71 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
71 lines
4.0 KiB
Markdown
I've always had a bunch of hardware at home to play with and test new software and products on, but that has over the years developed into a tier-1 production system (according to my family) and the ability to tear it down and/or reconfigure it has diminished.
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So to keep the peace at home I decided to build a new and dedicated setup for my home lab.
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I had some goals for the build:
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- **Completely isolated**, I wanted to be able to test PXE, DHCP and other network technologies that potentially would collide with my home network.
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- **Portable**. Due to lack of space, I needed to be able to easily remove the home lab and stow it away in the storage room when it's not in use.
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- I wanted both **x86_64 and aarch64** architecture.
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- Lastly, I wanted it to be **affordable** to build.
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The result, a complete lab environment contained in a hard case
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Everything is contained in a hard case with a stripped monitor in the case lid.
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All I need is to hook up the case to the power main and it's good to go. The case is divided with a plywood board and some components are mounted/hidden beneath, such as 8-port Network switch, USB-charger to power the Raspberry Pi's and all the power supplies. On top of the board you can see the following components:
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1. C14 power connector
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2. Admin server: ASUS PN50 (8-core, 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe, 1TB SSD)
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3. USB GbE to be used to attache to external networks
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4. HDMI connector for the monitor in the lid
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5. Power connector for the monitor
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6. Ethernet connector to the switch under the plywood
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7. 4-port KVM
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8. Small box to store USB thumb drives, HDMI->HDMI-mini dongle, etc.
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9. Switch to power on/off the USB charger beneath the plywood
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10. 3 RPi4 8GB
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11. 3 ASUS PN50 (8-core, 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe)
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## Admin server
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The Admin server is running openSUSE Leap 15.3 and is hosting all network services (dhcp, ntp, dns, etc) for the internal networks.
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It also runst hostapd and uses the Asus PN50 wireless as access point to the internal network so I can connect with wifi from my laptop or I can connect the external NIC to a network and get a DHCP address and connect with ssh.
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Everything is configured with a script and salt, so reinstalling the Admin server is done in a ease
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## Three Asus PN50
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They will be running Harvester as default, the default harvester cluster is installed using PXE on the Admin server and the configuration is done in the Admin server setup script.
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This makes it makes it easy to tear down and rebuild when I need to do other tests/labs that needs physical hardware.
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## Three RPi4
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They will be running a three node k3s (etcd) cluster as default.
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## Network diagram
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```
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external eth1 (dhcp)
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│
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│
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│
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┌─────┴──────┐
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│ │
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│ │
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│ Admin ├───────── wifi AP wlan0
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│ │ Internal
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│ │
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└┬──┬───┬──┬─┘
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│ │ │ │ eth0.250
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│ │ │ └───────────────arigap
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┌────┘ │ │ (172.18.250.1/24)
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│ │ │
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eth0 (172.18.0.1/24) │ │
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Internal │ └───────┐
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│ │
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eth0.100 │
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Public-1 │
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(172.18.100.1/24) │
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│
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eth0.200
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Public-2
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(172.18.200.1/24)
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```
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