My first homelab gave me a ton of hands-on learning, but I quickly hit some limitations:
The Cisco gear was too loud and not practical 24/7.
Too much CLI work just for small changes.
Redundant access points (ISP modem + Cisco AP).
Rack setup looked messy (uneven spacing, no cable color coding).
Using a separate Raspberry Pi for VPN felt like extra overhead.
VMware with Windows as a host consumed too many resources.
These issues showed me that I needed something cleaner, more efficient, and easier to manage.
This time, I want to build a setup that solves all of those problems and gives me a professional-grade playground for my IT journey:
🖧 Unify Networking: Combine everything under one network but still keep my homelab on a separate subnet from my family’s network.
🌐 UniFi Gear: Switch to UniFi devices (license-free, easy-to-use UI, and much simpler to configure).
🔧 Better Hardware Choice: Move away from VMware/Windows → use Proxmox (Type 2 Hypervisor) for running both VMs and containers (CTs).
💽 Redundancy & Clustering: Build a Proxmox cluster so if one node fails, the other keeps my VMs/CTs running.
📦 NAS & Backups: Set up a NAS with the 3-2-1 backup rule (3 copies of data, 2 on different storage types, 1 offsite).
🎛️ Clean Rack Mount: A tidy rack with proper cable management and quiet devices, not loud Cisco fans.
🎯 Future-Proof Playground: A ready environment where I can spin up and test anything I want for learning, certifications, and projects.
🖥️ Out-of-Band Management: Add something like HPE’s iLO for remote node control. My plan is to use a JetKVM (PoE version once released) so I can manage my servers remotely without adding extra cables.