HomeLab

While I have certainly had plenty of servers and devices at home over the years, I had taken a few years off from noodling at home and focused on consumer hardware from Apple, Eero, etc. Playing with Linux was relegated to VMware or Parallels virtual machines on my Macs, and I hosted my websites on Linux hosts at DigitalOcean and later AWS Lightsail. What little Windows I have played with has been virtualized on my Macs, as well.

Recently, I decided to freshen my technical skills and start focusing more on my professional development. So I decided to build a HomeLab to use as a learning sandbox as well as stand up services such as Pi-Hole for household use.

I’m adding hardware to my HomeLab opportunistically.. basically grabbing freebie’s from friends, buying used devices online, and occasionally splurging for a new component here and there. So I expect my configuration will evolve over time as I am able to acquire better and interesting things. My HomeLab is located in my home office, so I plan to try to buy only relatively quiet devices or devices where I can swap in quiet fans. With that in mind, I don’t plan on adding any enterprise-grade servers.

Things are in flux as I’ve procured some new hardware (including an OptiPlex Micro repair) but I haven’t incorporated anything new officially into the HomeLab yet. Stay tuned for updates.

Here is the current HomeLab config as of 2023-03-19