Building My Homelab from Scratch

The hardware, networking, and rack setup behind my first homelab build — from Cisco switches to enterprise server racks.

Getting startedhomelabnetworkingciscoserverrack

Introduction

I needed a lab environment that could run VMware vSphere clusters with vSAN and vMotion — something close to the production infrastructure I was working with at the time. Buying used enterprise gear turned out to be the right call. This post covers the hardware I picked, the networking setup, and the lessons from getting it all racked and running next to my desk.

My needs and limitations for a homelab

I’ve recently been envolved in a project that requires running high availability clusters running on premise, and I wanted to learn more about how to create and manage them.

I needed a homelab that could support the following:

  • ESXi hosts
  • vCenter server
  • vSan datastore
  • vMotion

In addition to the above, I wanted to learn more about networking and how to create a network that can support a high availability clusters, setup and manage vLans and so on.

The equiment needed to be power efficient and as silent as possible, as the whole setup will sit next to my desk.

The equipment

When choosing the equipment for my homelab, I had a few requirements in mind. I wanted to use equipment that was easy to find and that was not too expensive. I also wanted to use equipment that was easy to setup and manage.

I also wanted to use equipment that was close to what the project is using. The project is using Cisco switches and rack mounted servers, so I wanted to use the same kind of equipment in my homelab.

Switches and servers:

A lot of this equiment when bought new is very expensive, but if you look around you can find some great deals on used equipment. I managed to find some great deals on used equipment, and I was able to get everything I needed for a very good price.

So I decided to use the following equipment:

  • 2x Cisco Catalyst 3750x stackable switch (150€)
  • 1x Supermicro 1U rack mounted server (680€)
    • 2x Intel Xeon E5-2697v3
    • 1x Supermicro X10DRW-i (dual LGA 2011-3, WIO form factor)
    • 128GB RAM
    • 4x caddys for 3.5” drives
    • 1x PSU 550W
    • 1x 1U rack mount rails kit

At this point, I had the basis for my homelab, but I still needed to buy some cables and a rack to put everything in and some storage.

A quick note on the 550W PSU

That 550W supply looked tight at first glance, and worth a sanity check. Rough budget under load:

  • 2x Intel Xeon E5-2697v3 at 145W TDP each — ~290W under sustained load.
  • 8x DDR4 RDIMMs — ~3-5W each, call it 40W.
  • 1x NVMe PCIe SSD (~7W) + 1x M.2 SATA SSD (~3W) + 4x 2.5” SATA SSDs (~3W each) — ~22W.
  • Motherboard, chipset, BMC, NICs — ~30-50W idle.
  • Fans (1U screamers are not shy) — 20-40W under load.

That lands around 420-450W at peak, which fits inside 550W with a thin margin. For a homelab running ESXi with typical 30-40% CPU utilisation it’s fine, and PSU efficiency curves are best around 50-60% load anyway. If I were running sustained 100% CPU workloads (rendering, ML training), I’d have stepped up to 750W for headroom. Worth running the numbers before you trust the listing — the Xeon TDPs alone can eat 60% of a small PSU.

Also: the Amazon links above are a snapshot in time and some will rot. If you’re reading this and the links 404, search by the product identifier (e.g. “Crucial MX500 500GB”, “Cisco WS-C3750X-24T-S”) rather than expecting the URL to still resolve.

Storage:

I’ve decided to try and get some fast storage for my homelab, so I chose to go with a 1x 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD, 1x 1TB NVMe SATA, and 4x 500GB SSDs in the caddys.

The main idea is to use the PCIe SSD as a boot drive for the ESXi hosts, and the SATA SSD as a datastore for the vSan cluster. With some additional storage for VMs in the 1TB NVMe SATA drive.

In order to add the NVMe drives to the server, I needed to buy a PCIe to M.2 adapter. I bought a PCIe to M.2 adapter that supports both NVMe and SATA drives. Note that this expansion board is not enterprise grade, but it should be enough for my homelab.

Rack:

Given the structure of my home office, and since I do not have a place to put a rack in a separete room, I needed something that was not too big, but that would fit a few servers and network equipment in the future.

I decided to go with a 22U rack cabinet 600x800mm, that would fit the server and the switches. One thing I was not counting on was the size of the rails for the server, and I had to buy some additional extender to fit the server in the rack.

I’ve also noted that the rails when being put in the correct position, due to the way the rails are designed there’s a small clearence and in the back the rails are thicker so I couldn’t push the server in. After trying it in different positions and configurations (extenders in the back or on the front of the rack) in front it did not work as I could not close the door and in the back I still had the thickness of the rail. So, after a while I came up with a small hack. I got some M6 screws (same as the ones used to mount the rails) but with a different length, in this case 50mm long intead of the 20mm that come with the rails, and I used them to mount the rails in the back of the rack, this way I was able to push the server in and close the door.

To handle the power for the server and the switches I needed to buy a power strip. Ended up going with a 1u power distribution unit.

I also picked up a few other pieces of equipment complete the setup and keep things organized within the rack. So I’ve bougth a cable organizer to keep the cables organized, and a pack of rack mounting nuts and screws.

Cables and patch panels:

I also needed to add some cables and patch pannel to connect the switches to the patch pannel.

At this point in time the patch pannel hasn’t arrive yet. One requirement I had was to have a patch panel that was 1U, and that had a good amount of ports, and that could take RJ45 on both sides. I do not want to be creating cables everytime I need to change things around. As a homelab things are going to change a lot, and I want to be able to move things around without having to create new cables.

Initially I was going with a patch pannel that had 24 ports with RJ45 on both sides, but the product was never delivered so I had to go with a different one.

As I don’t know exactly how things will grow in the future, I decided to go with something more modular. So I’m thinking on going with a patch pannel that has 24 placements for keystones that I can change as needs grow.

A few images of the setup:

The server The server The server The server

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