hlab: infrastructure
Table of contents
I got upset with the ongoing enshittification of things. For me personally this was Amazon, Netflix and Spotify. Therefore I found I need to host tools and services myself, if I don’t want to run in rising prices and features cut every now and then.
My requirements were to build something quiet, as I value a very quiet and calm work atmosphere - both, the rack and the nas, sit in my office.
moho
moho is a 10 inch rack hosting my main services and components in my homelab. It currently runs a 2-node Kubernetes cluster on it, with
various services, Codeberg runner, and further tooling. The plan is to make it a 3-node HA cluster.
Info
Find my GitOps Kubernetes cluster in my Codeberg repo.
Rack
The rack is a DeskPi Rackmate T1. To power all the devices inside, I attached an extension lead, Digitus 4-socket lead, at the back.
Devices
| Device |
|---|
| 1x Netgear GS308EPP, 8 Port, PoE |
| 2x Raspberry Pi 4B, 4GB |
| 1x Beelink Ryzen 7, 5825U, 32GB RAM |
| 1x Beelink Ryzen 7, 5700U, 32GB RAM |
| 2x SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD, 1TB |
Applications
The following applications I host myself on the cluster.
- Silverbullet: note-taking and todo application
- Vaultwarden: password manager
- Mealie: recipe manager
- Stirling PDF: PDF toolbox
- Miniflux: feed reader
- Paperless-ngx: document management system
- Authentik: OIDC identity provider for all my homelab applications
- Woodpecker CI: running my own workloads, also from my Codeberg archives
Cluster-internal applications
belle
belle is a custom build NAS, as I feared upcoming enshittification coming along very soon to NAS vendors as well. It did not took long
and it happened with Synology limiting their NASes to only a special set of hard drives.
Furthermore the price difference is huge, or better, the price/value ratio.
I got a lot more power with buying older parts and assembling the parts myself.
| Component | Part |
|---|---|
| Case | Fractal Node 304 |
| Mainboard | ASUS Prime H310I-Plus R2.0, LGA 1151 (used) |
| RAM | 2x Corsair Vengeance, DDR4, 16GB (=32GB) |
| CPU | Intel i3-9100 |
| CPU FAN | Noctua NH-U12S |
| PSU | Corsair RM650x |
| Disk (Storage) | 2x WD Red Plus 3.5”, 8TB |
| Disk (System) | Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD |
| OS | TrueNAS Scale |
It runs Jellyfin and some Samba shares for moho, such as a share for my documents and for backups.
The hard disks run in RAID 1 mode, full mirroring. That leaves me with 8TB storage, which is enough right now. Let’s see for how long ^^.
Want to know more about belle?
See my custom build NAS (2023) post.
fido
fido is an older Lenovo T14 Gen. 2, 14" with 48GB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM, an integrated Radeon Vega Mobile,
an AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U and 2TB Samsung 980 PRO NVMe.
| Component | Part |
|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U |
| RAM | 48GB DDR3 3200 Mhz |
| GPU | ATI Cezanne [Radeon Vega Series ] |
| Mainboard | |
| Storage | Samsung SSD 980 PRO, 2TB |
| Display | Lenovo LCD Display, 14", 1920x1080 |
| OS | Arch Linux |
| WM | Sway |
Configuration in my Arch Linux can be found in my dotfiles.
Most used
- Ghostty, foot terminal
- Helix: editor
- Profanity: XMPP command-line client
- Headlamp: Kubernetes UI
- Betterbird: email client
- Vivaldi: browser
jethro
jethro is a MacBook M2 Pro, 14" from 2023, with 32GB DDR5 RAM, an Apple Silicon 12-core CPU
and 1TB SSD drive.
| Component | Part |
|---|---|
| CPU | Apple Silicon, 12 CPU-core, 19 GPU-core |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR5 RAM |
| GPU | Integrated |
| Mainboard | - |
| Storage | 1 TB SSD |
| Display | Apple Display, 14" |
| OS | MacOS Tahoe |
Network
The network is a Gigabit everywhere. My uplink is via cable (1 Gbit downstream, 50Mbit upstream), and inside my rooms is also Gigabit LAN.
- Fritzbox Cable: DHCP and DNS provisions for all clients
- DNS: 2 Raspberry Pis running a redundant Pihole setup for all clients