About this Project

This project started as an alternative to PC building, which was my go-to tech category of choice for a very long time. My goal originally was to have access to some network storage without buying a pre-built NAS box. A Raspi5, some external SSDs, and samba was where I started. There were plenty of guides out there on how to build these. Then over time I wanted my setup to feel like it could function in a small business or something that was expandable to a larger scale. In the end it really just turned into a playground for experimenting with networking, security, and PC building. Another large goal of mine when doing this was to utilize cheap hardware, recycled hardware, or aging hardware.

Below is where my network topology currently stands. I will cover some future plans and future upgrades in this writeup here which will outline where I would like to see this project go. You can also head over to the history page to see how it grew over time. There is also a short writeup on the Raspi5 wireless backup server here that I did my best to document. I realize my reserved IP address ranges are not best practice (.100-.199 non-static and .2-.99 for static devices - its on my list to fix at a later time).

Below is an older image of the 14U rack itself, certainly not the prettiest thing. Reconfiguring this entire rack is very high up on my list for future work which is covered later in this writeup.