HomeLab

Introduction

Hello, my name is Caleb. I’m creating this git to follow all changes, updates, issues, and resolutions within my homelab. I’m starting this a little late in the game as far as configuration with my current setup, however I am actively looking for new equipment and software to add/change constantly. Now, as for what’s current I will list it below and I will try to remember all of the issues I’ve faced and their resolutions. I will also post what I’ve learned from each thing. At this time, I’d say I’m around 120-160 hours into designing, and implementing everything here.

Hardware

Alright lets get right into the thick of it. Currently the network is a standard 3 tier, with an integrated CCNA lab that I will touch on later on.

Core

For my primary firewall/router I have a riverbed CX-570 running OPNsense. I originally had another firewall I had received for free, but there was an issue and I was not able to get so much as a bios boot no matter the console/BAUD settings. Because of this, I went on the hunt. My original plan was to find some sort of cisco ISR (due to me working towards my CCNA and having prior experience) and then a palo alto 820 (Also prior experience and PCNSE is up on the list for studying after CCNA). I was looking at somewhere in the range of 250 dollars or so for those two when I saw this device come up on facebook marketplace for 100 (naturally I got him down to 80 bucks and picked up that day).

And thus begins the woes of learning a new platform and putting my skills to the test. I’m going to touch each individual issue later but that should give you an idea of how this went.

Distribution

For my switch I have a Dell N1548P that I received from a client previously, this device actually has propelled my career in networking. As I was originally studying for my CCNA it forced me to learn the concepts as opposed to just what Cisco wants since it works relatively the same but just enough different to be … quite an annoyance. I believe here is a good place to add my VLAN assignments (note these may change depending on my mood.

I realize that at my current size 5 /24 networks is somewhere in the range of 1250 useable IPs and theres no possible way I could reach that but I clearly have plenty of room to waste some IPs :P

VMs

So currently I have 2 Proxmox Nodes (i.e. old laptops) in my lab, specs are as follows;

HMR-SERV-1 - Intel i7-9750H (12 core), RTX 2060, 16gb RAM, 500gb Hard Drive

HMR-SERV-2 - Intel i3-7100u (4 core), minimal graphics, 6gb RAM, 1tb Hard Drive

HMR-SERV-3 (To be added) - Intel i3-1215u (6 core), minimal graphics, 8gb RAM, 250gb Hard Drive

No current VMs, infact it is still running windows but lets list the plans:

Network Design

Here is the current network diagram, I’m still adjusting service IPs and as I do this will be adjusted. (I apologize for the sizing, It will have to stay like this until I get a proper website setup instead of github pages)

home lab drawio (1)

Ongoing Work

2/9/26

Well wrapping up today around 11pm after a VERY long day working on the lab. Last night I was working on setting up AD for LDAP and RADIUS authentication, well when I tested a user on the ldap within my OPNSense I suddenly didn’t have access to the router at ALL. This includes root access within the CLI which is supposed to be unchanged regardless of GUI access/authentication settings. Attempted a password recovery using an image on a USB key which failed, thus giving me no choice but to reset everything to a fresh image.

I believe that this was caused by some glitch with the replication from AD to the OPNSense users. However, not having access I wasn’t able to dig around and find out.

At this point I decided that I would go ahead do a couple of housekeeping tasks, such as actually setting up my subinterfaces as opposed to using a cable for each VLAN, which mostly frees up some cable space in the rack, but also gives me back some of my port density on my OPNSense router if I wanted to create any sort of DMZs or separate LANs in the future.

Lets go ahead and list everything I actually accomplished today