Hey everyone, Here is what my journey has looked like so far.
About a year ago I decided to spend some money on a server rack, R720XD, Ubiquiti UDM Pro, Ubiquiti 24 port switch, patch panel, UPS, and some other extras. I was very familiar with basic networking concepts, building desktops, repair, etc, etc. I was finishing up my Cybersecurity program and had learned enough to the point where i felt confident I could actually put the whole thing together and manage it myself. So I pulled the trigger on buying all of this stuff at once.
Surprisingly everything went well! I had received everything without any broken parts, everything was working (and is still working over 1 year later). The biggest issue i came across when buying everything and setting it all up was when i bought used harddrives and tried to use them myself. I made sure the harddrives were supported, but what I hadn't realized was that they needed to be reformatted with a different sector size. (and how damn long that would take!) Well, I bought about 14 used 4TB hard drives for suspiciously cheap (30 bucks each), and somehow I just decided to buy them anyways. I checked them out, and they each have about 4000 to 5000 hours on them, each. I had to troubleshoot for hours trying to figure out why they were showing up on my server and why i couldnt use them even tho i thought i had done my research about what is supported. I finally figured out i would have to re-flash my raid controller to IT mode, boot into some linux distro, completely format, and resize the sector size to a sector size the R720XD would be able to successfully read, then revert back to the original raid controller firmware, THEN, and ONLY THEN, could i finally use the damn thing with the hard drives i bought. (heres the link to the guide i found and followed to flash the firmware for the raid controller: fohdeesha.com/docs/perc.html)
After those shenanigans, I installed Proxmox on that puppy. I knew next to nothing about Proxmox or how to use it, I did know a little about ESXi tho and how to use it because we covered that a bit in my Cyber security class. I wanted to create a lab for AD, to learn how to set it up, how to use it, and generally for learning. So I did! A month or so down the line, 2 drives died, luckily i had ordered extra drives for that exact reason, so it was a simple swap and i was back to 12 running drives. I believe i was running raid 60 at the time??? I can't remember, either way, after a few months of that I did something to my Proxmox installation that broke something and I had to reformat and start all over basically. However, that gave me a chance to set up everything a little bit nicer considering i had learned quite a bit during the time of me owning this thing.
After I got everything running for the first time.
When i ordered and recieved my 3560G
fast forward another couple of months, its now been just under a year of owning this rack and I want to upgrade/ move stuff around/ customize this for some better home network security, not becuase i need it, but becuase i enjoy the blue team stuff quite a bit! I had finished by Blue Team Level 1 Certification, and i felt more confident in my abilities to understand what im doing, and during that time i had heard of Security Onion (a great piece of awesome software btw), so I attempted to install that on Proxmox as a VM. Everything seemed to run ok, except for the fact that I had basically zero visibility on my network. Turns out, Ubiquti's UDM Pro and just about any of their other products, don't allow for multiple SPAN ports!! (I find that incredibly ridiculous!) So I looked and looked for a way to solve that issue without having to buy new hardware, but as far as i could tell, there wasn't. (let me know if anyone knows a way!) Now with this knowledge, I decided it might be time to find a replacement switch and router. I also was much more comfortable with networking concepts and understood a hell of a lot more than I did when starting this whole thing. So, after a bit of digging and researching i landed on buying an R220 for running pfsense (Complete overkill yes, but it looks cool, and any of the other small networking appliances cost about double the price if not more, I dont need modern hardware for any particular reason, and power consumption isn't a big concern for me, also its more server hardware to get to touch and mess around with). I also purchased a Cisco Catalyst 3560G 48 port POE switch (only reason i bought a catalyst was becuase a. They were cheap b. my school gave us some to use in our Cyber security class, and c. for the most part, all cisco cli stuff is mostly the same, so i still gain some cisco knowledge out of it.) Well, it came in the mail, I installed it, and two days later, the damn thing died! No power at all. I swapped power cords, power outlets, held down buttons, nothing! I contacted the seller and they replaced it with a Cisco Catalyst 3570X Gigabit 48 port POE capable switch! I was under a time crunch as I wanted to do all of this during the course of 4 days and i was already 2 days in. SO off i went to craigslist to find me something to install as a switch, atleast until my return arrives at the store, and then they ship one back to me. ( I didnt want my parents asking why the internet wont work for the past few days, and also it would simulate a real world scenario where I would only have a limited amount of time to swap out things, or fix things). Lucky me, I happen to find someone about an hour away selling a Catalyst 3570X! The exact same thing thats going to be shipped to me within a week. I decided why not, the 3560G broke down, whos to say one of these wont just die all of a sudden within the next year or so? So i went to go buy it and pick it up, now i have 1 switch to use, and 1 switch as a backup incase anythign goes wrong with the current one!
