September 6, 2024 • 55 mins
Ever wonder if repurposing old hardware could skyrocket your tech skills and revolutionize your home network? This episode promises to transform your understanding of home labs and DIY tech setups with our special guest, Colby Sullivan, a Senior Implementations Engineer at Digital Boardwalk. Colby takes us on a nostalgic journey, from his first experiences with Windows Home Server in the mid-2000s to the latest trends in DIY tech. Get ready for a deep dive into practical advice and heartwarming tech memories that will inspire both seasoned tech enthusiasts and curious beginners alike.
Discover the transformative power of maintaining a home server and how it can sharpen your enterprise-level IT skills. Colby shares real-world examples of how his early adoption of tools like Unify not only benefited his home lab but also led to major implementations at Digital Boardwalk. We discuss the importance of being a jack of all trades in the IT world, the value of cross-training, and the essential passion for learning and experimentation. You'll also hear about solving complex problems at work using skills honed in home labs, such as addressing vulnerabilities in Plex by configuring advanced router settings.
Explore the world of custom-built routers and NAS systems, as Colby and I compare them with commercial solutions in terms of performance, flexibility, and cost. We talk about the benefits and challenges of DIY networking, including repurposing old hardware and setting up wired networks in modern homes. You’ll also get a sneak peek into our personal projects, like setting up a dedicated pinball room, and the joy of having supportive spouses who indulge our tech obsessions. This episode is packed with technical insights, practical tips, and a touch of humor that makes it an engaging listen from start to finish.
This Episode's Beer:
Emeral Coast Ultra Lager from Destin Brewery
Gulf Coast Blonde from Doc's Hop Shop
New Zealand Pilsner from Crooked Stave Brewing Company
Sponsor of this episode: Digital Boardwalk
Digital Boardwalk is one of the top 10 Managed IT Service Providers in the United States. If you are seeking to outsource your IT Management, or if your IT Team could use some help with projects or asset management, give Digital Boardwalk a call today! They offer a FREE IT Maturity Assessment on their website. If you want to see how your business's IT scores against industry standards, go to GoModernOffice.com now.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to another insightful episode of Nerds on
Tap, where we talk business andtech and get nerdy for an hour.
This time, we're exploring thefascinating world of home labs
and DIY tech setups.
Whether you're a seasoned ITprofessional or just starting
out, building and experimentingin your own lab environment is
(00:28):
one of the best ways to learnand grow your skills.
Join us and our specialreturning guest, colby Sullivan,
senior Implementations Engineerat Digital Boardwalk, as we
discuss servers, routers, nassetups and more.
Grab your favorite brew andtune in for a fun and
educational episode.
(00:49):
So let's welcome Colby Sullivan, who has over 10 years of
experience at Digital Boardwalk,specializing in deploying
servers, router switches, wi-fi,email migration, sharepoint
deployments and more.
Colby, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thanks for having me guys.
I had a blast the first time.
We talked about some electricvehicle news.
Now we're going to dive intoHome Labs.
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, no, love that segment.
I still go back to that tolisten to some of the stuff
about electric cars.
So we do appreciate you comingon way back when we had
technical difficulties.
Yeah, that was a fun day.
So today we'll be coveringthree segments, including
segment one building homeservers and virtual environments
.
Then we'll move on to DIYnetworking and we'll wrap it up
(01:33):
with how to expand and innovatein your own home lab.
We'll conclude at the end ofeverything with our rapid fire
questions.
But as always, we must beginwith a beer.
Let's go so edge.
What are we drinking?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcometo nerds on tap.
(01:56):
I'm your host, tim shu, and Icouldn't be more excited to
embark on this nerdy adventurewith all of you.
So grab your favorite brew,because things are about to get
exciting.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Three, two, one go.
All right, guys.
So our first beer is theEmerald Coast Ultra Lager by the
brewing company Destin Brewery.
It's a light-bodied lager witha pale golden color, has a
refreshingly crisp taste and aclean, dry finish.
(02:31):
This is the lightest beer theymake, unlike a traditional
Kolsch.
They remove some of the wheatand replace it with rice for a
drier, lighter finish, and thisbeer has also won a platinum
award in 2019 for the WorldBeverage Competition and a
bronze award in 2019 in the NewYork International Beer
(02:52):
Competition.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You want me to go first?
Yeah, go ahead.
The word I'm thinking of withthis is refreshing.
This is a refreshing beer.
It's not heavy at all.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
To me it's a wholesome beer.
It's got those full-bodiednotes in it, so I'm I'm getting
that very flavorful, easy sipperbeer that's very easy to drink
yeah, very easy to drink andit's from destin well, that's
even.
It's from our neck of the woods,so good beer to start the show
(03:27):
with.
Anyway, welcome, ladies andgentlemen.
Let's get moving with our firstsegment.
We're going to talk aboutbuilding home servers and
virtual environments, and thisis something that Colby is very
passionate about, and you know Iwatch you over a digital
boardwalk tinkering all the time.
(03:47):
So very cool to start this showoff.
So what was your firstexperience building a home
server and what challenges didyou face along the way?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh man.
So my first official homeserver was probably back in the
mid-aughts 2005, 2006,.
Using a software, an operatingsystem called Windows Home
Server, which eventually becamesmall business server on the
business side.
Yeah, so I used Home Server torun backups of my desktops at
(04:24):
the house.
It stored some media for me along, long time ago, early days
of sort of tinkering withservers just using standard
desktop hardware but running aserver-based.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
OS home lab now.
I mean, I've been foolingaround with stuff since the 80s,
but my first real home labdidn't come until, I think,
right before right, when I movedto pensacola, probably late 90s
, 98, 99, I started building pcsat home, um, and tinkering
(05:00):
around with different ideas ofmaking gaming cases, because I
don't know if you remember.
But you couldn't buy just acase with a window, you couldn't
get colored cases, you couldn'tget them with windows.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I had to mod my first one and cut the thing out and
put the window on it.
What did you use to cut it?
A Dremel, just cutting wheelRoto-Zip?
Yeah, four or five of them,because those steel cases just
destroyed those, those cuttingwheels.
But yeah, I got, I got throughit.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I I used a uh roto zip tool.
I would go to pep boys and buyuh window, uh weather stripping
that you would use on a car Iuse that too and I would run it
around the edge and then I woulduh get plexiglass and throw it
on the back and some hot glueyeah, those, those cold cathode
tubes on the inside oh yeah,lights and stuff before they
(05:49):
were expensive.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, before leds, there was cold cathode and they
were great.
They had a toggle switch.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that, that was wired into it.
Yep, and uh, yeah, and thenthey they've obviously used uh,
what's the technology they'reusing for those?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
now led strips strips , yes, just plugged right into
the motherboard, adjustable thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I think that's the first one I remember.
And then, obviously, when I wasstudying for MCSE way back in
the day, I remember doing thathad to learn the administration,
so I had to throw a server inthere, but PCs was building them
, I think was the first thing Idove into.
So for someone new to theconcept, now this this is a
(06:28):
loaded question because I reallywant to dig in with this with
you.
For someone new to the concept,how would you explain the
benefits of setting up a virtualserver environment?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
at home.
Great question For people whoyou know, who want to learn how
to get into different operatingsystems.
For example, there are plentyof people that know the
foundations of networking andcomputing but they may not be
familiar with Linux.
For example, they may get hiredon to a firm that specializes
(07:02):
in Linux servers.
Homeabs are a great way toexperiment with other operating
systems that you're not used to,and Linux is so easy to
virtualize.
It's so lightweight, free forthe most part, so very easy to
experiment with differentoperating systems.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So, being so lightweight, you can pretty much
throw it on an old setup or anold rig.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, in fact laptops actually work really well as a
first home lab server because,if you think about it, they have
the kvm built in.
They've got the keyboard, videoand mouse built in, right.
So like let's say, you know youcan't afford a, you know a rack
style server with its owndedicated slide out monitor,
right, your laptop has it builtin.
(07:42):
It's even got a built-in ups.
It's got a battery built in.
So laptops are great for thatkind of stuff.
You know, throw in a solidstate add some ram.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You're ready to, ready to go, so okay.
So, before I get into any morequestioning, take us, take us
into that world, I mean yeah soI'm going to take linux.
I'm going to slap it onto alaptop.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Um what am I going to ?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
what do I do next?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
the.
The software that I use to runmy virtualization platform of my
home lab is called Proxmox.
Proxmox has been around foryears.
It's um, it's Linux based.
I I believe it is based onDebian, which is your just sort
of standard.
You know, uh, vanilla Linuxflavor.
Ubuntu is also based on Debian.
(08:26):
Debian is very flexible and Iuse Proxmox to host some
lightweight machines, like I'vegot one that hosts a Windows
machine that I refer to as myjump box.
So basically, if I'm, you know,out and about and I need to log
into my network, or ifsomething's not working, I can
hop into that Windows virtualmachine and then I got access to
the whole network from there,rather than leaving my computer
(08:48):
on all the time, my gaming rigon all the time.
I just have a very lightweightvirtualization host that's 6
watts instead of being 250 TDP.
On my Ryzen rig I run a WindowsVM.
I run a virtual machine thatdoes whole home ad blocking
(09:10):
Every single device on mynetwork phone, tablet, computer,
whatever.
Ads are just not a thing, theyjust don't exist.
It's really cool to go tospeedtestnet and see all the ads
around the speedometer and thenyou enable the ad blocker and
this is not software in thebrowser.
This is something built intothe network infrastructure, okay
, and once you connect to it,you refresh and the ads just
(09:32):
disappear like they're neverthere.
It's awesome, dude.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So is it for the?
Audience here for someone thathas no idea what you're talking
about.
Has no idea what you're talkingabout, so is it?
This is on a machine betweenthe internet and all the devices
that are connected to your landexactly so.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
So the internet comes in.
I've got at&t fiber.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Um, I know you're you're looking forward to
getting that well I'm excited Isee that the cables are poking
out of the ground right now inour neighborhood, so I've got
at&t fiber.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I use their, their modem, right, I plug my, my
firewall that I have purposebuilt, you know I, I we can get
into the software on there, butI have my firewall and then I
have my switches and all thatand my, my virtualization server
is plugged into those switchesin my rack.
So it, you're right, the serversits between my devices and the
(10:22):
internet, so all of that stuffis filtered through that for ad
blocking and things like that.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So are you using Linux to host Microsoft Windows
environments?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, so Proxmox is Linux-based and I'm running a
Windows VM on that, just as myjump box.
Like I said, it's sort of likea lightweight terminal server.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Easy to administer.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, because if I need to get into, if I need to
log into something, pull upchrome.
I've got a dashboard that hasicons, quick icons to all my
stuff that I would need homelabs are.
I'm sorry.
Dashboards are very popularwith home labs because a lot of
home labs have a lot ofdifferent things and you know,
ain't nobody got time toremember all these bookmarks and
(11:03):
all that stuff.
So you want a nice likefront-end interface that just
shows you icons here's yourrouter, here's your switches,
here's your ad blocking and ittakes you where you need to go.
So it's sort of like my uh sois it?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
lay it out in kind of a uh infrastructure diagram,
flow chart.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
You can do it that way, or you can just say here's,
here's a button to go there,yeah, so sort of just like on
your phone, your app are justshortcuts, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, that's pretty sweet.
It makes it a lot easier so youcan track down any device on
your network pretty quickly bydoing that, if you've got IoT
stuff out there.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I'm using the cameras , I'm using all the UniFi stack
Other than the router.
Everything in my network isUniFi Switches, access points,
points, cloud key, all thatstuff, all the same stuff we use
here, yeah, you know, for ourclients.
I mean, I've been, I've beenusing, yeah, unify, for before
we started using, so, all yourcameras, I actually don't have
any, um, I have, uh, the nestcameras because I've got their
(11:56):
doorbell and everything youalready had yeah I don't have
any of the unify cameras yeah,good I've used them yeah and,
and they work
Speaker 1 (12:03):
yeah, we use them so that's cool, they they work
pretty well.
