Every year, each of us takes stock in their situation and this year is no different. This year, I am take stock in my homelab and I am hoping to document a series of infrastructure projects I want to complete this year in the homelab in my Homelab New Years Resolutions.
My homelab offers a variety of services which I use for my professional career along with my household. My server cabinet does not just host a variety of servers, but rather is also serves as a place to secure and hide technology in order to maintain a clean looking home. My office is in a shared place, so care is always taken to keep the power load down and most importantly keep the sound down.
I have utilized a server cabinet for about 10 years. Prior to the server cabinet, I would have a pile of computers and cables next to my desk. No matter how hard I tried, I was just not able to organize the volume of devices in such a way as to be cosmetically appealing. The server cabinet organizes and hides all of the hardware, and lets visitors know that I am really serious at what I do, and that I am a bit of an uber nerd.
Organize
The primary complaint about my current homelab, is that I just need to pull it apart and organize it all over again. Currently, I am on the fourth generation of computers and countless components. Sadly, it is that time that I just pull everything out and start rerouting everything all over again. Since I am not deploying a full cabinet of hardware and not worried about server density, I have space to work. This fact also allows me to be lazy and allows me to use what is one hand as opposed to the best solution. All in all, I just need to pull everything out and only replace the needed components.
New Server
The past six years, I have used a Dell Poweredge 1900 server, which 32 GB of Ram and a 2.0 TB Raid 5 storage arrays. The server was quieted a few years ago to allow me to operate it as a homelab server. Last year, this old warhorse of the computer lost its RAID controller, and I was forced to migrate to a much less capable computer.
Hopefully, this quarter, I would like to replace this server with a more capable hardware profile and provide for better performance.
Improve Allstar Node
About 10 years ago, I received my Technician Class Amateur Radio License. One of the first projects I did, was I build an AllStar node with a Raspberry PI 3, URIx and a Baofeng 888 radio which was heavily modified. Recently, they release Allstar3 which offers a much improved user interface. My biggest issue with AllStar radio, is that my node is too jury rigged. The radio, antenna and URIx interface are sitting on top of my server cabinet. The radio is powered by sitting in a power cradle and linked to the Raspberry Pi 3 which is located on a shelf inside the server cabinet. All of this is symptomatic of just cobbling something together to get it working and not setting up for use.
My current plane is to upgrade the Raspberry PI to a microcomputer with a sound card. The Baofeng radio will be replaced with a mobile radio(s) of some sort with a dedicated antenna. All of this will be mounted in a 2U rack mounted cabinet to clean up to install and secure everything together.
New KVM Switch
The KVM switch I am currently using is a CYBEX Switch view and has worked for just about 20 years now. The Cybex is currently sitting on a shelf. The issue with it is primarily, it only supports 4 devices and is VGA and PS2. At this point in time, I would really like to get a rackmount HDMI KVM with support of 8 devices.
Update: 1/17/2024
I installed an MT-VIKI 8 HDMI Port KVM Switch.
Build a Home Intranet Site
My home, like many these days, has a variety of devices installed all around the house with a web interface or some other IP Address. I am thinking of creating a home intranet site to allow me to easily connect and monitor all of them. This project will probably be an evolution over time but essentially it just makes it easier to manage all of the internet devices in my house.
Subnet / New IP scheme
At this point in time, my house is hosting at least 45 IP Address enabled devices. That is quite a number and at first I was a bit shocked until, you really start to look into the numbers. Over the past few years we started replacing old appliances with new smart appliances.
This year, I hope to subnet off all of the appliances, smart TVs and various other devices onto their own dedicated wireless network and free up wireless bandwidth for any media streaming devices on the home network.
Update Development Server
My development server gave it up last year when the RAID card blew out. Sadly, the SAS Raid card is not worth replacing on this old work horse of a server. The Dell Poweredge 1900 served me for many years. The specs on the system are still rather worthy, but I no longer trust it for mission critical operations. I would like to get it setup as a VM Server, but I need to replace the SAS drives with SATA drives and quite frankly, I have more important this to address at this time. May be by the end of the year.
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