3560G 1 day later still running
I almost forgot to mention. During me taking the BTL1 courses I went to goodwill and found a dead and leaking battery backup for 10 dollars! I took it, recycled the battery at orielly's, bought a new battery for 60 bucks, and now i had a fully working 1000VA battery backup for only 70 bucks. I didnt know what to do with it at the time, but after thinking about swapping hardware and installing the R220 and that 3570X I decided it might be wise to install two battery backups, one solely for keeping the R720XD up, and one solely for all of the networking equipment. With the loads split up, the bigger 1500VA backup can keep the 720 alive for 30-45 minutes, and the 1000VA backup can keep the networking equipment up for 30 minutes with everything running as usual!
After I drove an hour away to pick up the 3570X and hooking all the cables up
Fast foward to today!
I own this beautiful rack with a nice Arris docsis 3.1 capable modem with a gigabit connection, an R220 handling all of the VLANS, firewall rules, DHCP, DNS resolving, etc etc, a Cisco 3570X with multiport SPAN abilities finally allowing me to have full visibility of my network using Security Onion, and an R720XD running all of my VMs and LXCs!
Here is what it looks like today
Here is what im running on my Proxmox host
My Unifi controller for my APs
My simplified dashboard for my TV
My other simplified dashboard for my TV
I really just wanted to share my server rack, and a short summary of what I've been doing over the last year or so. I'll definitely condense this into my own resume at some point, but currently im very happily employed at my school! I finished the class in the top 3, they offered all three of us a position, one had a full ride to a college he really wanted to go to, the other had to move, and I was the only one left to take the position. I've been working there ever since, and I love what I do, both at work, and at home. Let me know if anyone has any questions, or please please let me know if i accidentally left any personal information on any of these pictures lol. ALSO let me know if you would've done something differently, or let me know straight up if my rack sucks lol. I'll be happy to hear any feedback from anyone! Tell me your story so far, or what issues you're currently going through! Thanks for letting me share!
Well first I think it'd be better to ask you first, what do you plan on using it for? Do you already know what you want to do with it? If not, I would do as others have suggested. Hold back on a rack mounted server for a while, grab a desktop, load it with ram HDDs (or SSDs) put proxmox on it, and tinker with it there. Once you've got that itch to buy more, then now at least you'll know what you need.
My use case is, running some core VMs and LXCs that will run 24/7 along with later down the line some VMs that I'll use for learning Active Directory and performing red and blue team activities on them.
I agree with people on here talking about buying a NUC type box and using that. It's likely to be as powerful or more powerful than the 720, low power usage, basically non existent noise, but you'll be missing out in storage and RAM. The cool part is, let's say you do get a NUC, play with it for a year and then you want to buy more, you can always repurpose the old NUC for some other use. There's also NUCs with dual gigabit/ 2.5 gigabit NICs in them, if you plan ahead for it's repurposing, you could convert it into a very nice router for your network. One WAN and one LAN for your home, then use a switch of some sort to give the rest of your devices connectivity.
But back to what I asked, what do you want to do with the hardware? If you don't have a clue, look at YouTube and search for other people's home lab setups, there's a variety, from purely entertainment like Plex and jellyfin to stream movies across their network, to a security lab for learning AD. Find what you want first, then build what you need for what you want.