Home Lab

What is a Homelab?

In case you have never heard the term, Homelab is the name given to a server (or multiple server setup) that resides locally in your home and where you host several applications and virtualized systems for testing and developing or for home and functional usage.

This server can be a simple tower or small PC or a Raspberry Pi like device or a repurposed professional server that you can acquire from companies who discard them due to their age but are still usable.

My home lab? I have 4 Raspberry Pi 4Bs. 3 have 4GBs of RAM and 1 with 8GBs. I avoided the rats nest of power supplies by using POE(Power Over Ethernet) for power. This gives a clean/uncluttered install. Next, keeping with the less clutter is better mantra, I used NVME M2 SSDs with a USB adaptor interface. Yes, I realize that the USB will never utilize the speed of the NVME interface however, the price differential between the NVME and the SATA SSDs was nominal and I don't have another cable sticking out the front of the mini-rack. I designed a open design rack using the MakerBeam XL system I found on Amazon. Tying it all together with a 5 port POE hub. See the list of components(with links) at the end of this article.

Why do you need a homelab?

You don't. It's not something mandatory for everyone to have a homelab setup. But having a homelab setup has its advantages.

If you are new to Linux servers, it provides you a playground for learning and breaking things.

If you are working as a software developer or sysadmin or devops, it lets you work and experiment with projects that you cannot try on the job itself.

It allows you to learn and do things on your own. With a little patience, you could create projects that would otherwise cost a lot if you to professional services. For example, a CCTV setup.

A homelab is also essential if you are privacy cautious and don't trust cloud services to back up their data.

Homelabs could also result in productive weekends. If you have young children at home, they could be involved in building cool stuff. A fun and engaging way for children to learn cutting edge stuff.