What is a Homelab? — Transcript

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1. 0:00You've probably seen something like this
2. 0:02before. A glowing rack of servers
3. 0:04humming away in a basement, lights
4. 0:06blinking, cables everywhere. It's a home
5. 0:09lab, a private server that only a Mr.
6. 0:12Robot type could build. But, it's
7. 0:15actually simpler than you think. A home
8. 0:17lab can just as easily be the old laptop
9. 0:19in your closet quietly hosting your
10. 0:21photos, movies, and smart home
11. 0:23automations for free, so you don't have
12. 0:26to pay up monthly to keep them in one of
13. 0:28the gargantuan data centers blighting
14. 0:30the country. Sounds pretty cool to me,
15. 0:33so in this video, we'll talk about
16. 0:35setting up your own home lab, which
17. 0:37software is worth running, what hardware
18. 0:39to run it on, and how to start this
19. 0:41glorious journey without torching your
20. 0:44power bill, or losing all of your wife's
21. 0:46photos of her favorite niece. Topanga,
22. 0:49I'm looking at you.
23. 0:51To help us answer all these questions,
24. 0:53we talked to my favorite dad, Jeff
25. 0:55Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps
26. 0:58and the internet's favorite home lab
27. 1:00guy.
28. 1:01>> There's tons of things in our life that
29. 1:02are getting more controlled by outside
30. 1:05organizations. A big thing for me for
31. 1:07home labbing is making a simple solution
32. 1:09to those problems that is completely
33. 1:11under my control. I don't want the
34. 1:13leaders of the media companies to come
35. 1:15into my living room and watch everything
36. 1:16that I do.
37. 1:17>> I don't know what to tell you, he's
38. 1:18right. And lately, every price hike and
39. 1:20privacy policy update proves it.
40. 1:23Thankfully, there's a billion things you
41. 1:25can do with a home lab, and what you
42. 1:27choose depends on your own needs. If you
43. 1:29want to block ads on every device on
44. 1:31your home network, you can run Pi-hole.
45. 1:33If you want to rip your media library
46. 1:35and make your own private streaming
47. 1:36service, there's Jellyfin. If you want
48. 1:38your smart home automated locally, spin
49. 1:40up Home Assistant. And if you want to
50. 1:43turf Google Photos because you'd rather
51. 1:44Gemini never even get the chance to
52. 1:47train on pictures of your corgi, Sir
53. 1:49Chunk-a-Lot, that's for me, you can
54. 1:51throw Image onto your hardware. The
55. 1:53common thread between all of these
56. 1:55different tools is that they're free and
57. 1:57open source. All of your data lives on
58. 2:00your hardware where nobody else can
59. 2:02price hike it, mine [music] it, or
60. 2:04delete it. Now, the subscriptions you're
61. 2:06replacing run on entire warehouses of
62. 2:09servers because their customer base is
63. 2:11billions of people. Since you're just
64. 2:13serving your household, you don't need
65. 2:15that kind of horsepower. So, while you
66. 2:17can buy a retired rack server off eBay,
67. 2:20it'll howl like a jet engine, turn your
68. 2:23office into a sauna, and add hundreds of
69. 2:25dollars a year to your power bill. All
70. 2:27to do a job a much smaller machine
71. 2:30handles in near silence. The cheapest
72. 2:32option is the computer you already own.
73. 2:35That old laptop gathering dust in your
74. 2:36closet. And the fact that it can write
75. 2:38out power outages like a champ thanks to
76. 2:40its internal battery is just a bonus.
77. 2:43But, for people who don't have extra
78. 2:44hardware kicking around, the answer is
79. 2:46almost certainly a mini PC. A little box
80. 2:49that fits in the palm of your hand and
81. 2:50only pulls around 6 W,
82. 2:52which, depending on where you live, will
83. 2:55probably end up costing you about 10
84. 2:56bucks a year in power.
85. 2:58>> Mini PCs have become, in the past 2
86. 3:00years, like the standard. They cost
87. 3:03about the same as a Raspberry Pi now
88. 3:04because Raspberry Pis have come up in
89. 3:06price and Intel mini PCs have come down
90. 3:08in price.
91. 3:09>> But, hardware alone is not enough. You
92. 3:11need software. And in home lab land,
93. 3:14that starts with the operating system
94. 3:16known as Linux.
95. 3:19Explosions.
