My Complete Home Lab Setup

Just about everything created on this site and my YouTube channel comes from the experience I’ve gained professionally and in my home lab, so to say that I’m a home lab enthusiast might be an understatement! This all has changed more times than I can count, but it’s nearing its final form…for now.

Current Hardware in My Home Lab

This is the current hardware in use for my home lab, but at the bottom of the page, you can see what’s changed and when. I have various videos that I’ll reference throughout this that help show how things are set up, and why they’re set up the way they are.

Firewall

I am currently using two UniFi UDM Pro Max devices configured in Shadow Mode for my home lab. This provides high availability on my firewall, and while I don’t have redundant Switches (so there’s still individual points of failure), I keep Shadow Mode enabled due to my VLANs. When my firewall goes offline, all layer 3 routing breaks, so having redundant firewalls ensures that if I have to reboot the primary device for any reason, the secondary kicks in without disruption, and inter-VLAN routing can continue to operate.

Paired with the two UDM Pro Max devices are two ISP connections. One 1Gb Fiber Connection and a backup Broadband connection configured as primary/backup.

The two ISP connections are configured using a Switch with VLANs, which is a pretty cool way of splitting an ISP connection. Check out the video below if you’re interested in configuring this or seeing how it’s configured.

Switches

My Switch configuration has been changed a lot over the past few years, but I think it’s finally at a point where it will stay this way. Everything is connected to a USW Pro Aggregation Switch, and then there are three main Switches for my devices:

Pro Max 24 PoE: Mainly used for Outdoor Security Cameras
Pro HD 24 PoE: Used for all Internal Devices (APs, Servers, etc)
Pro Max 16 PoE: Split between Security Cameras and Internal Devices

I have a few other smaller Switches that are used for utility purposes as well (USW Flex 2.5G and USW Ultra).

Access Points

At this point, I have full coverage with Access Points in my home lab. More than I need, quite honestly, but the entire goal is to ensure Wi-Fi performance is great, and a lot of the time, optimizing Wi-Fi comes down to adding more APs, so that’s what I’ve done.

U7 Pro XGS: 10Gb Uplink
U7 Pro XG: 2.5Gb Uplink (goal is to switch this to 10Gb soon)
U7 Pro Max: 2.5Gb Uplink
U7 Pro Outdoor: 2.5Gb Uplink
U7 In-Wall: 2.5Gb Uplink
U7 Lite: 2.5Gb Uplink

The Access Points are all tuned to work well together from a transmit power perspective, so that client devices have an easy time roaming between Access Points.

Virtualization Servers (Proxmox)

I currently use two DIY home servers that I built for virtualization in my home lab, which provide more than enough power for my current needs. In summary, these are the specs for each Proxmox node:

8-core, 16-thread Processor (Ryzen 9700x)
96GB of DDR5 RAM (which I can upgrade to 192GB if needed)
10Gb Networking (Intel X540-DA2)

There’s a lot more to these servers, but you can check out the entire build guide here.

These devices are configured in a Proxmox Cluster for High Availability, with a Raspberry Pi acting as a qDevice to ensure quorum is maintained.

NAS Devices

I’m kind of obsessed with NAS devices and should probably consolidate these, but I just can’t bring myself to it. In total, I have 240TB of total storage with another 24TB off-site for my home lab. My off-site NAS will (hopefully) expand in size as the year goes on, but this storage is all split between three main NAS devices:

Synology DS1019+
UNAS Pro
DIY NAS with TrueNAS Scale

The devices are used for a few main, but important needs.

Synology NAS: Synology Drive and Active Backup for Business
UNAS Pro: Main surveillance storage, and all backups
DIY NAS: Still in the process of configuring this, but will mainly be used for video footage. My Proxmox Backup Server also replicates from the UNAS Pro storage to this NAS.

The DIY NAS is an absolute powerhouse, with an 8-core, 16-thread processor, 128GB of ECC RAM, 2 x 25Gb NICs, and twelve 3.5″ drive bays and six 2.5″ drive bays, all hot swappable. This was a ton of fun to build, and you can find the whole build guide in the video below.

Surveillance

I am big into video surveillance and currently have an extremely overkill setup for my home lab. I record 24×7 to two different devices: Blue Iris and a UNVR running UniFi Protect. Overall, I like both systems and will probably consolidate at some point in the future, but I kind of like the idea that both are recording 24×7 for redundancy purposes, so it might stay this way.

Blue Iris handles all of my motion notifications, and the cameras’ day/night profiles are synced this way. The UNVR is used for 24×7 recording, but I also have an individual camera with an AI Port being used for motion events as well. Overall, I am really liking UniFi Protect, so there’s a chance this will be my primary NVR in the future…

Change Log for My Home Lab

While the hardware above is what’s currently being used in my home lab, a lot of stuff has changed as the years have gone on. I try and keep up with the latest and greatest tech as it’s important for the entire WunderTech community, but I’ll list out some of the bigger changes below.

Date Changed	Hardware	Service Dates	Replaced By
March 2025	U7 Pro	December 2024 – March 2025	U7 Pro XGS / XG
December 2024	U6 Pro / 2 x U6 LR	November 2021 – December 2024	U7 Pro / 2 x U7 Pro Max
December 2024	Netgate 6100 w/ pfSense	November 2021 – December 2024	2 x UDM Pro Max
December 2024	USW Pro 24 PoE	November 2021 – December 2024	Pro Max 24 PoE
December 2024	DIY Home Server (Intel Proxmox Server)	November 2022 – December 2024	1 x Ryzen Home Server (video above)
December 2024	DIY Home Server (Ryzen Proxmox Server)	May 2022 – December 2024	1 x Ryzen Home Server (video above)