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2023-11-29_Homelab-Upgrades.md

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+---
+date: 2023-11-29
+title: Planning a Homelab Upgrade
+tags: 
+  - homelab
+  - hardware
+  - networking
+  - unraid
+  - proxmox
+  - pfsense
+---
+
+I am just starting to plan a major overhaul of my homelab and decided where better to start than by documenting the process.
+This is about how my setup has reached its current state and why this setup is starting to feel limiting.
+
+## A Brief History
+The first home server I used was a Sunfire X4150 that I got for something like $50. Windows Home Server 2011 seemed
+like a logical choice of OS (this is where I started; I didn't know what I was doing) so I grabbed a copy from my local Fry's (RIP).
+
+After some adventures in data recovery from a dead drive (read: data loss), I built an [unRaid](https://unraid.net/) box.
+One of the main motivations here was that I could add drives over time and increase capacity easily without having to match
+drive models or even sizes; this meant I could use all the random drives I had lying around and save some money.
+
+My current server is basically unchanged since then, with a few upgrades, namely a 3900X and some 8TB HDDs shucked out of
+WD external drives when they went on sale.
+
+## Taking Inventory
+The bulk of my setup lives in a 15U rack that I built into the wall of my office. I also have some other networking equipment,
+a tower for work, and a personal machine I built into my desk but those aren't relevant to this project. 
+I'll work through my current setup from the top of the rack down.
+
+### Networking
+- (2U) 48 port patch panel: This is where networking infrastructure like switches and access points, IP cameras, and other 
+  rack equipment terminates
+- (1U) 48 port Ubiquiti POE switch: This handles switching for most of the devices terminating at the patch panel
+- (1U) 8 port Ubiquiti 10GbE switch: This connects other switches and provides a 10gig connection to my Unraid server
+- (2U) pfSense router: This is just an old PC in a 2U case with an Intel Gigabit NIC
+
+### Compute
+- (3U) Unraid server: This is where all of my storage and compute is
+- (1U) X4150 server: I spin this up manually every month or so to manually back up data from my Unraid server. Its loud and power 
+  hungry so I leave it shutdown as much as possible
+
+### Power
+- (2U) TrippLite UPS: This provides enough power to run things for about 15 minutes, long enough to safely shutdown and even keep 
+  networking up through a brief outage
+
+For anyone keeping score at home, that leaves 3U empty which does factor into my plan.
+
+## Current Shortcomings
+Now that I've laid out what I have and how I got there, let's look at some pain points.
+
+### Power Consumption
+Much of my setup has been built from surplus or repurposed systems. The pfSense router in particular is overbuilt for the minimal 
+compute that routing requires. The backup X4150 server is mostly powered off, but when running for a backup it takes a lot of power 
+and turns it into a lot of heat and noise in my office.
+
+### Availability and Maintenance
+I have a pfSense VM defined on my Unraid server, so I can at least take the pfSense router down for maintenance without network 
+downtime but the same cannot be said about the Unraid server. If the Unraid server is down, Plex, HomeAssistant, NextCloud, this blog, 
+and a lot of other things go down. I also have some issues with my pfSense box resuming after a power outage with is particularly 
+annoying if I'm not home to turn it back on.
+
+### Compute
+My 12-Core 3900X is generally more than enough compute for me now, but it is occasionally limiting and will not support all of the
+services I want to deploy. I also need more than 32GB of RAM, but that's an easy upgrade.
+
+## The Plan
+There are two main upgrades I want to make to address the current shortcomings.
+
+### pfSense Router Appliance
+This one's easy, I just want to get a low-power box to run pfSense since it needs to run 24/7; 
+I'll likely pick up a used network appliance on eBay for this.
+
+### Clustered Compute
+This still requires a bit more research. I've been becoming more acquanted with Kubernetes as 
+[part of my day job](https://github.com/NeonGeckoCom/neon-diana-utils) and am settled on setting up a cluster at home.
+I will likely use [Proxmox](https://www.proxmox.com/en/) since it checks the boxes for being open source, having a web UI
+for management, and being popular enough to find support online.
+
+I'll use my current pfSense router and Unraid server as nodes, possibly adding another new node with a GPU to play with some LLMs.
+
+### Storage
+I am as of yet undecided on what to do here; I need to do some more reading up on GlusterFS, Ceph, iSCSI, 
+and probably some technologies I know even less about.
+
+## What Comes Next
+This post is already getting a lot longer than I anticipated, so I'll wrap it up here. My next steps are to (1) find an appropriate 
+upgrade for my pfSense router and (2) decide on a storage solution.