Project #35 - Adding VLANS to the FLINT1 and FLINT2 routers

I have finally come to the point where I need to setup VLANs on the FLINT routers in my network.  I have noted for some time that people have problems with setting up VLANs on GL-iNet routers in general.  I mainly want to do this so that I can have some vlans that are outside of my normal Edgerouter-12 controlled space.  This would also enable me to get more into the fine tuning of these routers.  I can see having a couple of guest vlans on each router which would connect over iBGP.  I am currently reading a book on the ins and outs of GL-iNet that might give me some better information on how to do this, however at the moment it seems to be more of a word salad than a how to book.

I also need to be careful to document the entire process so that I can reproduce it.  To that end I will document the process in the RedNotebook app.  I intend on noting differences between the FLINT1 and FLINT2 setups. The main changes should be limited to one or two vlans on each router:

• On FLINT1 I will add two VLANs; Guest1 and Arbitrary1 that will not have access to the basic vlan
• On FLINT2 I will add two VLANs; Guest2 and Arbitrary2 that will not have access to the basic vlan
• The setup should be able to be altered to accommodate iBGP or VXLAN in the future (or any other items I might want to experiment with)

Update: I am placing this project on hold for the moment until I have more time.

Checking out the previous effort at a File Server on Proxmox

The LXC #101 was created some time ago (debian 12, turnkey fileserver, 18.0-1).  The last time it was used was in July and I am not sure if I had tried to integrate it with #106 NextCloud; I may have.  So from here it looks like there was a try, but I need to review what steps were taken to set it up.  Also what is the current setup of the Proxmox drives: 2@1TB and 2@4TB drives in the case.

Update: I was able to get it working again and this time as well as connect LXC #101 to Tailscale.  I was then able to pull up a Z drive on my laptop.  Now I can access this Z drive from anywhere.

Project #37 - Setup a File Server on Proxmox

 This is a case of the cart before the horse.  It occurs to me that I need a files server in the network.  I would buy a NAS to integrate, but short of that I am going to utilize my Proxmox server to create a File Server.  Fortunately, there is a Turnkey file server that I can utilize for this purpose.  So this project is to setup a file server using the Turnkey File Server template.  Of course, I need to get the drives setup correctly on Proxmox before I can begin this.

State of the Network - September 2024

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I might get the blog up to speed.  I have been busily pushing things in the rack to an everyday state.  To do that I had an epihany about the connection between the living room manaaged switch (GS108Tv2) and the back bedroom managed switch (GS116Tv2).  It turns out that instead of using a Powerline adapter, I would be able to use a 35 foot flat Ethernet cable to accomplish the same thing.  So I obtained a flat Ethernet cable, ran it along the floorboard, through the balcony door, around the back of the balcony, through the bedroom door, and plugged into an extension Ethernet cable coming from the back bedroom managed switch.  In doing that, I managed to get the speedtest to triple on downlink (at times) and double the upload speed (at times) [201.9/237 Mbps].  I assume that this means I am approaching the 1Gbps speed between the two managed switches.  This also means that I am not susceptable to power fluctuations on the Ethernet line between the Powerline adapters.

I have also been busily rearranging the rack equipment to use the Netgear M4100-26 and Ubiquity Edgerouter-12.  The Netgear and Edgerouter have been changed to always power on when the rack has power.  This simplifies the overall structure of the rack and eliminates the need for using the two Edgerouter-X routers and another GS108Tv2 switch.  I can now power off those three components until I might need them again.  I left them plugged into the Ethernet patch panel on the bottom.  The only disadvantage is that the Netgear M4100-26 now runs hotter; but the fans at the top are putting out cold air which indicates that it is not as hot as I might assume in the rack; currently at 104 degrees F.

I am now trying to configure a monitor system that can gather statistics and send out commands to update, reboot, shutdown, etc. equipment in the rack.  I hope to continue to get closer to an automatic mode int he rack which will support experiments in the future.

I have re-arranged the HomeLab rack to allow for four different systems

 I decided to change out the HomeLab rack and concentrate on four sub-systems: (1) Experiment Pod; (2) Proxmox; (3) Edgerouter-12/M4100-26g; and (4) Monitor sub-system.  Each one of these sub-systems can now be independently booted up and used.