96. 3:22It's the OS that every programmer in
97. 3:24every hacker movie uses. And it's the
98. 3:26system that almost all of these
99. 3:28self-hosted tools are built on. If
100. 3:30picking which version of Linux to use
101. 3:32sounds daunting, we got a whole video on
102. 3:34that right here. Now, fair warning. From
103. 3:37here on out, the Reddit hole gets deep
104. 3:40because once you see people turning
105. 3:41their garages into Tony Stark's
106. 3:43workshop, you won't want to run just one
107. 3:45of these services, you'll want six. So,
108. 3:48what's an aspiring genius billionaire
109. 3:50playboy philanthropist to do? Buy six
110. 3:53computers in this economy? No need. You
111. 3:56can run them all on one Linux machine
112. 3:59using tools like Docker or Proxmox,
113. 4:01which pack each app into its own sealed
114. 4:04little bubble. Unlike the apps on your
115. 4:06phone, these services run around the
116. 4:08clock and all want to grab the same
117. 4:10system files and network settings. So,
118. 4:12the separation keeps a crash or a
119. 4:14botched update in one app from taking
120. 4:17down the rest. In practice, [music]
121. 4:19a 10-year-old office PC running Docker
122. 4:21can handle Pi-hole, Jellyfin, and Home
123. 4:24Assistant all at once without breaking a
124. 4:26sweat. Sounds awesome, but we'd be
125. 4:28glossing over things if we didn't
126. 4:30mention what can go wrong. From
127. 4:32malfunctioning smart lights to losing
128. 4:34your entire digital library. We'll talk
129. 4:37about how to dodge them after we talk
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149. 5:19>> Here's the deal.
150. 5:20>> When you run your own cloud, you are
151. 5:22also your own IT department. Nobody at
152. 5:24Google is watching over your services
153. 5:26anymore. So, you might want to follow a
154. 5:29couple of safety rules. One, you'll
155. 5:31eventually want to reach your home lab
156. 5:33from outside your home network, but
157. 5:36don't just open a port on your router.
158. 5:39That leaves your home lab open to the
159. 5:41internet and a search engine called
160. 5:43Shodan that lists exposed devices for
161. 5:46anyone to find. Ransomware crews have
162. 5:48locked up a ton of internet-facing home
163. 5:50servers just by searching for exposed
164. 5:52computers. Use a tool like Tailscale
165. 5:55instead. It's easy to set up and it
166. 5:56connects your devices privately through
167. 5:58an encrypted tunnel [music] with nothing
168. 6:00left open for the whole internet to gawk
169. 6:02at. Rule two, proper backups. You don't
170. 6:06want to be like the people who build a
171. 6:07storage box with fancy redundant drives,
172. 6:10put the family's only copy of all their
173. 6:12photos on it, and think that they're
174. 6:13safe. [music]
175. 6:14>> The problem is that everything fails.
176. 6:17Every storage solution fails, whether
177. 6:18it's now or in 5 years or in 3 years,
178. 6:20and it's always going to be the worst
179. 6:21possible time. Like you're going on a
180. 6:23trip somewhere [music] and it dies like
181. 6:25the day that you leave. The gold
182. 6:26standard is 3-2-1.
183. 6:28>> 3-2-1 means three copies of your stuff
184. 6:30on two different kinds of storage with
185. 6:33one copy somewhere outside your house.
186. 6:36That last one is very super important.
187. 6:39It's what makes it so that a dead drive,
188. 6:41a fire, or a nasty hack can't wipe out
189. 6:45all of your data at once. Skip this and
190. 6:47you will eventually lose everything.
191. 6:50>> And that's a threat.
192. 6:51>> Even Linus Tech Tips Sebastian has lost
193. 6:54data this way.
194. 6:55More than once. So, if you want to get
195. 6:57started with a home lab of your very
196. 6:59own, here's the dead simple approach.
197. 7:01One, use a computer you already have or
198. 7:04grab a cheap mini PC. Two, put Linux on
199. 7:07it and install Docker or Proxmox. Three,
200. 7:10set up your first service. Is it photos?
201. 7:13Is it your movie library? It's up to
202. 7:15you. It's your server. Why you asking
203. 7:17me? Four, install Tailscale so you can
204. 7:19access your stuff from anywhere without
205. 7:22leaving your network open to the
206. 7:23internet. Five, set up those backups
207. 7:25before you trust it with anything you'd
208. 7:27cry about losing. And just to be safe,
209. 7:30go through a test run of restoring your
210. 7:31data from backup every once in a while.
211. 7:33Now, if you're still worried you don't
212. 7:35know enough to start,
213. 7:37don't be.
214. 7:38>> Home labbing is all about being humble
215. 7:40and and [music] starting from something
216. 7:42that you don't know and then growing
217. 7:44into it. In my case, my career
218. 7:45completely changed once I get into it.
219. 7:48>> Like any new project, just start small,
220. 7:50break stuff, start again, take it as an
221. 7:53opportunity to learn. If it never
222. 7:55becomes more than a thing you tinker
223. 7:56with on weekends, that's fine. It's kind
224. 7:58of the whole point. Your home lab is
225. 8:00yours to do with what you will, and it
226. 8:03always will be. [music]
227. 8:04If you want to go deeper on how
228. 8:06virtualization and containerization
229. 8:08work, check out our video on Docker.