Hello, I’ve recently setup a homelab using an old desktop pc, and decided to install proxmox on it and then TrueNAS scale VM for Network drive for storage and to use jellyfin for personal movies and tv shows. Couldn’t get jellyfin to work inside TrueNas scale so tried TrueNas core didn’t boot up at all after creating the VM (the install of core went fine no issues till reboot, then it hung and wouldn’t load) . Long story shorter. switched back to Scale added in Ubuntu server for jellyfin and seems to work. however now have an issue connecting a network drive for Ubuntu to see from the Truenas VM running. It is an SMB drive due to others using windows in the home (and yes I have checked to make sure the storage drive is working and accessible. On multiple machines.).
I am completely out of my depth with the command line as I am really new to linux and have been trying to find all the information I can on every topic I can find. Perhaps I am biting off more than I can chew in regards to learning how to network and do a home lab / server. I am learning lots and hope to find all the information and help to successfully get my homelab working amazingly and even accessible outside of my home network in the future. ( after many updates and security upgrades. )
Thanks hope I haven’t rambled too much.
Also any tips on firewalls and routers / switches (cheap cough cough) would be amazing also. Thanks again for any insight.
Welcome to the forum!
Congratz on your homelab. But can you please explain what exactly are you setting up. because I didn’t understand. Are you running TrueNAS Core as a VM in proxmox? And Jellyfin inside TrueNAS
If your main hypervisor is proxmox, I would have storage straight on it and make the shares on it, but since you’re a beginner, I guess a truenas vm makes sense as of right now. Maybe installing OpenMediaVault straight on Proxmox might serve the same purpose better (as it gives you access straight to hardware) and still gives you the GUI to manage stuff without knowing a lot.
https://docs.openmediavault.org/en/latest/installation/on_debian.html
The way I’d set up jellyfin would be a debian VM inside proxmox. Then you mount the share from OMV / Proxmox inside the VM and you’re gold. Just make sure to disable proxmox’es own firewall in the network config tab in the proxmox web gui in the VM managment (haven’t used proxmox in a while, I think it’d be in the VM options, but definitely when editing the network interface). Proxmox might be blocking access from the vms to itself by default.
For firewalls, pfsense / opnsense are always beginner friendly firewall OS, can’t go wrong with them. You could virtualize it in proxmox, but you need at least 2 (preferably 3) network interfaces on the host. I don’t like virtualized firewalls, but that’s just me (I’d get something like an asrock j3455m, or an odroid h3 non-plus with the network case and the 4 port m.2 card). For the virtualized route, all you need is a 2 port NIC for pfsense and one nic for proxmox (technically you could get away with 2 if you make a bridge in proxmox, but if you mess something up in the firewall, getting back into proxmox will be a tough job without the third port used for the management interface).
If you want a new switch, I’d recommend the zyxel xgs1210-12, which I own. It doesn’t have any CLI interface (to its own detriment IMO), but it’s easy to setup and has a decent web gui. If you don’t mind scavenge hunting, get an old enterprise switch (but most of these don’t come with guis). Cisco is typically the easiest to find documentation and tutorials for, but the concepts translate to most switches, just that the commands don’t match. Zyxel and HPE switches are nice (used to own a hpe procurve 2910al, really good, except it was loud frfr).
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bullet point setup
consumer router
proxmox
vm truenas scale ( as core wouldn’t work after install)
ubuntu server with jellyfin running for media
Issue Ubuntu server doesn’t want to talk to TrueNas for media files stored there at the moment.
I didn’t realise proxmox had a built in firewall that made talking between vm’s difficult.
I’ll post an update once i have a chance find that and see if that is the issue.
Thanks and I will look at your network switches and router suggestions.
Much Appreciated.
I think you are biting off more than you can chew for a beginner. Too many moving parts to master. I think TrueNAS is a lot for an inexperienced person to learn. How familiar are you with Linux and permissions? If Linux and permissions are foreign to you, you may be better off running CasaOS to start. Or delay using Jellyfin and just get the hang of running a NAS first. I like the idea of Openmediavault. My very first homelab project was setting up OMV as a NAS on a raspberry Pi.
As far as firewalls, I love the fanless pfSense boxes on Amazon (Moginsok, Qotom, Hunsn, etc.). As far as switches go, as long as you are OK with 1gbe, its kind of hard to go wrong with the TP-Link TL-SG105E. Its a 5 port managed switch (so you can set up VLANs some day) for $22.
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Thanks for the reply.
My working knowledge of linux and all the permissions is limited at best. Coming from windows to linux I’m still learning the file structure and how to find everything. The command line is daunting however I am learning and the whole reason behind setting up my homelab in proxmox is the limitations I currently have on hardware to use. I think i have the issue solved to get the vm’s to talk to each other for storage of media files. I’m working on creating / making all my dvd’s and tv shows accessible to me first just at home. Although at some point in the future I likely will setup for access from anywhere.
Originally I was going to use TrueNAS core in a vm for creating storage drives for my media files and a vm to create all those files. As the only dvd player I have is in that proxmox server. So I was wanting to create the file, dump it to storage, then from storage use handbreak to transcode it with the video card in that server and then refile it on the storage drive in the right paths. Then from there use another vm to have it on all my personal devices or home tv’s as I wanted or needed.
Convoluted I’m sure for a homelab project but what better way to get experience doing everything I was looking to do then all at once and as I hit challenges try and find solutions, and ask questions.
Hopefully this gives you the insight into what I’m doing and why it might be a little more difficult from the start.
That managed switch looks exactly like what I’m looking for.
Thank you.
