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Home lab setup. Journaling / AMA

aayusharyan

TF Legend
VIP Lounge
Heya folks,
I am starting this thread to just have a general discussion and as a blueprint for anyone who wishes to setup their own homelab.

What's a homelab?​

Well, according to Gemini, it's a collection of computer hardware and software that allows you to learn about and experiment with information technology in a simulated environment. Homelabs can range from a single device to multiple rack-mounted devices.

Why does it belong in TechnoFino?​

TBH, I don't know, I don't personally like reddit and am more active here, so maybe just give it a try here. That's why it's under anything other than Finance part, 🙈.

So, the journaling starts here (Obviously I will try my best to keep this post updated as I keep adding things, it might take up a few months I believe as there are quite a few things I want to setup).


Jun-12​

I received my NAS. Moving all my files to that now.
s23e8cczed1d1.jpeg


(I have a few External Hard disks, about 5TB + 4TB + 2TB + 1TB + 500GB + 500GB) and about 3TB in laptops, which is almost full, the problem is that it is super difficult to organise and I cannot access them remotely. Plus there is another problem of Drive failure, because if any of these drives fail, my data is lost. So, I don't want that, obviously. I have been thinking about it for a few years now, but finally decided to dive into it and get it.

Specs:
- Synology DS923+
- AMD Ryzen R1600
- 4GB RAM (obviously I plan to upgrade this, it is upgradable to 32GB dual channel).
Additionally, I bought 2 Seagate Barracuda Compute 8TB @5400 rpm drives. Right now I have configured at SHR-1 (Which is basically RAID-1 when 2 drives, but as soon as I add another HDD, it will become RAID-3).
(RAID is a way to recover from lost drives, for now even though I have 2 8TB drives, I can loose 1 drive and still my data will not be lost).
Then this can add NVME M.2 for fast storage. So I bought a Western Digital Black 1TB 770 M.2 SSD. That is in RAID-0, which means, if gone, it's gone.
That's like my workspace storage, fast and quick, when I am working on a project, I use that, once done, I move to the HDD.
Right now, moving all the files. Considering I am going to office almost daily, I think this can take a week to complete. Let's see.


Jun-18​

The sync was completed, also I found that Synology has a feature for setting up DNS serves, so just to try, I setup that and obtained SSL certificate from LetsEncrypt so I can access on a subdomain of my website. (Orcourse it's local so nobody from the internet can access that, I need to figure out a way to have VPN access). Even though Synology themselves have VPN Server as an additional software, I don't want to put all these things on the NAS itself as it will make it slow and maybe vulnerable. My storage is already getting filled. I need to soon get more storage. I will clear the Working area drive (M.2) and move data to HDD.

Also, I configured snapshot backups and recycle bin, so if I delete any file, I have 30 days to recover back from the recycle bin before it's deleted, even then I have daily snapshots for 6 months so I can recover post 30 days also.
Also setting up snapshots help because if I get attacked by an ransomware which encrypts all my files, I will have a way to rollback that to a working version which will keep me protected from Ransomware attacks as well. Ideally I need to follow 3-2-1 rule of backup, which will need me to have another storage medium. I will set that up in some time in the future.

1718857418304.png

Also,
My hardware started arriving. I got my first server, a second hand Dell Workstation PC with 8th gen i7, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD.

1718857837212.png

Now I am moving to setup a way to manage the containers, I plan to use portainer for that. That's a very good way to manage docker containers, so that's going to be my orchestrator tool. I also ordered a VPN router and a managed switch.
The VPN router will offload the VPN Services from the NAS and switch I need because I will be adding more devices, I need that as a managed switch because I want to add VLANs to isolate different parts of my network.
 
Last edited:
I got confused.
Isnt Synology a standalone NAS storage setup. Does it have its own AMD processor and RAM?
 
Heya folks,
I am starting this thread to just have a general discussion and as a blueprint for anyone who wishes to setup their own homelab.

What's a homelab?​

Well, according to Gemini, it's a collection of computer hardware and software that allows you to learn about and experiment with information technology in a simulated environment. Homelabs can range from a single device to multiple rack-mounted devices.

Why does it belong in TechnoFino?​

TBH, I don't know, I don't personally like reddit and am more active here, so maybe just give it a try here. That's why it's under anything other than Finance part, 🙈.

So, the journaling starts here (Obviously I will try my best to keep this post updated as I keep adding things, it might take up a few months I believe as there are quite a few things I want to setup).


Jun-12​

I received my NAS. Moving all my files to that now.
s23e8cczed1d1.jpeg


(I have a few External Hard disks, about 5TB + 4TB + 2TB + 1TB + 500GB + 500GB) and about 3TB in laptops, which is almost full, the problem is that it is super difficult to organise and I cannot access them remotely. Plus there is another problem of Drive failure, because if any of these drives fail, my data is lost. So, I don't want that, obviously. I have been thinking about it for a few years now, but finally decided to dive into it and get it.

Specs:
- Synology DS923+
- AMD Ryzen R1600
- 4GB RAM (obviously I plan to upgrade this, it is upgradable to 32GB dual channel).
Additionally, I bought 2 Seagate Barracuda Compute 8TB @5400 rpm drives. Right now I have configured at SHR-1 (Which is basically RAID-1 when 2 drives, but as soon as I add another HDD, it will become RAID-3).
(RAID is a way to recover from lost drives, for now even though I have 2 8TB drives, I can loose 1 drive and still my data will not be lost).
Then this can add NVME M.2 for fast storage. So I bought a Western Digital Black 1TB 770 M.2 SSD. That is in RAID-0, which means, if gone, it's gone.
That's like my workspace storage, fast and quick, when I am working on a project, I use that, once done, I move to the HDD.
Right now, moving all the files. Considering I am going to office almost daily, I think this can take a week to complete. Let's see.
I currently have my Homelab with HP elitedesk 800 g2, 8GB, 256 GB Sata SSD. Using One Drive for offsite backup. Currently 50 Docker containers are running with 3GB memory in use. Most of them are Telegram bots.
 
I currently have my Homelab with HP elitedesk 800 g2, 8GB, 256 GB Sata SSD. Using One Drive for offsite backup. Currently 50 Docker containers are running with 3GB memory in use. Most of them are Telegram bots.
You have 50 containers in 8GB RAM, interesting...
BTW, how do you monitor them, I am thinking Grafana and Prometheus.
 
Bhai koi documentation ya video ka link bhi lagao.. ya apni koi YouTube video banao.. want to setup my own NAS .. i have 3*1 TB hard disks..
Bhai, there is no 1 tutorial, I also followed like a bunch of places, (Reddit, YT, Blogs to name a few).
I think I will create a blog post only to journal my journey and share my experience.
 
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