Tag: HomeLab

Home Network – with pictures

Having decided on ESXi for my type 1 hypervisor, over alternatives such as Proxmox I thought I’d put a simple home network diagram to get me visualising everything.

I used draw.io as I like the look of it, but there any many more network diagram tools to choose from if you do a quick Google.

I’m yet to decide if I want to vlan off my virtual estate with vSwitches (internal VMWare ESXi L2 switches) and Port Groups, but if I feel it will add value I may.

I’m utilising the OpenVPN capabilities of my ASUS router to VPN onto my LAN and access my Lab (and Plex library :)) when I’m away from home – using certificates and a username/password. I’m also thinking about picking up a Dell iDRAC licence, which will then give me the ability to turn on the R720 remotely, when required.

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Home Lab Take Two

Having sold my older Dell R710 server a few months back I decided, with a recent purchase of Cisco Modelling Lab, to pick up a more capable replacement. After scouring eBay for a few weeks I found an R720 (non-xd model) within my price range.

The specs of the new server are;

  • Model – Dell PowerEdge R720 2U Rack Server
  • CPU – Two Intel Xeon E5-2660 V2 2.2Ghz, 10 cores each
  • Memory – 256GB
  • Storage – None included, but 8 3.5” front bays

I picked up two 600GB 15K SAS 3.5” hard disks to slot in and provide some generic storage and a Fusion-IO ioDrive II 1.2TB internal SSD to use up one of the PCI-E slots on the servers motherboard.

The server’s main function will be to run my Cisco CML lab VM, as I have another HP Gen 8 server to run my other VMs – notably my Plex and Valheim servers :). CML can get ridiculously resource hungry if you want to spin up labs with 10/15+ nodes that include NX-OS devices, hence the requirement for plenty of CPU cores and memory.

To launch CML I’ll be running VMWare ESXi as a bare-metal installation, and installing the OVA file as a VM. I have chosen ESXi v6.7, as unfortunately v7 does not support the Fusion-io SSD drivers – thanks, Dell! The R720, as did the R710 I had prior also has an onboard USB slot, so I’ll be booting and running the OS from the USB stick to save external / PCIe storage space.

On a storage note, I don’t have a problem with disk failure or VM loss, so will only be running the virtual disk in a RAID0 configuration to utilise all the disk space.

When I have it all spun up I’ll put another post up.

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HP Proliant Gen8 Home Server

Home servers have become really popular over the last 5 years or so, whether they be your regular NAS or a more home server flavour, with MS Windows, Linux or a Hypervisor as an OS.

I decided to jump aboard the band-wagon, so picked up a Gen 8 HP Proliant from eBuyer to utilise as a mix of the below:

  1. Plex Media Server
  2. Home Lab for study

I have since added a 4TB WD Red hard drive and will be picking up 16GB (2×8) of Ram in the coming weeks to max out it’s two dimm slots. I will, at some point, also add additional disks and employ RAID – with 0 (Striping) or 1 (Mirroring) being the options.

Plex Media Server

Plex is a client-server media player system and allows you to consolidate all of your pictures, films, Music etc in one location, and access it all from anywhere with an internet connection. You can stream the movies on a range of devices (iPads, SmartPhones etc), but you do have to pay £4.99 for the privilege – but in my eyes it’s well worth it.

Home Lab

This was the main reason I picked up a decent home server. As I work away the Gen8 allows me to remotely connect onto my home server and lab/test away in my own virtualised environments!

I initially went with Xubuntu as my server OS, which is perfect for home use as it’s lightweight and you don’t need to be a Linux developer to navigate around it. However, although the Gen8 supports RedHat Linux (RHEL) out of the box, to go above a 640×480 resolution you have to create your own bespoke driver!

If I had to do this just for a useful res, I assumed there would be other issues down the line I’d encounter too, therefore decided to wuss out and rebuild it with something more friendly – Windows Server 2016 Essentials!

After a couple of weeks running Server 2016 I decided to start fresh again, therefore went for a Hypervisor. My choice was the most popular, VMWare’s ESXi. This now means that I can spin up as many VM’s as I desire (resource allowing) – for example I have a Server 2016 VM, which sits on my LAN happily as my Plex Server. I then access all of my VM’s using the vSphere Client below.

vSphere Client

Other VM’s include Linux distro’s – Mint, Ubuntu etc and also a Cisco 1000v virtual router so I can try my hand at some Ansible Playbooks.

Bug-Bears

There are a few issues I had/have with the Gen8, and for all it’s positives here are a few negatives.

  • iLO requires a licence to mount virtual cd – 60 day workaround
  • No DVI or HDMI, just VGA
  • NTFS pendrives not supported, only Fat32, but 4GB file limit
  • To install an OS you need to load the relevant disk drivers before the OS will see the Array you’ve created prior in the BIOS – I had them on a USB pen-drive and you can grab them from here. You can also circumvent this using the HP Intelligent Provisioning utility, but I prefer the old fashion way.

I.

HP_Pro_Gen8

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