The Lab

The Lab

Where old enterprise hardware, home networking and questionable ideas get another life. ๐Ÿ˜„

THE HOMELAB

What started as a few computers and a home network has gradually become a small lab for experimenting with servers, virtualization, networking, storage, automation and a full size rack.

Some of the hardware is new. Some of it has been given a second life. And some of it probably consumes more electricity than I should admit.

Homelab server rack

FROM ENTERPRISE TO HOMELAB

After years of managing VMware and data-center infrastructure professionally, some of that enterprise technology eventually followed me home.

A retired Dell VxRail server now runs Proxmox, ZFS storage and virtual machines โ€” hardware that once lived in a data center getting an entirely different second career.

Hardware and tools on a project bench

THE NETWORK BEHIND IT

The lab isn't just servers. It's also the network connecting everything together: UniFi switching and Wi-Fi, multiple VLANs, internal DNS, isolated IoT and guest networks, monitoring, automation and the inevitable Raspberry Pi.

Most of it exists for one reason: I like understanding how all the pieces fit together.

The Lab is never really finished. Hardware changes, software gets replaced, experiments succeed, experiments fail โ€” and there's always another idea waiting on the list.