This post will serve as the 10,000 ft overview of my environment and what it all consists of. I plan to follow up this post with a series of smaller posts breaking down my Home Lab into the following sections:

(as I update these blog posts, links will appear and become active)

• Home Lab Servers & Storage
• Home Lab Routing & Switching
• Home Lab Access Points
• Home Lab Surveillance
• Home Cat6 Cable Wiring

In this post I go into details about the server and storage that I use in my Home Lab environment.

The current hardware I use is:

• Dell PowerEdge R710 SFF & LFF
• Dell PowerEdge C2100
• Dell PowerEdge CS24-SC (Essentially a 2950)
• Dell PowerEdge R510 LFF

The operating systems that I use are:

• VMware esxi 6.5
• VMware esxi 6.7
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019
• FreeNAS 11.1 (U7 if you care)

In this post I will cover all the networking equipment that I use in my home lab and how I use it.

The networking hardware that I use is:

• Unifi USG-PRO-4 (Gateway)
• Unifi US-24 (Switch)
• Unifi US-8-150 (Switch)
• 3 x Dell PowerConnect 7048P (Switch)
• Netgear ProSAFE GS108Ev3 8-Port

In this post I will cover the Access point that I use in my home, discussing wiring, port and physical placement.

The hardware access points I currently use are:

• Unifi UAP-AC-PRO
• Unifi UAP-AC-M-PRO
• Unifi UAP-IW-PRO

In this post I will cover my Home Surveillance Solution using my Home Lab equipment.

Some of the equipment I use is as follows:

• Home Server (Sometimes virtualized, sometimes standalone)
• BlueIris NVR Software
• Reolink IP Cams
  • RLC-410
  • RLC-411
  • RLC-420
  • RLC-423
• HikVision IP Cams
  • DS-2CD2142FWD-IS 4MP
• Ring Pro Doorbell

In this post I will go through what it takes to wire up your home with Cat6 cabling. This is currently an ongoing process for me and may be for some time yet to come.
The materials you will need to complete wiring in your house are as follows:

• Cat6 cabling
• RJ45 Cat6 Jacks
• RJ45 Boots
• RJ45 Crimping tool
• RJ45 Punch Down tool
• Cat6 Wall Plates with Jacks
• Pull String

NOTE: This how-to assumes that you have set up you FreeNAS installation according to the instructions shown in my tutorial: Install and Setup FreeNAS on Dell CS24-SC

Setting up a Share

First we are going to need to set up a share(I did cover this in my Install and Setup FreeNAS on Dell CS24-SC tutorial, so you can skip if you already followed that).

NOTE: I have chosen to use CIFS, as I am going this from a Windows Machine.

Navigate to your FreeNAS IP and login, then expand “Services” on the side and click on “CIFS” and it will bring up the following:

You can choose what to put in all these fields, just make sure you check and IP to bind it to at the bottom. Next go back to the left side of the screen and click on “Control Services” under the “Services” section.

Here you will need to turn “CIFS” on. Now we will need to add a CIFS share onto FreeNAS, first expand “Sharing” then expand “Windows (CIFS) Shares” and click on “Add Windows (CIFS) Share”

I am choosing to share the root of my “Volume0” and I decided to name the share “FreeNASROOT”

After this is done bring up Windows Explorer and verify that you can access the share. For me I had to type in \\FreeNAS or \\192.168.0.91 in my explorer bar. Once it connected I saw the share “FreeNASROOT” and when i selected that I was asked for creds to access the share, enter the root creds you use to log into the WebGUI as we have not created any users at this time.

**I am not covering users and user permissions in this how-to, but it is pretty simple and you should always create a user so you are not doing everything as the root user**

Installing Plex

FreeNAS makes this pretty damn easy. Simply click on the “Plugins” tab and wait for it to load.

