A quick update

November 05, 2022

Overview

I’ve recently made a few changes in my home lab setup. The major change has been swapping out my Unifi router/firewall for a custom pfSense box. I was constantly wanting to move things around or test out new services, so I made the jump to Proxmox. I’ve also been modifying a small closet into a proper network closet and purchased a network rack to house my devices in the closet. I’ve got a few articles in work describing the details of some of these changes as well as documenting my current backup strategy.

pfSense

I’ve been running pfSense for a few months now, and it has been great. I have much more control that I did with Unifi. I still have Unifi APs, and have virtualized a Unifi controller on my Proxmox server. I’ve yet to run in to something I want to do on my network that can’t be done with pfSense. I’m starting to learn more about VLANs at the moment and hope to better segment my network in the near future.

Proxmox

Proxmox has been a game changer for me. Until recently, I only had one main server and attempted to run everything from that single box. This worked fairly well with Podman containers, but I still ran up against issues occasionally. After watching a few YouTube videos about Proxmox, I decided to give it a try. The main function of my old server was for Plex. I decided to create a dedicated NAS and Plex media server with a proper Intel Quick Sync enabled CPU. I settled on a server style motherboard with the C246 chipset, an Intel i3-9100, and 32 GB of ECC RAM. I then created my Proxmox server with an AMD 5600X and 32 GB of ECC RAM. So far, Proxmox has been great. I’m currently using Fedora Server as the base image for my server style VMs. I also have various Linux desktop distributions to try out and a Windows VM. I’ll go more in detail on this in a future post.

Network closet

I have a small closet in my home office that I finally decided to turn into a proper network closet. Previously, my routing/switching devices were mounted under a desk, and my one server was stashed in the closet. After making a few modification to the closet and purchasing a server rack, the space is almost complete. I would still like to route a vent from the top of the closet, through the attic (insulated ducting with inline fan), to another part of the house. This will keep the server closet from getting too warm, and will have a negligible affect on the temperature in the rest of the house.

Conclusion

I’m getting close to wrapping up these changes. Work/Life has been busy lately, so the changes have been slow. I’ve also been working on a side project to restore a 1997 2-door Tahoe, but that is a whole other conversation. I’m looking forward to writing some articles about the details of how I’m using pfSense and Proxmox. Hopefully that won’t be too long from now.