So what are some commonmistakes people make when
building their first home serverand and how how can those
mistakes be avoided?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
yeah, um, so number one raid is not a backup.
So uh, ask me how I know, butit is.
Yeah, come on, we can mirrorthe data.
Right, but what happens whenthe data?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Just go RAID 1.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, what happens when the data itself is bad and
it's like well, sure, right.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
The bad data.
You still got to haveredundancy outside of the RAID.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So I learned the hard way that we definitely need,
you know, you definitely needoffsite backups.
I have a solution for that.
That's really cool.
A friend of mine has a similartype setup as me and we have a
connection between our networksand we use a portion of our
network attached storage asoffsite backups for the other
person, which is cool.
(13:00):
So it's scheduled, it just runsand you know, sends it over the
internet.
He lives in Pennsylvaniasomewhere, you know.
So it's scheduled, it just runsand you know sends it over the
internet.
He lives in Pennsylvaniasomewhere, you know.
So I I back up his stuff, hebacks up mine.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Works out for both of us, any other, any other
mistakes that you've made overthe years?
Yeah, I mean don't.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So if you're interested in getting into home
labbing, I mean it basicallyjust a home network that is
built around, you know, businessgrade or enterprise grade
hardware for the purposes oftinkering or automation.
Virtual you know virtualizationthat kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So is this?
This isn't a production network.
This is a network that'sisolated.
It is Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, so like.
So I definitely do have aproduction network where you
know, tablets, desktops, laptopsall the stuff we have at our
house runs on that.
But I absolutely do have an IoTnetwork and that's the next
thing I was going to get into.
Number one, when you'restarting off, you don't have to
go crazy with the hardware,start small, get an old laptop,
(14:05):
don't just go to eBay and justpurchase a $7,000.
But because it's all scalable,right, you can just upgrade
whenever you want.
But as far as the, the networksegmentation goes, all of my
like amazon echoes and all myautomation stuff, as far as
lighting or anything that playsmusic or does some kind of like
smart home feature, is all inits own separate vlan or virtual
land so it cannot communicatewith my production network.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I can get to it, but it can't get to me right and can
you tell me, like, why you haveit separated like that?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
yeah, for sure.
So, uh, I spoke about the neststuff earlier.
So my nest thermostat, um, thatjust is on my, my wi-fi network
, the, the IoT Wi-Fi.
So if Nest gets compromisedright and someone gets access to
my thermostat, if it were onthe production network they
could theoretically get toeverything right Because it is
(14:54):
on its own isolated network.
Iot means Internet of Things,like a bunch of devices, because
it's isolated.
Even if that were to getcompromised, they would only
have access to that.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Just to the thermostat so they could heat or
cool you, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Anything that's cloud-facing I have isolated.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
You know, it's interesting that you bring that
up, because a lot of folks outthere use baby cams.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
And those are compromised all the time, oh
yeah.
Compromised all the timeBecause people don't know how to
keep up with firmware updatesand security and all that stuff
you know and they're watchingthat room that the baby's in so
they're learning more about andthey're listening yeah, so it's
scary.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So how has building and maintaining a home server
impacted your understanding ofenterprise level server
environments?
Like immense, obviously,immensely.
I mean, this is kind of a, it'snot kind of a dumb question.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Great question, actually, because, like I can
you know, I can test a lot ofstuff on my own right Before it
may even be a super popularthing in the enterprise.
And, for example, unify.
I started using unify longbefore we used it here and I
mentioned it to you and wevetted the product, you know,
(16:10):
when it was ready for us to useas a business, we started using
it Right.
So I've been able to apply mytinkering knowledge to stuff at
Digital Boardwalk all the time.
I mean, there's so many timeswhen I've been messing with a
virtual machine or something oranything and a weird error comes
up and I would not have everseen that in any other context,
(16:32):
right.
And then it happens here andsomeone's like what is this?
And I'm like, oh, that's easy,hit this done, fix, cause I've
seen it before, because you'veseen it.
Yeah, and it's just cause I havea passion for all these
learning and seeing how thingswork and just you know, messing
around.
I mean you can't be afraid tobreak stuff.
That's another thing.
You mentioned mistakes earlier.
You cannot be afraid to breakstuff.
That's the whole point of this.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, colby, how long have you been at digital
boardwalk?
This is my 11th year, 11 years,and and you know it's
interesting that you say thatbecause obviously, sticking
around at Digital Boardwalk, oneof the things that we've
noticed with you is you have apassion, and we know that you
(17:12):
tinker outside of work, becauseyou wouldn't know all the things
that you know without doingthat.
So this isn't a scriptedquestion, I'm ad-libbing here
Okay this isn't a scriptedquestion.
I'm ad-libbing here, okay, butwhat would you tell our audience
that wants to get in it?
You know how important it is tohave a home lab growing up,
(17:33):
well before you're planning togo professional with your career
, like just um, I've always beenone of those people that
believes in cross-training.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Specializations are great, right, yeah, they're
great.
But I've been in situationsbefore where something is broken
and the guy or the gal whoknows this thing inside and out
that's their whole job isn'tavailable, right yeah, I've
always believed in the jack ofall trades.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I don't want to wait yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, I don't want the labor pains, I just want the
baby.
You know what I mean.
So I've always believed in justbroadening all of your
abilities.
So I mean I do specialize innetwork infrastructure, servers,
that kind of stuff, networkinfrastructure servers, that
kind of stuff.
But I mean I also have messedaround a little bit with you
(18:27):
know, uh, creating dockercontainers and you know things
like that.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
so I I've done, I've I've done a lot yeah, I, you
know that hits home for mebecause I don't like to wait
either.
I mean, I know if, for instance, on a vehicle, I I just put
brand new speed sensors in my,in all my wheels on my jeep, and
jack that thing up and rip, ripsome stuff apart and redid it
all because I didn't want towait and I I'm not a mechanic.
(18:53):
Yeah, that's funny that youmade it.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I'm looking into doing like a slight lift on my,
on my pickup truck.
Yeah, so I've been.
It's pretty straight so I'vebeen when I you need to go four
inches if you're going when Iget when I I was thinking two
and a half, two and a half whenI I'm joking my uh, one of my
brother and brothers-in-law hasa six inch lift on his truck and
it's like bro now it's no, it'snot sway, yeah, um, we're
(19:17):
getting off topic ladies andgentlemen, sorry, um, because
this show's all about gettingnerdy and it doesn't matter what
we get nerdy with, we just getnerdy.
This is good, this is reallygood.
I like this.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
You like that.
Well, I can get you a whole canof it after the show oh, cool
Okay.
We don't want you to get too.
I see you've got that look inyour eyes, so I don't want
exactly what someone who's notfine would say so all right.
So share a specific examplewhere your home server setup
(19:49):
helped you solve a real worldproblem.
Now you kind of led into it.
A minute ago you said it helpsyou every day up at Digital
Boardwalk because it's somethingyou already encountered at home
, so that would be a good yeah,something you already
encountered at home.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So that would be a good yeah.
So I use, I use Plex to playall of my media.
Yeah, right, you know I rip abunch of Blu-rays or have a
bunch of music that I've, youknow, accumulated over the years
without getting super technical.
There was a exploit orvulnerability and one of the
(20:26):
like older plex versions, right?
Um, my setup is done in such away that it automatically
updates itself anyway.
But even if I hadn't, Imanually applied this fix via my
pf, since router that 99 ofrouters out there wouldn't have
been able to do, right.
So, um, basically, there's a uh, there's a plugin or a package
(20:49):
that I have installed on myrouter that allows me to limit
connectivity based ongeolocation, right?
So, even if I have a port open,like, let's say, I wanted to,
host.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That is the nerdiest thing I think I've ever heard on
this show.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
So even if I wanted to host a website, right, I
could allow.
I could allow it.
So only us people could get in,not other countries, that kind
of stuff.
So I sort of hardened my plexserver by blocking other
countries from being able toconnect to it before the
vulnerability would have takeneffect.
Yeah, Right, that makes senseso yeah, all right, I told you
(21:28):
I'm not a normal person.
I totally acknowledge that.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
With this kind of stuff, so, before we end this
segment, one more question.
What are the key factors toconsider when deciding whether
to build a physical server orset up a virtual one?
In the cloud, like what?
What is going to make me wantto go virtual versus going
physical?
So, besides the obvious, whichis cost these well?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I would argue there is no argument.
There is no pro physical serverargument anymore, ever, because
computers, servers, whateveryou know desktop computer, even
you know desktop computer, evenyou know laptops even if they're
three or four years old, theyare still so much more powerful
than what installing oneoperating system can do.
(22:14):
In other words, you're you'releaving hardware on the table by
not virtualizing.
Right.
Right, a laptop can easily runeight linux vms like in its
sleep to do specific things.
So it may not be the answer youwere looking for, but to me the
answer is always to virtualize.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I think that's exactly the answer I was looking
for, because, you know, when we, for instance, when Digital
Warwalk was starting back in2009, 2010, it was all about
physical, physical, physical.
Everything was still.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I mean back, I mean we're talking 15 years ago, I
remember taking servers out to aplace and all they do is host
files.
And now, what do we do?
Yeah, it's all VMs.
If we're not doing a virtualmachine.
It's like what's going on here?
Or consolidate, because we'restill running into physical
servers, Even if it is even ifyou're not breaking up the
hardware and you are justrunning one virtual machine,
it's infinitely easier tomigrate a virtual machine than
(23:07):
it is a physical machine.
It's infinitely easier, Well,back up as well.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I'm going to use that as a segue into the second
segment.
We're going to talk routers,nas and SANs, but before we do,
let's grab another beer Edge.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
All right, guys.
So our next beer is the GulfCoast Bl blonde from the brewery
docks hop shop in pensacola,florida.
They described this beer as abeach beer, a fishing beer and a
backyard beer.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I mean, that's even the idea more refreshing than
that one I've had this beerseveral times before and it is
totally that this is a boat beer.
This is totally that this is aboat beer.
This is a refreshing beer.
This is a pool beer.
Repeat the name of it, Tim, soour audience can listen to it
and order more of it.
It is the Gulf.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Coast Blonde.
It has a low enough ABV thatyou won't hook yourself.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Nice Very good.
Well, I'm hooked.
Nice Very good Well, I'm hooked.
I don't have a lot of.
I'm not very good at describingthings other than this beer is
good, so that's what I'm goingto go with.
It's very easy to drink, justlike that last one.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
People appreciate a man, a few words.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah if only that were me this beer has notes of
simplicity and energeticoptimism.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, it's good everyone.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So, diy networking, let's dive deep, let's get nerdy
.
What inspired you to startbuilding your own router or NAS
at home, and how did you getstarted?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
So I got tired of constantly having to upgrade an
off-the-shelf router solutionbecause I kept overloading them.
I guess you know, remember the.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So tell the audience what that means.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean it's traffic right, yeah, I'm about to.
So you remember the old likeLinksys like stackable router
they were like blue and like Ihated they were blue and black.
Yeah, yeah, about to.
So you remember the old likeLinux Linksys like stackable
router they were like blue andlike I hated blue, they were
blue and black, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Isn't there a song about that?
Blue and black, blue on black.
Yeah, blue on black.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So I got to the point where, you know, the hardware
just couldn't keep up with whatI needed to do.
It was limited by.
It had a very, very smallamount of memory like to the
point where it was like 16megabytes of ram.
That's insane.
(25:31):
And this was this was not thatlong ago, maybe 20 years.
I mean by then computers wereat least one or two gigabytes.
The router should have youshould not be bottlenecked by
your most important networkdevice.
You know what I mean.
Um, so anyway, I did someresearch on building a router
and, um, you remember, uh,andrew smith.
He worked with us for, yeah,yeah, but he built the jail here
.
No, that's the other andrew,old andrew smith.
(25:52):
Oh, yeah, other building, okay,but yeah, anyway, he um told me
about this software called pfsense yeah and, um, I had heard
about it, but I hadn't talked toanyone who'd used it, and this
was in 2013.
I had just started here and, uh, I went, did some research.
I went to ebay and I found awatch guard firebox I'm sure you
(26:15):
you've heard the name.
Those yeah, those routerstypically run their own, like
proprietary software.
It's all licensed I don't likethem yeah, but they had the
capability to run pf sense, sobought a used firewall on ebay,
installed it and I've beenrunning it ever since.
Not I've changed physicaldevices over the years, but I've
(26:37):
been using the software andwatched it grow for the last,
you know, 11 years, and it'sjust so flexible, so powerful.
I will never switch unless someother software comes along and
it just blows out of the water.
There's just no reason for meto switch so you're building
these things yourself.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
You're buying used hardware to house them or new
hardware.
Yeah is it?
I just got a new I just got anew one.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
A couple weeks ago I bought uh, so you know the
little tiny computers that wetypically sell, yeah, you know.
So I bought something that'ssimilar to that, like 200 bucks
on amazon.
It's got two, two and a halfgigabit network ports on it one,
one for the internet, one forthe local.
Runs a little intel n100 cpu,16 gigs of ram nothing crazy,
just it's overkill.
(27:20):
For what?
Pfc?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
needs right six watts just sips power doesn't it, you
know, and it's my router now sois there cost savings
associated with this versuspaying?
You know a company thatdevelops their own router well,
it's free.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
It's free, so you, you just, the software is open
source, but you still gotta putit on hardware.
Yeah, yeah, the hardware.
Obviously you know you pay for.
But I mean there are.
I mean, how many?
What's's that Netgear Nighthawkcost Like?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
$300?
.
I mean, those things aren'tcheap either.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's about the same soit's about the same, but you're
according to what you're saying.
You're getting more power andflexibility out of it Way more
usage yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
So tell me about the difference between a commercial
router and a custom-built routerin terms of performance and
flexibility.
Well, I mean, you're definitelygoing to get the support with
the off-the-shelf solution,right?
We sell Fortinets here, right,and Fortinets are great because
the way the firewall rules workis exactly like PFSense, so I
know those just like the back ofmy hand, right.
All rules work, yeah, it'sexactly like pf sense, yeah, so
I know those just like the backof my hand, right?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
um, I think an engineer there that developed,
that was probably going, hey whydon't we just yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's where the name came from.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
They want to make sense out of packet filtering,
right?
Pf sense, right.
That's just the name comes fromyeah, comes from um.
So yeah, with a, you know, witha commercial solution, you're
going to get support, you'regoing to get that kind of stuff.
On a DIY solution, it's all upto you to maintain it and things
like that.
But this particular solutionthat I use has a really great
(28:52):
community, really gooddevelopers.
They're always pushing outsecurity updates.
I've always found that youshouldn't be anti-open source
just because you can't monetizeit.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean I love whenever weget a firewall or, I'm sorry, a
(29:12):
Fortinet we have to install fora client here.
It's always nice because I knowthat they're going to be able
to do the job and I know thosefirewalls really well, oh
they're badass.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Because of my.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
EFSense experience, so yeah, so it's yeah, it's
great.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
So for someone new to diy networking, what are the
first steps to take whenplanning a home-built router or
shared network storage?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
um, pick your your hardware solution.
You know um there are.
You can buy a.
You can buy a pf sense routerlike there is hardware that the
software.
There's a.
The company that that owns thepf sense software is called
netgate.
They make their own hardware aswell.
You don't have to diy it, youcan buy from them right.
So decide if you want to.
(29:55):
You know pay them for theirhardware.
Or you know, choose your ownbased on your use case.
How fast is your internet?
How fast do you want your youknow local devices to own, based
on your use case?
How fast is your internet?
How fast do you want your youknow local devices to be able to
communicate that kind of stuff?
So I would say, start with thehardware, but also make sure
that whatever software solutionyou choose is fully vetted and
(30:17):
you know whether you're going togo with a free solution or a,
you know, subscription-basedsolution.
Whatever.
Just do your research and makesure there's no vulnerabilities
and things like that, or ifthere are, they're fixed.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
I kind of feel like if you're not going to recycle
old hardware and make your ownrouter, you're kind of
half-assing a home lab.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, 100%, especially for the purposes of
home labs.
You can just grab an olddesktop like like dell optiplex
is always is my go-to for people.
They're cheap.
I tell them, hey, go get a delloptiplex, throw in one of those
half height dual nicks, youknow, because they only come
with one network adapter and youneed two when and land.
(30:57):
Yeah, uh, technically you cando it with one if you have a
managed switch and all that, butthat's the whole thing with v
lands.
You can actually do it with oneif you have a managed switch
and all that, but that's thewhole thing.
With vlanes, you can actuallydo it with one, but that's way
too down the rabbit.
Right, it's easier just to plugin two cables.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
So I think talking about research where outside of
the some of the r slash home lab.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
All right, say it again so reddit as I cannot, I
can't.
I love red.
I can't believe I'm saying thisbecause I I've always felt like
reddit is a.
I go on there every day.
I always feel like reddit's acancer personally, but it's,
it's like one of those things.
You, it's not reddit that well,it's not reddit.
That's the problem.
It's usually the, the people,as with anything uh, I was gonna
(31:36):
say that is great, is a greatsolution.
Um, also, as as cliche as thisis gonna sound, google is your
friend.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Dude like you can just find so many resources yeah
, yes, absolutely yeah, I'vefound, I mean shoot, we built
this studio with uh usingyoutube.
Yeah, so, um, you know I didn't.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
These mics are incredible I've watched many a
youtube video on how to spin upa site-to-site vp with PFSense
or whatever, so absolutely.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, actually there's a really charismatic,
cool guy that will show you howto install a Remy Halo bulb in
your air conditioning unit, ifyou can find it on.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'll have to go look at that.
His name is Tim Shute.
I'm pretty sure I've seen thatone.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So what's the biggest mistake you've made in a diy
networking project and what andwhat did you learn from that?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
experience?
Um, great question, and I had I.
This is my go-to.
I always have this answer.
It will always be this.
Um, I decided just on a whim toimplement vlans at home.
I already had the pf senserouter, had all of the I was I
wasn't using unify yet.
I was using hp pro curveswitches at the time.
Um, totally, totally, you know,good solution.
(32:51):
Um, I was using unify accesspoints.
I hadn't gotten the switchesyet because you know they are
not the cheapest of switches andthere's a reason, because
they're amazing.
Um, anyway, I decided to addvlans because I was.
You know, we were, we wereabout to have a son, I was
installing some baby monitoringstuff and, uh, all this other
(33:14):
you know iot stuff at the time,2014 ish, right, okay, I wanted
to add some security, so Iwanted to do vlans.
I knew how to do vlans from aswitching perspective, but I've
never done vlans inside pf sensebecause I've never had a need
to.
Um created the vlan, put allthe config in place, had all the
firewall rules in place andthen plugged everything in the
(33:36):
way that, physically, wasplugged in proper in.
It was plugged in correctly,right, not in incorrectly.
You know I'm saying had it allhooked up right, couldn't get an
IP address to save my life.
Could not pull an IP addressfrom the router and it was just
a simple firewall rule mistakethat I had made, but I'm going
to blame PFSense for this one.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Oh, you got a point of finger, Basically when you
make.
This is what an IT guy does, ohyeah.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It's got a point of finger.
So when you so that basicallywhen you make this is what an it
guy does, yeah, it totally wasmy fault.
The the way that this routerplatform works if you don't give
it access, specifically like ifyou don't tell it it's allowed,
it's blocked, right.
So when I made the firewallrule to allow this vlan to get
online and to work, when youmake a rule in PFSense by
(34:25):
default, it only selects the TCPprotocol, which is not part of
DHCP.
Pulling an IP address, I onlyallowed a TCP, not UDP, not ICMP
for pings, stuff like that.
So I literally handcuffedmyself by just choosing the
wrong pull-down and it is TCP bydefault.
(34:46):
But I should have seen that Ineeded all the protocols, right,
right, and I didn't know.
So why did you what?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
made you do that, made me do what?
What made you make thosechoices when you were doing the?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Oh well, because, like I said, I wanted.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
What's the point to this?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I wanted the VLANs for the security, right, and
when there's a point to this, Iwanted the VLANs for the
security.
And when I made the firewallrule, I didn't read through it
all the way.
I said, oh, they know whatthey're doing, click, click,
click, click, click.
And I didn't read it properly.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
But that sounds all too familiar, I mean, to any
DIYer out there, right?
Yeah, I mean, we've all gonewell.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I don't need it.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I don't need the instructions yeah, I don't, I
don't need the instructions,yeah, I'm gonna do what makes
common sense.
And then common sense doesn'tsolve the problem.
And then you go back to theinstructions and go well, that's
stupid, why would I do that?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
and then you do it and it works.
And you know, I looked at therule and I was like it's
basically, like it's theequivalent of my lawnmower won't
start because it had no gas init.
Yeah, you know, and it was justlike okay I figured you'd have
an electric lawnmower.
I do, but I didn't, but Ididn't.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
You know, I didn't want to go down that road so how
does building and maintainingyour own networking equipment
compare to using off-the-shelfsolutions in terms of learning
and hands-on experience now, wealready got into this.
Yeah, you said you were able tolike, create and have more
power and this and that yeah,but you know, it's sort of like
(36:06):
uh god, I'm about to go supernerdy here.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
But okay, you know the difference between george
lucas star wars and disney starwars, right?
George lucas star wars is good,disney star wars is not.
And that's because george lucascreated it, disney didn't,
right?
So if you just go out and justbuy a off-the-shelf router
platform, you may plug it inproperly, you may get it online
and it may work.
But you're not the one that,like you know, you didn't choose
(36:30):
that specific network cardbecause that card works with
that software, right?
Or this, this specific, youknow speed processor because you
need it for something.
You don't know the ins and outsof it.
When you build your own router,you know.
Or build your own computer, ingeneral, you know it more.
You know what components youchose, the components on purpose
, right?
Yeah, so you just, you're justmore, you're just intimately
familiar with it, as opposed tojust buying something.
(36:50):
Yeah, you know, you're in tune.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah to the end result.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Yep, whereas disney right is churning they don't
understand what made it popularin the first place.
No, they, they just know how tomonetize, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Exactly.
So, before we get into our nextbeer, we're going to end this
segment with what are yourthoughts on the future of home
networking, particularly in thecontext of DIY setups and the
growing importance of dataprivacy?
So data we talked about, uh, uh, baby cams, I mean that's.
(37:28):
That's bigger than data privacy.
That's your children, yeah,that's you know.
So actual, like personal threat.
So, future home networking,context of diy setups and the
growing importance of dataprivacy this is a loaded
question, but there's so manyways you can attack.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Man.
There's so many differentangles to this Number one
builders when they build a newhome, it shouldn't be optional
to install the Ethernet cabling.
In 2024, when a new home isinstalled, it should be required
but you know.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
But what about wi-fi?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
yeah, and and and.
You know, wi-fi is great, butwhat?
What people don't realize, wemay not realize, is that
wireless actually has quite abit of wires in it, right, so
houses need to be wired, justthe same way that, you know,
builders had to start learninghow to run phone cabling right.
(38:28):
In the 50s and 60s, every houseevery you know houses were
getting phones right.
Every house needs to be cat sixat least today.
It just needs to be home run.
None of this?
Speaker 3 (38:38):
yeah, I think so you know and they need.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
they need to have a dedicated panel in a closet,
somewhere that has a patch panelto plug into, and that way they
can at least get a smallnetwork going and they're not
relying on Wi-Fi for everything.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
But they need to think about access point
locations and things like that.
Because I feel like doing thatas an afterthought.
It's so labor-intensive.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Right.
It's so much easier to runcables when the studs are there
and it's not.
There's no drywall and thingslike that.
It should just be part of thebuild right, but wi-fi is so
fast now, colby it can be.
But I'm telling you, like wi-fiI'm going to use quotes wi-fi is
never going to be as fast ashardline it.
Just you know, every timethere's a new wi-fi standard,
there's a new wire standard.
(39:20):
You want to talk?
You know 1.2 gigabit.
On wireless I have 100.
Yeah, I can do 100 gigabitright, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
So I remember a time when I had I can't do 100
gigabit I wish, when I had threedevices on a network yeah and
now I have 60 plus devices, yourtv, your, yeah, freaking smart
watch your.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You know.
Thermostat, your you know.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Everything is wireless now so being able to
being able to what's the wordI'm looking for?
To being able to manage thetraffic that not only not only
travels across your wi-fi butalso your ethernet, and being
able to kind of diversify wherethat traffic is going, um.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, that's where the solution that I use comes in
a lot, because I know a lot ofpeople just aren't technical
right and they just want to plugsomething in and have it work,
and these days that's usuallyhow easy it is, right.
But you can't have convenienceand security.
You got to pick one.
You can do a little bit of ahappy medium, but you can't have
both just full on right.
(40:24):
And people need to educatethemselves.
They just they need to learnhow important it is to, like you
know, segment traffic and notjust have you know one.
You need a guest wi-fi.
When friends come over, youshouldn't be putting them on
your your.
I'm going to use productionwi-fi.
Right, you should have a guestwi-fi.
Yeah, you know, you should havean iot wi-fi for all of your
(40:45):
little smart things.
Most off-the-shelf routersolutions.
They may give you a guest one,but it's just not flexible
enough to be able to secure itproperly.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
That's a perfect segue into our last segment, but
before we're going to talkabout expanding and innovating
in your home lab, before we gointo our rapid fire questions,
before that Edge, we needanother beer.
All right guys.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
So our last beer today is the New Zealand Pilsner
by the crooked stave brewingcompany.
They describe it as a newapproach to a traditional style.
This crisp Pilsner is dryhopped with a Maltu Aca from New
Zealand, resulting in adistinct and refreshing
(41:33):
lemon-lime profile I was goingto say there's definitely some
lemon-lime there.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
New Zealand is definitely on my bucket list to
travel to.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Oh my God dude, if I, like you know me, this one's
good.
We've had this conversationbefore.
I don't fly.
If I could just like teleportto New Zealand, I would.
You know, lord of the Rings isprobably the best film franchise
I've ever seen, and that placeis just incredible.
Some other world.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You said Lord of the Rings isbetter than Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Oh God, that is another show guys.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, we can make the argument either way for the
original trilogy, but Lord ofthe Rings has got to be up there
.
The top three trilogies of alltime, if not number one.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
When I was, in boot camp in the Navy many, many
moons ago.
You have to fill out your dreamsheet and your dream sheet is
your top three locations you'dlike to go to post boot camp.
So I put New Zealand, germanyand Hawaii and they sent me to
Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
I thought you went to Germany or you lived in Germany
.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
No, I lived in Germany for many years when my
dad served in the civil serviceuh, back in the early eighties,
but I had it also on my list.
As an adult they sent me toOklahoma and I said wait a
minute, there's no ocean.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Is there an ocean in Oklahoma?
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, what is the Navy going to do there?
I went to an Air Force base inthe Navy and that's what they
call in the Navy.
If any of you sailors arelistening, that's what they call
skate duty.
Interesting, yeah, skate dutyis when you get the easy, the
easy off because stationed on anair force base.
Let me tell you something.
(43:11):
It's easy, easy peasy.
So, uh, expanding andinnovating in your home lab.
How do you approach documentingyour experiments and projects
in your home lab, and why isthat so important to document?
Oh my god uh, yeah, uh.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
So that's that, you know.
Harkens back to the stuff abouthow things I do at home help me
with stuff I do here.
This is actually the opposite.
You know, we document.
You learned it here yeah, yeahso we document here and I use
not the same solution justbecause I have no need to pay
for all those licenses that weuse for IT glue, but I take the
(43:53):
similar approach where if it'snot in the ticket, it didn't
happen, yeah Right.
So I have just a Word documentI keep up with when I make major
changes and stuff.
But I'm doing all kinds ofstuff.
I use bit warden for mypassword manager.
That's what I use I.
I host it.
I host it myself on my unraid.
(44:14):
Of course you do, because Imean I don't want to, I don't
want to pay for the, the serviceand I.
They allow you to use, theyhave a uh it.
They give you the, the sourcecode, and if you're able to
compile that yourself, then youget all the features for free.
They won't support it becausethey're not selling it to you,
but they have.
(44:34):
They fully are allowing you to.
You know, compile the sourcecode yourself and get everything
.
So I do that.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, you're probably a little less vulnerable too,
because you're not technically atarget.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, I'm not.
You know, I'm not using it inthe cloud like all their
customers are.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
So how do you stay updated with the latest trends
and technologies to incorporateinto your home?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
lab Great question.
We kind of touched on itearlier.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Talked about Reddit, how much you love it and the
people For me it's mostlyYouTube.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
I go to reddit anytime I have a problem that I
can't just fix myself, just tosee if anyone else has it.
I've been doing a lot of redditlately, lately with research on
my frontier because I'minterested in lifting it.
But, uh, youtube, just I.
I watch a lot of tech youtubechannels.
Uh, network chuck um, tomlawrence, I know you know tom um
(45:28):
uh, techno tim is another one.
That's really cool.
I don't know if you have him.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
No, I haven't done that, he's cool.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Um, he's kind of I like his name uh, and then we
were right on, we were right ontop of that one.
Uh, yeah, I, it's youtube forme.
I, I watch a ton of ofinstructional videos and, um,
not even that, just likeinformational videos on new
vulnerabilities or you know new,you know stuff that's out.
And I, yeah, I was the otherday I was watching one.
(45:54):
This guy got a um, he built anew small rack for testing and
he's like, what should I do withthis?
And some guy was like, hey,make a um, make a video on a
whole home audio streamingsolution using this software,
because it's perfect built forwhat he was doing.
And I was like, oh, I haven'theard of that.
It's called mood.
Um, is it E on the end and thesecond O is capital.
I don't know some of thesenames.
(46:15):
Um, it's so weird, um, but it'shosted on a raspberry pie.
And that's not a pastry, folks,that's a little computer about
the size of your phone.
Yeah, you can do a lot withraspberry pi.
And, uh, yeah, so I'm.
I learned it in about an hourand I've got a amplifier plugged
into my digital analogconverter, plugged into my
raspberry pi so I can have musicanywhere I want in the in the
(46:38):
house and using a nice webinterface super cool.
So what are some?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
cost-effective ways to expand your home lab without
breaking the bank yeah um ebay.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Uh, honestly I love you can you can find enterprise
grade hardware that is maybefive years old, that still has
tons of life left on it, forpennies on the dollar compared
to what it when you, when youlook at the cpu that's in there,
right, when it was brand new,that cpu cost twelve hundred
dollars, right, yeah, you pay 12200 for the entire server, you
(47:10):
know, including ram.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
You know hard drive bays, uh, rack rails, all that
stuff, you know so discuss theimportance of failure in the
learning process within a homelab environment the importance
of failure.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, why?
Speaker 1 (47:24):
is it important?
I could talk about this all daylong in terms of running
businesses, because I havefailed more than I've succeeded.
But in a home lab you have tofail, so figure out what is it?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
happy wife, happy life, right?
Um, you know, don't ever messwith the internet.
When, uh, you know, unlessthere was a approved maintenance
window, who?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
turned off the internet exactly so?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
um, yeah, definitely plan your maintenance
accordingly.
Um, don't, just, don't changemore than one thing at a time,
right?
Speaker 3 (47:56):
you know, because then you get confused.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yep, right yeah, don't shotgun a problem, as I
call it.
If you're going to make achange, make one change.
Did it fix it?
Nope, put it back.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, you know how do you manage the physical space
and organization of your homelab setup.
So let's talk about instead oftalking about all the virtual
and the knowledge and theeducation, what about the
physical action?
Speaker 2 (48:18):
setup Physically, housing it?
Yeah, absolutely, ed.
You've been over to my house.
I have a.
Technically, our house is fourbedrooms, but one of those
bedrooms is really an officethat they call a bedroom.
Right, it has a closet, so it'sa bedroom, right.
Um, that room is in the frontof the house and our house faces
West, so it's way too hot inthere, cause the sun just
destroys that room, right.
(48:39):
So I was like this seems like agood place to put a bunch of
expensive equipment.
I put a, I put a dedicated ACunit in there and all that stuff
.
But anyway, um, I got it outthe closet, got rid of the the
you know the shelving stuff andput a rack in there.
So I've got my servers, all mycables run to patch panels, all
my equipment is rack mounted, soit's just sitting in a closet
(49:02):
and I have a cooling solution inthere, just like you would in a
business.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Are your pinball tables in there too?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
They are, it's funny.
So my wife told me I can buy asmany pinball machines as I want
, as long as they fit in oneroom.
I'm only getting one room,right how?
Speaker 1 (49:19):
big is the room?
How many square?
Speaker 2 (49:20):
feet, I don't know, 10 by 14.
Maybe it's a dining room and wedon't ever eat there, so I was
like we don't use this room foranything.
So, uh, that's my pinball room,yeah yeah, that wouldn't fly in
my house.
I'm very, I'm very fortunateman.
I I I'm the luckiest guy in theworld.
I'm telling you wouldn't fly inmy house.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
You need to.
Uh, I I hope, kathleen, I hopeyou listen to this show.
I'm actually downsizing too.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
I I technically have twoleen, I hope you listen to
this show.
I'm actually downsizing too.
I I technically have twomachines right now.
I had four as of like twomonths ago.
I never I wasn't playing twoother ones, so I sold them.
And um, brian farley, emily'shusband, he bought my royal
rumble, okay he's but he's inwashington, so I'm holding it
for him until he can go get it.
But I still have deadpooldeadpool's bolted the floor.
(50:06):
That's not going anywhere, sothat's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I still need to get the black hole.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
That'll be my one, I sent you that I know when you
told me about it.
They're not just.
They're not cheap, though, man,they are expensive that was my
first real joy of yeah, there'sanother one that's the exact
same, called haunted house.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Oh yeah I played that , have you been?
Speaker 3 (50:25):
to uh play the arcade bar in pensacola.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
That's relatively new the grid, or yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's on pace yeah, it's a greatplace.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
They expanded the back room since the last time
I've been there and they have awhole I.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
I have not been there we could do a whole podcast on
all right, we're not gonna talkabout it actually before the
show, we were talking aboutwaxing your pinball, yeah
surface because those balls tearit up.
So yeah, so always keep yourballs waxed.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
There's no other way to put it tim I I yeah I don't
wax my balls, I powder them allright.
Next segment all right yeah, wemay have to cut that part, I
don't know, um, so we're gonnago into our rapid fire.
Oh, that wasn't rapid fire,okay.
(51:16):
No, this is rapid fire.
We're looking for one to oneword, to one sentence answers.
We're gonna shoot through themquick, uh, so are you ready?
Mr colby sullivan?
All right, don't look at myscreen, look straight ahead.
First question favorite os,windows 10.
I, I see you more as a windowsme kind of go.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Oh yeah, emmy was great.
Come on man 98, third edition.
What did it stand for?
Speaker 1 (51:42):
millennium mistake edition.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, yeah, I was not sure.
I thought you were actuallyasking me.
Preferred router PFSense.
All right, I think I knew thatTop protocol Top protocol DHCP,
Because you got to have an IPaddress right.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
We need to give him another beer.
No, I'm good Go-to tool, yourgo-to tool.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Oh, I'm thinking go Go-to tool, your go-to tool.
Oh, I'm thinking go-to like theguy I know what you're saying.
Go-to tool Linus Tech Tips.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Ratcheting screwdriver.
Use it every day.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Yep, you were in here bragging about it one day.
And last but not, least dreamsetup.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
Come on, One sentence Wireless power.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Just no wires, nothing I thought you said
everything needs.
That is a prior.
Nerds on tap show what we talkabout wireless power there you
go, yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Minimalistic.
I, I don't like clutter and I Ican't seem to get it right at
home.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
So, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this
episode of nerds on tap.
I hope we got nerdy enough foryou in this hour and, uh, you
know, if you have any questions,feel free to write into the
show.
I know this episode willprobably prompt several
questions, except especially ifyou're trying to build a diy
(53:09):
home setup or lab at home.
Colby, I'd love to help youguys out.
Totally, yeah, um, do you haveany last words for our audience
here?
Speaker 2 (53:17):
don't for.
Don't be afraid to tinker.
You know um, get in there, getyour hands dirty, break stuff.
That's the only way you'regonna learn thank you, ladies
and gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Thank you, colby, for being on the show.
Thank you, tim edge, for uhserving up some fantastic beers
today.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hopeyou enjoyed the show and, uh,
(53:57):
please join us on our nextepisode, where, uh, we will talk
about something nerdy.
Thank you, I don't know.
With your friends, colleaguesand fellow beer enthusiasts,
let's build a community thatembraces curiosity, innovation
and the enjoyment of a cold one.
Welcome to another insightful episode of Nerds on
Tap, where we talk business andtech and get nerdy for an hour.
This time, we're exploring thefascinating world of home labs
and DIY tech setups.
Whether you're a seasoned ITprofessional or just starting
out, building and experimentingin your own lab environment is
(00:28):
one of the best ways to learnand grow your skills.
Join us and our specialreturning guest, colby Sullivan,
senior Implementations Engineerat Digital Boardwalk, as we
discuss servers, routers, nassetups and more.
Grab your favorite brew andtune in for a fun and
educational episode.
(00:49):
So let's welcome Colby Sullivan, who has over 10 years of
experience at Digital Boardwalk,specializing in deploying
servers, router switches, wi-fi,email migration, sharepoint
deployments and more.
Colby, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thanks for having me guys.
I had a blast the first time.
We talked about some electricvehicle news.
Now we're going to dive intoHome Labs.
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, no, love that segment.
I still go back to that tolisten to some of the stuff
about electric cars.
So we do appreciate you comingon way back when we had
technical difficulties.
Yeah, that was a fun day.
So today we'll be coveringthree segments, including
segment one building homeservers and virtual environments
.
Then we'll move on to DIYnetworking and we'll wrap it up
(01:33):
with how to expand and innovatein your own home lab.
We'll conclude at the end ofeverything with our rapid fire
questions.
But as always, we must beginwith a beer.
Let's go so edge.
What are we drinking?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcometo nerds on tap.
(01:56):
I'm your host, tim shu, and Icouldn't be more excited to
embark on this nerdy adventurewith all of you.
So grab your favorite brew,because things are about to get
exciting.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Three, two, one go.
All right, guys.
So our first beer is theEmerald Coast Ultra Lager by the
brewing company Destin Brewery.
It's a light-bodied lager witha pale golden color, has a
refreshingly crisp taste and aclean, dry finish.
(02:31):
This is the lightest beer theymake, unlike a traditional
Kolsch.
They remove some of the wheatand replace it with rice for a
drier, lighter finish, and thisbeer has also won a platinum
award in 2019 for the WorldBeverage Competition and a
bronze award in 2019 in the NewYork International Beer
(02:52):
Competition.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You want me to go first?
Yeah, go ahead.
The word I'm thinking of withthis is refreshing.
This is a refreshing beer.
It's not heavy at all.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
To me it's a wholesome beer.
It's got those full-bodiednotes in it, so I'm I'm getting
that very flavorful, easy sipperbeer that's very easy to drink
yeah, very easy to drink andit's from destin well, that's
even.
It's from our neck of the woods,so good beer to start the show
(03:27):
with.
Anyway, welcome, ladies andgentlemen.
Let's get moving with our firstsegment.
We're going to talk aboutbuilding home servers and
virtual environments, and thisis something that Colby is very
passionate about, and you know Iwatch you over a digital
boardwalk tinkering all the time.
(03:47):
So very cool to start this showoff.
So what was your firstexperience building a home
server and what challenges didyou face along the way?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh man.
So my first official homeserver was probably back in the
mid-aughts 2005, 2006,.
Using a software, an operatingsystem called Windows Home
Server, which eventually becamesmall business server on the
business side.
Yeah, so I used Home Server torun backups of my desktops at
(04:24):
the house.
It stored some media for me along, long time ago, early days
of sort of tinkering withservers just using standard
desktop hardware but running aserver-based.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
OS home lab now.
I mean, I've been foolingaround with stuff since the 80s,
but my first real home labdidn't come until, I think,
right before right, when I movedto pensacola, probably late 90s
, 98, 99, I started building pcsat home, um, and tinkering
(05:00):
around with different ideas ofmaking gaming cases, because I
don't know if you remember.
But you couldn't buy just acase with a window, you couldn't
get colored cases, you couldn'tget them with windows.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I had to mod my first one and cut the thing out and
put the window on it.
What did you use to cut it?
A Dremel, just cutting wheelRoto-Zip?
Yeah, four or five of them,because those steel cases just
destroyed those, those cuttingwheels.
But yeah, I got, I got throughit.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
I I used a uh roto zip tool.
I would go to pep boys and buyuh window, uh weather stripping
that you would use on a car Iuse that too and I would run it
around the edge and then I woulduh get plexiglass and throw it
on the back and some hot glueyeah, those, those cold cathode
tubes on the inside oh yeah,lights and stuff before they
(05:49):
were expensive.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, before leds, there was cold cathode and they
were great.
They had a toggle switch.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that, that was wired into it.
Yep, and uh, yeah, and thenthey they've obviously used uh,
what's the technology they'reusing for those?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
now led strips strips , yes, just plugged right into
the motherboard, adjustable thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I think that's the first one I remember.
And then, obviously, when I wasstudying for MCSE way back in
the day, I remember doing thathad to learn the administration,
so I had to throw a server inthere, but PCs was building them
, I think was the first thing Idove into.
So for someone new to theconcept, now this this is a
(06:28):
loaded question because I reallywant to dig in with this with
you.
For someone new to the concept,how would you explain the
benefits of setting up a virtualserver environment?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
at home.
Great question For people whoyou know, who want to learn how
to get into different operatingsystems.
For example, there are plentyof people that know the
foundations of networking andcomputing but they may not be
familiar with Linux.
For example, they may get hiredon to a firm that specializes
(07:02):
in Linux servers.
Homeabs are a great way toexperiment with other operating
systems that you're not used to,and Linux is so easy to
virtualize.
It's so lightweight, free forthe most part, so very easy to
experiment with differentoperating systems.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So, being so lightweight, you can pretty much
throw it on an old setup or anold rig.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, in fact laptops actually work really well as a
first home lab server because,if you think about it, they have
the kvm built in.
They've got the keyboard, videoand mouse built in, right.
So like let's say, you know youcan't afford a, you know a rack
style server with its owndedicated slide out monitor,
right, your laptop has it builtin.
(07:42):
It's even got a built-in ups.
It's got a battery built in.
So laptops are great for thatkind of stuff.
You know, throw in a solidstate add some ram.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
You're ready to, ready to go, so okay.
So, before I get into any morequestioning, take us, take us
into that world, I mean yeah soI'm going to take linux.
I'm going to slap it onto alaptop.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Um what am I going to ?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
what do I do next?
Speaker 2 (08:04):
the.
The software that I use to runmy virtualization platform of my
home lab is called Proxmox.
Proxmox has been around foryears.
It's um, it's Linux based.
I I believe it is based onDebian, which is your just sort
of standard.
You know, uh, vanilla Linuxflavor.
Ubuntu is also based on Debian.
(08:26):
Debian is very flexible and Iuse Proxmox to host some
lightweight machines, like I'vegot one that hosts a Windows
machine that I refer to as myjump box.
So basically, if I'm, you know,out and about and I need to log
into my network, or ifsomething's not working, I can
hop into that Windows virtualmachine and then I got access to
the whole network from there,rather than leaving my computer
(08:48):
on all the time, my gaming rigon all the time.
I just have a very lightweightvirtualization host that's 6
watts instead of being 250 TDP.
On my Ryzen rig I run a WindowsVM.
I run a virtual machine thatdoes whole home ad blocking
(09:10):
Every single device on mynetwork phone, tablet, computer,
whatever.
Ads are just not a thing, theyjust don't exist.
It's really cool to go tospeedtestnet and see all the ads
around the speedometer and thenyou enable the ad blocker and
this is not software in thebrowser.
This is something built intothe network infrastructure, okay
, and once you connect to it,you refresh and the ads just
(09:32):
disappear like they're neverthere.
It's awesome, dude.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So is it for the?
Audience here for someone thathas no idea what you're talking
about.
Has no idea what you're talkingabout, so is it?
This is on a machine betweenthe internet and all the devices
that are connected to your landexactly so.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
So the internet comes in.
I've got at&t fiber.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Um, I know you're you're looking forward to
getting that well I'm excited Isee that the cables are poking
out of the ground right now inour neighborhood, so I've got
at&t fiber.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I use their, their modem, right, I plug my, my
firewall that I have purposebuilt, you know I, I we can get
into the software on there, butI have my firewall and then I
have my switches and all thatand my, my virtualization server
is plugged into those switchesin my rack.
So it, you're right, the serversits between my devices and the
(10:22):
internet, so all of that stuffis filtered through that for ad
blocking and things like that.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So are you using Linux to host Microsoft Windows
environments?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, so Proxmox is Linux-based and I'm running a
Windows VM on that, just as myjump box.
Like I said, it's sort of likea lightweight terminal server.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Easy to administer.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, because if I need to get into, if I need to
log into something, pull upchrome.
I've got a dashboard that hasicons, quick icons to all my
stuff that I would need homelabs are.
I'm sorry.
Dashboards are very popularwith home labs because a lot of
home labs have a lot ofdifferent things and you know,
ain't nobody got time toremember all these bookmarks and
(11:03):
all that stuff.
So you want a nice likefront-end interface that just
shows you icons here's yourrouter, here's your switches,
here's your ad blocking and ittakes you where you need to go.
So it's sort of like my uh sois it?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
lay it out in kind of a uh infrastructure diagram,
flow chart.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
You can do it that way, or you can just say here's,
here's a button to go there,yeah, so sort of just like on
your phone, your app are justshortcuts, that's all it is.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, that's pretty sweet.
It makes it a lot easier so youcan track down any device on
your network pretty quickly bydoing that, if you've got IoT
stuff out there.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
I'm using the cameras , I'm using all the UniFi stack
Other than the router.
Everything in my network isUniFi Switches, access points,
points, cloud key, all thatstuff, all the same stuff we use
here, yeah, you know, for ourclients.
I mean, I've been, I've beenusing, yeah, unify, for before
we started using, so, all yourcameras, I actually don't have
any, um, I have, uh, the nestcameras because I've got their
(11:56):
doorbell and everything youalready had yeah I don't have
any of the unify cameras yeah,good I've used them yeah and,
and they work
Speaker 1 (12:03):
yeah, we use them so that's cool, they they work
pretty well.
So what are some commonmistakes people make when
building their first home serverand and how how can those
mistakes be avoided?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
yeah, um, so number one raid is not a backup.
So uh, ask me how I know, butit is.
Yeah, come on, we can mirrorthe data.
Right, but what happens whenthe data?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Just go RAID 1.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, what happens when the data itself is bad and
it's like well, sure, right.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
The bad data.
You still got to haveredundancy outside of the RAID.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So I learned the hard way that we definitely need,
you know, you definitely needoffsite backups.
I have a solution for that.
That's really cool.
A friend of mine has a similartype setup as me and we have a
connection between our networksand we use a portion of our
network attached storage asoffsite backups for the other
person, which is cool.
(13:00):
So it's scheduled, it just runsand you know, sends it over the
internet.
He lives in Pennsylvaniasomewhere, you know.
So it's scheduled, it just runsand you know sends it over the
internet.
He lives in Pennsylvaniasomewhere, you know.
So I I back up his stuff, hebacks up mine.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Works out for both of us, any other, any other
mistakes that you've made overthe years?
Yeah, I mean don't.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So if you're interested in getting into home
labbing, I mean it basicallyjust a home network that is
built around, you know, businessgrade or enterprise grade
hardware for the purposes oftinkering or automation.