Once its loaded you will see something along the lines of the following:

Here you need to scroll down to “PlexMediaServer” select it, then click “Install” at the bottom of the page. You will get a popup notification that reads “Are you sure you want to install “PlexMediaServer” plugin?” Click “OK” and it will proceed with the install and configurations.
Now we need to configure what IP Plex will listen on. You can do this by expanding the “Jails” tab and then expand “plexmediaserver_1” and now click “edit”

Go ahead and give it an IP that will work for you. And now click on the “Installed” tab on the Plugins page and you will see the following:

The only difference between what you see and the image above is that your Plex will be powered off (red). Go ahead and turn it on (blue). Note that you may get “some error occurred” when you try to do this. That is bc we just changed the Jail IP. Go ahead and reboot the box if that is the case. After it powers back up, navigate back to the page above and power Plex on. Once it is on you can go to the following address: (change the IP with the IP of your Plex Jail)
http://192.168.0.93:32400/web/index.html
You can also get here by refreshing your page, then expand the plugins tab and select Plex Media Server as seen in the following screenshot:

In the popup window click on the “here” link and that will bring up Plex! You did it, you installed Plex successfully!

Now we just have to configure it so you can see your movies on there.

Configuring Movies with Plex

Once you browse to http://192.168.0.93:32400/web/index.html your screen should look like this:

Before we can tell what movies Plex to look at, we first have to add a movie, or movies, to our FreeNAS Share we set up. So, go ahead and navigate back to your Share in explorer and add a folder called “Movies“, then add a Movie into that Folder as shown below:

                           

We also need to add in a corresponding folder in our freenas jail, to do this, navigate to: \\freenas\FreeNASROOT\jails\plexmediaserver_1\media (if you have named everything as i have here) and add a folder called “Movies“.

This is going to act as an alias in the FreeNAS Jail’s storage we are about to configure. So go ahead and open back up your web browser, open up FreeNAS and navigate to Jails on the left hand side, expand everything you can.

…and you should be in the “Add Storage” section of your Plex jail. Go ahead and click on Add Storage. For Source put /mnt/Volume0/Movies or navigate to wherever your movies actually live. And for Destination put /media/Movies

Now go back to Plex and Click on the + (plus) in the upper left, next to the name of your Media Server and you will get something that looks like this:

From here you will choose “Movies” and click Next

Click on “Add folders” on the left hand side and choose the alias that we created /media/Movies. Now Plex should auto-update and find the new movie(s), but in case it doesn’t, just click on the gear on the upper left and select “Update Libraries” and there you have it, you can now see your new movie(s) on Plex!

Now that I have gotten you up and running you just have to go look through the Plex settings by clicking on the Wrench and Screw Driver in the upper right hand corner. It’s all pretty straight forward and simple but if you can’t figure it out then google that shit, then if that doesnt work comment and message me and i will see how I can help.

So that’s it, pretty simple install. If I left anything out that you notice or are having any trouble, leave a comment or send me and email on the right hand toolbar

FreeNAS is offered in two ways: Install and support it yourself, as it is a Free/OpenSource Operating System, or invest in a turnkey solution from iXsystems Inc. Their support is great as they built the OS and know how it works best, I would strongly recommend contacting them if you are running FreeNAS as a business solution.

This how-to will cover the basic install and very basic set-up of FreeNAS. FreeNAS has a lot of options and you will set it up pretty uniquely with each option. So for this tutorial I have covered a basic setup and a CIFS/SMB Share. This will allow you to use your FreeNAS server as a Data/File Store.

What you will need

• 1 – Dell CS24-SC
• 2 – 8GB Flash Drives
• LAN Connectivity
• Keyboard and Monitor – (if you are not going to use BMC)
• 1 – Windows Computer – (I am using Win7)

FreeNAS USB Stick

Obtain a copy of the FreeNAS ISO.
NOTE: This Guide is using the Build FreeNAS 9.3 Stable

Write the ISO to a USB drive (Use a USB Drive of at least 8GB’s)
– You can do this using Win32 Disk Imager or Rufus

                        

**Use the settings you see above in Rufus

Installing FreeNAS

You can also refer to the FreeNAS installation instructions from the developers website found here
I am using 2 separate USB’s for the install, I have found this to be easier as i keep quite a few OS’s on USB sticks at any given time. One is set up as shown above with the ISO mounted to it, and the other one is currently formatted as FAT32, FreeNAS will work fine with this. Attach the ISO drive to the back and the blank drive to one of the front slots.

Boot your CS-24

You can do this from the BMC console which is where I will get the following screenshots come from. You will get the exact some thing when hooking up a monitor and keyboard to your CS-24.

