1 year of Homelab, experience and what's next
Tags: homelab, beginners
Published: 2023-02-03 17:52:45

In this article I will explain my experience of my first homelab.

## Definitions

> **vm** = _Virtual Machine ([complete definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine))_
**iso file** = _Disk / CD image compressed in one file, frequently used to install operating systems ([complete definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_image))_
**proxmox** = _Operating system based on kvm software designed to facilitate vm management ([Proxmox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxmox_Virtual_Environment))_

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![My Dell Poweredge T320 Server](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/lkmioakre83l2z2r9rdy.png)

## How it started

2 years ago, I met a friend who is fond of servers... Like a virus he contamined me and I started my homelab with a raspberry pi. 6 months after, I bought a Dell Tower Server (T320) and installed Proxmox.

> Please note that I am not a professional, i’m only passionate.

## Experiences

In this section I will tell you stories that appened with my homelab.

![Dell Disk](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/u46cpv81a2awkarwso97.png)

### Backups, backups and organize storage

One of my biggest mistakes hopefully appended 2 months after creating my first vms. I hadn’t setuped backup job and I only backuped my vms once…

Results: one of my raid-0 (9yo) disk died and I lost all my server; from the system to vms and backups. Hopefully I had copied all backups to my PC and I didn’t lost all my datas…

After that story I divided server root fs in one disk, iso / unimportant files in another and vms in one redunded disk (raid-1).

I setuped Proxmox backups for backuping each vm everyday and keep a daily, weekly and monthly one.


![Disk Drive Caddy](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/a01klzpfgy120eqawyf3.png)


### Caddies for drive bay

When I wanted to add more storage I was confused to didn't find disk drive caddies easily. My server has 8 disk emplacement for disk drives but he only came with 3 caddies (and 3 disks). I bought 5 more that I found on amazone but next time I will ensure that there is no missing pieces like these.

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![Monitorng Illustration](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2j0tulk96kj1eojpger4.png)


### Monitoring

Monitoring tools I use.

**Maltrail:**
I recommend you to use [Maltrail](https://github.com/stamparm/maltrail) if you would like to ensure your server security...
You will see every connection to your server and it will helps you to write more firewall rules.


**Netdata:**
Self-hosted or in the cloud, [Netdata](https://github.com/netdata/netdata) is the software that notify you of any process, software or hardware problem or failure. You feel safer to know that you haven't to check charts everyday to see problems.

**Uptime Kuma:**
A classical one: [Kuma Uptime](https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma). I register all my application urls and activated sms notification to be notified to any application failure. Very useful with his status pages to organize multiple monitors in one public page !

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## Next 


My current homelab setup is not very clean... A lot of useless vm are on my only server... But some important application are running on it and the server is directly connected to my home network so I need a new, fresh and clean, production server isolated in a vlan to make my homelab even secure.

I'm currently looking for rackable servers and Ikea lack table. I want to make a DIY rack built with lack tables !

I will write an article when my homelab will level up !

Thank you very much for reading, 
Have nice code,
See you later !