Virtual you know virtualizationthat kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So is this?
This isn't a production network.
This is a network that'sisolated.
It is Okay.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, so like.
So I definitely do have aproduction network where you
know, tablets, desktops, laptopsall the stuff we have at our
house runs on that.
But I absolutely do have an IoTnetwork and that's the next
thing I was going to get into.
Number one, when you'restarting off, you don't have to
go crazy with the hardware,start small, get an old laptop,
(14:05):
don't just go to eBay and justpurchase a $7,000.
But because it's all scalable,right, you can just upgrade
whenever you want.
But as far as the, the networksegmentation goes, all of my
like amazon echoes and all myautomation stuff, as far as
lighting or anything that playsmusic or does some kind of like
smart home feature, is all inits own separate vlan or virtual
land so it cannot communicatewith my production network.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I can get to it, but it can't get to me right and can
you tell me, like, why you haveit separated like that?
Speaker 2 (14:33):
yeah, for sure.
So, uh, I spoke about the neststuff earlier.
So my nest thermostat, um, thatjust is on my, my wi-fi network
, the, the IoT Wi-Fi.
So if Nest gets compromisedright and someone gets access to
my thermostat, if it were onthe production network they
could theoretically get toeverything right Because it is
(14:54):
on its own isolated network.
Iot means Internet of Things,like a bunch of devices, because
it's isolated.
Even if that were to getcompromised, they would only
have access to that.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Just to the thermostat so they could heat or
cool you, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Anything that's cloud-facing I have isolated.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
You know, it's interesting that you bring that
up, because a lot of folks outthere use baby cams.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
And those are compromised all the time, oh
yeah.
Compromised all the timeBecause people don't know how to
keep up with firmware updatesand security and all that stuff
you know and they're watchingthat room that the baby's in so
they're learning more about andthey're listening yeah, so it's
scary.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So how has building and maintaining a home server
impacted your understanding ofenterprise level server
environments?
Like immense, obviously,immensely.
I mean, this is kind of a, it'snot kind of a dumb question.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Great question, actually, because, like I can
you know, I can test a lot ofstuff on my own right Before it
may even be a super popularthing in the enterprise.
And, for example, unify.
I started using unify longbefore we used it here and I
mentioned it to you and wevetted the product, you know,
(16:10):
when it was ready for us to useas a business, we started using
it Right.
So I've been able to apply mytinkering knowledge to stuff at
Digital Boardwalk all the time.
I mean, there's so many timeswhen I've been messing with a
virtual machine or something oranything and a weird error comes
up and I would not have everseen that in any other context,
(16:32):
right.
And then it happens here andsomeone's like what is this?
And I'm like, oh, that's easy,hit this done, fix, cause I've
seen it before, because you'veseen it.
Yeah, and it's just cause I havea passion for all these
learning and seeing how thingswork and just you know, messing
around.
I mean you can't be afraid tobreak stuff.
That's another thing.
You mentioned mistakes earlier.
You cannot be afraid to breakstuff.
That's the whole point of this.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, colby, how long have you been at digital
boardwalk?
This is my 11th year, 11 years,and and you know it's
interesting that you say thatbecause obviously, sticking
around at Digital Boardwalk, oneof the things that we've
noticed with you is you have apassion, and we know that you
(17:12):
tinker outside of work, becauseyou wouldn't know all the things
that you know without doingthat.
So this isn't a scriptedquestion, I'm ad-libbing here
Okay this isn't a scriptedquestion.
I'm ad-libbing here, okay, butwhat would you tell our audience
that wants to get in it?
You know how important it is tohave a home lab growing up,
(17:33):
well before you're planning togo professional with your career
, like just um, I've always beenone of those people that
believes in cross-training.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Specializations are great, right, yeah, they're
great.
But I've been in situationsbefore where something is broken
and the guy or the gal whoknows this thing inside and out
that's their whole job isn'tavailable, right yeah, I've
always believed in the jack ofall trades.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I don't want to wait yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, I don't want the labor pains, I just want the
baby.
You know what I mean.
So I've always believed in justbroadening all of your
abilities.
So I mean I do specialize innetwork infrastructure, servers,
that kind of stuff, networkinfrastructure servers, that
kind of stuff.
But I mean I also have messedaround a little bit with you
(18:27):
know, uh, creating dockercontainers and you know things
like that.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
so I I've done, I've I've done a lot yeah, I, you
know that hits home for mebecause I don't like to wait
either.
I mean, I know if, for instance, on a vehicle, I I just put
brand new speed sensors in my,in all my wheels on my jeep, and
jack that thing up and rip, ripsome stuff apart and redid it
all because I didn't want towait and I I'm not a mechanic.
(18:53):
Yeah, that's funny that youmade it.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I'm looking into doing like a slight lift on my,
on my pickup truck.
Yeah, so I've been.
It's pretty straight so I'vebeen when I you need to go four
inches if you're going when Iget when I I was thinking two
and a half, two and a half whenI I'm joking my uh, one of my
brother and brothers-in-law hasa six inch lift on his truck and
it's like bro now it's no, it'snot sway, yeah, um, we're
(19:17):
getting off topic ladies andgentlemen, sorry, um, because
this show's all about gettingnerdy and it doesn't matter what
we get nerdy with, we just getnerdy.
This is good, this is reallygood.
I like this.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
You like that.
Well, I can get you a whole canof it after the show oh, cool
Okay.
We don't want you to get too.
I see you've got that look inyour eyes, so I don't want
exactly what someone who's notfine would say so all right.
So share a specific examplewhere your home server setup
(19:49):
helped you solve a real worldproblem.
Now you kind of led into it.
A minute ago you said it helpsyou every day up at Digital
Boardwalk because it's somethingyou already encountered at home
, so that would be a good yeah,something you already
encountered at home.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
So that would be a good yeah.
So I use, I use Plex to playall of my media.
Yeah, right, you know I rip abunch of Blu-rays or have a
bunch of music that I've, youknow, accumulated over the years
without getting super technical.
There was a exploit orvulnerability and one of the
(20:26):
like older plex versions, right?
Um, my setup is done in such away that it automatically
updates itself anyway.
But even if I hadn't, Imanually applied this fix via my
pf, since router that 99 ofrouters out there wouldn't have
been able to do, right.
So, um, basically, there's a uh, there's a plugin or a package
(20:49):
that I have installed on myrouter that allows me to limit
connectivity based ongeolocation, right?
So, even if I have a port open,like, let's say, I wanted to,
host.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That is the nerdiest thing I think I've ever heard on
this show.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
So even if I wanted to host a website, right, I
could allow.
I could allow it.
So only us people could get in,not other countries, that kind
of stuff.
So I sort of hardened my plexserver by blocking other
countries from being able toconnect to it before the
vulnerability would have takeneffect.
Yeah, Right, that makes senseso yeah, all right, I told you
(21:28):
I'm not a normal person.
I totally acknowledge that.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
With this kind of stuff, so, before we end this
segment, one more question.
What are the key factors toconsider when deciding whether
to build a physical server orset up a virtual one?
In the cloud, like what?
What is going to make me wantto go virtual versus going
physical?
So, besides the obvious, whichis cost these well?
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I would argue there is no argument.
There is no pro physical serverargument anymore, ever, because
computers, servers, whateveryou know desktop computer, even
you know desktop computer, evenyou know laptops even if they're
three or four years old, theyare still so much more powerful
than what installing oneoperating system can do.
(22:14):
In other words, you're you'releaving hardware on the table by
not virtualizing.
Right.
Right, a laptop can easily runeight linux vms like in its
sleep to do specific things.
So it may not be the answer youwere looking for, but to me the
answer is always to virtualize.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I think that's exactly the answer I was looking
for, because, you know, when we, for instance, when Digital
Warwalk was starting back in2009, 2010, it was all about
physical, physical, physical.
Everything was still.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I mean back, I mean we're talking 15 years ago, I
remember taking servers out to aplace and all they do is host
files.
And now, what do we do?
Yeah, it's all VMs.
If we're not doing a virtualmachine.
It's like what's going on here?
Or consolidate, because we'restill running into physical
servers, Even if it is even ifyou're not breaking up the
hardware and you are justrunning one virtual machine,
it's infinitely easier tomigrate a virtual machine than
(23:07):
it is a physical machine.
It's infinitely easier, Well,back up as well.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I'm going to use that as a segue into the second
segment.
We're going to talk routers,nas and SANs, but before we do,
let's grab another beer Edge.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
All right, guys.
So our next beer is the GulfCoast Bl blonde from the brewery
docks hop shop in pensacola,florida.
They described this beer as abeach beer, a fishing beer and a
backyard beer.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
I mean, that's even the idea more refreshing than
that one I've had this beerseveral times before and it is
totally that this is a boat beer.
This is totally that this is aboat beer.
This is a refreshing beer.
This is a pool beer.
Repeat the name of it, Tim, soour audience can listen to it
and order more of it.
It is the Gulf.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Coast Blonde.
It has a low enough ABV thatyou won't hook yourself.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Nice Very good.
Well, I'm hooked.
Nice Very good Well, I'm hooked.
I don't have a lot of.
I'm not very good at describingthings other than this beer is
good, so that's what I'm goingto go with.
It's very easy to drink, justlike that last one.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
People appreciate a man, a few words.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah if only that were me this beer has notes of
simplicity and energeticoptimism.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, it's good everyone.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So, diy networking, let's dive deep, let's get nerdy
.
What inspired you to startbuilding your own router or NAS
at home, and how did you getstarted?
Speaker 2 (24:42):
So I got tired of constantly having to upgrade an
off-the-shelf router solutionbecause I kept overloading them.
I guess you know, remember the.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So tell the audience what that means.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean it's traffic right, yeah, I'm about to.
So you remember the old likeLinksys like stackable router
they were like blue and like Ihated they were blue and black.
Yeah, yeah, about to.
So you remember the old likeLinux Linksys like stackable
router they were like blue andlike I hated blue, they were
blue and black, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Isn't there a song about that?
Blue and black, blue on black.
Yeah, blue on black.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So I got to the point where, you know, the hardware
just couldn't keep up with whatI needed to do.
It was limited by.
It had a very, very smallamount of memory like to the
point where it was like 16megabytes of ram.
That's insane.
(25:31):
And this was this was not thatlong ago, maybe 20 years.
I mean by then computers wereat least one or two gigabytes.
The router should have youshould not be bottlenecked by
your most important networkdevice.
You know what I mean.
Um, so anyway, I did someresearch on building a router
and, um, you remember, uh,andrew smith.
He worked with us for, yeah,yeah, but he built the jail here
.
No, that's the other andrew,old andrew smith.
(25:52):
Oh, yeah, other building, okay,but yeah, anyway, he um told me
about this software called pfsense yeah and, um, I had heard
about it, but I hadn't talked toanyone who'd used it, and this
was in 2013.
I had just started here and, uh, I went, did some research.
I went to ebay and I found awatch guard firebox I'm sure you
(26:15):
you've heard the name.
Those yeah, those routerstypically run their own, like
proprietary software.
It's all licensed I don't likethem yeah, but they had the
capability to run pf sense, sobought a used firewall on ebay,
installed it and I've beenrunning it ever since.
Not I've changed physicaldevices over the years, but I've
(26:37):
been using the software andwatched it grow for the last,
you know, 11 years, and it'sjust so flexible, so powerful.
I will never switch unless someother software comes along and
it just blows out of the water.
There's just no reason for meto switch so you're building
these things yourself.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
You're buying used hardware to house them or new
hardware.
Yeah is it?
I just got a new I just got anew one.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
A couple weeks ago I bought uh, so you know the
little tiny computers that wetypically sell, yeah, you know.
So I bought something that'ssimilar to that, like 200 bucks
on amazon.
It's got two, two and a halfgigabit network ports on it one,
one for the internet, one forthe local.
Runs a little intel n100 cpu,16 gigs of ram nothing crazy,
just it's overkill.
(27:20):
For what?
Pfc?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
needs right six watts just sips power doesn't it, you
know, and it's my router now sois there cost savings
associated with this versuspaying?
