One of the questions I’m often asked is how I pick up things like OCP so quickly. The answer is simple I run an OCP Stack at home for personal projects. The original objective was to run this long term, so I understood the challenges of running an OCP cluster for a long period. In reality it gets reinstalled every three months after a “learning” event. Aka I broke something testing an idea out.

This post is a flex and will be one of a few about what I run at home.

PHOTO

So how do I make this happen. First of all you need an ebay account and a spend limit.

Main Virtualization Box

For the last two years I have run a Dell PowerEdge R620 that had 150GB of memory. Last week this developed a fault on one of the memory channels (its very old kit) and it was replaced with an R720. I moved my RAID Contorler, CPUs and Memory and added more memory. So I now have a 40 thread, 330GB of memory, 6TB Raid 6 server.

The rough costs after the initial R620 purchase are • R720 Chassis • CPU £20 each • 16 x 600gb in 2 RAID 6 configurations • Memory 24x16GB sticks

I was looking at an Dell PowerEdge R730 but that is DDR4 and I was not in a position to replace my DDr3 with DD4 yet.

Thanks to the people at Datatekuk for dealing with my weird requests and providing me a great deal on the R720 Chassis. This is not a sponsored post, but they deserve calling out. https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/datatekuk?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11051.m44.l1181&mkcid=26&ch=osgood&euid=e490a28c78df406e89a6d00c9649dea5&bu=43133661369&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20221014001215&segname=11051&ul_noapp=true

This VM box runs ESX 7 (license form ebay). On this box I have a run for

  • VCenter to simplify installing OCP
  • Windows Server (180 day trial still) – mainly for active directory
  • Bind 9 – (about to be replaced with Windows DNS )
  • PI Hole
  • HomeBridge (Home Kit)
  • DryDock (OCP Bastion vm)
  • OCP 4.10 Master
  • OCP 4.10 Worker x 3
  • WildCard – LetsEncrypt generating vm
  • Airlock – DMZ VM
  • Unifi Management Software – (Now decommissioned)

NAS

I have a separate Custom Build NAS with a RAID 0 Disk. Atom CPU with 8GB Memory. This is running TrueNas and has nothing special going on. This is where I back up everything to. As I do not have an offsite backup yet this hardware hasn’t changed for five years. I have been intending to increase the memory for a few years.

Network

I run a UnifI network. For those that are not aware of Unifi it is the prosumer drug where you keep talking yourself out of setting up a 10GB network. I have some 2GB LAG connections on my main trunk the rest is GB.

  • UDM pro
  • US-8
  • US-8150 W
  • US Nano HD
  • US AP Lite
  • US-16
  • Uni Flex x2

Image

Other.

I have a couple of Raspberry Pi’s

  1. Home Dashboard client
  2. Octo Print for my 3d printer

The future projects for this are as follows

  • Increase Network Ports in my NAS so it can do 2GB LACP
  • Increase Memory in NAS
  • Three UPS
    • My Desktop
    • Switch in Loft
    • Daughters Computer
  • Install 3rd Wifi Point
  • Move to 10GB network,
  • Buy an Unifi Aggregation switch
  • complete my fibre roll out
  • Unifi Pro switches (when I win the lottery)
  • Buy an F5 (They are only £50 for an old one ) Load Balancer so I can understand why there is such an issue with configuring them.