I Built my first homelab

This project started with me trying to revive an old desktop I found. It's was a Windows XP from 2006 that my brother had in his room. I had dreams of turning it into a lightweight server. It almost worked… until I realized the BIOS didn’t support USB booting 😩. My only option was to burn a DVD. I stared at the DVD drive. It stared back. I gave up. So I pivoted to a Raspberry Pi 4, and honestly, it was the better call.

Hardware Setup:

• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
• Micro SSD but using a USB to boot
• External HDD for storage
• Unmanaged Ethernet Switch (TP-Link TL-SG105)
• Powerline adapter (TP-Link AV1000)

My Problems:

My room is a wifi deadzone, so I used to powerline adapter that I already had and pluged it into the switch. Now, the switch is being used to connect ethernet to my RaspberryPi and main desktop. Setting this up wasn’t easy. First, the boot didn’t actually clone correctly from the USB to SSD, so the Pi would just vanish from the network when I unplug the USB.

What’s Next?:

• I want to host this site on the RaspberryPi
• Container more apps via Portainer
• Maybe circling back to that old XP machine… someday.😭

Final look of what my homelab looks like. The HD isnt connected because its the wrong cable. 😁