As some of you may know, I recently joined the r/homelab subreddit and their Discord server as a casual lurker, based on my increasing interest in Information Technology. After looking around and seeing/reading what other users have done, I decided to embark on my own homelabbing journey.

Below is what my homelab initially consisted of:

Gaming PC – Not really a homelab component, but close enough. AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6C/12T CPU, 32GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM (2x16GB sticks), 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD (OS/application drive), 2TB WD Black HDD (game/local file storage), MSI 1660 6GB GPU, Windows 10 Professional 64-Bit.

Proxmox VE host – HP Elite Pro 6300 SFF. Intel i7-3770 4C/8T CPU, 16GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM (4x4GB sticks), 256GB SATA SSD (OS/VM storage). VMs: Pi-hole, Windows Server 2016, NAS -> Backblaze B2 backup, 3CX PBX

WD MyCloud NAS – Homelab network storage. 2x4TB WD Red drives in a RAID1 configuration for redundancy. Backed up trihoraly (once every 3 hours) to Backblaze B2 (encrypted) using a VM on my Proxmox VE host

Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 10X – Homelab router running DHCP and OpenVPN Remote Access Server.

TP-Link EAP245 Wireless Access Point – Providing wireless internet access to all of my non-wired devices (cell phone, tablet, laptops, etc.)

600W CyberPower UPS (Hidden behind 360W UPS) – Back-up power to my gaming PC and homelab network equipment, in the event of a power outage.

360W CyberPower UPS – Back-up power to my Proxmox VE host, in the event of a power outage.

10kW Automatic Standby Generator (Not pictured) – Provides redundant power to my household’s neccessities, including the all-important homelab.

I started to become more interested in the Information Technology industry, and was starting to outgrow my Proxmox VE host with the number of VMs I was running and the amount of processing power they were taking. It wasn’t affordable to upgrade the host, so I began to plan out a new, custom VM host with more processing power that would instead run ESXi (due to the wider compatibility and common use within the industry). Along with this, I also decided that it was time to recreate my entire lab.

The beginnings of a new homelab

To start off my new and improved homelab, I decided to implement a budget that specifies how much I’m willing to spend on upgrading my current equipment and purchasing additional equipment. Because of our highly-inflated prices up here in the great white north, this budget was $4,500 CAD including taxes, shipping and customs/tariffs (if applicable).

After implementing this budget, I set off to create a list of everything I’d be purchasing for my homelab. This list consisted of the following:

Once I finished creating and making final changes to this list, I set out to purchase everything that I needed to recreate and improve my homelab. In total, everything came out to around $3,900 CAD, taxes, shipping and import/customs fees included. How’s that for planning?

Once all of my orders were placed, it was time to sit around and wait for everything to arrive. Once everything got here, it was time to put myself to work.

Everything is here!

It took about one-and-a-half weeks for everything I ordered to arrive. Day-by-day, packages kept filling up my living room to the point where I could barely make it over to my front door, let alone sit on the couch. Some of them were heavy, too – each package ranged in weight from 5lbs up to 100lbs. I could barely lift some of them, so I had to get some help from my father in order to move them out of the way so I could get by. I remember saying to myself, “This is the last time I order so many things at once. Next time, I’m going to order things bit-by-bit, so I don’t have so many packages arriving at the same time.” As if I’m going to remember that for long…

Time to start assembly!

First things first, I started working on assembling the rack I ordered. It took me around 2 days to get it finished and correct, as there were no assembly instructions included in the packaging or online. Nothing like going to mount something just to find out that one of the rails is attached backwards. Whoops!

After the rack was assembled correctly, I started racking the UPS and PDU. It took a bit of time and effort to mount the UPS in the rack, but racking the PDU took no time at all because of how light-weight it is. I think I may have strained a muscle while racking the UPS, because it weighed a fortune and I was trying to mount it by myself despite warning labels on the UPS saying 2+ people required. Oh man, have I learned my lesson after that.

After the UPS and PDU were mounted, I decided that it was time to transfer my gaming PC over to the Rosewill chassis from the mid-tower case and mount it into my rack. It took a bit of confusion as to what goes where, but I figured it out after a bit and got everything switched over. After mounting the PC in my rack, I decided to take a 4-hour break to relax after all of the racking in a hot living room.



After my break, I went back to mounting all of my other gear into the rack. Next up was the custom ESXi host, which I first had to assemble all of the components into the Rosewill chassis and ensure that it worked. After confirming that it POSTs, I went ahead and mounted it in the rack.

After mounting my gaming PC and ESXi host in the rack, I mounted the rack shelf and the brush panel. It was a bit easier than I had thought, but I had a bit of trouble with the pre-drilled holes in the panel and shelf not lining up properly with the square holes in the rack. A little bit of modification later, and they fit perfectly.



After the majority of my gear was mounted into the rack, it was moved into my office where the filing and storage cabinets were pictured earlier in this post. Once moved into the office, I mounted the HP Elite Pro 6300 SFF, NAS, EdgeRouter 10X and TP-Link AP on top of the rack shelf.

EdgeOS to pfSense

While I was planning out my improved homelab, I had to decide what I was going to do with my old Proxmox VE host. I decided on installing a dual-port Intel PCIe NIC and converting it over to a pfSense router. The reasons why I chose pfSense are because of the wide range of tutorials available online, as well as the different packages you can install on it.

The primary packages I chose to install are HA-Proxy, pfBlockerNG and ACME. HA-Proxy primarily because I want to host my own websites and services from home, pfBlockerNG for a firewall/Adblocker, and ACME for automated Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates for my websites and services. Also installed are an OpenVPN Remote Access Server and Dynamic DNS via Cloudflare.

The final homelab component arrives!

The next day after moving my rack into the office, the final component for my lab arrived: The Aruba S2500-24P-4x10G network switch! It took 4 business days less than what it was predicted to arrive, which caught me off-guard as the courier showed up unexpectedly without any notification from their tracking app (which I usually get notifications from when a package is about to be delivered).

The one thing I noticed was that it included a power cable, despite the listing saying one wasn’t included. This also caught me off-guard, as it surprised me that they would state something in the listing and that not be the case. I know it turned out in my favour, but I purchased an additional power cable just in case one wasn’t included. Once I finished admiring my new switch, I got it mounted in my rack. Following the steps taken by Vicious in this YouTube video, I managed to perform a reset to factory settings, configure the network settings, and upgrade the firmware to the latest version. After the switch was configured, I immediately started hooking up my devices one-by-one so I could assign a static IP to each of them through pfSense’s GUI.

One thing I am going to note is that upon booting the switch, the fans ramp up to full speed for around 2 minutes then quiet down to a barely-noticable speed. It’s not too bad, but it is slightly noticable when you’re sitting right beside it. Otherwise, it just sounds like your typical furnace fan.

Noise Levels

I’m someone who prefers to have the noise levels down as much as possible, as my rack sits in my home office a little down the hallway from my parents bedroom, with neither room having any doors. This is one of the reasons why I opted for a custom build as an ESXi host, the other being that it’s also my parent’s office as well. This lab is super quiet, peaking at only 39dBA when measured from 1 meter to the side of the rack and at full load.

Completed (for now) Homelab

After all of the time, money and effort I’ve put into this new and improved homelab, this is what I’ve come out with: