Home Lab

  • Thu, Jul 11, 2024
  • 5-minute read

Ladies and gentlemen….this is the configuration of my home lab! 😊

Why a home lab?

Throughout my career, I have always collaborated with fellow systems engineers in order to allocate some resources for some labs in the test/laboratory server farm. Sometimes the relationship was good, sometimes not. I have some expertise on VMware and prefer to create/set up “my” virtual machines myself instead of “outsourcing” them to my colleagues. The same goes for port groups, datastores, and so on….
Then, I have been inspired by my first mentor who has a home server and helped me in the choice (thanks BGP , you know 😉), he’s able to create as many topology as he wants, and me?

(Un)Fortunately, company policies were restrictive, so I was not allowed to perform many activities in the lab server farm…. I want to be independent, I want to create/destroy/change VM settings and resources as I want, I want to run VMs as long as I need to, I don’t want to find out that my VMs (with client demo data) have been turned off by someone else (human or script)… So, after much thought (just kidding) I decided to buy my own server.

Pros:

  • Independence
  • Learning new skills
  • Learning new technologies
  • Testing and testing and testing almost everything I am working with (except ACI…)
  • Creating new content

Cons:

  • Servers are expensive (but not second hand)
  • Electricity bill (thanks to solar panel)
  • Space and noise (thanks to garage/box)

Server: Dell or HP?

To be honest, the first idea was Cisco UCS…. but they are completely out of budget for me. So I started looking for alternatives and created a short list: DELL or HP?
I read about the differences, licensing and more…. is not my field, but when I read that finding/downloading the firmware update for DELL servers was easier than doing it with HP… I made my decision.

Is this correct? I don’t know and don’t care, I bought a DELL server from eBay so…. DELL is the best ahahahahah

Server Specs & Costs

Well, I’ll be short… the server arrived with:

Vendor: DELL
Model: R630 (10x SFF 2.5")
CPU: 2x E5-2690 V4 (14C and 28T each, total 28C and 56T)
RAM: 32GB DDR4 2400 MHz
PSU: 2x 750W
Storage: No Disks
Remote Access: iDRAC8 Enterprise

Then, I bought the following hardware to upgrade it:
RAM: 256GB DDR4 2400 MHz
Storage: 1x 256GB SSD for Hypervisor, 1x 2TB SSD for VMs

So, the final hardware specs are:
Vendor: DELL
Model: R630 (10x SFF 2.5")
CPU: 2x E5-2690 V4 (14C and 28T each, total 28C and 56T)
RAM: 288GB DDR4 2400 MHz
PSU: 2x 750W
Storage: 1x 256GB SSD for Hypervisor, 1x 2TB SSD for VMs
Remote Access: iDRAC8 Enterprise

Here is some pics:

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I know that you are curious… so here is the cost list:

  • Server: 250€ + 40€ shipping cost = Total 290€ [eBay]
  • Storage: 2x SSD = Total 151,39€ [Amazon]
  • RAM: 279€ + 6,90€ shipping cost = Total 285,90 [eBay]

Total: 727,29€

My budget was 700€… It has been a little bit over budget but it’s ok

Firmware Upgrade

The first thing I did with my brand new server was to upgrade the firmware!
I am not a DELL/Server expert, I just followed the procedure and the guide I found on the DELL website, so here is my experience:

BIOS UPDATE

PRE
BIOS Version: 2.15.0
12

  1. Go to DELL Support page and put the server service tag
  2. Filter by BIOS and download the “.efi” extension file
  3. Copy the “.efi” file into a USB
  4. Connect the USB to the server
  5. Reboot the server the Press F11 during the boot to enter the “Boot Manager”
  6. Select “System Utilities”

04

  1. Select “BIOS Update File Explorer”

05

  1. Select the USB Device

06

  1. Select the file name

07

  1. Verify that the version is correct and Select “Continue BIOS Update”

08

  1. Take a coffe 😉

09

  1. Congrats! The BIOS has been updated!

10

11

iDRAC UPDATE
This one is apparently simpler than BIOS Update.

PRE
iDRAC Version: 2.15.0
13

  1. Go to DELL Support page and put the server service tag
  2. Filter by iDRAC and download the “.exe” extension file
  3. Lunch the iDRAC page and login
  4. Go to “Overview” -> “iDRAC Setting” -> “Update and Rollback”
  5. Select “Local” and then select and upload the “.exe” file downloaded at step 2.

14

  1. Wait some minutes to complete the upload phase
  2. Under “Upload Details” select the update package and then click on “Install”

15

  1. Take a coffe 😉
  2. Congrats! The iDRAC has been updated!

16

Hypervisor & Virtual Machines

After Broadcom acquired VMware, they cancelled the free version of ESXi… So I decided to go ahead with another hypervisor called ProxMox .
To be honest, I am not an expert on ProxMox and I am learning how to manage it day by day…like the famous “training on the job” that we all have done at least once in our careers 😉

Actually, I installed a simple Ubuntu server to play and eve-ng (community edition) . I am still thinking which software to buy between Cisco Modeling Labs and eve-ng PRO , the cost is almost the same. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for your time I hope that you’re enjoying my blog!
If you have some questions, please drop me a message through social networks!😊
👈 You can find the relative icons here on the left of the page

Riccardo

2024HomeLab