minirack / studio
Series · 3 of 10 parts published

Build the rack

Ten parts, one rack: the plan, the frame and the cables, a VLAN switch, a bare-metal firewall, DNS with ad blocking, a hypervisor and backups, remote access, a VPN port, monitoring and hardening. Every part ends in a working state, names the hardware that is in the configurator, and keeps the lessons from the build that did not go to plan. Follow in order; later parts rely on the earlier ones.

Parts

  1. Tutorials · Part 1

    Build the rack, part 1: plan before you buy

    The plan behind a complete 10-inch home lab: five roles, nine VLANs, a port map, the parts list and the rack layout, all decided before the first order.

    · 8 min read
  2. Tutorials · Part 2

    Build the rack, part 2: mount, patch, power

    The physical build of a 10-inch home lab: mounting order, the SFP+ card in a Tiny, patching per the port map, one supply per Pi, and the ISP router's settings.

    · 7 min read
  3. Tutorials · Part 3

    Build the rack, part 3: the switch

    Configuring a MikroTik CSS318 in SwOS for a VLAN home lab: the one egress rule, the VLAN table, per-port settings, snooping and the lockdown that comes last.

    · 7 min read

7 more parts to come. Follow the RSS feed to catch them.