{"id":821,"date":"2017-02-12T13:53:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T18:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ithinkvirtual.com\/?p=821"},"modified":"2017-02-13T07:41:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T12:41:47","slug":"home-lab-2017-part-1-network-and-lab-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ithinkvirtual.com\/2017\/02\/12\/home-lab-2017-part-1-network-and-lab-overhaul\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Lab 2017 – Part 1 (Network and Lab Overhaul)"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last 6+ months, I haven’t had much time to dedicate to my home lab and overall home network. \u00a0Between holidays, transitioning to a new employer\/role, and everyday life getting in the way, I found that I had to put everything on the back burner for a bit…so I inevitably shutdown by home lab. Well now I am back and am looking forward to writing up some new material that I have been meaning to do for a while. \u00a0I will start this by saying this is a continuation of my Home Lab 2016 Series<\/a>, now being dubbed as “Home Lab 2017<\/strong><\/em>“!<\/p>

So first and foremost, I powered up my home lab once again and I intend to leave it up and running at 100% uptime. \u00a0While doing so, my Synology NAS decided to reboot itself for an auto-update, right in the middle of a VM’s (my domain controller to be exact) boot process. \u00a0This would eventually cause my VMDK file to become corrupted and I could no longer boot my DC and reconnect my home lab. \u00a0I also had not yet backed anything up since the environment was still fairly new so I figured why not take this opportunity to rebuild everything and get some new components.<\/p>

I decided to add a few more (3 per host to be exact), extremely quiet, Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX<\/a> 40mm \u00a0fans. \u00a0This will help to keep my ATOM CPU cool as well as exhaust any hot air from out of each case. \u00a0I had also been contemplating on doing a Network equipment overhaul. \u00a0Last year I upgraded my ASUS RT-AC68U SOHO Router with a Ubiquiti ERLite-3 EdgeRouter, and turned the ASUS into a wireless AP only. \u00a0I do not have a single complaint in the performance and overall stability of that setup. \u00a0But I recently began looking at the Ubiquiti UniFi gear, and noticed that it the Unified Security Gateway basically runs the same EdgeOS found in the ERLite-3, just with a different web-interface. \u00a0Realizing that we are in this new wave of cloud-managed networking, and seeing that the USG-3P was basically on-par with the ERLite-3, I bit the bullet and ordered my new Ubiquiti UniFi gear to replace my current setup. \u00a0The featureset in the EdgeRouter series of routers still has the edge over the UniFi’s features but it’s only a matter of time before they are equal, or UniFi surpasses the EdgeRouters.<\/p>

I decided on the following products:<\/p>