Building a non-NAS homelab

I bought a $510 server on Amazon. If you care about the details it’s a “minisforum” UM series. It has a Ryzen 9 6900HX, 64GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Alongside some USB-4 ports and dual ethernet ports it hit EVERY checkbox I had for a homelab server. I am not interested in storage. I’m interested in running software.

The primary day-in-day-out purpose this box serves is as our router. FYI, A $1000 router setup to replace the free one you get from your ISP is a lot of fun but absolutely not worth the cost. The access points are TP-Link Omada EAP610s. They’re kind of inexpensive, and can be controlled with a software controller. It even allows me to specify VLANs for different SSIDs. I use this setup to disallow my IOT devices from doing anything except talking to my main network (where Home Assistant is running).

In total it runs: A firewall, router, DNS, and DHCP server OPNSense, a wireless SDN TP-Link Omada Controller(the link didn’t seem reliable), and my absolute favorite home automation software Home Assistant. There will definitely be a post on HomeAssistant in the future. It does so much! I have a strict “no non-locally controllable smart devices” rule in our house.