You know a company thatdevelops their own router well,
it's free.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
It's free, so you, you just, the software is open
source, but you still gotta putit on hardware.
Yeah, yeah, the hardware.
Obviously you know you pay for.
But I mean there are.
I mean, how many?
What's's that Netgear Nighthawkcost Like?
Speaker 1 (27:45):
$300?
.
I mean, those things aren'tcheap either.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's about the same soit's about the same, but you're
according to what you're saying.
You're getting more power andflexibility out of it Way more
usage yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
So tell me about the difference between a commercial
router and a custom-built routerin terms of performance and
flexibility.
Well, I mean, you're definitelygoing to get the support with
the off-the-shelf solution,right?
We sell Fortinets here, right,and Fortinets are great because
the way the firewall rules workis exactly like PFSense, so I
know those just like the back ofmy hand, right.
All rules work, yeah, it'sexactly like pf sense, yeah, so
I know those just like the backof my hand, right?
Speaker 1 (28:25):
um, I think an engineer there that developed,
that was probably going, hey whydon't we just yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's where the name came from.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
They want to make sense out of packet filtering,
right?
Pf sense, right.
That's just the name comes fromyeah, comes from um.
So yeah, with a, you know, witha commercial solution, you're
going to get support, you'regoing to get that kind of stuff.
On a DIY solution, it's all upto you to maintain it and things
like that.
But this particular solutionthat I use has a really great
(28:52):
community, really gooddevelopers.
They're always pushing outsecurity updates.
I've always found that youshouldn't be anti-open source
just because you can't monetizeit.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean I love whenever weget a firewall or, I'm sorry, a
(29:12):
Fortinet we have to install fora client here.
It's always nice because I knowthat they're going to be able
to do the job and I know thosefirewalls really well, oh
they're badass.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Because of my.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
EFSense experience, so yeah, so it's yeah, it's
great.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
So for someone new to diy networking, what are the
first steps to take whenplanning a home-built router or
shared network storage?
Speaker 2 (29:34):
um, pick your your hardware solution.
You know um there are.
You can buy a.
You can buy a pf sense routerlike there is hardware that the
software.
There's a.
The company that that owns thepf sense software is called
netgate.
They make their own hardware aswell.
You don't have to diy it, youcan buy from them right.
So decide if you want to.
(29:55):
You know pay them for theirhardware.
Or you know, choose your ownbased on your use case.
How fast is your internet?
How fast do you want your youknow local devices to own, based
on your use case?
How fast is your internet?
How fast do you want your youknow local devices to be able to
communicate that kind of stuff?
So I would say, start with thehardware, but also make sure
that whatever software solutionyou choose is fully vetted and
(30:17):
you know whether you're going togo with a free solution or a,
you know, subscription-basedsolution.
Whatever.
Just do your research and makesure there's no vulnerabilities
and things like that, or ifthere are, they're fixed.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
I kind of feel like if you're not going to recycle
old hardware and make your ownrouter, you're kind of
half-assing a home lab.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, 100%, especially for the purposes of
home labs.
You can just grab an olddesktop like like dell optiplex
is always is my go-to for people.
They're cheap.
I tell them, hey, go get a delloptiplex, throw in one of those
half height dual nicks, youknow, because they only come
with one network adapter and youneed two when and land.
(30:57):
Yeah, uh, technically you cando it with one if you have a
managed switch and all that, butthat's the whole thing with v
lands.
You can actually do it with oneif you have a managed switch
and all that, but that's thewhole thing.
With vlanes, you can actuallydo it with one, but that's way
too down the rabbit.
Right, it's easier just to plugin two cables.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
So I think talking about research where outside of
the some of the r slash home lab.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
All right, say it again so reddit as I cannot, I
can't.
I love red.
I can't believe I'm saying thisbecause I I've always felt like
reddit is a.
I go on there every day.
I always feel like reddit's acancer personally, but it's,
it's like one of those things.
You, it's not reddit that well,it's not reddit.
That's the problem.
It's usually the, the people,as with anything uh, I was gonna
(31:36):
say that is great, is a greatsolution.
Um, also, as as cliche as thisis gonna sound, google is your
friend.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Dude like you can just find so many resources yeah
, yes, absolutely yeah, I'vefound, I mean shoot, we built
this studio with uh usingyoutube.
Yeah, so, um, you know I didn't.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
These mics are incredible I've watched many a
youtube video on how to spin upa site-to-site vp with PFSense
or whatever, so absolutely.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Yeah, actually there's a really charismatic,
cool guy that will show you howto install a Remy Halo bulb in
your air conditioning unit, ifyou can find it on.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, I'll have to go look at that.
His name is Tim Shute.
I'm pretty sure I've seen thatone.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
So what's the biggest mistake you've made in a diy
networking project and what andwhat did you learn from that?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
experience?
Um, great question, and I had I.
This is my go-to.
I always have this answer.
It will always be this.
Um, I decided just on a whim toimplement vlans at home.
I already had the pf senserouter, had all of the I was I
wasn't using unify yet.
I was using hp pro curveswitches at the time.
Um, totally, totally, you know,good solution.
(32:51):
Um, I was using unify accesspoints.
I hadn't gotten the switchesyet because you know they are
not the cheapest of switches andthere's a reason, because
they're amazing.
Um, anyway, I decided to addvlans because I was.
You know, we were, we wereabout to have a son, I was
installing some baby monitoringstuff and, uh, all this other
(33:14):
you know iot stuff at the time,2014 ish, right, okay, I wanted
to add some security, so Iwanted to do vlans.
I knew how to do vlans from aswitching perspective, but I've
never done vlans inside pf sensebecause I've never had a need
to.
Um created the vlan, put allthe config in place, had all the
firewall rules in place andthen plugged everything in the
(33:36):
way that, physically, wasplugged in proper in.
It was plugged in correctly,right, not in incorrectly.
You know I'm saying had it allhooked up right, couldn't get an
IP address to save my life.
Could not pull an IP addressfrom the router and it was just
a simple firewall rule mistakethat I had made, but I'm going
to blame PFSense for this one.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Oh, you got a point of finger, Basically when you
make.
This is what an IT guy does, ohyeah.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It's got a point of finger.
So when you so that basicallywhen you make this is what an it
guy does, yeah, it totally wasmy fault.
The the way that this routerplatform works if you don't give
it access, specifically like ifyou don't tell it it's allowed,
it's blocked, right.
So when I made the firewallrule to allow this vlan to get
online and to work, when youmake a rule in PFSense by
(34:25):
default, it only selects the TCPprotocol, which is not part of
DHCP.
Pulling an IP address, I onlyallowed a TCP, not UDP, not ICMP
for pings, stuff like that.
So I literally handcuffedmyself by just choosing the
wrong pull-down and it is TCP bydefault.
(34:46):
But I should have seen that Ineeded all the protocols, right,
right, and I didn't know.
So why did you what?
Speaker 1 (34:52):
made you do that, made me do what?
What made you make thosechoices when you were doing the?
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Oh well, because, like I said, I wanted.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
What's the point to this?
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I wanted the VLANs for the security, right, and
when there's a point to this, Iwanted the VLANs for the
security.
And when I made the firewallrule, I didn't read through it
all the way.
I said, oh, they know whatthey're doing, click, click,
click, click, click.
And I didn't read it properly.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
But that sounds all too familiar, I mean, to any
DIYer out there, right?
Yeah, I mean, we've all gonewell.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I don't need it.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I don't need the instructions yeah, I don't, I
don't need the instructions,yeah, I'm gonna do what makes
common sense.
And then common sense doesn'tsolve the problem.
And then you go back to theinstructions and go well, that's
stupid, why would I do that?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
and then you do it and it works.
And you know, I looked at therule and I was like it's
basically, like it's theequivalent of my lawnmower won't
start because it had no gas init.
Yeah, you know, and it was justlike okay I figured you'd have
an electric lawnmower.
I do, but I didn't, but Ididn't.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
You know, I didn't want to go down that road so how
does building and maintainingyour own networking equipment
compare to using off-the-shelfsolutions in terms of learning
and hands-on experience now, wealready got into this.
Yeah, you said you were able tolike, create and have more
power and this and that yeah,but you know, it's sort of like
(36:06):
uh god, I'm about to go supernerdy here.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
But okay, you know the difference between george
lucas star wars and disney starwars, right?
George lucas star wars is good,disney star wars is not.
And that's because george lucascreated it, disney didn't,
right?
So if you just go out and justbuy a off-the-shelf router
platform, you may plug it inproperly, you may get it online
and it may work.
But you're not the one that,like you know, you didn't choose
(36:30):
that specific network cardbecause that card works with
that software, right?
Or this, this specific, youknow speed processor because you
need it for something.
You don't know the ins and outsof it.
When you build your own router,you know.
Or build your own computer, ingeneral, you know it more.
You know what components youchose, the components on purpose
, right?
Yeah, so you just, you're justmore, you're just intimately
familiar with it, as opposed tojust buying something.
(36:50):
Yeah, you know, you're in tune.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah to the end result.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Yep, whereas disney right is churning they don't
understand what made it popularin the first place.
No, they, they just know how tomonetize, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Exactly.
So, before we get into our nextbeer, we're going to end this
segment with what are yourthoughts on the future of home
networking, particularly in thecontext of DIY setups and the
growing importance of dataprivacy?
So data we talked about, uh, uh, baby cams, I mean that's.
(37:28):
That's bigger than data privacy.
That's your children, yeah,that's you know.
So actual, like personal threat.
So, future home networking,context of diy setups and the
growing importance of dataprivacy this is a loaded
question, but there's so manyways you can attack.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Man.
There's so many differentangles to this Number one
builders when they build a newhome, it shouldn't be optional
to install the Ethernet cabling.
In 2024, when a new home isinstalled, it should be required
but you know.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
But what about wi-fi?
Speaker 2 (38:08):
yeah, and and and.
You know, wi-fi is great, butwhat?
What people don't realize, wemay not realize, is that
wireless actually has quite abit of wires in it, right, so
houses need to be wired, justthe same way that, you know,
builders had to start learninghow to run phone cabling right.
(38:28):
In the 50s and 60s, every houseevery you know houses were
getting phones right.
Every house needs to be cat sixat least today.
It just needs to be home run.
None of this?
Speaker 3 (38:38):
yeah, I think so you know and they need.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
they need to have a dedicated panel in a closet,
somewhere that has a patch panelto plug into, and that way they
can at least get a smallnetwork going and they're not
relying on Wi-Fi for everything.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
But they need to think about access point
locations and things like that.
Because I feel like doing thatas an afterthought.
It's so labor-intensive.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Right.
It's so much easier to runcables when the studs are there
and it's not.
There's no drywall and thingslike that.
It should just be part of thebuild right, but wi-fi is so
fast now, colby it can be.
But I'm telling you, like wi-fiI'm going to use quotes wi-fi is
never going to be as fast ashardline it.
Just you know, every timethere's a new wi-fi standard,
there's a new wire standard.
(39:20):
You want to talk?
You know 1.2 gigabit.
On wireless I have 100.
Yeah, I can do 100 gigabitright, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
So I remember a time when I had I can't do 100
gigabit I wish, when I had threedevices on a network yeah and
now I have 60 plus devices, yourtv, your, yeah, freaking smart
watch your.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You know.
Thermostat, your you know.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Everything is wireless now so being able to
being able to what's the wordI'm looking for?
To being able to manage thetraffic that not only not only
travels across your wi-fi butalso your ethernet, and being
able to kind of diversify wherethat traffic is going, um.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah, that's where the solution that I use comes in
a lot, because I know a lot ofpeople just aren't technical
right and they just want to plugsomething in and have it work,
and these days that's usuallyhow easy it is, right.
But you can't have convenienceand security.
You got to pick one.
You can do a little bit of ahappy medium, but you can't have
both just full on right.
(40:24):
And people need to educatethemselves.
They just they need to learnhow important it is to, like you
know, segment traffic and notjust have you know one.
You need a guest wi-fi.
