Escami Homelab

Welcome! This website is where I will document my homelab, what all I have done to it, and the problems—and solutions—that I have encountered.

Intro:

What are the specs of the server?

The server is a Beelink SER5 mini-PC powered by a Ryzen 5 5560U, a 6-core/12-thread AMD CPU. It also has 16GB of DDR4 memory, 500GB NVME SDD, and has a single RJ45 port. You can find this same mini-PC by googling B0B2943QSJ.

What is the server running?

The server is running a Type 1 or “bare metal” Hypervisor called Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE), it is currently running Proxmox VE version 8.4.1. Proxmox is open-source, quite intuitive, and remotely accessible from within your home network.

Projects:

Self-Hosted Network Attached Storage (NAS):

The how?

  1. Create an LXC Container running a Debian 12, and assign it a static IP address.
  2. Back in that Debian container, install Cockpit, which allows us to more easily access the shares and users through a user-interface. apt install -t cockpit --no-install-recommends
  3. Before we can access the web UI, we need to allow the root user to access cockpit. Remove root from the file. nano /etc/cockpit/disallowed-users
  4. Verify that we can successfully connect to the web user-interface, whatever static IP address you used followed by port 9090. Login using your root username and password.
  5. Install these three Cockpit plugins to give us more user management options and overall ease-of-use. See the following repos for more information: cockpit-file-sharing, cockpit-navigator, and cockpit-identities.
  6. In Proxmox, mount your desired disk for use in the network storage.
  7. In Cockpit, create desired users and groups under the new “Identities” tab.
  8. In Cockpit, we also need to create a network share under “File Sharing”, this share will be the directory for your NAS. Assign appropriate restrictions for users and groups.
  9. Lastly, verify that you can access your NAS remotely through File Explorer.

Yea but why?

I record a lot of videogame content with my friends, and on longer playthroughs, those recording file sizes add up. I do editing on both my home desktop PC, and my laptop. This meant it was a pain trying to move these video files back-and-fourth, from cloud storage services like Google Drive. Self-hosting a NAS made sense for this purpose, as I wanted to be able to access this footage from any device anywhere in the home.

Homelabs:

Windows Server Active Directory Lab:

The how?

  1. Provision a Windows Server 2025 (wserver) virtual machine, make sure to assign a static IP address.
  2. In wserver, initialize the Domain Controller services, in “Server Roles”, be sure to select “Active Directory Domain Services” and “DNS Server”.
  3. Promote the server to a Domain Controller, create a new forest, assign a root domain name.
  4. Create Users, Groups, and Organizational Units in Active Directory Users and Computers.
  5. Create a Windows 11 Pro (wpro) virtual machine, in the system, update the preferred DNS to wserver’s IP.
  6. In wpro, under system properties, change wpro to be a member of the domain that was previously created on wserver. The VM will restart, and upon restart, you can now login to the domain as one of those test users.
  7. Make neccessary edits, test account security policies.

Yea but why?

I did this lab to better familiarize myself with the basics of Windows Server 2025 and Active Directory. This lab was also my first time creating a Domain Controller, Organizational Units, Group Policy Objects, and connecting other external VMs to this domain. There is a lot you can do, from editing permissions on users, groups, computers, to implementing audit policies, these systems offer a lot of flexibility, and you can make a system as secure as needed.

General Homelab Woes:

  • Dependency problems can feel like a videogame fetch quest. Where trying to fix one issue leads you down a rabbit-hole troubleshooting other problems before you can progress.

  • Windows 11 requiring an internet connection and online user account for virtual machines. Temporarily disabling the network device and rebooting setup bypassed their check. Linux installs are 10x easier.

  • The desire for a bigger and better homelab server. This server is adequate for the time-being, but, as I continue to provision more VMs, I can see the amount of cores or memory bottlenecking the server.

Future:

  • Pterodactyl Videogame Server Manager
  • PFsense Firewall / VPN