HomeLabUpdate #02 - What am I going to do with the Proxmox server?

After some starts and stops with the Proxmox server, I am determined to change it to allow some additional capabilities.  I have had heat problems that were solved when I put a second fan in the case and connected it to the power supply.  The problem is I only have 360 watts coming from the power supply and I have to work within that limit.  I think I have come to the end of what I can do with a 1TB SSD drive and two 4TB drives.  I may be able to add an additional 1TB SSD drive, but that remains to be seen.  I want to maintain the motherboard and the drives at a temperature value that will not cause early failure.  I am thinking of the following:

• Add an additional 1 TB SSD drive and use ZFS for the file system for redundancy
• Move the files off of one of the 4TB drives and use ZFS for the combination 2@4TB drives for redundancy
• Setup the 4TB ZFS redundant drive to allow spill over of the LVM-thin components as well as use for general storage from the NFS server
• Update Proxmox to version 7
• Update Proxmox to use OVS as the bridging mechanism (might require addition of ifupdown2)
• Install Mac OS and Windows 10 in two different VMs
• Add an additional display card to allow iGPU passthrough for the Windows 10 VM / Ubuntu VM
• Start integrating the outside RPis with the Proxmox server

This is the short list as it stands now.  First off I want to keep things below about 60 degrees C within the cabinet and work within the 360 watt budget.  Currently, the temperature of components within the Proxmox cabinet range between 35 to 45 degrees C.

Changed out the WiFi hookup in the Apartment

I did some measurements of the 802.11ac signal levels in my apartment.  When I am up close to the Cisco endpoint, I am measuring around -41 dBm, which is a pretty high level signal (-30 dBm being the theoretical maximum).  But when I measured the level in the back bedroom it came up as -78 dBm.  A level of -70 dBm is about minimum for not dropping packets.  So I am below that and that is why I have been having issues with the 802.11ac not having enough speed at 11 o'clock at night when everyone is streaming their stuff.  The reason for the drop in signal level is due to the construction of the apartment.  The apartment is basically a firebox, made to withstand fire from the outside, including the positive pressure in the hallways to keep fires at bay.  The walls inside the apartment have steel studs and the plasterboard is almost the consistency of concrete.  Both of these material types are bound to have an effect on RF transmission from the endpoint.

I decided to move the GL-iNet SLATE to the living room (around -44 dBm).  I am now connecting the SLATE to the rack by the use of some TP-Link AV2000 power adapters.  In that way I should be able to have an increase in speed of the network connection.  I discovered that the Signal and Noise levels, from the SLATE itself, are Signal = -35 dBm and Noise = -70 dBm.  That indicates that my -78 dBm measured in the back part of the apartment was way below the noise level, which means my packets were probably suffering from re-transmission.  No wonder I was seeing a slowdown of the connections to the outside.

Net Interface #02 - Spin up an NGINX Server with accompanying web server

I am starting with spinning up an NGINX server on my Proxmox server box in an LXC container using Docker.  The NGINX server will interface from the gateway vlan to the web vlan.  This will require me to spin up a web vlan and provide it with a dns/dhcp service and connect the web vlan to the Proxmox server.  Fortunately I already have a vlan setup on the Edgerouter-12 that I can use for this.  I just have to provide the path for the web vlan to pass directly to the Proxmox server.

Net Interface #01 - Defining an Initial Set of Interfaces that Can be Accessed by My Devices

In the future, as part of my ability to keep up doing my HomeLab stuff, I will need to be able to get to some software/VM/container things from the GSV-Network side of things using my laptop/iPhone/iPad.  These items will consist of experiments that are ongoing, documentation software, calendar/project items, etc.  So as part of this development, these are the initial components that I will put up to interface to:

• An NGINX server to provide reverse proxy control to web based items in my network such as NextCloud, Redmine, Blog, Journal, NodeRed, HomeAssistant, etc.
• A web services port for interfacing to my experiments
• An IPSec w/GRE port for interfacing directly to individual vlans within the HomeLab through a special interface built from a RPi Zero W
  

Project #26 - Making a Gateway interface for the Retirement Community WiFi Network

In addition to interfacing the rack equipment to the Retirement Community WiFi Network (GSV-Network), I need to have a couple of interfaces that can be connected to by my personal laptop and iPhone/iPad.  I have those devices connected to the GSV-Network directly and need to determine if I can port redirect from the rack equipment to provide some services to myself.  In addition, I need to have the ability to access any of the vlans that I have defined by using my laptop anywhere in the community for updates and HomeLab things.  This of course will require a number of tests.

UPDATE (2022-06-08):  Project is currently paused in order to fixate on one and only one project at a time.

HomeLabUpdate #01 - Initial Rack Setup

 As I came into the Apartment, I had setup the rack to have (from top to bottom):

• 24 port patch panel
• Ubiquiti Edgerouter-12 Router
• Short shelf for KVM and regular switch/ER-X
  
• Netgear M4100-26g Switch
  
• Panel with 4 Raspberry Pi 4s (RPiInject, RPiCICD, RPiLDAP, RPiPlex)
  
• Panel with 4 Raspberry Pi 3Bs (RPiSecure, RPiPower3, RPiPower2, RPiPower1)
• Shelf for containing WDMyCloud drives
• Open area (2U) TBD on contents
  
• Proxmox Server (2U case)
• APC UPS (1U)

I had left 6 Ethernet cables connected, numbered #8-1 through #8-6.  When I got to the apartment, I added the GL-iNet SLATE router (in Repeater mode, without second SSID) as the input to the apartment's wifi system.  My printer is connected to the wifi system and I have connected the HA-IOT server to the back of my Acer Monitor with connections through the 4-way KVM switch.

MOVED INTO NEW APARTMENT AT RETIREMENT COMMUNITY