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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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!
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
[+] [-] bustling-noose|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] NegativeK|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] farslan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] imp0cat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wannacboatmovie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0000000|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] farslan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] system2|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tehlike|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tehlike|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sorum|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|1 year ago|reply
1. https://arslan.io/2024/05/05/braun-borse-2024/
[+] [-] farslan|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgerhardt|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] colordrops|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] asynchronous|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hamandcheese|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Arn_Thor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] farslan|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tobiasbischoff|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nevi-me|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] amatecha|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] petepete|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] xupybd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NegativeK|1 year ago|reply
Everyone's got what they're interested in; mine is definitely not radio voodoo.
[+] [-] tehlike|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wannacboatmovie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] deisteve|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Helmut10001|1 year ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] ghotli|1 year ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] righthand|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0000000|1 year ago|reply
Registering DHCP leases in the DNS, maybe? There's nothing contradictory between a custom domain and dynamic addresses.
[+] [-] cyberax|1 year ago|reply
Aesthetics are important! Especially for home use, where you might be looking at your systems all the time.
[+] [-] amatecha|1 year ago|reply
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