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My Homelab: The hardware

My Homelab: The hardware
Photo by Albert Stoynov / Unsplash

Hello, World!

This is a documented summary of the current state of my homelab, It has a few moving pieces and I keep on adding/removing/repurposing hardware (and software) at times, so this might not be the most up to date at times, Feel free to remind me in comments to keep it updated if you notice the last updated date is too old.

My Home lab or Home network is primarily built around the necessity. and has been iterated over the years, What stated out with a humble 512kbps ADSL broadband and a desktop computer some 15-20 Years ago has now grown into a giant of its own. Below is a written summary of the equipment and it's role in the network.

  1. The Core (MikroTik CRS310-1G-5S-4S+IN) : This is the core switch of my network, Internet comes into SFP ports then carried over to my main routers for further distribution to the rest of my network.
  2. The Router(s) (MikroTik RB5009UG+S+IN and RB5009UPr+S+IN) : The difference between the two is that UG+S+ is Non-PoE and the UPr+S+ is Bi-Directional PoE., In my network, the UG+S+ is the core router which handles the entire network. All the routing, firewall rules, VLANs etc are managed here, The PoE version UPr+S+ is being used as a managed switch with extras, it has a few containers running on it but for the most part it is just a glorified high performance fully managed PoE switch for my Unifi APs.
  3. The PoE Switch (TP-Link TL-SG1218MPE) : This switch is primarily used to power all the IP Cameras around the house. Around 10 of them. Due to some constrains, I have one of the runs from this switch connected to a satellite PoE Switch (MikroTik PowerBox Pro RB960PGS-PB) This device accepts PoE Power from the upstream TP-Link Switch and then further distributes it downstream to 3 Cameras.
  4. The 10G Backbone (TP-Link TL-SX3008F) : This one is a recent addition, added it when I ran out of usable SFP+ ports on the CRS310. It is a nice package overall, with some quirks. Coming from the mikrotik background, It was a bit of a side quest to learn how to configure this switch, but once it was configured, it has been solid.
  5. The APs: (Ubiquiti U6-PRO) : The U6 Pros are my APs of choice, Earlier I was using a Mikrotik WiFi stack which had a lot left to be desired, It was fine until I was on 100mbps plans from my ISP but as soon as higher speeds became available in my area, I upgraded and those devices started to show their limitations, In comes U6 Pros and their agility, They have been solid ever since, Got a Cloud Key Gen2+ which is rack mounted using the official unifi rack mount for UCKG2+ . In addition to 2 U6 Pros, I have an older gen Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LR which I scored courtesy of this thread on techenclave .
  6. The NAS: This is a custom built machine, Key Specs are:
    AMD Ryzen 5600G, Gigabyte B450M DS3H, 32GB DDR4 @ 3200MT/s (Corsair Vengeance), LSI 9240-8i HBA, 3x 24 TB IronWolf Pros and 3x 4TB IronWolf Pros. OS of Choice here is TrueNAS Scale (aka TrueNAS CE). I have a lot of containers (aka Apps) running on the NAS.
  7. The NVR: Another custom built machine, Key Specs are:
    AMD Ryzen 5500GT, B450M-A PRO MAX II, 16GB DDR4 @ 2400MT/s (Corsair Vengeance), MSI RTX 3050 Ventus 2X 6G, 2x 2TB WD Purple. OS of Choice is Debian (Debian 13 Trixie as of writing). Besides running my NAS software of choice (Frigate), I also have Immich Machine Learning and Ollama (Runs Moondream model for frigate).

Thoughts? Share them in comments below!