Alright, it’s been over a year, so it’s about time I did an update to my previous post, Jerry-Rigging My Home Network (Hey, it Works). There have been quite a few changes to my life and network over the past year. Chief among them is that I have moved to Virginia and finally spent some time building a lab environment.

My goal was to get hands-on experience with various platforms and tools to expand my arsenal while creating an environment where I could have a more self-hosted playground and entertainment system. And it all started when I discovered VulnHub. I wanted to be able to spin up any of their machines without clogging up my personal computer. In the previous post, I mentioned that I had Proxmox running on my gaming tower, but I wanted to have something completely stand-alone running the lab, so I started buying the parts to make a budget lab server.

That lab server sparked the idea to get a small server rack for my desk or closet to help stack all the devices I already had. So I picked up a little two-post desk rack and a small Cisco switch for additional practice on network devices. After an afternoon of installing all the components, installing Proxmox, and overhauling the network, I had my lab machine. And that was where I was going to stop; that was all I had planned on getting set up.

But no, I had started scratching an itch and wanted—needed—to continue.

Building the Perfect NAS

I now have a lab, but what else? My last setup was running an external HDD off a Raspberry Pi as a NAS, and it was an old HDD, so I thought I should get myself a proper NAS machine next. Hmm, but what to get? I wanted it to go on the little rack I just picked up, but a rackmount NAS is pretty expensive.

At the same time I was pondering this, I was also thinking about updating my gaming tower. It had been about five years since I originally built it, and even at the time, it was with older pieces of equipment. Then it all clicked into place; if I upgraded the CPU, motherboard, and RAM, I would be able to repurpose the old components into the NAS! That was all I needed. I was off, acquiring parts for two different computers and adding some extra networking bits along the way.

The Revamped Home Network

So, some servers, Pis, switches, racks, a router, and power bars later, I have a revamped home network. I had a lot of fun with it:

• Reconfiguring the VLANs every time I tried to get some cable management done.
• Accidentally adding rules to the firewall that blocked access to the internet.
• Rearranging my room every time I sat down to put a computer together.
• Setting up a VPN tunnel when traveling.

And the best part is that now that I have a good baseline, I can keep improving and modifying the network until it's just the way I want it to work (until I change my mind again).

I've learned a lot and can't wait to keep learning. Oh! I just heard the oven ding; the bread is ready! That's all for now, until next time!