Homelab

I have been using an EdgeRouer POE as my main router for most of the network (some of the network still uses PFSense as a router, but thats being removed soon) for the last few weeks, and i am quite happy with it. I also have a second router, a Sophos UTM VM between my first LAN (essentially a DMZ) and my client LAN (there will be more “LANs” over there soon). The Client LAN is NATed between the DMZ and the LAN, which means anything on the LAN i want to access from the DMZ has to be port forwarded… Ideally, not much from the LAN should be accessible though the DMZ, but in my initial setup, stuff like Plex, etc, is…

So, after some messing, tweaking, and thinking, I have made some progress with the home lab… or at least broken some stuff… I mentioned previously that i had a Ubiqititi networks EdgeRouter POE in the home lab. Originally, the plan was to use a Virtual PFSense box for my core router… Given the power usage of the current PfSense Box (I have 2 MPower Pro’s watching power in the lab) I am now thinking of moving to just the EdgeRouter for, well, edge routing… below is the usage of the ProLiant for the last 12 hours or so:

After a few months of running Sabayon Linux on the GodboxV2, i am going back to Windows Server. Back around October of last year, i installed Windows 10 Preview on the GodBoxV2, and, well, there where issues with graphics drivers, etc. Then, some time after, i cant remember off hand when, i moved to Sabayon Linux. Its based on Gentoo but has a lot of the components pre-built. Gentoo is a “Build from scratch” sort of OS. You get a basic kernel and a basic set of components, but you build everything else from scratch… including rebuilding the kernel if you want. Sabayon, on the other hand has all that mostly prebuilt, though you can still use Gentoo’s Portage to build stuff yourself.

Today, my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter POE arrived in the house. I got it hooked up to both UPC connections (as secondary connections) and all seems to be working grand. Some notes i wanted to put up here:

• out of the box, the install was quite simple. set my Ethernet connection to a static ip in the 192.168.1.x/24 range,
  using 192.168.1.1 as gateway and dns, and then point at http://192.168.1.1 for admin. login (ubit for both username and
  password) and heay presto. I was asked did i agree to the license, and then im in.
• by default, NAT is off… i turned it on, and enabled DNS and was able to surf.
• I also noticed the software was out of date… Oddly, there did not seem to be an option to update automatically, but
  you can manually download the tar and upload it, which i did.
• so far, so good… not sure yet if i will be using it as my main router, but it may end up being a VoIP router.

Finally, speed test result below:

So, this part of my article set will be talking specifically about the router and wireless network. At the moment, my router is way overkill:

• Old HP Proliant ML110 G5
• Intel Core2Quad Q6600
• 8 Gb RAM
• total of 12 Gigabit network cards (of which 4 are currently used…)
• 500Gb HDD

I have been playing with some networking in the house and have managed to build some VLANs. The modems are connected both directly to the Router
and to a dedicated switch port for a given VLAN. The plan for the upgrade, which i hope to complete sooner than the rest of the network is as
follows:

So, in my last post i talked about the requirements for the home lab, and in this post, im going to talk about a few more updates i have made in the last few weeks.

First, the processors: in the first post, i talked about Xeon D or Xeon E3… Well, i missed one… The Xeon E5. I have 2 of these in GodBox 2, and you can get them into a microATX board. There does seem to be some limits with the microatx boards, but hopefully enough searching will find me what i am looking for. Ideally, i want it to take “normal” DDR3/4 memory (not SODIMMs like the ASRock one above) and also take enough of them to run 64 or 128Gb of ram (thinking 8 would do the job!). Also, i would like to have 4 GigE ports onboard and 1 management port. 4 onboard is not a hard requirement: If i can get one with 2 ports, i can always get a 4 port card for the PCI-Express slot… Finally, i would like it to have at least 6 SATA ports and possibly an MSATA port. Thinking Boot off MSATA (Windows Server 2016 Nano Server would be used), 2 SSDs and 4 HDDs. Using Storage Spaces, use the 2 SSDs as “Fast” storage for the pool.

So, its that time again… HomeLab upgrade time… Or at least the planning for it. I am in the process of rebuilding my home lab, which involves pull all old servers out of the rack and replacing them with new ones… It also means rewriting the network, possibly upgrading some existing gear and hopefully getting the whole lot done on a budget of some sort…

So, why? Well, biggest reason for all this is currently heat and power usage. We use about 4-6x more electricity than the average house here in Ireland, which means our electricity bill is fairly high. It also means that the lab, which is also my office/bedroom, gets quite warm and uncomfortable during the summer month. There is an Air-Con unit in the room, and, well, that’s costing the most on electricity!

About a month ago, while i was recovering from surgery, i attended a Webinar on
Cisco Meraki devices. After the webinar, i was contacted by Maraki and given a MR18 with a 3 year license, to play with and evaluate. So, i set it up in the house and all was good.

Thing is, the wifi in the house was grand previously. I have a Routerboard RB951G which does the job and has no issues. And because i am mostly offsite in the office i work, and because i need to remotely manage the network, the MR18 is going into the office from tomorrow morning. I may talk about the MR18 and the rest of the Meraki gear later on, but this is not that post. This post is about something the MR18 did, and i wanted to do on the RB951.

A couple of years back, i did a post about my Daily Carry for college… Well, I have finished (ish) college, but i still cary a lot of weird and wonderful stuff… So, this is the update…

The details are on my Daily Carry page, and, in theory, should always be up to date… Thats the theory anyway… 🙂

Tomorrow, Monday the 28th January, 2013, will be the start of my final real Semester in College. I have been studying part time for the last 3 and a bit years, and tomorrow marks the begining of the end… Its the final REAL semester, meaning at the end of this i will have exams, but i wont be “finished” as such… I have a final semester from September to December where i hand up my final year project, which i plan on documenting here soon.