I somehow have started to mine Ethereum in early May. Just when I decided to expand my mining farm, I got around to build a homelab, which is moreso a small data center at home. I've got a variety of information on subreddit homelab where homelabbers reside.

Structure

I have a gigabit internet connection provided by Korea Telecom. It's running on shared mode but I was able to get a large amount of DHCP IP leases as the area doesn't have many ISP customers. Now, let's draw a simple network diagram:

Because gigabit fiber optic modem is on the ground floor, MDF, I connected two switches, one is the modem and the other is CISCO SG300-10, via fiber. After that, I placed a pfSense box I built and make it to have multiple DHCP IP leases in order to group VLAN per each IP address and ensure that 802.1q VLAN trunk and LAGG will succeed. From the pfSense box, NETGEAR GS724Tv4 L2 smart managed switch will handle the VLAN operations, yay. I used EdgeRouter X SFP(ER-X-SFP), which is pretty good for the buck and could be a replacement for expensive Cisco, for backup router. Ports from ER-X-SFP will have: IPMI connection for pfSense box, internal connection for existing home server, and one for NAS. I will attach miners under the NETGEAR switch, and will remain RJ45 ports for further OpenStack work.

Order

I selected the things that will be great for the system I presume. Since I'm living in Korea, many things from overseas. For example, I made an order for the pfSense mobo on Amazon because it does not sell in Korea.

  • 15U small rack cabinet: LD-R750 Plus(15U) 170K KRW
  • primary switch: CISCO SG300-10 (managed) $140
  • backup router: Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP $73.96
  • pfSense switch: NETGEAR GS724Tv4 $157.95
  • Fiber media converter: TP-Link MC220L $24.99
  • Intel 4P gigabit LAN: I340-T4 $75
  • pfSense mobo: ASRock Rack E3C236D2I $239.99
    • 1U chassis: MIXTPC M1U05 Mini 1U $89.95
    • PCIe 1x riser: Tenext PCI Express Riser 1U Card $6.99
    • CPU cooler: Supermicro heatsink SNK-P0049A4 $38.31
    • CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230v5 (used) 180K KRW
    • RAM: Samsung DDR4 ECC UDIMM PC4-17000 8GB 100K KRW
    • SSD: Samsung 750 EVO 120GB 70K KRW
    • 40mm chassis fan: Noctua NF-A4x20 5v PWM 20K KRW
  • NAS
    • Intel gigabit LAN: EXPI9301CT 40K KRW
    • chassis: Fractal Design NODE 804 140K KRW
    • HDD: WD Red 6TB $199.99
    • HDD: HGST 4TB NAS 7200rpm * 4ea 680K KRW
    • PSU: FSP Hydro 600W 80PLUS BRONZE 80K KRW
    • CPU cooler: Noctua NH-L9x65 LGA115x 70K KRW
    • 120mm chassis fan: DEEPCOOL WIND BLADE 120mm 30K KRW

To be continued.