superczar
Keymaster
Long time since I posted something (presumably) useful around here - so thought might as well post about my experiments over the last 1 year about reusing some old hardware and replacing my entire fragmented home computing infra into one place.
Also, many thanks to @vivek.krishnan for his tips/inputs along the way!
I probably have 30+ IoT devices, 4 RPIs , a couple of ageing NASs , a crumbly NVR and a bunch of old routers/APs doing all sorts of various duties around the household
Like many of the folks around here, I also have several old CPU/MOBOs/3.5" HDDs etc lying unused in some corner or attic
Sometime in the recent past, I thought to myself how do I consolidate all this- So I read up a bit about virtualisation and decided to re-assemble an old i3 4th gen system with a couple of oldish HDDs
TBH, I thought the whole virtualisation gig will be too hard/troublesome but proceeded nonetheless
To cut a long story short, it turned out to be an endeavour really worth my/anyone's while
I was able to knock off all the RPIs /NASs/aforementioned moody NVR and routers into a single unit sitting in a corner of the attic
That poor old discarded CPU now serves as a:
Another few K (can't recollect how much ) to get an extra 8GB of RAM for all the VM instances to not feel some RAM TLC
Point of the thread :
Also, many thanks to @vivek.krishnan for his tips/inputs along the way!
I probably have 30+ IoT devices, 4 RPIs , a couple of ageing NASs , a crumbly NVR and a bunch of old routers/APs doing all sorts of various duties around the household
Like many of the folks around here, I also have several old CPU/MOBOs/3.5" HDDs etc lying unused in some corner or attic
Sometime in the recent past, I thought to myself how do I consolidate all this- So I read up a bit about virtualisation and decided to re-assemble an old i3 4th gen system with a couple of oldish HDDs
TBH, I thought the whole virtualisation gig will be too hard/troublesome but proceeded nonetheless
To cut a long story short, it turned out to be an endeavour really worth my/anyone's while
I was able to knock off all the RPIs /NASs/aforementioned moody NVR and routers into a single unit sitting in a corner of the attic
That poor old discarded CPU now serves as a:
- Load balancer yielding 150 mbps Internet aggregation speeds with a 3rd WAN failover to Airtel 4G
- state of the art UTM/Firewall appliance providing VPN connectivity to my home/webfiltering/Intrusion prevention
- NAS yielding 60 MB/s (480 mbps) LAN transfer speeds
- NZB/torrent downloader/aggregator
- NVR for 4 video cameras
- A windows desktop (via RDP) just for kicks
- Home Automation server for my IoT devices
- small linux instance running homebridge (translator for non HomeKit certified IoT devices for Apple HomeKit for the family phones)
- small linux instance running habridge (translator for none Alexa certified devices for the physical Echo devices)
- A guinea pig that helps ensure I don't have to wipe systems/disks clean in case I want to try a new OS/distro
Another few K (can't recollect how much ) to get an extra 8GB of RAM for all the VM instances to not feel some RAM TLC
Point of the thread :
- Like I said, random thoughts for posterity's sake
- pointer to fellow members - virtualisation is easier (and way more useful ) than I thought
- Save time for anyone interested : I toyed with several platforms till settling down on proxmox for virtualization / Sophos XG for routing/firewall... choice of VMs for NAS/automation etc is not that material - just pick the linux distro(s) of your choice
Last edited:
