full image - Repost: Looking for advice as I transfer my office server cabinet to a home lab (from Reddit.com, Looking for advice as I transfer my office server cabinet to a home lab)
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Sorry in advance for the long post. Basically, I'm looking for advice on what to keep or replace from my collection of gear that I'll be bringing home from the office.BackstoryI've run a small animation company for the last 15+ years. During the pandemic, we were forced to figure out cloud-based remote workflows, and they worked so well for us that we decided it's not worth having a centralized office anymore. Which means I've got our old technical infrastructure sitting in storage right now, and I'm thinking about the most effective ways to continue to use it.Simultaneously, I'm about to start on a gut renovation the c1890 brick rowhouse my family will be moving to, so I'm thinking about wiring it up with cat6 while the walls are open, and putting in 20amp service in the basement to get at least some of the gear back online.My goal is a really solid home network that can use all of a Fios gigabit connection, both with various internet-connected entertainment devices in all the rooms, but more importantly my several workstations and render nodes. And I'd like my employees to be able to VPN in for certain shared software licenses that aren't currently cloud-managed, as well as to potentially render on my machines during crunch time.But since the last major office hardware refresh we did was in like 2015, a lot of the gear I currently have may not be ideal for the task.Rack CaseEverything currently lives in a 24U IsoBox cabinet (sealed and sound-treated, designed for quiet studios), which we got for our last office in a large industrial space without a dedicated machine room. The airflow is decent, and it handled our relatively small amount of gear just fine. Since it'll eventually live in a storage area of my basement, I'll be able to remove some of the sound baffling if heat becomes an issue.PowerPower is handled through an APC 2200VA UPS with a replacement battery less than a year old.NetworkFor network, in the office we used a Meraki MX100 and some MR40/MR18 access points. They were great for my level of admining, but I don't intend to keep paying all that money for those licenses for a home network, so they're going to become paperweights. Thinking about replacing them with a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro and ~3 access points for good Wifi6 coverage from basement to roof deck, through old brick/plaster walls. But I'm definitely looking for reddit's advice on this aspect of the project.I've got a couple Dell gigabit switches (24 port and 48 port) left over from when our office was bigger and spread across two floors. I'll probably only need the 24 under this new setup, but either way I should be covered for switching.NASOur old network storage is a SmallTree TitaniumZ with 16 drives. I'd like to have some kind of NAS on this network, but even though this one cost us like $20K back in 2014, I'm assuming there's now an option that would be faster, quieter, and draw less power for a small fraction of the price. NAS is also not a huge priority, since our production work is handled via a cloud storage pipeline. But having at least something will simplify configuring my render farm. So again I'm turning to reddit for recommendations.If there's space/power/heat to spare…There are a few other obsolete things cluttering the rack (thunderbolt drive array, LTO drive) that I'll clear out, and if there's room for the power/heat of 1-2 render nodes in ATX cases, I'd love to have them in there instead of in my office.Am I being too sentimental/stingy in the things I'm planning on keeping? Am I being to reckless in planning to get rid of perfectly fine hardware that I should still use? Is there anything I'm forgetting/never had to learn since I had consultants helping to design our IT infrastructure before?Thanks for any advice you can offer.
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