This Home Lab started some years ago with just an old tower server (still running nowadays) assembled with leftover hardware. The primary purpose behind its creation was to serve as a testing environment for VMware products such as vRealize Automation and VMware Horizon.

As time progressed, I gradually incorporated numerous additional products into this server. Consequently, the CPU and RAM consistently operated at full capacity, reaching 100% utilization approximately 95% of the time, so I decided to upgrade the environment with two Intel NUC 11 Performance. Since then, the hardware expansion has been ceaseless.

The primary objective of the Home Lab is to be used as learning platform for new technologies. As such, redundancy isn’t a priority, which is evident from the various single points of failure present in the logical diagram. On the other hand, while pfSense has the capability to take over the configured functions of the Cisco Router (R1) like vLans, NAT, BGP, and so on, R1 has been in place in this environment long before pfSense’s introduction. There’s a certain sentimental value attached to it, and I must admit, there’s an undeniable boost of confidence in configuring a router via command line.

Please note that as new ideas emerge, I regularly integrate new hardware into the setup. Consequently, the details in the following list may change by next weeks or days. I will do my best to keep it as updated as possible.

Firewall

The pfSense is currently installed on a barebone that has more resources than necessary, but it was the only one I had with two NICs. Maybe in a near future, I will setup a new pfSense on more appropriate hardware and use this barebone to expand the ESXi cluster.

  • pfSense Community Edition
    • CPU: 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-10110U CPU @ 2.6GHz
    • RAM: 16 GB

Routing

  • Cisco C1111-4P

Switching

  • Cisco CBS250-24T-4G

ProxMox Cluster

  • ProxMox Virtual Environment 8.1.4
  • CPU: 20 x 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
  • RAM: 160 GB
  • Services: Home Lab management VMs like domain controllers, Horizon Connection Servers and App Volumes managers. Docker containers like Bitwarden for password management, Apache Airflow for automation, Wiki.js to document procedures and so on.

ESXi Cluster

  • VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
  • CPU: 8 x 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-1115G4 @ 3.00GHz
  • RAM: 64 GB
  • Services: Windows 11 VDIs, Windows Server 2012 farms with App Volumes applications, NSX Edges and vCenter Server.

Storage

This section is screaming for an upgrade for a long while like a Synology DiskStation DS923+ but it will keep screaming until prices drop. 
  • Synology DS218
  • SSD: 480GB

Wireless Repeaters

  • TP-Link Wireless Extender RE450