Question Need advice to build a new home lab

[lsquare]

I'm totally new to this, but I want to build a new home lab. The good news is that starting relatively fresh, I won't have to worry much about legacy equipment.

I just started rebuilding my wired and wireless networks with Ubiquiti equipment. I described my build in another thread. The LAN will be 10GbE.

Originally, I was planning to build one powerful machine and then virtualize things, but I've been advised to have multiple machines executing the task to avoid having everything go down simultaneously. Is this the current consensus on best practices?

I do have two existing PCs. One is a mini PC with an N100. I'm currently using that as a web browser and it has 32GB of RAM. I love the power efficiency of the N100. I also have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q with an AMD Ryzen 4650GE and 64GB of RAM.

I also have a spare 5G cellular modem. I was planning to use it as a fallback with the Ubiquiti router, but I also want to play with OPNsense. UGREEN has a DXP4800+ with a G8505 processor. I'm thinking of getting this, installing 96GB/128GB of RAM, Proxmox, TrueNAS/Unraid, Docker, and OPNsense. Proxmox will virtualize these OS. I'll place less important data like movies and TV shows here. Or should I consider the DXP6800 Pro with an Intel i5-1215u CPU? It also has dual 10GbE.

I also want to have at least one, but possibly two NAS. I was originally set on getting a Ubiquiti NAS, but I'm reconsidering and might go with either TrueNAS or Unraid.

For priceless photos and videos, I will fully utilize the 3-2-1 backup concept, but I also want to have a NAS that will ensure data integrity and resist/mitigate against bitrot. I'm considering either an Intel Core 235 with W880 motherboard or an AMD EPYC setup. Both will have ECC RAM. For this build, I want it as low-power as possible.

Finally, I also want to have a build for gaming, editing photos with Adobe Lightroom, and editing 8K videos with Adobe Premiere. It's tempting to stick an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 to the workstation build with an W880 motherboard and ECC RAM.Again, best to separate it, especially with ECC and workstation motherboards being expensive?

Sorry, I know it's a lot of questions. Looking forward to reading all the expert opinions here. Thank you!

 

[In2Photos]

Wow, that's a lot! Jumping in with both feet eh?

Have you thought about dipping your toes in the water instead?

In all seriousness have you messed with any of this before? I don't know that I would call my setup a "home lab", but my first NAS was UnRAID on a PC made from an Athlon 3000, 1.9GHz with 2GB of RAM. Granted, it was just for file storage, including media, to watch on my HTPC. That system lasted years before it was upgraded to an i5-2300 with 8GB of RAM and is now an i7-8700 with 32GB of RAM. I still only really use it for storage of media, Jellyfin, and backups from other PCs in the house. I have a few dockers, but no VMs or anything. I also only have a 1GbE network. And while file transfers would speed up if I had a faster network it doesn't slow me down from being able to enjoy the media anywhere in the house. I have thought about upgrading the network, but haven't felt it necessary just yet. I use ONN 4K streaming devices for playback along with browsers on PCs.

I also have my gaming/photo editing PC. I don't do much with video, but that rig is in my signature, Ryzen 7 7700, 32GB RAM, RX6800XT.

I like having dedicated devices where possible. I think it makes sense to have a dedicated gaming/editing rig separate from the NAS. I think you could have one NAS to run everything and main storage and then just a backup NAS for storage. This would require much less horsepower than the main unit of course. You could also put it off site if you have some place to set it up with good internet speeds.