Setting up homelab 3.0
My homelab setup has yo-yo’ed a lot over the years, starting with a small Netgear NAS for backing up family photos, progressing to a HP cube server for learning VMWare when I started hitting limits of the NAS. At it’s peak, my homelab consisted of a pair of HP DL360 G8s running esxi with a rack SAN with 12TB of storage.
After moving from my sysadmin job to a Cloud infrastructure role I started to see less need for running a lab at home so scaled down to the trusty Netgear NAS for “offsite” backups of my cloud servers.
When I started working more with the Cloud I lost the desire to spend my weekends troubleshooting issues with my home environment and sold/scrapped most of my equipment. Having stressful holiday abroad with my servers having overheated and powered down due to a hot summer week while they were running in my loft was the final straw..
Recently, however, I’ve felt the calling again and purchased 3x HP 800 G2s from Ebay with the aim of running a Kubernetes cluster at home to train for my CKS (Certificated Kubernetes Security Specialist) exam and to venture into the world of home automation.
The hardware
I had a few different requirements when it came to looking for hardware for the latest edition of my home lab:
- Noise — As the machines will be running my…
