how does someone learn the basics of "home lab" or small-scale server setup, particularly networking?
I'm pretty familiar with managing compute & storage, but the networking is largely a mystery to me. I've read a bunch of CompTIA study materials but it was all very abstract
- get computers. laptops, desktops, raspberry pis, custom-built ("whitebox") servers, old dell poweredges you got off ebay, etc etc. Install linux on them.
- plug servers into switches, switches into switches, and eventually into your router. Don't create cycles in your tree (unless you know your router/switches support it (STP), and unless you paid $1k for your switch, it doesn't support it)
- Figure out your router config to assign them static/reserved DHCP IP addresses so they always get the same IP.
- put those IPs in your hosts file. (optionally, set up a DNS server.)
- ssh-copy-id your ssh key to all servers
Now you have a bunch of machines you can ssh to. Which imo is the most basic definition of a homelab.
Lots of people get super creative and use fancy routers and switches and enterprise gear and do complicated networking and etc etc etc but all that stuff is just good fun and not necessary.
I think you would benefit from an "Introduction to Computer Networks" type class
It will teach you what a switch and a router do, the difference between LANs and WANs, what DHCP and DNS do. The different ISO/OSI layers involve, TCP vs UDP.
Then you'll be able to setup a home network without issues, because you'll know the different moving pieces and how they fit together.
It is network simulation software that simulates down to the hardware level and will let you setup networks and see how they work as individual packets move through.
Best thing I think is "do it", because when you need to fix an issue you learn new stuff, I have never done dedicated studies, also because each system has its own particularities, so you can learn the basic but then the names and operations may change a bit from one to another brand.
In the context of the linked article, the easiest starting point would be to get a managed switch like the Netgear GS308T in the article, and then feed the data into grafana for pretty graphs. From there you can start branching into more complex topics like vlans, wifi, etc
I'm pretty familiar with managing compute & storage, but the networking is largely a mystery to me. I've read a bunch of CompTIA study materials but it was all very abstract