My parents bought our first computer in the early 1990’s… a Packard Bell Legend 233 bundle from the Best Buy in Cedar Rapids! After the nearly two-hour car ride home I remember sitting, transfixed on the first boot as it ran though the POST screen, marveling at the technology I knew nothing about but was anxious to behold. Fast-forward nearly 30 years and I still marvel at the wonders of technology, though now with an understanding of how it all works, more or less.
However the same curiosity and tenacity that led that pre-teen boy to mess with the BIOS and set a boot password, which was soon forgotten – leading to a painful first introduction to motherboard jumpers, still drives me. And, it’s that curiosity that has led me to the world of the homelab.
Homelab [hom-læb](n): a laboratory of (usually slightly outdated) awesome in the domicile
introduction – homelab (reddit.com)
I picked up a Dell R610 rack-mount server a few years ago… then another… then a Cisco Catalyst 3750G which is performing great as a shelf but poorly as a switch… and while I have that (out-of-date) enterprise-grade equipment racked up and powered on, the homelab is operating on also-outdated consumer-grade Dell laptops, desktops, and Apple Mac Minis; running services on a mix of Proxmox hosting Debian servers, and Windows Server 2019, on a Ubiquiti network!
If that all sounds confusing, I assure you it is, even to me some days… which brought about this – Jay’s Homelab – a place I can document and hopefully organize my notes and thoughts, share accomplishments and bemoan failures, possibly teach and definitely learn.
Power-on self-test
You’re welcome to join me in this journey, though please standby while I complete my POST…