Homelab
To be honest, I don’t know how to write non technical and catchy articles. this is the first one, I write since a while.
I want to describe my Lab, and the evolution it took over the last years.
I went the spiral to home labbing as most people do, at some point during a IT job.
I have now roughly 20-25 Years IT experience, from Commodore 64 and starting basic programming, over a 386-SX25 with 4 MB RAM with DOS 5, upgrade to 8 MB RAM and CD-ROM install Windows 95.
I have learned HTML and CSS, spiced with client side JavaScript, though about Server side programming and peeked into PHP, realized I am not a designer, and began to learn objected oriented language.
C# to see what is possible with GUI programming with Borland C# Builder, realized VB.NET is less -Net and more VB, which is something a can not comprehend, C++ only to see what it looks like and how to read the code.
Build some websites, and small tools to simplify selling on ebay, organize recipes, or a learning system for the Leitner Box System.
I have made my Hobby my profession in 2010, where I made a apprenticeship to have a professional qualification.
In 2013 I have have completed my apprenticeship with an IHK qualification.
My spiral began in 2011 I guess, where is get hands on a supermicro ATOM board.
installed Proxmox and setup a Windows Domain, Asterisk PBX, but, as the life goes, i had on of the Atom C2000 bugs, which killed the system.
I thought maybe I start a little bit smaller.
Bought a PI3, installed Pi-hole, installed some more container in docker, one of them was openHAB had experimented with a Wi-Fi lightbulb, which worked more or less, but required 2.4 ghz Wi-Fi, which is borked in my environment. to much neighbors. Zigbee sounds like a feasible replacement, and IKEAs Tradfri series was to tempting to ignore.
So bought Ikea lightbulbs 2 pieces, and a Tradfri gateway, but having the Gateway in the network was always a thorn in the side.
Switched to deconz Raspbee2 and ditched the IKEA gateway, bought some Zigbee switches and recognized, the openness of openHAB is one of the biggest struggles in home automation.
After a couple of years, I had the chance to get a N100 mini PC to replace the Pi.
I installed Proxmox, again, and hoped this is not a bad sign. but this System worked amazing. installed a lot more services, and 1 2 3 the N100 was full. a second one was required. and with this also Sonoff Zigbee coordinator.
My Lab in the meantime became 3 hosts cluster, 2 NAS systems with 18 TB, UGREEN NAS with Truenas Scale
Authentik, Vaultwarden, Gitea, WikiJS, Home Assistant, 4 Docker LXC Container, Pihole, LabCA, Portainer, 2 NginxProxyManager instances (one internal, one external), 2 node k8s cluster, 1 k3s with AWX, Opnsense for firewall, crowdsec LAPI server, Bind9 DNS Server with WEB interfaces for Zone management, Zabbix for monitoring and Gotify for notifications.
Home Assistant for Light and Thermostat control, Window and Door sensors for Alarm, Motion Sensors and BLE for presence detection. Sometimes it feels the hobby became a chore.
But on the other hand, having an active network keeps my mind active.
And homelabbing brings the opportunities to learn and test for the daily business.
I think I make a series out of this.