I added a GS108Tv3 managed switch to the top of the rack so that I could change out the cables going from the HomeLab rack to only need one connection to the external GS108Tv2 switch behind the rack.  This frees up some of the ports on that switch to be used for experiments on the table.  The ExPod is now behind an Edgerouter-X connected to that top switch, with all components able to be turned off at the same time from a single switch on the power switch panel.  The Proxmox server is also connected to that top switch for all of its external ports and is powered through a single switch on the power switch panel.  The Edgerouter-12/M4100-26g combination is powered down from a single switch on the same power switch panel; external connections go through the top switch.  The monitor sub-system is also turned on and off through a single switch on the power switch panel and is behind an Edgerouter-X connected to the top switch.

I also added an RGB led lighting on the sides of the HomeLab rack.

Issue: the vlans for server admin and servers still require the Edgerouter-12 to be running since the DHCP servers are on that device.  This will need to be dealt with int the future.

HomeLabUpdate #03 - The more things stay the same, the more they change

 So here I am, a month longer into the process of updating my HomeLab, changing what I am going to do with the Proxmox server.  I have been able to add an additional 1TB SSD to the Proxmox server chassis and am now focusing in on what kinds of programs that I will be doing.  I have discovered that ZFS does indeed take a lot of memory, something that I don’t have a lot of.  I have also discovered that decent backups alleviate the need to have redundant drives that don’t contain critical information.  I have enough backups of critical information on different media that in my estimation preclude the need for redundancy like Raid1.  My critical information now resides on laptops that I backup on a regular basis and have nothing to do with the HomeLab structure in the rack.  The new 1TB SSD will become an LVM-thin component to complement the LVM-thin on the original 1TB SSD that the system resides on.  I can watch the statistics on the drives to know if they are ready to be replaced or not.  The UPS will take the shock of brownouts, spikes, and blackouts that will arrive this summer.  I have also discovered that I will not be able to force the on-board GPU to  a specific VM on the Proxmox server, so that is now off the table.

What this means is that I will be extending the current Proxmox configuration and will probably not be updating the version to 7.2.

I have decided to center on one program that I can focus my attention on and that allows me to achieve many of the goals that I have for my HomeLab.  That program will be an implementation of a Weather data gatherer focused on Docker and Node-Red.  I have already determined that I can spin up a Node-Red instance in Docker and duplicate it multiple times on the same host.  That will be the starting point for both implementing the Weather Data Gatherer and playing around with DevOps.

I recently came across some information on Microservices which seems to fit in nicely with the idea of DevOps in that you break an application down into several different parts, all communicating with each other.  It allows for spinning up new versions of the Microservice without having to stop the rest of the microservices, as well as allowing the full CI/CD chain to be implemented in development.  This should give me a software means of learning new development techniques.

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.

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.

Turned off the Home Assistant and IOT Server

There were a number of changes I made to the network this week in preparation for the move to Greenspring:

• Took down the RPiPWS and turned off the Tempest weather station.  This is now ready to be packed up.
• I moved the NodeRed docker containers from RPiKodi to an LXC container on my Proxmox server.  I then took down RPiKodi and it is now ready to be packed up.
• I copied the HA-IOT docker containers from the HA-IOT server to an LXC container on my Proxmox server.
• This morning I turned off the HA-IOT server that has been running commanding my lights in the house.  The HA-IOT server and the switch that I was using to send back the data to my router are now ready to be packed up.
• I then spun down the two LXC containers on the Proxmox server since they are no longer needed.
• I removed the hardware IOT equipment from the living room and side room.  These are now ready to be packed up.

All of this seems like loosing an old friend that I have been playing with over these past few years.  But, in hindsight I did learn a lot and now I am ready to take on other challenges.  It will be a few weeks until I am packed and ready to move to Greenspring Village, but at least I will not have these items nagging me in the back of my head.

Changeover of Ubuntu Server to Proxmox Box

 I have been wanting to try my hand at a Type 1 hypervisor for a while but it was too expensive.  I looked at ESXi, but decided that each change of the software meant a world of hurt for the VMs that would be running.  I do like to use KVM and have wanted to learn LXC containers, so I decided to change out the Ubuntu Server and go with Proxmox.

I changed the HW for the Proxmox server to have a 1TB SSD, repurposed the 4TB spinner from the Ubuntu Server to use, and reconnected the DVD drive.  I did a fresh install from the Proxmox 6.3-1 iso that I downloaded from the site and came up running very quickly.  I then added a number of OS isos, including CentOS, Ubuntu, and Fedora.  I was able to quickly spin up Ubuntu and start working on the challenge of other VMs and LXCs.

I connected the GUI/SSH port of the Proxmox to my admin vlan and ran the first Ubuntu VM on my Pers vlan.  So far so good.