The Problem
My home lab came about from asking the question “how am I supposed to get an IT job that requires experience, without experience?” On top of new responsibilities at my current role, my home lab is a great place to practice, learn, try new things, and fail, all without worry about taking down production.
The Approach
I figure my hardware is a good place to start. I’ll make a list of all the hardware and what I am doing with it or what I plan to do with it. This list is probably going to grow overtime but I’m going to stick with what I have for right now.
| Device | Use |
|---|---|
| Protectli Vault FW4B | Router and Firewall running PFSense |
| TP-Link TL-SL2428P 24 Port Switch | Main Switch configured with 3 VLANs and PoE |
| TP-Link EAP650 Wireless Access Point | Access Point with an SSID for our main network and a second one for IoT Smart Devices |
| HP Prodesk 600 G2 Mini Tower PC | Purchased refurbished from Amazon - Running Windows with Hyper-V for VM management - running a VM with a docker container for Homebridge, a service to link non-Apple Homekit devices to Homekit |
| Dell Inspiron 3847 | My parent’s old desktop PC - Installed Proxmox VE OS to manage virtual machines and LXC containers - Will serve as my lab’s main server for now |
| Cisco Catalyst 2950 48 Port Switch | Currently not in use on my home lab but it is configured similarly to the 24 Port TP Link switch above (with 3 VLANs) |
| Custom Build | Running proxmox for main home server (NAS, Media server, etc.) |
The Impact
- Well one of the first things I learned is about how switches offer different speeds. At one point, I was using a different 24-port switch for my home network until I realized we were not getting the full speed we were supposed to from our ISP. So I upgraded the switch to one that can handle faster speeds.
- The custom server was the first PC I’ve ever fully built before. I’ve swapped RAM and removed hard drives to prepare devices for recycling, but that’s it. Going through the process of finding parts and making sure they all work together was a difficult process but I learned a lot about the different parts of a PC.
- I tinkered with VLANs on the Cisco Switch, where I learned basic commands to configure interfaces.