murdaBot

The hardware doesn't matter. Something with 2 cores and 4GB of RAM is enough to run a k8s lab.

What are you doing in your "homelab" that needs a $2000 CPU? If you don't need the PCIe lanes or memory bandwidth, get a Ryzen for 1/8th the cost and a third of the platform power requirement. You'll get better single core IPC anyway, which is still king.

To help you with this, you need to tell us what your environment looks like. A CI/CD pipeline for a VM based infrastructure looks VERY different than a fully GitOpsed k8s platform, which looks different than a pipeline for regular Docker containers, which looks different than if you have some cloud infrastructure, etc etc.

That's really the upside of the "NAS" drives, they usually come with a solid "no questions asked" warranty. That's really all you're paying for in some cases, especially for mechanical drives.

Don't expose unnecessary things to the internet, keep any client PCs patched, use some sort of malware protection ... and that's all you need to do.

All these VLANs are such are just overkill unless you're actively exposing things to the internet. They wind up breaking really useful stuff, especially stuff that relies on multicast.

Besides, that Chinese IoT device can't get hacked if it's not open to the 'net in the first place.

This is completely normal for a machine exposed to the internet. In the words of Obi Wan, "Nothing to see here, move along ..."

I've got a dual-wan UXG-Pro and am lucky enough to have two 1Gbps providers (fiber + cable), plus an employer who reimburses me for both. I have a small wired T-Mobile LTE MiFi device as backup, but never needed it. ($20 a month + usage over 2GB)

Ahhh, Datadog, the sleazy used car salesmen of the observability market. Seriously, they're hucksters.

Only reason I keep a Windows box around!

Because people get overly emotional about stupid things. Once you get a bit older and more mature, most people grow out of that. But for the ones who never do, they think their "way" is the "right way" and if you don't do it the "right way" ... "you're wrong."

At the end of the day, if what you're using meets your needs, then it's the right choice. Period. End of story.

Lower your MTU to 1380 and try again.

This switch runs hot to the touch, even with the default screamer fans. If you swap for Noctuas it's going to die a rapid death.