When friends come over, youshouldn't be putting them on
your your.
I'm going to use productionwi-fi.
Right, you should have a guestwi-fi.
Yeah, you know, you should havean iot wi-fi for all of your
(40:45):
little smart things.
Most off-the-shelf routersolutions.
They may give you a guest one,but it's just not flexible
enough to be able to secure itproperly.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
That's a perfect segue into our last segment, but
before we're going to talkabout expanding and innovating
in your home lab, before we gointo our rapid fire questions,
before that Edge, we needanother beer.
All right guys.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
So our last beer today is the New Zealand Pilsner
by the crooked stave brewingcompany.
They describe it as a newapproach to a traditional style.
This crisp Pilsner is dryhopped with a Maltu Aca from New
Zealand, resulting in adistinct and refreshing
(41:33):
lemon-lime profile I was goingto say there's definitely some
lemon-lime there.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
New Zealand is definitely on my bucket list to
travel to.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Oh my God dude, if I, like you know me, this one's
good.
We've had this conversationbefore.
I don't fly.
If I could just like teleportto New Zealand, I would.
You know, lord of the Rings isprobably the best film franchise
I've ever seen, and that placeis just incredible.
Some other world.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You said Lord of the Rings isbetter than Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Oh God, that is another show guys.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, we can make the argument either way for the
original trilogy, but Lord ofthe Rings has got to be up there
.
The top three trilogies of alltime, if not number one.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
When I was, in boot camp in the Navy many, many
moons ago.
You have to fill out your dreamsheet and your dream sheet is
your top three locations you'dlike to go to post boot camp.
So I put New Zealand, germanyand Hawaii and they sent me to
Oklahoma.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
I thought you went to Germany or you lived in Germany
.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
No, I lived in Germany for many years when my
dad served in the civil serviceuh, back in the early eighties,
but I had it also on my list.
As an adult they sent me toOklahoma and I said wait a
minute, there's no ocean.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Is there an ocean in Oklahoma?
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, what is the Navy going to do there?
I went to an Air Force base inthe Navy and that's what they
call in the Navy.
If any of you sailors arelistening, that's what they call
skate duty.
Interesting, yeah, skate dutyis when you get the easy, the
easy off because stationed on anair force base.
Let me tell you something.
(43:11):
It's easy, easy peasy.
So, uh, expanding andinnovating in your home lab.
How do you approach documentingyour experiments and projects
in your home lab, and why isthat so important to document?
Oh my god uh, yeah, uh.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
So that's that, you know.
Harkens back to the stuff abouthow things I do at home help me
with stuff I do here.
This is actually the opposite.
You know, we document.
You learned it here yeah, yeahso we document here and I use
not the same solution justbecause I have no need to pay
for all those licenses that weuse for IT glue, but I take the
(43:53):
similar approach where if it'snot in the ticket, it didn't
happen, yeah Right.
So I have just a Word documentI keep up with when I make major
changes and stuff.
But I'm doing all kinds ofstuff.
I use bit warden for mypassword manager.
That's what I use I.
I host it.
I host it myself on my unraid.
(44:14):
Of course you do, because Imean I don't want to, I don't
want to pay for the, the serviceand I.
They allow you to use, theyhave a uh it.
They give you the, the sourcecode, and if you're able to
compile that yourself, then youget all the features for free.
They won't support it becausethey're not selling it to you,
but they have.
(44:34):
They fully are allowing you to.
You know, compile the sourcecode yourself and get everything
.
So I do that.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, you're probably a little less vulnerable too,
because you're not technically atarget.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, I'm not.
You know, I'm not using it inthe cloud like all their
customers are.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
So how do you stay updated with the latest trends
and technologies to incorporateinto your home?
Speaker 2 (44:58):
lab Great question.
We kind of touched on itearlier.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
Talked about Reddit, how much you love it and the
people For me it's mostlyYouTube.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
I go to reddit anytime I have a problem that I
can't just fix myself, just tosee if anyone else has it.
I've been doing a lot of redditlately, lately with research on
my frontier because I'minterested in lifting it.
But, uh, youtube, just I.
I watch a lot of tech youtubechannels.
Uh, network chuck um, tomlawrence, I know you know tom um
(45:28):
uh, techno tim is another one.
That's really cool.
I don't know if you have him.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
No, I haven't done that, he's cool.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Um, he's kind of I like his name uh, and then we
were right on, we were right ontop of that one.
Uh, yeah, I, it's youtube forme.
I, I watch a ton of ofinstructional videos and, um,
not even that, just likeinformational videos on new
vulnerabilities or you know new,you know stuff that's out.
And I, yeah, I was the otherday I was watching one.
(45:54):
This guy got a um, he built anew small rack for testing and
he's like, what should I do withthis?
And some guy was like, hey,make a um, make a video on a
whole home audio streamingsolution using this software,
because it's perfect built forwhat he was doing.
And I was like, oh, I haven'theard of that.
It's called mood.
Um, is it E on the end and thesecond O is capital.
I don't know some of thesenames.
(46:15):
Um, it's so weird, um, but it'shosted on a raspberry pie.
And that's not a pastry, folks,that's a little computer about
the size of your phone.
Yeah, you can do a lot withraspberry pi.
And, uh, yeah, so I'm.
I learned it in about an hourand I've got a amplifier plugged
into my digital analogconverter, plugged into my
raspberry pi so I can have musicanywhere I want in the in the
(46:38):
house and using a nice webinterface super cool.
So what are some?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
cost-effective ways to expand your home lab without
breaking the bank yeah um ebay.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Uh, honestly I love you can you can find enterprise
grade hardware that is maybefive years old, that still has
tons of life left on it, forpennies on the dollar compared
to what it when you, when youlook at the cpu that's in there,
right, when it was brand new,that cpu cost twelve hundred
dollars, right, yeah, you pay 12200 for the entire server, you
(47:10):
know, including ram.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
You know hard drive bays, uh, rack rails, all that
stuff, you know so discuss theimportance of failure in the
learning process within a homelab environment the importance
of failure.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, why?
Speaker 1 (47:24):
is it important?
I could talk about this all daylong in terms of running
businesses, because I havefailed more than I've succeeded.
But in a home lab you have tofail, so figure out what is it?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
happy wife, happy life, right?
Um, you know, don't ever messwith the internet.
When, uh, you know, unlessthere was a approved maintenance
window, who?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
turned off the internet exactly so?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
um, yeah, definitely plan your maintenance
accordingly.
Um, don't, just, don't changemore than one thing at a time,
right?
Speaker 3 (47:56):
you know, because then you get confused.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yep, right yeah, don't shotgun a problem, as I
call it.
If you're going to make achange, make one change.
Did it fix it?
Nope, put it back.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, you know how do you manage the physical space
and organization of your homelab setup.
So let's talk about instead oftalking about all the virtual
and the knowledge and theeducation, what about the
physical action?
Speaker 2 (48:18):
setup Physically, housing it?
Yeah, absolutely, ed.
You've been over to my house.
I have a.
Technically, our house is fourbedrooms, but one of those
bedrooms is really an officethat they call a bedroom.
Right, it has a closet, so it'sa bedroom, right.
Um, that room is in the frontof the house and our house faces
West, so it's way too hot inthere, cause the sun just
destroys that room, right.
(48:39):
So I was like this seems like agood place to put a bunch of
expensive equipment.
I put a, I put a dedicated ACunit in there and all that stuff
.
But anyway, um, I got it outthe closet, got rid of the the
you know the shelving stuff andput a rack in there.
So I've got my servers, all mycables run to patch panels, all
my equipment is rack mounted, soit's just sitting in a closet
(49:02):
and I have a cooling solution inthere, just like you would in a
business.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Are your pinball tables in there too?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
They are, it's funny.
So my wife told me I can buy asmany pinball machines as I want
, as long as they fit in oneroom.
I'm only getting one room,right how?
Speaker 1 (49:19):
big is the room?
How many square?
Speaker 2 (49:20):
feet, I don't know, 10 by 14.
Maybe it's a dining room and wedon't ever eat there, so I was
like we don't use this room foranything.
So, uh, that's my pinball room,yeah yeah, that wouldn't fly in
my house.
I'm very, I'm very fortunateman.
I I I'm the luckiest guy in theworld.
I'm telling you wouldn't fly inmy house.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
You need to.
Uh, I I hope, kathleen, I hopeyou listen to this show.
I'm actually downsizing too.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
I I technically have twoleen, I hope you listen to
this show.
I'm actually downsizing too.
I I technically have twomachines right now.
I had four as of like twomonths ago.
I never I wasn't playing twoother ones, so I sold them.
And um, brian farley, emily'shusband, he bought my royal
rumble, okay he's but he's inwashington, so I'm holding it
for him until he can go get it.
But I still have deadpooldeadpool's bolted the floor.
(50:06):
That's not going anywhere, sothat's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
I still need to get the black hole.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
That'll be my one, I sent you that I know when you
told me about it.
They're not just.
They're not cheap, though, man,they are expensive that was my
first real joy of yeah, there'sanother one that's the exact
same, called haunted house.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
Oh yeah I played that , have you been?
Speaker 3 (50:25):
to uh play the arcade bar in pensacola.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
That's relatively new the grid, or yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's on pace yeah, it's a greatplace.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
They expanded the back room since the last time
I've been there and they have awhole I.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
I have not been there we could do a whole podcast on
all right, we're not gonna talkabout it actually before the
show, we were talking aboutwaxing your pinball, yeah
surface because those balls tearit up.
So yeah, so always keep yourballs waxed.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
There's no other way to put it tim I I yeah I don't
wax my balls, I powder them allright.
Next segment all right yeah, wemay have to cut that part, I
don't know, um, so we're gonnago into our rapid fire.
Oh, that wasn't rapid fire,okay.
(51:16):
No, this is rapid fire.
We're looking for one to oneword, to one sentence answers.
We're gonna shoot through themquick, uh, so are you ready?
Mr colby sullivan?
All right, don't look at myscreen, look straight ahead.
First question favorite os,windows 10.
I, I see you more as a windowsme kind of go.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Oh yeah, emmy was great.
Come on man 98, third edition.
What did it stand for?
Speaker 1 (51:42):
millennium mistake edition.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, yeah, I was not sure.
I thought you were actuallyasking me.
Preferred router PFSense.
All right, I think I knew thatTop protocol Top protocol DHCP,
Because you got to have an IPaddress right.
Speaker 1 (52:01):
We need to give him another beer.
No, I'm good Go-to tool, yourgo-to tool.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Oh, I'm thinking go Go-to tool, your go-to tool.
Oh, I'm thinking go-to like theguy I know what you're saying.
Go-to tool Linus Tech Tips.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Ratcheting screwdriver.
Use it every day.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
Yep, you were in here bragging about it one day.
And last but not, least dreamsetup.
Speaker 2 (52:25):
Come on, One sentence Wireless power.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Just no wires, nothing I thought you said
everything needs.
That is a prior.
Nerds on tap show what we talkabout wireless power there you
go, yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Minimalistic.
I, I don't like clutter and I Ican't seem to get it right at
home.
Speaker 1 (52:47):
So, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this
episode of nerds on tap.
I hope we got nerdy enough foryou in this hour and, uh, you
know, if you have any questions,feel free to write into the
show.
I know this episode willprobably prompt several
questions, except especially ifyou're trying to build a diy
(53:09):
home setup or lab at home.
Colby, I'd love to help youguys out.
Totally, yeah, um, do you haveany last words for our audience
here?
Speaker 2 (53:17):
don't for.
Don't be afraid to tinker.
You know um, get in there, getyour hands dirty, break stuff.
That's the only way you'regonna learn thank you, ladies
and gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
Thank you, colby, for being on the show.
Thank you, tim edge, for uhserving up some fantastic beers
today.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hopeyou enjoyed the show and, uh,
(53:57):
please join us on our nextepisode, where, uh, we will talk
about something nerdy.
Thank you, I don't know.
With your friends, colleaguesand fellow beer enthusiasts,
let's build a community thatembraces curiosity, innovation
and the enjoyment of a cold one.
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