systems on YouTube has good stuff.
Ordered another Dell R710 to use just for FreeNAS. Considering ordering a managed Ubiquiti switch.
One of the first projects I want to do is either a thin client or fat client server. I guess this depends on whether or not I can get hardware acceleration working. I’ll have to do some more research on this.
Ubiquiti switches are nice. Setup a controller in a VM to work with them. There are some cheaper TP-Link managed switches that will do the job of learning also.
Here’s some real world employable challenges for when your other R720 gets here:
Use some clustered storage … doesn’t matter what kind, use existing solutions or build your own.
Test: start watchiing a movie stored on R710s, cut the power to one of them, wait 10 minutes, turn it on, … wait 20 minutes, cut power on the other one. wait 10 minutes. … Movie should still be running. turn back on the second one.
Networking exercise: Install pfSense on R710s and use VRRP (CARP).
Test: telnet to towel.blinkenlights.nl, and record wireshark traffic to port 23 … turn off one dell, wait 1 minute, turn it back on wait 10 minutes. Turn off the other Dell, wait 1 minutes, turn it back on. … you should still be seeing star wars… uninterrupted. Only thing when you open the wireshark file should be maybe some lost packets and maybe a bit higher latency.
Networking exercise 2: VPN
Test: make sure you have openvpn setup, with a second factor, make sure you can survive machines twiddling like that.
Networking exercise 3: VLANs
Test: make it so you need to VPN-in to admin any network gear.
You’ll probably want to go through typical ms admin cert courses, to get a sense of what it is typical corporations might look for (active directories etc etc).
If you’re up for it, you can also configure an independent domain controller on bare metal to act as the “puppet master” of your hypervisor running on your main machine.
Maybe this is already what you were planning. Benefits include, keeping the main box locked down with an independent security principle, and reducing the interfaces on the main so you can reconfigure it for any combination of virtual network/machine topology you care to try out.
Well, if you are using ADDS and HyperV ( I know, I know, no body likes these and they’re expensive)… But, if you use those it’s really kinda fun.
Every DC and base software suite for your main is going to have the same levers, though labeled differently. So it’s maybe not as straight forward, but it is very effective.
I found an HP disk shelf, which seems like a good deal to me (see LINK)
And I can pick up 24x Dell 10.3k 600GB 2.5" SAS drives for $239 shipped. Which gives me 14 terabytes of un-formatted storage.
Now, I need something to run that disk shelf, which could be the R710 thats on the way. It’s got 24GBs of memory which I’m hoping is enough for the disk shelf. I plan on being the only user to access the data pool. If it’s not enough, RAM is cheap.
I’m also looking for something cheap (sub $200), that’s rack mountable and will server as a simple workstation for me. 6-8GBs of RAM should be enough. I found a r310 quad core for $110. Unless anybody has any other ideas.
Oof, you’re right. I didn’t think about that. In total I would expect the 2 r710, maybe an r320 and the disk shelf. Plus misc switches and a monitor. You think this will overwhelm a standard US 120v wall socket?
