What I do in my homelab..

Summary

In this video, the creator shares their journey of building a home lab, focusing on the learning experience and the technologies used. The lab serves multiple purposes, including home automation, data storage, backup systems, and computational tasks like AI and math calculations. Key components include a proxmox cluster, a robust backup system with off-site storage, and power management solutions, including solar energy and lithium-ion batteries. The video emphasizes hands-on learning, reliability, and the importance of understanding the technology one works with, particularly for those in tech professions like CTOs.

Takeaways

• 😀 The home lab was built for hands-on learning about technology, including networking, automation, and system design.
• 😀 The home lab serves multiple functions, such as hosting home automation systems, media servers, and AI experiments.
• 😀 The system is designed for learning, with various technologies like ZFS storage, Grafana, Home Assistant, and AI models being used.
• 😀 Power consumption typically ranges from 3.5 to 4 kW, peaking at 7 kW during intensive tasks like backups.
• 😀 A 42 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery system backs up both the home and server room, ensuring continuity during power outages.
• 😀 Solar panels are integrated into the system, providing power to recharge batteries and reduce reliance on the grid.
• 😀 Data storage is a central aspect of the setup, with 1 petabyte of storage including personal archives and backup systems.
• 😀 Automation is key, with Ansible used for deployment and system monitoring, minimizing manual maintenance.
• 😀 The setup includes high availability (HA) clusters, ensuring services remain online even if a node fails.
• 😀 The home lab integrates with the broader home energy system, shifting to backup power when necessary and optimizing energy usage.
• 😀 The creator emphasizes the importance of understanding technology at every level, advocating for hands-on learning in any tech field.

Q & A

Why did you build your home lab?

The home lab was built as part of the process of creating a new house. The goal was to have a dedicated environment for learning, experimenting with technologies, and building systems like power and cooling setups. It also served as a place to explore fiber optics, networking, and data management, along with providing a space to learn and practice various technical skills.

What types of systems and technologies are used in your home lab?

The home lab hosts a variety of systems, including home automation platforms like Home Assistant and HomeSeer, monitoring tools like Grafana and InfluxDB, media servers like Plex, and AI models for video analysis and text interpretation. Additionally, it includes compute servers for big data processing (Hadoop, Spark), math computations, and FPGA synthesis.

How do you manage the power consumption of the home lab?

The power consumption is managed by automating the powering down of servers when not in use and optimizing the overall setup. The lab's power usage peaks at around 7 kW during heavy operations, but typically it runs between 3.5 kW to 4 kW. Automation tools like Ansible help with managing and scaling the power usage efficiently.

What role does the backup system play in your home lab?

The backup system is critical for ensuring data redundancy and protection. It includes ZFS arrays with a mirrored setup, along with offsite backups, LTO tape backups, and automated weekly differential backups. This system ensures the safety of important data such as personal files, emails, project data, and vintage computing archives.

How do you handle hardware failures in your home lab?

Hardware failures are handled through automation. For example, if a drive fails, Ansible detects the problem and sends alerts via text, email, or a page. It then identifies which drive bay the failure occurred in, allowing for quick replacement with minimal manual intervention. The system is designed for self-healing, with hot spares replacing failed components automatically.

What is the purpose of the server cluster in your lab?

The server cluster is designed for redundancy and high availability (HA). It ensures that even if one node fails, others in the cluster will continue to run, maintaining uptime for essential services. This setup is particularly important for running critical systems like home automation and monitoring, which need to be reliable.

What role do solar panels and battery backup play in your lab's power system?

The solar panels and battery backup work together to provide sustainable power for the entire house, including the server room. Solar energy is used to charge the lithium iron phosphate battery system, and during power outages, the battery can provide power to the lab and the house. The system is also designed to conserve battery power by shutting down non-essential systems when running on battery.

How does the battery backup interact with the rest of the power system?

The battery backup is integrated with the house's grid and ensures continuous power during an outage. When grid power is lost, the battery system automatically takes over, and the solar panels can continue to charge the batteries while supplying power to the lab. If the batteries get low and solar power isn’t sufficient, the system can automatically trigger a generator to recharge the batteries.

How do you maintain and monitor your home lab?

Maintenance and monitoring are largely automated. Ansible is used for deployment, scaling, and detection of system issues. Remote management tools allow for maintenance without physical intervention. Additionally, the system automatically handles backups, hardware failure detection, and power management, reducing the need for hands-on work.

Why is it important for a CTO to understand the technology they oversee?

As a CTO, it's important to understand the technology at a deep level, not just at a strategic or managerial level. A strong technical understanding helps in troubleshooting, decision-making, and ensuring that the systems run efficiently. Knowing the ins and outs of the technology makes it easier to lead the team, address problems, and innovate effectively.