I have said it, so now I have to deliver it.

General thoughts

Though the picture is large, the fist step to do is still the metal. I decided to build my lab with an extra hardware:

• A seperated environment that I can reboot
• Power-consumption should be lower vs turning my sub-PC into a 24/7 machine

Also I need to concern on my networking setup, which is pretty flat currently thanks to the free-provided home network that comes with my apartment contract. (Yea, I need to enhance this part too, but it will be a later story)

And considering the new hardware, again several options comes up

• Raspberry Pi device for low-power consumption
• Pre-built PC for lazy people
• Custom built computer for maximum flexibility

Finally some actions

I finally settled with a compact pre-built PC, as I found it to be cheaper than a custom-built one, yet I can expand the storage more than a Raspberry Pi allows. I also bought a switch so I can create a basic LAN with my subPC. I chose one with Intel N150, 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD. which should gives a lower power consumption.

Along the way one important thing for me is to scope down my imagination, otherwise it will expand endlessly and I can never finish it. E.g. Availability/redundancy is another big topic to think about. But that would be too much on the plate + cost. This would be a topic in phase 3 when I found things not enough and need to scale-out.

Installing the hardware

After some easy-wiring (basically plugging and tidying up cables near the socket) I have managed to get it running. I need to buy also a switch as I only have one LAN port. And now the network setup becomes the following:

Installing the OS

As I only have a mini PC for setup everything, it would just require me provisioning many items on it. Considering the way I will be using it and the amount of restarts/backup I decided to use ProxMox for the setup. Installing it is rather simple:

1. On My Desktop download the latest Proxmox PV ISO file from the download page
2. Using Etcher and load the ISO file onto a unused USB (here I used one with 16GB), this would make it a bootable device
3. Plugin the USB to the server mini PC and boot into BIOS
   • On my device it is by pushing ESC during it is booting
4. In the very last boot tab, choose the USB as the boot media
5. Proxmox installation Agent should then be loaded. Following the steps and we should get it running
   • zfs is selected for disk format option
   • As this is as first a home network my hostname is set as random
6. After the installation, the server can be accessed from my MacBook and Desketop using web browser

Great! Nice! Wonderful!

Next step

To further expand the capacity I have bought other parts making it 32GB + 3TB in the end. I plan to create a 2DB NAS and 1 TB for all other things. For an initial setup this should be more than enough. The next step is to wait for them to come, so I can reinstall the things and get the server real running.

Interesting that from the beginning of my study I was trained to build things on cloud, and now I need to start things in cloud.

The Hardware.