Hardware Overview

This section provides information about the physical hardware components of the homelab.

Table of contents

  1. Hardware Stack
  2. Server Specifications
  3. Network Equipment
  4. Upgrade Plans
  5. Hardware Topology
  6. Power Consumption

Hardware Stack

The homelab is built using a combination of custom-built servers, network equipment, and storage solutions. The current hardware stack includes:

  • Servers: 2 compute nodes for virtualization and containerization
  • Network: Managed switches, router, and wireless access points
  • Storage: NAS with redundant storage arrays
  • Power Management: UPS for power protection and management

Server Specifications

Server Role CPU RAM Storage OS
Homelab-1 Hypervisor AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 64GB 2TB NVMe + 8TB RAID10 Proxmox VE 7
Homelab-2 Backup/Storage Intel i7-11700K 32GB 1TB NVMe + 16TB RAID6 TrueNAS Scale

Network Equipment

Device Quantity Purpose
Unifi Dream Machine Pro 1 Router, Firewall, Network Controller
Unifi Switch Pro 24 PoE 1 Core Switch with Power over Ethernet
Unifi AP AC Pro 2 Wireless Access Points

Upgrade Plans

This section contains future hardware upgrades being considered for the homelab.

  • Add a third compute node for increased redundancy
  • Upgrade networking to 10GbE for improved storage performance
  • Implement hardware-level remote management (IPMI/iDRAC/iLO)

Hardware Topology

The diagram below shows the physical connections between the main hardware components:

graph TD
    Internet((Internet)) --- Router[Unifi Dream Machine Pro]
    Router --- CoreSwitch[Unifi Switch Pro 24 PoE]
    CoreSwitch --- Server1[Homelab-1: Proxmox]
    CoreSwitch --- Server2[Homelab-2: TrueNAS]
    CoreSwitch --- AP1[Unifi AP AC Pro #1]
    CoreSwitch --- AP2[Unifi AP AC Pro #2]
    CoreSwitch --- OtherDevices[Other Network Devices]

Power Consumption

Current estimated power consumption for the entire homelab:

Component Power Draw (Watts) Daily kWh Monthly kWh
Servers 180-350W 6.3 189
Networking 50-70W 1.4 43
Total 230-420W 7.7 232

Always monitor power consumption to avoid overloading circuits, especially when adding new hardware.