Mister Accidental is a lawyer who mediates between clients and cloud companies, specifically assisting in cases of accidental overages where clients forget to turn off resources. Additionally, he plans to deploy internal services that can create QR codes, generate weather reports, and perform other useful tasks.

Mister Sighs agrees and decides that his first step will be to design the infrastructure layout before proceeding with deployment.

Today, we will look at the infrastructure that will be deployed on the HP Proliant DL360. Since everything will be virtualized within the server, the need for physical switches and routers can be eliminated. Additionally, as we are limited to a single server, a Type-1 hypervisor will be necessary to deploy the infrastructure.

Disclaimer

Before proceeding, it's important to note that this environment is being built in a home lab, meaning all operations on the server will be isolated from the home network. This isolation ensures that any testing or configuration changes within the lab do not impact the home network, thereby mitigating risks such as network congestion or security vulnerabilities. In a real-world scenario, this type of environment would be deployed within the company’s network and would handle requests from workstations and other devices. For this environment, we will simulate that using a lightweight VM on the server.

Additionally, the linked HP Proliant DL360 is the one I purchased a few years ago. If you are looking to use a similar server, I would suggest this server which has more processing power and RAM.

Overview of the Specs

The HP Proliant DL360 server features two E5-2680 CPUs, each with 6 cores and 12 threads, 64 GB of RAM, and 2.4 TB of storage space. With 12 threads per CPU, the server has a total of 24 threads. It is a robust server but still limited in resources, meaning Mister Sighs must carefully plan what he can deploy.

The Design

Mister Sighs has opted for a straightforward approach to the infrastructure layout. First and foremost, he needs a Type-1 hypervisor.

A Type-1 hypervisor is virtualization software that is installed directly on a computer’s physical hardware. It interacts directly with the computer’s CPU, memory, and storage. These hypervisors are prevalent in IT enterprises due to their efficiency, scalability, stability, and effective resource management capabilities. Some of the most common Type-1 hypervisors include VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Hypervisor, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. Free alternatives include Proxmox, Xen, and KVM.

For this project, Proxmox will be used. Proxmox is an enterprise-grade virtualization platform with a built-in web interface for easy VM management. It also supports plugins and providers for automation tools like Ansible, Terraform, and Packer.

With the Type-1 hypervisor selected, the next step is setting up the firewall. In a company, a firewall is used to restrict or permit the flow of traffic between networks. In this case, a firewall will be set up at the edge of the network. Mister Sighs prefers open-source solutions, which are often free, customizable, and transparent. Options include OPNsense, IPFire, Untangle NG, pfSense, and more.

For this scenario, pfSense will be utilized. pfSense is regarded as one of the world's most trustworthy open-source firewalls for securing businesses. It is built on stateful packet filtering and is highly customizable with a wide range of features.

While pfSense has OpenVPN, Mister Sighs decides to use WireGuard. WireGuard is regarded to have better performance, minimal code base, higher security with the usage of public/private keys and of course is open-source. Since resources are finite and WireGuard can be deployed with 1 CPU and 1GB of memory, it makes it an optimal choice.

For the remaining infrastructure, Mister Sighs decides to use two docker servers to manage monitoring, pipelines and registries and both development and production environments on a single Kubernetes cluster.

Ultimately, Mister Sighs devises the following infrastructure design:

This configuration requires six servers, a workstation, and a pfSense firewall. The initial rough draft provides an idea of the necessary components, but more work remains. The first step is setting up Proxmox.

In the next blog, we will delve into the setup and configuration of Proxmox.

This is where a home lab comes in handy. A home lab is a lab environment set up and maintained by you, which can range from a single VM to an entire rack filled with servers, switches, and routers. There are websites and Reddit pages dedicated to home labs, such as homelab and minilab. Some people do this as a hobby, while others use it to learn and study new tools. Home labs vary in design, with some building it specifically for their home network and smart automation tools (like Home Assistant), while others create miniature data centers. The design really depends on the user's level of commitment and needs.

Home labs can be inexpensive, as anything can be used. You can start with consumer PCs or build out with servers. Consumer PCs are often the starting point for many looking to dive into the world of home labs because any type of consumer PC can be used, regardless of age. However, I recommend using systems from the last ten years, as they are more affordable and easy to obtain. Compared to servers, consumer PCs take up less space, produce less heat, and draw less power. Additionally, consumer PCs offer multiple options to get started.

This is largely because you can easily install a Type-2 hypervisor on your system, such as VMware Workstation for Windows or Fusion for macOS, VirtualBox, or even the native Hyper-V for Windows Professional systems. Type-2 hypervisors allow you to get up and running quickly because they interact with the underlying host machine hardware through the host machine's operating system.

Type-2 hypervisors are straightforward to install, and spinning up servers is quite easy. You can even dedicate time to building them using Ansible or Terraform, as both have plugins and providers for the most common hypervisors. Note that the limitations here will be the amount of CPU, RAM, and storage you can dedicate to spinning up VMs, as it can bottleneck your host machine hardware.

Alternatively, you can use consumer PCs to build out infrastructure too. You can deploy Linux OS and build Docker or Kubernetes environments. Or, if you want to deploy multiple virtual servers, you can consider using a Type-1 hypervisor like Proxmox to build a cluster of dedicated systems. Often, home lab builders use Dell Micro/Mini Optiplex or Lenovo ThinkCentres to build their cluster environments. These can often be found cheaply online (eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, FB Marketplace) or in used PC stores or even at places like Goodwill.

Or, you can skip consumer PCs and use a server. Much like consumer PCs, servers can be found online for relatively low prices. For example, Amazon Renew Store has an HP ProLiant DL360 for $259. Again, like a consumer PC, you can use the hardware to build out a Linux OS and deploy Docker or Kubernetes, or use a Type-1 hypervisor (VMware or Proxmox) to deploy a small infrastructure of VMs. Note that servers take up more space, draw more power, produce more heat, and can be loud.

Before diving into what I will be doing, let me share where I started my adventure in home labs. I began with home labs in 2018 on two Dell rack servers, which lasted about a year. Back then, I was learning how to build a simple hypervisor cluster using Proxmox. I didn’t have much desire for it and ended up selling the servers. Then, in 2020, in college, I built a gaming rig with Windows 10 Professional and used Microsoft’s built-in Hyper-V to spin up servers for classwork. Later, my brother-in-law donated a server, and I built a simple vSphere system with a few servers. But again, I slowly gave this up due to a lack of dedicated time. Now, I will be building out on an HP ProLiant DL360 with the possibility of migrating to Lenovo’s for a smaller footprint or buying another server.

My goal for this blog site is not only to document my adventure into home labs but also to provide useful ideas and tips on how to create your own infrastructure. For the context of this blog, I will be building out a fictional company infrastructure, all housed on VMs inside Proxmox on the DL360. Most of this will be built and deployed using Configuration Management Tools (Ansible), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), and pipelines.

So that’s it. This will act as the start of my adventure. My next blog will detail the architectural layout of the planned infrastructure.