First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.
Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.
I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.
Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.
Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.
Edit 2: This is looking pretty good right now.
I wouldn’t trust his guides personally. He has some hot takes and more importantly he isn’t someone who really knows the Homelab/self hosting landscape.
If you are looking for guides I would find channels that have done series on whatever you are interested in there is plenty of quality material.
To start off here is what I would do.
First, get a wireless router that is capable of running OpenWRT and then get a switch to accompany it.
Next go to eBay and buy 3 used workstations. They don’t need to be fancy and you can always upgrade them later. You need 3 for later.
Next find some storage. You can find decent Sata SSDs for pretty cheap. If you are looking to store something bigger like a movie collection also pickup some larger drives. With the extra drives make sure you buy a sata or SAS pcie card. This is because you need a dedicated controller to passthough to a VM.
Once you have all that you can start installing Proxmox. You probably want a raid 1 configuration so that you can replace a disk without downtime. The reason I say three devices is because you need 3 machines to get consensus in the cluster. When consensus is lost affected devices go into what is called fencing which is where it freezes all VMs and operations to prevent split brain from happening.
Technically this is probably a bit overkill but I like having a solid base for experimentation and flexibility. Doing it right from the get go will mean that you have more power down the road.
For actually hosting stuff I would use docker compose inside a VM.
Any advice/links for a beginner
you can start installing Proxmox
🤔
Proxmox is nice for beginners. This is a nice tutorial: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo
Proxmox has nice UI for managing Linux Containers (LXC). They act like a computer inside a computer with the advantage that you can clone them. So you can basically save and load them whenever you succeed or fail at something. Proxmox also allows you to install Turnkey Linux containers which have the software you want to run preconfigured in them so that’s also good for beginners.
Only downside is that this is not declarative so it won’t be as scalable as docker or nix. It might be more worth it to learn docker from the beginning but that would also be less friendly for a beginner.
It isn’t to crazy to install
The installation is not the problem…
What is the problem? I started my homelab a month ago by installing proxmox lol
The problem is using Proxmox…
For your router setup, it sounds like you’re looking for a high-performance system to act as a gateway for your entire network. Given your fiber internet connection (10 Gbps up/down), you’ll want components that can handle that kind of throughput efficiently.
Suggested Hardware: Processor (CPU): A multi-core processor like an Intel i7 or i9, or AMD Ryzen 7 or 9 would be ideal. These chips offer good processing power for managing high-bandwidth traffic.
RAM: 16GB of RAM should be more than sufficient for most routing tasks. If you plan on running additional services like firewalls, VPNs, or network monitoring tools, you could consider going up to 32GB for added headroom.
Ethernet Ports: Since you need at least two Ethernet ports, make sure to choose a motherboard with built-in dual NICs (Network Interface Cards) or add a dedicated dual-port Ethernet card. You’ll also want to look for support for 10Gbps Ethernet adapters if you’re aiming to fully utilize your fiber connection’s speed.
Storage: Since you’re mainly using this as a router, SSD storage is typically unnecessary unless you’re running a network service like a DNS cache or logging heavy traffic data. A small SSD or even a regular HDD would suffice.
No GPU Needed: You’re right, you don’t need a GPU for routing tasks unless you’re running other applications like video rendering or gaming servers.
This setup should provide the stability and performance you’re looking for, and ensure that your network can fully utilize that 10 Gbps fiber connection.
Also, while we’re discussing performance and efficiency, if you’re interested in expanding your use of AI, especially for networking tasks like optimizing configurations or generating reports, I recommend checking out ChatGPT Español. It’s a great tool for automating language-based tasks, translating configurations, or even generating documentation for network setups in Spanish
Like other people suggested here, use opnsense instead of pfsense, and wireguard instead of openvpn. What I did for my homelab was to get a used HP t620 thinclient and an Intel 350 card with 2x 1gbps ports. You say you have 10gbps, so you would need a card that can handle that, and maybe a beefier CPU. For my setup, this tiny 65€ machine is not even feeling it. Single digit cpu usage for 2 wireguard connections, a little over 1GB RAM usage for a handful of services. I think for you an n100 with 4gb of ram is more than enough, but going for 8gb will be better and it will not be much more expensive.
