Looking for help & suggestions on home network setup

Networking
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1

Hi all,

I’ve been putting together some documentation and plans to re-build my home network. I have equipment that I’ve obtained and been using for a number of years, and I am trying to optimize and get more use out of everything in general.

I’ll start by listing what I have in the environment, list out my ideas, and what I’m trying to achieve. I am hoping that some of you have insight on things that I can do better, different tools/software that I haven’t used or heard of, or some anecdotal stories to help steer me in the right direction. All info is appreciated.

Equipment I have to use:

  • 1 x Unifi USW Pro 24 (layer 3 24-port switch, no PoE)
  • 2 x Unifi UAP-AC-Pro (Wi-Fi 5 access points)
  • 1 x QNAP TS-420 NAS (5.7TB total storage)
  • 1 x 4-port 2.5Gb network appliance (used for pfSense currently, open to new firewall ideas)
  • 3 x Dell OptiPlex 5050s (i5-7500, 500Gb 2.5" SSD, 500GB nmve, 16Gb DDR4 matching in each machine)
  • 1 x HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 (2x Xeon 16-core, 8x 500GB SSD, 88GB DDR3 ECC, 4 x 1GB networking)
  • 1 x Custome build PC (i5-7500, 16GB DDR4, 4x 500GB SSD, 1x 500GB nvme, 1GB networking)

What I’m trying to accomplish

Network monitoring/filtering/reporting - I would like to track specific usage and trends. I am only really worried about monitoring traffic for my children, not trying to snoop on the wife or grandma :P.

PC backups- Preferably with incremental and total backups so that I could restore files in place without reimagining the entire PC.

AD - (I know, not for home, but hear me out) I am in a new role at work which will heavily use AD, so I need to learn it anyway. I’m looking to have high availability, file server, authentication, and MFA run through the domain, this would need to be publicly accessible in case I need to use my laptop outside the home.

Media server - I have media files in multiple formats (x.265, photos, music. etc.) that I would like to make easily accessible through something like Plex/Jellyfin/etc. I would like to offload as much of the processing for this to the media server as possible, as some of the devices we’ll be using to consume the media may be older/slower.

Game server - I’d like to run some game servers for friends, nothing elaborate.

PBX - I have a couple of Yealink phones that I would like to use, plus the kids think it’s awesome to call each other or use the speaker call function.

My plan so far

Network - I plan is to use the network appliance for a firewall/router solution. I have used Untangle in the past, but I think Arista is planning to wind down home user stuff and start focusing on larger clients (like the VMWare situation). I ended up using pfSense for now, but I have had issues getting NGblocker to work for my needs. I plan to segment the network using VLANs, and set up rules to block traffic as needed (things like IoT go on their own network, etc.) For reporting and logging, I have used Uptime Kuma in the past, and it seems to fit the bill. If you know of something better, let me know!

AD/Media/Game/PBX server - My plan was to use ProxmoxVE to virtualize as much as possible, mostly because I’m familiar with it already. I would cluster the 3 x dells and use containers instead of VMs as much as possible. My biggest concern is the AD server. Any advice on this part would be greatly appreciated. For photo storage, I am looking for something to work with or completely replace Google Photos. Anybody aware of anything that can synchronize with Google Photos and keep regular backups?

Backups - Plan is to use the HP Proliant with TrueNAS for “main” media storage, I would like to run Veeam as a VM on TrueNAS for the backup agent for PCs. This would then get backed up to the QNAP NAS for archive storage.

I understand that this is complete and utter overkill, but that is kind of the point. I am looking to get as much real-world experience with these systems as possible and take advantage of the horsepower that I have laying around.

I’m open to any ideas and suggestions at this point. Maybe you’ll know about something I don’t!

2

If you want really easily logging and filtering, Unifi has some very easy to use and powerful filtering, and the vlans and rules would integrate well with your main switch you already have. This pic is an example of a user on my network, and if you don’t want something to work you can block the app right from this page on that device:

Logging
Logging2880×1437 313 KB

3

I’d recommend busting out Visio to create a network diagram and map out how things will be laid out logically/physically.

4

For google photos replacement. I cant recommend Immich enough. Initially trued photoprism but switched to immich for built in automatic uploads from devices. One less thing for me to do manually, the better.

For Media playback Jellyfin is king. I use mine for movies, tv shows, music, and ebooks, with mapleread as an ebook client. Podcasts and Audiobooks handled through Audiobookshelf.

5

Thanks for the info and screenshots! That looks very clean, and I’m already using the Unifi controller for my switch and APs. This looks like it could be a good option.

Is there any way to use the Unifi routing without a Ubiquiti hardware router? Can I put this on my network appliance box?

6

Absolutely! I’ve been using draw. io lately even though I have a Visio license. I can’t recommend it enough especially for anyone who doesn’t own Visio.

Any tips on making good diagrams? I usually spend way too much time worrying about making it look pretty and then fail to add that one vital piece of info that I end up needing later lol.

@Jojo314
I recently saw that name in a YouTube recommendation, I’ll look this up tonight for sure! Thanks for the recommendation!

7

Nope, you need a Unifi gateway if you want to use any routing, firewall, app blocking, etc rules. Many have asked for a virtual appliance they can license and run like pfsense, but Ubiquiti still wont go for it.

8

IIRC Samba can (mostly) do it.
Random tutorial I found: How to Create a Domain Controller on Linux for AD

If you opt M$ Server, prepare for strange headaches. Although making network-shares available through DFS (= Micro$oft attempts Ceph) is oddly satisfying, before you run into annoying quirks.

Any intentions to ad a “SAN”-setup to the server setup? Just for giggles, off course!
Like, 10/25G those servers together to speed things up a bit.

9

I’ve absolutely been thinking about it, at this point it is just a budget issue (I have to keep the WAF ((Wife approval factor)) in check). I’ve been watching the 25G stuff come down in price, and I just discovered recently that my Unifi switch has built in 10G spf+.

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