First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.
Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.
I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.
Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.
Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.
Edit 2: This is looking pretty good right now.
I would not look at his guide. If you’ve watched any of Louis’ videos, you already know this guy is a ranting machine. He can go on and on for hours about things. I watched about 15 minutes of his rambling and realized he had gotten basically nowhere. It’s also one of the more complex ways of doing things. Use ZimaOS to get started with the easy button.
Stick with whatever router you have, for starters. You can upgrade later. You don’t necessarily need that at all.
For the actual server I highly recommend this guy. N100 is very common due to being very inexpensive and efficient. You’ll have to add RAM and an SSDs but you probably want to choose exactly how large that is anyway. It has 4xNVMe and 2xSATA, if you decide you want to expand later.
I wouldn’t trust his guides personally. He has some hot takes and more importantly he isn’t someone who really knows the Homelab/self hosting landscape.
If you are looking for guides I would find channels that have done series on whatever you are interested in there is plenty of quality material.
To start off here is what I would do.
First, get a wireless router that is capable of running OpenWRT and then get a switch to accompany it.
Next go to eBay and buy 3 used workstations. They don’t need to be fancy and you can always upgrade them later. You need 3 for later.
Next find some storage. You can find decent Sata SSDs for pretty cheap. If you are looking to store something bigger like a movie collection also pickup some larger drives. With the extra drives make sure you buy a sata or SAS pcie card. This is because you need a dedicated controller to passthough to a VM.
Once you have all that you can start installing Proxmox. You probably want a raid 1 configuration so that you can replace a disk without downtime. The reason I say three devices is because you need 3 machines to get consensus in the cluster. When consensus is lost affected devices go into what is called fencing which is where it freezes all VMs and operations to prevent split brain from happening.
Technically this is probably a bit overkill but I like having a solid base for experimentation and flexibility. Doing it right from the get go will mean that you have more power down the road.
For actually hosting stuff I would use docker compose inside a VM.
Start off small, get an old PC that has an i5or better that’s got vt-d support. start off with 8gb of RAM or more. Then throw proxmox on it and you are off to the races. It will save you a lot of money since you can run multiple virtual machines or lxc containers. This is how I started out, my proxmox host now has 26gb of RAM and its running very smoothly . i like opnsense as a router and firewall but its a little advanced but amazing, also get an access point and a switch and you can start building your network. You could also even run opnsense in a VM but that gets a little confusing but its an option.
I second this. Once i was confident enough to start virtualizing (I’m old so this was a while ago) I took a chance and it’s been so good. I use probably a 1/10th of what it has to offer but that just means there’s tons of head room for you.
I would recommend a small form factor (i use dell optiplexes, some offer more options for sure though) and stuff it with a bunch of memory. For the cost i would max it out. A Dell 7060 micro i5-8500 with 64gb has allowed me to be able to not worry about resources at all.
Just glancing through that guide:
OPNsense instead of Pfsense, because pfsense is going to rugpull, it’s just a matter of time. I wouldn’t trust the twats that run it farther than I could throw them because they’re pretty silly people. Rossman suggests exactly this in the intro to the router section, he would change if he hadn’t been using it for a decade already. Unfortunately, a lot of this guide is focussed on how to do it via pfsense and if you’re brand new, you’re going to have to figure out how to do it in OPNsense yourself.
Wireguard/Tailscale instead of openvpn. Faster and way easier to set up. Don’t even try to set up a full LAN routed VPN, just use Tailscale for the services you want. And use it for everything and everyone instead of punching holes in the firewall.
He’s definitely right about mailcow; if you’re reading that guide for information, you are not a person that should be self-hosting email.
Just kinda flipped through his guide. It’s a bit dated on knowledge and techniques, even for beginners.
You don’t need a computer for a router. Get a router that ships with OpenWRT and start there. GL.iNet makes good and affordable stuff. Use that for your ad blocking, VPN, and so on to get started.
I’d just skip OpenVPN altogether and get started with Wireguard or Headscale/Tailscale.
If you want to run other heavier services, start out with a low-power minipc until you’re settled on what your needs or limitations are. You can get a very capable AMD minipc for $250-300, or an n100 low-power for a bit cheaper. Check out Minisforum units for this. Reliable, good price, and solid warranty.
If you deal in heavy storage, maybe consider adding a NAS to the mix, but maybe that’s a further steps. OpenWRT is a good starting point just to get your basic network services and remote access up, then just move on from there.
A good and fun starting point for some people is setting up Home Assistant on a minipc or Raspberry Pi (honestly, the costs of Pi boards now is insane. Might be good just to get the minipc).
I’d just skip OpenVPN altogether and get started with Wireguard or Headscale/Tailscale.
This one was huge for me. OpenVPN is pretty heavy with CPU overhead, where as wireguard is almost free. I was getting throttled due to the overhead of OpenVPN and roasting the CPU on my Netgear R6350 (it’s what I had lying around). With wireguard I get nearly the same speeds as without a VPN and my loads are very reasonable.
Also with weaker routers like mine, be wary of trying to use QoS, this will probably not help network congestion and instead become a bottleneck (like it did for me). This is where a beefy dedicated router really shines.
First, thanks everyone for all the info, glad I posted. It’s a lot to go through.
OpenWRT is the most frequently recommended thing here, and my router is not supported. I somewhat recently purchased my router (Asus AX6600) when I switched to fiber due to its high bandwidth and I’d prefer to not replace it. I’ll look around and see what options I have for putting a separate device upstream of my current hardware and if that doesn’t work out then maybe I’ll replace my current router.
I see that you can install openwrt on a switch. Would it make sense to put a switch with openwrt upstream of my current router/AP?
Edit: dang there’s only 1 switch supported by openwrt that has 10 gbps ports (ZyXEL XGS1250-12)
Gl.iNet is a great value router, but if you want to do anything really interesting, it won’t do.
I have Slate AX chugging along, and have been eyeing teklager boxes to do actual routing, with slate as an access point.
