Under 100W tiny-homelab - 2-node ESXi Cluster, Synology NFS Storage & PfSense

Here it is! The mini-homelab. I live in a small apartment and space is a priority. Organization is also a priority and when I came across this small 11 inch wide mini-rack I pulled the trigger. It holds all of the necessities though! I liked the fact I can give every device a place.

The equipment and setup slowly grew, originally starting with the Qotom box running pfSense. Eventually, I added a Synology DS1515+ which led to Plex, docker, proxies and so much more. After a while I wanted to add some small dedicated servers and that is when the NUCs came about. Finally, it was the Unifi gear, if you have ever browsed the homelab sub-reddit or Stack Overflow you will find that a lot of hobbyist, tech people, home-labbers and the like start to build out their networks with Unifi as it is fairly reliable for a good price.

So, what's in this homelab?

Equipment

• Ubiquiti nanoHD (sitting on top)
• Synology DS1515+
  • CPU - Intel Atom
  • RAM - 6GB
  • HDD - 15TB
• Qotom-Q310G4 running pfSense
  • CPU - Intel Celeron
  • RAM - 8GB
  • SSD - 256GB
• Netgear GS108T Switch (DMZ)
  • 8 Ports
• Ubiquiti USG-3P
  • 3 Ports
• Unifi Switch8 - 150W
  • 8 Ports
• Raspberry Pi 3b+
• Unifi CloudKey
• Unifi Switch8 - 60W
  • 8 Ports
• 2 x NUC8i5BEK (ESXi Cluster)
  • CPU - i5
  • RAM - 32GB
  • SSD - 128GB

All of this equipment works great together; the biggest change I would make in this setup is mounting the AP on the ceiling or adding another NUC! However, renting makes mounting the AP a difficult task and another NUC is costly. I will eventually update all of the NUCs in the future.

The 9U rack is approximately 11 inches wide and 19 in tall. I got the rack from a German company and the total cost was about $190 US, including shipping.

• 9U Rack
  • 79 euro
  • https://www.reichelt.com/de/en/10-wall-mounted-enclosure-9u-depth-300-mm-gc-r0103-p248770.html?&trstct=pol_3
• Patch Panel
  • 18 euro
  • https://www.reichelt.com/de/en/patchpanel-10-12-port-cat-6-0-5-u-logilink-np0069-p249344.html?&nbc=1&trstct=lsbght_sldr::248770
• Shelves
  • 8 euro
  • https://www.reichelt.com/de/en/10-shelf-mounting-depth-160-mm-light-grey-gc-n0100-p248796.html?&trstct=vrt_pdn&nbc=1

Here's a logical diagram of the network! The idea was to setup a DMZ between pfSense and Unifi. There is a concept called "defense in-depth" which has a goal to make an attacker have to penetrate various barriers before gaining access > https://www.giac.org/paper/gsec/2867/multiple-firewalls-vendors-defense-in-depth-strategy/102293. I must add-in that if not configured properly, and even when the network is configured properly, that maintenance and configuration is less about convience than it is securtiy. Hey... it is a homelab, that's fun right?!