Homelab: My Devices
# homelab
# networking
# hardware
Published On: July 20, 2022 (Last updated on: April 15, 2024)
613 words · 3 min
For a long time, I held many different digital gadgets, however, I did not consider putting them into a cluster, or more precisely, setting up a platform where I can easily manage them. In this summer vacation, I started thinking of a possibility of setting up a distributed homelab.
Why Distributed
Since I am wandering around the big bay area, multiple different devices are scattered. Thus, I have to build a distributed cluster.
Here is the list of my bare metal device:
| Device | Location | Configuration | System | Network |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DELL EMC R730 | Zhuhai, China | E5-2650V4 + 128GB + 240GB SSD + 600GB HDD + NVIDIA TITAN XP | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 500Mbps |
| DELL Precision T1700 | Zhuhai, China | i7-4790 + 16GB + 256GB SSD + 1T SATA HDD + NVIDIA RTX 2060Ti | Arch Linux | 500Mbps |
| Homebuilt PC | Zhongshan, China | i5-9400f + 16GB + 256GB SSD + 256GB SSD + 2T SATA HDD + NVIDIA TITAN XP | Arch Linux | 500Mbps |
| Homebuilt NAS | Shenzhen, China | AMD A8-5550M + 6G DDR3 + 128G SSD + 3T SATA HDD | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 1Gbps |
| ARM Router | Shenzhen, China | rk3568 + 2GB Mem + 8GB EMMC | iStoreOS (based on OpenWrt) | 1Gbps |
| ARM Router | Shenzhen, China | rk3399 + 1GB Mem + 1GB + 16GB EMMC | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 1Gbps |
| ARM Router (In future) | Guangzhou, China | rk3399 + 1GB Mem + 1GB + 16GB EMMC | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 100Mbps |
Not only the bare metal, I also own a bunch of VPS/VPC/VM/Lighthouse, here is the list
| Device | Location | Configuration | System | Network |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - Guangzhou | 1C2G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 3Mbps |
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - Shuanghai | 2C4G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 3Mbps |
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - Shuanghai | 4C8G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 3Mbps |
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - Shuanghai | 2C2G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 3Mbps |
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - HKSAR | 2C4G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 30Mbps |
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - HKSAR | 2C4G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 30Mbps |
| A Lighthouse server | Tencent Cloud - Singapore | 2C2G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 30Mbps |
| A VM server | Oracle Cloud - Japan | 1C1G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 500Mbps |
| A VM server | Oracle Cloud - Japan | 1C1G | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 500Mbps |
| A VM server | CubeCloud - HKSAR | 1C512M | Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | 1Gbps |
After the listing, you may know why I need a distributed solution.
Possible solution
- Docker Swarm
- Kubernetes
Docker Swarm refers to a container orchestration tool that allows user to manage multiple containers within multiple nodes (a cluster). The document can be found in here
Kubernetes, a.k. K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and managerment of containerized applications. The introduction can be found in here
In general, Kubernetes is more suitable for those complex applications within the complex development/production environment, and the Docker Swarm is designed for ease of use. Based on the introduction and comparison, I design to use them simultaneously, parts of the device will be used in Docker Swarm (Dhe DS cluster) and others will be used in K8s, those who need persistance will be deployed in DS cluster and the K8s cluster is used for studying.
After the platform architecture, we need a networking solution for putting up these devices into a LAN. Intuitively, I need a VPN(Virtual Private Network) software as these device can be accessed via the WAN. Based on the VPN software, I may develop my own SD-WAN. Here are some SDN (Sofware-Defined Networking) solutions:
- Zerotier
- Tailscale: based on Wireguard
- Nebula: A scalable overlay networking tool by Slack
- n2n: peer-to-peer VPN
After the comparison, for my home devices, I will choose Tailscale as its performance in my experiment, and for those two cluster, I will use Wireguard as I don’t need to pay any fee for occupation.