When FreeNAS boots you will see the following screen:

Click “enter” on the one and only option, if you fail to do so FreeNAS will proceed with executing the FreeNAS installation anyway.

Next You will see this screen with four options:

Click “enter” on the first option, Install/Upgrade, and you will get the following screen:
(Note – I used 2 different brand flash drives that were different sizes so it was easy to identify the two)

Here you will select the flash drive that is plugged into the front, by scrolling to it and hitting “space” and then “enter” and you will get the following screen:

Click “enter” on YES here, this is just formatting the drive with the correct permissions for FreeNAS, and you will get the following screen:

Here, enter your password into both fields and click “enter” on OK, then you will see some script run and after a while you will finally get this screen:

Click “enter” to acknowledge that you understand the notification. And this will bring you back to the original screen where you will now choose option 4 Shutdown System

Once the server is off, remove the flash drive from the back of the machine, and move the one from the front to the slot in the back and you are ready to roll. Power that baby on and wait for the install to complete…

Configuring FreeNAS

When your server does finally get done booting for the first time you will see the following screen that will have an IP address on it if your network has DHCP enabled, if not you will have to configure the network settings , which will be covered in the next step:

Now to configure the network chose option 1 and click “enter”
Now I am going to be using both NIC’s, you can choose to use just one or the other if you wish, but i have chosen to use both for redundancy reasons, both NIC’s are not necessary.
Now you can set up your network as follows, since I am on the 192.168.0.0/24 Network I will be setting my FreeNAS box accordingly.
You can see my configurations here:

                                          

Once you have done the steps above, you will come back to the main screen and it will look like the screen below:
(but the IP'(s) listed will be static IP'(s) on your network)

Now you just need to change the root password, do so by selecting option 7 and following the reset password prompts.

FreeNAS GUI Configuration

Now that we have done all the steps for the console configuration we will choose one of the two IP’s above, open a browser from a computer on your local network and navigate to one of those IP’s. When you navigate to either of those IP’s you will see the following login screen:

Type in the username “root” and enter the password that you set up in the previous step. Once logged in you will get the following screen:

*It may not come up directly to this screen, you will likely get a pop-up for the language and time zone, set these accordingly, and you will get another pop-up asking to create volumes, just click exit on this.
Start off by clicking on the “General” tab and you will get this screen:

I chose to bind the WebGUI to my .91 address and I verified my Time Zone was correct here. Now you will want to click on the “Network” tab

Here you will want to change your Hostname, add in the Defualt IPv4 Gateway, and the DNS servers. After saving these settings navigate to the “Storage” tab and choose “Volume Manager” and you will see something like this:

Since I am running hardware RAID 10 with 4x120GB’s Hard Drives. You will see Volume settings as above. Your volumes will most likely be different from this, so you have some freedom here to choose what best fits you.

You may have to run the following commands from the shell if your Add Volume fails the first time, there is some trash in the partition table area:
sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada0
after this runs for about a minute, hit ctrl+C and then go ahead and proceed with setting up the volume.

Once you have configured these settings to your liking click on “Add Volume“. After your volume finishes writing you will see something along the lines of the following:

Now that we have our storage set up, we need to setup access for it. I have chosen to use CIFS, as I am going this from a Windows Machine. Expand “Services” on the left hand side and select the “CIFS” tab. and it will bring up the following:

You can choose what to put in all these fields, just make sure you check and IP to bind it to at the bottom. Next go back to the left side of the screen and click on “Control Services” under the “Services” section.

Here you will need to turn “CIFS” on. Now we will need to add a CIFS share onto FreeNAS, first expand “Sharing” then expand “Windows (CIFS) Shares” and click on “Add Windows (CIFS) Share”

I am choosing to share the root of my “Volume0” and I decided to name the share “FreeNASROOT”

After this is done bring up Windows Explorer and verify that you can access the share. For me I had to type in \\FreeNAS or \\192.168.0.91 in my explorer bar. Once it connected I saw the share “FreeNASROOT” and when i selected that I was asked for creds to access the share, enter the root creds you use to log into the WebGUI as we have not created any users at this time.

**I am not covering users and user permissions in this how-to, but it is pretty simple and you should always create a user so you are not doing everything as the root user**