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My Homelab

My Homelab

This space documents the physical, virtual, and network infrastructure I use to experiment, self-host services, test container architectures, and run local and secure artificial intelligence models.

Network Topology and Architecture

The lab is segmented using VLANs and physical/virtual firewalls to isolate public services from the trusted home network.

[ISP (rt-01)] ──> [TP-Link ER605 v2 (rt-02)] ──> [Switch Netgear GS308E (sw-01)]
│
┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
▼                           ▼
VLAN 10 (Physical)          VLAN 20 (Local)
10.0.10.0/24                10.0.20.0/24
│                           │
└─────────────┬─────────────┘
▼
[OPNsense (Virtual)] ──(Wireguard Tunnel)──> [AWS Lightsail (Public IP)]
│
▼
VLAN 40 (Exposed)
10.0.40.0/24 (Isolated)

Network Segmentation

  • VLAN 10 (10.0.10.0/24) - Physical Devices: Servers, Raspberry Pi, and infrastructure equipment. Managed by the physical router-firewall (ER605 v2).
  • VLAN 20 (10.0.20.0/24) - Local Services: Containers and personal internal services.
  • VLAN 40 (10.0.40.0/24) - Exposed Services (Isolated DMZ): Containers accessible from the outside.
    • Managed entirely by an OPNsense virtual router.
    • Connected to the internet via a WireGuard tunnel to an AWS Lightsail instance with a dedicated public IP.
    • Advantage: All incoming and outgoing traffic for public services goes through the cloud’s public IP in complete isolation, avoiding mixing traffic with the local network and maintaining an extra layer of security.

Lab Hardware

Networking

  • rt-01 (ISP Router): Main router provided by the internet service provider (used as a bridge).
  • rt-02 (Homelab Router): TP-Link ER605 v2. Controls the main network and internal VLANs.
  • sw-01 (Switch): Netgear GS308E (Smart Managed Switch) for the physical interconnection of servers.

Servers and Nodes

  • rp-01 (Raspberry Pi 5):
    • 8 GB of RAM.
    • M.2 HAT with 128 GB NVMe SSD.
  • sv-01 (Lenovo M920x):
    • Intel Core i3 processor.
    • 16 GB of RAM.
    • NVMe storage.
  • sv-02 (Lenovo M920x):
    • Intel Core i3 processor.
    • 16 GB of RAM.
    • NVMe storage.
  • sv-03 (Custom PC - Compute Node):
    • AMD Ryzen 5 3400G processor.
    • 16 GB DDR4 RAM at 3200 MHz.
    • NVMe disks for operating system and VMs.
    • Dedicated SSDs for persistent data storage and backups.

Personal Workstation (AI / Development)

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700.
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti.
  • Usage: Used for development, running heavier local AI models in parallel while working, and performance testing.

Software Stack and Orchestration

  • Hypervisor / Virtualization: Proxmox VE deployed on nodes for managing virtual machines and LXC containers.
  • Container Orchestration: Kubernetes (K8s) for scalable workload administration.

Local Services (VLAN 20)

  • Homarr: Customized dynamic homepage.
  • Pi-hole: Ad blocking and local network DNS.
  • Grafana: Homelab metrics monitoring and visualization.
  • Nextcloud: Private cloud for storage and file synchronization.
  • NFS Servers: Shared network storage for nodes.

Exposed Services (VLAN 40)

  • Traefik: Reverse proxy and load balancer.
  • n8n: Workflow automation and integrations.
  • MailFlow: Email routing and management system.
  • WordPress: CMS for testing and web projects.
  • OpenLLM / Local Models: Deployment of language models and chat interfaces accessed in a controlled manner.

Project Purpose

This homelab serves as a continuous testing environment (sandbox) for:

  1. Experimenting with advanced network configurations (Firewalls, Static/Dynamic routing, WireGuard, VLANs).
  2. Learning and deploying cloud-native architectures using Kubernetes.
  3. Self-hosting critical services while maintaining data sovereignty.
  4. Integrating both local and securely exposed Artificial Intelligence workflows.