Finally got started on my first-ever homelab!

Okay. Here we go! 25-year IT veteran, Day 2 homelab noob. Here's what I've got working so far;

• Lenovo Thinkpad T580
  • 32GB RAM
  • 256GB SSD
  • 256GB Flash Drive (local backups)
• Proxmox as the base
  • Virtualised OPNsense firewall
    • Server, Device, and Management VLANs
    • DNAT to the home network
  • AdGuard DNS
    • DNS-A on a rPi on my main home network
    • DNS-B as a proxmox LXC in the lab network
  • Monitoring LXC
    • Prometheus + Grafana for metrics
    • Gatus for system status
  • Tailscale Router publishing routes for my lab networks for remote access
• Root CA on OPNsense
  • Root+Intermediate
  • CA Root trusted on all lab devices
  • Issued certs for various admin consoles.
• Tailscale Serve for lab admin consoles
• "Offsite" backups from Proxmox to my Raspberry Pi
• Most LXCs managed with Ansible, but there's been a fair bit of ClickOps going on to get myself setup.

Current projects;

• Proper DNS on the lab network (*.lab.internal) using Adguard request forwarding to dnsmasq for internal resolution
• Setting up my Stream Deck as a Proxmox monitor using python-elgato-streamdeck (and some OpenAI Codex!!)
• Jellyfin Media Server (hence the USB 4K Bluray drive and the external USB HDD)
• Lab Wifi – going to see if I can reuse an old USB wifi dongle for this
• Smart Lighting – got an old ESP32 board I never used, so going to see if I can hook it up to some Blinkt lights to show LXC status or something
• Networking – got a cheap TP-Link SG108PE arriving tomorrow so I can connect real devices and play with the VLANs and suchlike
• IP KVM – want to pick one up to play with, and for when I break things!

If I get into it, I'll probably try and go from the laptop to a small rack (6/9U, 10" desktop rack from Tecmojo most likely) and add 10Gb/s networking, and probably a Mini PC and a NAS, but for now this is it. Also thinking long-term about something like a Strix Halo for local LLMs, but that's getting expensive.

Happy to answer questions, or if anyone has some cool ideas for things I could try or add to the setup. I'd also be interested in recommendations for a decent top-of-rack 10Gb/s POE switch that won't bankrupt me, or a decent IP KVM.

Last thing I want to acknowledge is that Tailscale is frickin' awesome, and makes everything so much easier!