Homelab

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In this series, I’ll go over the lab environment, which I share with https://www.simplygeek.co.uk/

History:

My home lab started at home with two servers and https://www.simplygeek.co.uk/ having the same setup. In 2020, the UK saw a huge increase in electricity and fuel costs, so these systems couldn’t be run 24/7 due to sheer cost. Having worked with simplygeek, we decided to put our resources into a colocation. We hosted at a colo for 2 1/2, but unfortunately, they had financial issues, and we were asked to leave on very short notice. We moved all our kit in one weekend to https://www.veloxserv.co.uk/. These guys are exceptional, and I would recommend them to anybody.

And one last big shout is to the vexpert program and vmug programs for providing the licenses. http://vexpert.vmware.com & https://www.vmug.com

Some pictures taken during the installation (Yes, I know about the cabling, but we had a short install window)

Foundations:

Servers

I have the following Dell R630 servers (All ESXi 8):

  • (5) Dell R630 –
    • 1U Rack Form factor
    • (5) are in a vSAN cluster
    • (5) 2x Intel Xeon v4 E5-2660 v4 @ 2.00GHz (14 Cores 28 threads per CPU)

Networking

  • Cisco Nexus 3K, Top of Rack Switch and internal router
  • Ubiquiti – Udm Pro Router and Firewall
  • NSX-T Overlay
  • (5) Dell 0C63DV X520 2x 10GB SFP (Used for NSX and VSAN) and 2x 1GB (Used for Management)

Storage

  • (5) 2x Enterprise Grade SSD Drives, 1x Enterprise Grade nvme drive (cache) and 6x 1.2TB SAS drive
  • vSAN datastore running on nvme and sas drives, (1) disk group per server

Networking Design

The whole premise of the design is to keep the networking simple and useable while ensuring good practices are kept.

On the Cisco 3k, 2x VRFs have been deployed, one for DMZ and One for Workloads; this ensures no routing tables are shared, and that connectivity is separate. Each of these vrfs is allocated separate subnets.

On the Udm 3x VLANs are deployed, (2) two are used a carrier networks between the UDM pro and the Cisco 3k. Static routes are then added. With a vif (virtual interface) deployed on the 3k

Example

For LAN Static Route (VLAN2), with a deployed subnet of 10.20.0.0/20

Subnet 192.168.1.0/30

UDM PRO – 192.168.1.1/30

CISCO 3K VIF (On the LAN VRF) – 192.168.1.2/30

On the UDM Pro you deploy a static route for 10.20.0.0/20, with the next hop being 192.168.1.2

On the VRF you add 0.0.0.0/0 to 192.168.1.1 (which adds the default route to the UDM pro interface)