Linux and the command line are not particularly difficult if you come into it with an open mind. In fact, I would argue that it can be easier, and sometimes, even too easy. People like Jay, Network Chuck, and others often provide copy and paste commands to walk you through the process. You can’t really do that with a GUI. But if you don’t understand what is being done, then it becomes a bear to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. I would say go one step at a time and learn as you go.
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Don’t get me started on all the deprecated tutorials for pfsense 2.2 and the GUI change. 
(although some things can be inferred, you may need to look into different spots)
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Hey All, Sorry for not responding sooner. Update I had a massive basement flood and lost my machine. Any way Got a replacement went with an old Dell r710 3.5 drive server with 2 cpu’s and 192 gbs of ram. it has an Idrac port and a quad nic in it (referb) haven’t started it up yet waiting on a network switch to get all the cabling in the house sorted out first. Which will be next week. As well as Running power line to a server (closest /room) with a rack I’m setting up. Once done with that I’ll get back to posting my issues if I have any at that time and requesting some help. Thanks in advance.
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I hope you’re ok and haven’t suffered any other damages and that your financial situation is stable. Just ping us if you’ve got any problems setting it up.
Yes everything is okay financial or will be once everything is sorted out properly. Right now I’m in the design phase of my homelab network. Waiting on a 8 port 2.5gb with 1sfp+ port network switch to arrive. I will need to do some rewiring of my network cables to start using Vlan’s and better security structure of the home network to better accommodate the server in the home. I think I might have gone too small on the new switch and should have done a larger 24 port rack mounted switch instead.
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So the Switch has Arrived and I’ve started with setting it up. Got into the switch and started looking around it to Try and learn its GUI and look at all its features. A Mokerlink 8 port 2.5gbE with a 10G SPF+ port. Now I don’t have a 10G spf+ port on the server yet so future item. Secondly the amount of options in the switch blew my mind as to how many features I didn’t know existed in switches. More over also found out my current home router with supposed to have 4 X 1GbE ports on it not counting the WAN port that is also just a 1GbE aren’t even running at those speeds. They are running at just 100M spends. So now I have to make decisions on do I make a VM with pfsense not ideal however at least I would get full 1GbE. I’m thinking what to do now.
What are you planning to use for hard drives?
I have a 13th gen And I was able to get a dual sfp+ and dual gigabit card for under $20 shipped.
If you are looking for more ports, check out some of the used brocade switches. There is a really detailed thread over on serve the home forums about upgrading the firmware. Beware, it is the loudest piece of equipment I have. I plan to play with it, but if I’m going to use it full time, it will require a muffler. I was just watching a few on eBay. A seller offered me a 48 1g 8 10g poet procade for 100 shipped.
I got a dell r710 that has a quad nic at 1gb for the four ports also has 192GB of ram so adding in a 10gb spf for storage vm would be fine I think. So doing it as a VM inside Proxmox should be fine depending on if I need to do a passthrough of the nic or not. That I could use although its not best practice it should be okay for a homelab till I can get something else.
The Hard Drives are going to be a 500gb ssd for OS and two 8TB drives for storage in a mirror.
The reason I ask, I think the 11th gen servers have some drive size limitations.
It may and if that’s the case I do have some smaller 1TB drives or even 500 GB drives I can use instead. Thanks though for the heads up.
Reminder that gigabit is just fine for homelab and I used dual gigabit in LACP and in situations where I’ve ran out of LACP groups on my switch, balance-alb (I had more servers connecting to more NASes, so basically each could get its gigabit).
40 VMs per server, about 7 hypervisors, 5 small NASes and 3 big NASes. All on gigabit switches with 1x 10g uplink between them (they were in their own storage area, no routing happening).
I was a bit bummed at the slow speeds of my network at home when transferring large files, but for services other than video streaming, it’s more than fine (the only time I was affected by the slow speed was a full backup to my backup server).
I agree gigabit is fine right now the router though is only serving up 100m though for machines on that device. Just too slow. Hence thinking of switching to a VM running pfsense even though that’s not the best practice. The connection out though is showing at 1gig however i don’t have 1gig service so no real way to test that with the provider lol.
The connection to the switch of your ISP (or modem or whatever else) might be gigabit, but you’re limited in software to 100 Mbps. Similar is you’d be buying a 200 Mbps or 250 Mbps or 500 Mbps. There’s no Ethernet standard that supports that, it’s just soft-limited in their authentication server (usually pppoe, but could be anything else).
Routers running pfsense is nothing unusual and it can work just fine in the home (and work to some degree in the enterprise, but dedicated appliances are preferred as routers, because that means less impact during maintenance). The reason I hate VM routers in the home and small business setups is that you have to take out the router when you update your hypervisor (typically there’s only one big box running your stuff, instead of multiple boxes running something like VRRP or CARP + pfsync).
In my lab, I also power off my hypervisor, so even more of a reason to have a small router always-on.
A VM router should be capable of gigabit even without passthrough of a physical NIC. Keep in mind you’ll still be routing in your infrastructure if you make multiple subnets. If you’re only going to have a single subnet, then you won’t even be routing traffic other than going out to the internet.
The front end to the ISP is limited by the plan where I am. However the backside of the Router is supposed to be 1Gig yet is running at a Max 100M. Tomorrow when no one else is around I’ll be bring down the Router to do fine testing to make sure it isn’t wiring issue and really the back end of the router. This was something I noticed but didn’t have any measurements of when I started setting up the original server. Other than noticing the speed seemed slow.
Do you build your own cables? Punch down I have no problem with. What ever combo I have of monoprice cable and non through terminals is not fun to work with. I had several that would only run at 100MB. It was my fault. I ran across some of the monoprice slim cat cables and I don’t see any reason I will ever build my own now.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=13510
and
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34211
I think mixing B on one end and A on the other will also cause it to run at 100mb.