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If you really want to become great at something, you practice it a ton, right? Well networking and IT work exactly the same. You’re not going to become an expect by just reading a ton of tech books and blogs. While those certainly help, there is nothing better than simply getting your hands dirty. Having a good home lab setup is key to truly understanding how things work.
So how do you get started? Well the way that I built a home lab over the past 10 years is probably much different from you could today, given the amount of virtualization technologies available. Still, I believe that some physical pieces of equipment are necessary. I took classes in high school toward CCNA certification, and we had a lab of several routers and switches there. Once I got into the real world, I wanted to start working on additional certifications and just improve my skills overall. So I picked up an old Cisco 2611 router and a 2950 switch. I played with these for a bit and used them to get my CCNA Security, which at the time covered the basics of securing Cisco IOS routers and switches.
Another year or so down the road and I expanded by picking up a power-over-ethernet switch, and two Cisco 7900 series IP phones. Since I had discovered that the 2611 router could run Cisco’s Call Manager Express, I decided to go for the CCNA Voice certification. Having this equipment to work on gave me experience that was much closer to real world, than if I had just studied the textbooks. I could configure things, break things, then sit there for hours until I figured out how to fix my problem. I could configure the entire system, test it all, then tear it down and completely rebuild. Being able to configure the entire CME system from memory gave me a lot of confidence toward taking the certification exam.
So do I still have a home lab today? Oh yeah, you bet I do! It’s changed quite a bit from what it used to be, but the same concept still applies. I have an entire environment to play with, which allows me to test and learn new technologies outside of work. In fact, my ‘home lab’ has evolved into just part of my home networks.
So here is what I’ve got running today:
- Cisco ASA 5505 (Probably soon to be replaced with a Juniper SRX 300)
- Two Cisco 2960G-8TC-L switches
- Ubiquiti UniFi 802.11n wireless access point
- Synology DS411 Network Attached Storage with 4x 3TB drives (Soon to be replaced, as it is over 5 years old(Update: Got myself a DS918+!))
- A few spare PCs running VMware ESX 6.0
The ASA, switches, and AP run just about all of my home network. I even have the ASA running AnyConnect SSL VPN so I can access my storage at home from anywhere. The Synology has been one of the best additions to my network and lab. For one, it acts as a centralized storage device for my home network. I back up all of my PCs to it, and any digital media I own is also stored on it so I can stream it to devices within my home. For two, the Synology acts as an iSCSI backend to my VMware hosts. This setup allows me much more flexibility with my lab.
On the ESX hosts, I have a few VMs for lab use and a few that are for my home network. A GitLab server hosts all of my Git repositories for my own personal coding projects. I have a CentOS box for running the Ubiquiti management web interface. Another few CentOS VMs for running bind DNS, Observium, and Splunk. I also run a personal Minecraft server on there, so it’s not all work here 🙂
I love the idea that at any time I can just go home, spin up a few VMs, and start playing with something new. When I was learning Juniper’s SRX platform, I downloaded their free trial of the vSRX and had it running for a while. When I changed jobs, I needed to learn a new web proxy software – so I downloaded their free trial and stood up a VM. You really learn a lot by building a platform from scratch, because you gain a better understanding of what impact certain configuration options have. You also have the freedom to change whatever settings you want and see what they do. I once had an idea for a coding project, so I turned up a VM running RabbitMQ – and spent a weekend learning how it works to see if it would accomplish what I needed for the project.
So to sum it up – I just want to say that having a home lab has really contributed a lot to my success. It offers way more flexibility than trying to test something at work, unless they also offer you a complete lab environment. Your lab doesn’t have to start off perfect, nor does it need to have expensive equipment – it just needs to help facilitate your ability to learn and gain experience.
Have a lab at home? Tell me about it in the comments below! I would love to hear what other people have done.