I somewhat agree. The priorities just seem off for a large percentage of homelab creators. If you are starting new, a more reasonable priority list would be:
1. Get a hardware firewall (opnsense/pfsene) and learn to use it (1-3 years)
2. Get a virtualization server and learn what the separation of concerns principle means (1-2 years); (this includes adding vlans)
3. Add the first Smart Home tools that are critical to you (e.g. monitoring of electricity consumption/production or automation of activity scenes for burglar defense) (6 months)
4. Work on a resilient backup solution. This includes offsite backups, so you will need to add a second server in a second house somewhere else. This _should_ come earlier, but you may have some backup solution in place already when starting at (1), so now is the time to do it properly (e.g. ZFS, automated syncoid pull-mode snapshots etc.) (1-2 years)
5. Try to improve individual pieces, maybe buy a larger rack, a UPS etc. (3 months)
6. At this time, you have a fully functioning Homelab. Now it is time to improve the look.. but doh, you have no time left anymore!
(above is basically my history.. started in 2017 and I am now after 7 years at stage (6), but otherwise overall pretty happy with my ugly looking setup)
Note: the latest OpenWrt on rack-grade routers is significantly more secure than proprietary, backdoored firewall appliances. I haven't really used Netgear/pfense but I reckon it wouldn't be much of improvement.
VLAN are perhaps the most important aspect of a network, and honestly I would start with it: tag the ports, bonding if necessary, and figure out IPv6-PD and resolve topology for it all, so that downstream DNS is easily configurable.
Do you mean pfsense/opnsense with "proprietary, backdoored firewall appliances"? I don't think so (if we are talking about OPNsense or the CE variant of pfsense).
Otherwise, I slightly agree that for the regular user, OpenWrt is simpler and less of a hassle than pfsense/opnsense, but still offers enough features. Personally, I enjoy having full control over all and every detail in my FW, which is only possible with the latter.
Thank you for the hint towards IPv6-PD/resolve topology - my migration to IPv6 is still on the ToDo list!
Comments
I somewhat agree. The priorities just seem off for a large percentage of homelab creators. If you are starting new, a more reasonable priority list would be:
1. Get a hardware firewall (opnsense/pfsene) and learn to use it (1-3 years)
2. Get a virtualization server and learn what the separation of concerns principle means (1-2 years); (this includes adding vlans)
3. Add the first Smart Home tools that are critical to you (e.g. monitoring of electricity consumption/production or automation of activity scenes for burglar defense) (6 months)
4. Work on a resilient backup solution. This includes offsite backups, so you will need to add a second server in a second house somewhere else. This _should_ come earlier, but you may have some backup solution in place already when starting at (1), so now is the time to do it properly (e.g. ZFS, automated syncoid pull-mode snapshots etc.) (1-2 years)
5. Try to improve individual pieces, maybe buy a larger rack, a UPS etc. (3 months)
6. At this time, you have a fully functioning Homelab. Now it is time to improve the look.. but doh, you have no time left anymore!
(above is basically my history.. started in 2017 and I am now after 7 years at stage (6), but otherwise overall pretty happy with my ugly looking setup)
Note: the latest OpenWrt on rack-grade routers is significantly more secure than proprietary, backdoored firewall appliances. I haven't really used Netgear/pfense but I reckon it wouldn't be much of improvement.
VLAN are perhaps the most important aspect of a network, and honestly I would start with it: tag the ports, bonding if necessary, and figure out IPv6-PD and resolve topology for it all, so that downstream DNS is easily configurable.
Do you mean pfsense/opnsense with "proprietary, backdoored firewall appliances"? I don't think so (if we are talking about OPNsense or the CE variant of pfsense).
Otherwise, I slightly agree that for the regular user, OpenWrt is simpler and less of a hassle than pfsense/opnsense, but still offers enough features. Personally, I enjoy having full control over all and every detail in my FW, which is only possible with the latter.
Thank you for the hint towards IPv6-PD/resolve topology - my migration to IPv6 is still on the ToDo list!