[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What do you do with your homelab?
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Ask HN: What do you do with your homelab?
For reasons born purely of intellectual curiosity, I'd like to
build a homelab. But, I'm kind of stumped on what to do with it.
Like everyone else, my house is pretty well connected to various
different cloud platforms for things like streaming and music. It's
hard to imagine that a homelab would be a tangible improvement in
ways other than things like privacy, but maybe I'm just unaware. I
hear of people running K8s clusters on their homelab, which, while
being overkill, I could see as a fun hobby project, but I'm just
not sure what the actual purpose would be. Is there anything you
can do with a homelab that doesn't have an ergonomically superior
cloud alternative? Perhaps the way I have stated that question is a
tad too subjective, but I'd definitely love to hear why I'm wrong
-- especially if the argument extends beyond the obvious things
like not using a proprietary service or privacy concerns.
Author : debaserab2
Score : 9 points
Date : 2022-01-29 21:59 UTC (1 hours ago)
| detaro wrote:
| It's funny how the term has come to mean "overkill home servers"
| now, and the _lab_ part has gone somewhat missing or at least isn
| 't a core part anymore. A _lab_ is traditionally where you
| experiment and try stuff you want to understand, not something
| you use to run your home network. E.g. for network folks going
| for vendor certifications often a big pile of outdated (=cheap)
| networking hardware to get hands-on experience. Or if you want to
| learn Kubernetes or try a specific configuration and set that up
| on some servers.
|
| I don't really have one, experimental/learning stuff is done
| either on my normal PCs or on VPSes. I have a small home server,
| which just runs filesharing and some tiny services.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| My homelab started out of CCIE studies, so it was originally
| focused on networking and virtualization. I still use it for
| this, e.g. running a Cisco ASAv or VeloCloud vEdge on ESXi, I've
| also run Xen just because I wanted to try it out. This is where I
| would spin up a sandbox to learn how to use something like
| Wireguard, or Splunk, or whatever else $dayjob or $interests
| prompt me to explore.
|
| But I also use my homelab to run "production" services as well:
| Emby/Plex/Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, a local Wikipedia, and more to
| come.
|
| The overkill gear let's me do handy things, like split off my IOT
| devices to their own SSID/VLAN with appropriate firewall rules. I
| can run a guest wifi network, with rolling password auth, or even
| no auth at all - in which case I might want to block certain web
| traffic and such, which I can do with my squid proxy.
|
| In summary, the answer is "whatever I want", and what I want is
| often to play with new (to me) tech, or practice professional
| skills.
| ddingus wrote:
| Well, my home lab consists of:
|
| An Apple //e computer with a variety of cool cards in it. Gives
| me access to 65C02, 65C802 (address limited 65816, and the
| hardware is 65816), Z80, and at some point 6809, but it looks
| like I might have to build that one. I do have a PC type card,
| but it's convoluted and I may just get an actual PC, maybe one of
| those industrial ones.
|
| Couple of other retro systems in storage.
|
| Electronics:
|
| Tek 300Mhz analog, 4 channel scope. Looking hard at a digital
| one. Various meters, signal generators, tools for electronics
| work, testing sensors, prototyping systems for use in products.
|
| High end 3 extruder 3D printer. Can do 3 serious polymers, or a
| mix of support and polymers, flexibles, and the only materials
| out of range for it are the uber expensive high temp stuff. PEKK
| and friends, though Victrex did recently release AM 200 which
| works GREAT on my machine.
|
| HDMI monitor, 15Khz CRT PVM for classic signals, retro grade,
| flat CRT VGA will do 2560x1xxx @ 50 / 60Hz. I rarely push it,
| preferring 1024x768, perhaps 1280x1024. All, except the HDMI
| display are 4:3.
|
| Microcontrollers: Parallax Propeller, 1 and 2.
|
| Dev machines running Linux, Mac OS, Windows 10. I added the Mac
| because I want to follow all the fun on the M1!! (seriously cool
| chip)
|
| Various hand tools, drills, saws, sockets, everything from taking
| apart some electronics that find it's way in here to working on
| my car.
|
| I have had some form of this since I was a kid in the 80's
| literally!!
|
| Back then I had a Tek 80Mhz scope, 2 channel, Apple and Atari
| machines for development and control projects, various meters,
| signal generators.
|
| I use the Parallax chip as a poor man's logic analyzer, and it's
| good to like 20Mhz, and much higher on the newer one.
|
| Stuff comes and goes.
|
| In the 80's, it was about assembly, serial comms, driving CNC
| gear, controlling things.
|
| In the 90's, it was about networking and I had stocked a bunch of
| SGI, Linux and WinNT gear. Was running everything on a DSL, Cisco
| modem, awesome! Learned a lot, then ditched all of that because
| my professional work went from bigger systems to smaller ones.
|
| In the 00's, more programming, product development, building
| things for research, helping others get things done. For a while,
| I was working with big enterprise stuff and had a whole
| environment or two virtualized at home. This was extremely
| valuable, until I stepped away from that space. Frankly, wanted
| to go small, where the bits are, one can see the pixels, hear the
| sounds, sense the world, control things.
|
| That dove tailed right into additive where I am now and am
| working on some advance projects. Some of it leading edge, likely
| startup type stuff. Having a home lab, and making the friends I
| have is the only way I would have ended up here, and being as
| effective as I currently am.
|
| Most recently, it's about supporting pro work with 3D printers.
| Got some spiffy machines coming into the country and I'll make
| sure they can print all the sexy polymers, print sample parts and
| in general validate any use case people want validated.
|
| And always some programming, building my own tools to use on
| projects.
|
| Most of this stuff has been paid for by the work I've done in the
| lab at home.
|
| I strongly recommend this path because it makes one think about
| the money they spend and how relevant the gear might be. Always
| find ways.
|
| Get old crap out of dumpster and fix it.
|
| Trade work for gear. (my favorite, makes everyone happy)
|
| Make gear, signal generator, logic analyzer, various test
| harnesses. If I get good, and realize I need more, then I'll buy,
| or scrounge and get the proper stuff. Take the harder projects,
| learn the harder things.
|
| I'm writing this because there is a whole world of development,
| product design, CAD, assembly, test, measure, that does not have
| much to do with the cloud.
|
| Above all, put what you love in the lab and do shit. Push it.
| Find out the real risks, real limits, etc... This generally pays
| off and I know very few people with bad experiences and they
| worked to other's expectations and goals, not their own mastery
| for their own reasons.
|
| Have fun!! If it is not fun, ditch it, get new stuff, until it
| is. Seriously.
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