Just kinda flipped through his guide. It’s a bit dated on knowledge and techniques, even for beginners.
You don’t need a computer for a router. Get a router that ships with OpenWRT and start there. GL.iNet makes good and affordable stuff. Use that for your ad blocking, VPN, and so on to get started.
I’d just skip OpenVPN altogether and get started with Wireguard or Headscale/Tailscale.
If you want to run other heavier services, start out with a low-power minipc until you’re settled on what your needs or limitations are. You can get a very capable AMD minipc for $250-300, or an n100 low-power for a bit cheaper. Check out Minisforum units for this. Reliable, good price, and solid warranty.
If you deal in heavy storage, maybe consider adding a NAS to the mix, but maybe that’s a further steps. OpenWRT is a good starting point just to get your basic network services and remote access up, then just move on from there.
A good and fun starting point for some people is setting up Home Assistant on a minipc or Raspberry Pi (honestly, the costs of Pi boards now is insane. Might be good just to get the minipc).
Gl.iNet is a great value router, but if you want to do anything really interesting, it won’t do.
I have Slate AX chugging along, and have been eyeing teklager boxes to do actual routing, with slate as an access point.
To add to this, don’t buy a server at all, upgrade your desktop! Then use the desktop as a server. Then recycle every desktop for the rest of your life into the new server. Been working for me for decades.
I would probably suggest just getting a Synology NAS or similar because it’s plug and play.
They’re definitely on my radar whenever I get around to setting up a NAS
I don’t recommend it unless you just want it for storage or whatever else it does out of the box. It’s basically impossible to tinker with it because it has so many layers of abstraction. At least that was my impression when I tried to edit their nginx config. It had like 2000 lines so I just gave up.
If you want a server that runs services that you download from the internet, don’t buy it. Look at it as a box that does the thing that it promises to do, not as a computer. If you want it to do a different thing, buy a different box that does that. Kinda like a TV. It’s technically a computer that runs some kind of linux but to the user it’s a monitor that also shows videos from the internet.
Also it’s perfectly fine to buy a “NAS black box” but maybe not something I’d buy if I wanted to get into selfhosting. I’d buy it if I wanted to have a NAS running at home with the least amount of “self” in “selfhosting” that’s feasable.
Proxmox
Unraid
UniFi
Raspberry Pi
Docker
I don’t have time to respond, but exploring the capabilities of any of those things would be a great place to start.
Proxmox can be a bit of a bear to setup. The documentation is not very approachable for new users. It uses a lot of terms without definition which is a deadly sin of technical writing IMO. Guides for getting an Ubuntu Server VM setup vary wildly and often recommend outdated settings.
I’m totally on board with using it though. It eliminates the need to start from scratch when migrating to newer hardware.
Set up your favorite Linux server distro and then go ham on setting up docker (dockge is a great tool to introduce compose).
You don’t need any guides for it except for really niche cases.
For example Ubuntu VM; click create VM, choose Linux for the type, click next a bunch and choose your ISO image, CPU cores, and RAM. And you’re done, there’s no specific settings to use.
I need a guide
This guide seems pretty dated in terms of technologies and approaches used so I wouldn’t follow it 100%.
And it is heavily opinionated, without pointing out other solutions like for example the use of openvpn without mentioning wireguard even once.
TLDR, the developers of pfSense are not the nicest people sometimes. If this bothers you, consider checking out OPNsense.
So first the author is arguing around on the router section that you should not buy a cheap router but then goes for pfsense instead of opnsense, i understand that when you are used to pfsense that you may not want to switch but recommending it for new ppl is just stupid. They have shown their hostality against their OS community in the past see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13615896
