My Homelab Rack
This webpage and all the necessary services are hosted inside my own servers inside a homelab rack I made. In this page you can watch the different hardware gear I got on it and the usage of them.
Main Rack
| nº | Hardware gear (Front) |
|---|---|
| 12 | Keystone Patch panel (24 ports) |
| 11 | HP ProCurve 1810G-24 (Gig Switch) |
| 10 | Dell Poweredge R210 (Server) #1 |
| 9 | |
| 8 | Dell Poweredge R320 (Cloud Server) |
| 7 | Dell PowerEdge R520 (Storage Server) |
| 6 | |
| 5 | |
| 4 | |
| 3 | |
| 2 | Dell Poweredge R210 (Server) #2 |
| 1 | Dell Poweredge R210 (Server) #3 |
| nº | Hardware gear (Rear) |
|---|---|
| 12 | 5 switch PDU (Homemade) |
| 11 | |
| 10 | |
| 9 | |
| 8 | |
| 7 | |
| 6 | |
| 5 | |
| 4 | |
| 3 | |
| 2 | |
| 1 |
Networking electronics
As the main networking switch I use the HP ProCurve 1810G-24 with 24 Gig ports and two Gig SFP. This switch is intended for connecting all devices from the rack between them and also provide Internet connection to the wired network.
This switch is connected to the gateway (router) through a OM3 fiber cable using the SFP port 1.
The other SFP port (#2) is connected through a 15 meters OM3 fiber cable to another HP ProCurve 1810G-24 located below the electronics bench, right over the Huananzhi Workstation. This gigabit switch allows me to have wired connection to my workstations, my laptop and whatever else I had to connect to my network.
Backup Networking
There are another switch in the rack (below all servers) as a backup switch in case that the main fails so I can easily and quickly replace the broken one and reconnect everything for being online again. I know that this is not a redundant and automated solution but, is what I can afford.
For this backup switch I use the Linksys SRW2024 with 24 Gig ports and two Gig SFP. This is a managed switch via console and web interface.
Servers
Actually in the rack, there are 5 different servers installed, but not all are running at the same time.
Dell Poweredge R210 (3 servers)
I got three units of this server in the rack, but only one is actually running. The other two are backups for the services I run on them.
The power consumption of each one of these are very low, form 30 to 80 Watts, which make this servers ideal for being powered on 24/7 without making a hole on my wallet. The power it consumes depends on the disks is using and the PCIe cards that are installed. But using a single SSD disk without any PCIe card, it only consumes 30 Watts.
The specs of these servers are:
- CPU: Intel Xeon L3426 w/ 4 cores (8 threads) @ 1.87 GHz
- RAM: 16 GB DDR3 ECC dual-ch (Hynix)
- NIC: 2x Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Port
- OOB: iDrac 5
Dell Poweredge R520
Usually, most of people builds their own NAS servers with a RaspBerry Pi or with a small old computer with up to 2 disks on it, generally configured as a Raid 1 setup using software.
For me, that is not an option, I go big or go home, so my own NAS server is capable of up to 8 disks with hardware RAID using the iPerc H700 controller. Featuring 6 Seagate IronWolf disks of 3 TB on RAID 6 I got a total of 12TB of storage with a tolerance of two disk failures without loosing data. That is what I call go big.
Additionally, I have a Seagate Exos X16 of 12TB as a backup disk for performing monthly backups and avoiding data lost in case of fire of the rack, as this disk is stored apart from the lab and only connected to make a backup.
The specs of this server are:
- CPU: Dual Intel Xeon E5-2440 w/ 6 cores (12 threads) @ 2.40 GHz
- RAM: 24 GB DDR3 REG ECC @ 1333 MT/s (Samsung)
- NIC:
- 2x Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5720 Gigabit Port
- 4x Intel I350 Gigabit Network Port
- RAID: iPerc H710P Minimonolithic (8 SAS-II ports)
- OOB: iDrac 7 Enterprise
Dell Poweredge R320
As a cloud to store all my VMs and services (like this page) with enough power and resources, I used this 1u server.
For storing the OS and all the VMs, I got two SAS disk of
In order to have all my VMs and services in a server with enough power and resources I got this R320 server as a cloud.
The specs of this server are:
- CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2470 w/ 8 cores @ 2.3 GHz
- RAM: 48GB DDR3 REG ECC @ 1333 MT/s
- NIC:
- RAID:
- OOB: iDrac 7
Computing Workstations
Appart from the homelab rack where there are all networking electronics and all basic servers, there are two workstations intended for high computational load.
Huananzhi Workstation
This setup runs an X99 platform in a Huananzhi F8 motherboard, which have the following specs:
- CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2678 v3 w/ 12 cores (24 threads) @ 2.50 GHz [120W]
- RAM: 64GB DDR4 quad-ch @ 2133 MHz (Hynix and Micron)
- GPU: ASUS RTX 2080 Super
- NIC: 2x Realtek Gigabit Ports
As wrote before, the purpose of this server is for working with high computational loads and for graphics rendering, which also is ideal for gaming due to its power, being able to keep processing scheduled tasks while remote gaming on it.
Gigabyte Workstation
This workstation used to be my gaming PC more than four years ago. Now it is a deprecated hardware for gaming, however, it is still be able to work for low end computing.
The specs of this workstation are:
- CPU: Intel i5
- RAM: 8GB DDR3 dual-ch @ 1333 MHz (Kingston)
- GPU: Gigabyte GTX 750Ti
- NIC:
- PCIe: FireWire Card
Testing Bench
Right next to the homelab rack, there is a bench with some networking gear intended for training Cisco certifications. The gear on it is:
- 3x Cisco Router Series 1800
- 2x Cisco Router 1811
- 1x Cisco Router 1801
- Cisco Switch Catalyst C2940 8TT-S
- Cisco Switch Catalyst 2950-24
- Cisco Switch Catalyst 2960-24TC-L
- Cisco Switch Catalyst 3548-XL
- 2x Cisco Switch Catalyst 3750G-24TS-S1U
- Linksys SRW2024 (Gig Switch)
Also, there are few old Linksys hardware used during some testings:
- 2x Linksys router WRT54GL
- Linksys AP WAP54G
- Linksys switch EZXS16W (16 ports)
- Linksys switch RZXS55W
In the posts section of this web you can find some projects about servers and my homelab rack in the server category. There I will post any interesting modification or craft about my rack. Feel free to take a look on it.
One of the person who influenced me on having my own homelab rack was Jeff from Craft Computing, a famous Internet vlogger that taught me a lot of things about servers and network management. I recommend taking a look at his videos.