I have two business ideas to explore, and I decided that now is a good time to take the plunge and create a prototype. My hesitation throughout the last year of was due to the time and financial investment required. After some inspiration, detailed thought, and self-evaluation, I am ready to go for it. Worst case scenario, this is going to eat up a lot of my time. Even if I lose time, I will learn a lot about cloud infrastructure, cloud networking, and cloud instance provisioning. My first business idea is in the realm of home and small business network cyber security. The second utilizes a private cloud platform to provision labs for IT and cyber security training. A small virtual lab isn’t going to cut it for these ventures.
My Current Setup
Before I can pursue these builds, I need to upgrade my home network and lab and select a platform. I currently have 3 old used servers (2 Dell PowerEdge R510s and an HP Proliant DL360) for the cloud. For networking, I have ancient Cisco switch. I think I can get by with the old switch for now, but my a small private cloud requires more servers. I can use the private cloud to provision networks to test out capabilities, learn, and design. These can also hold prototypes and proof of concepts for demonstrations. For the private cloud I selected Openstack as my platform. This will allow me to provision instances using Terraform, and have more flexibility with networking configuration. I can also avoid a large AWS and Azure bill while I experiment with different configurations. The only thing that will suffer is my power bill 😊.
Project Goals
Based on the Open Stack documentation I will need at least 4-5 servers to support my configuration which is a small compute cloud. To use Juju and Metal as a Service (MAAS) to deploy the cloud I will need 2 more servers, but I could probably use one of my servers and host 2 VMs instead of purchasing another server. I haven’t yet decided whether I am going to use Juju and MAAS to deploy Openstack, but I do know that I need at least 2 more servers for my project. I also want to separate my private cloud from the rest of my network and still maintain network performance with the added security, so I will need a firewall / IPS appliance. Once complete, my home network will look something like this:
My Private Cloud Budget
I am trying to stay under $2,000 total for this project (including what I already spent). Below is the price I paid for everything I already have.
| Device | Qty | Unit Cost | Shipping | Total Cost |
| HP ProLiant DL360 | 1 | $149.99 | $112.89 | $262.88 |
| Dell PowerEdge R510 | 2 | $238.99 | $75.00 | $552.98 |
| Cisco Catalyst 3560 | 1 | $69.00 | $17.95 | $86.95 |
| Total Cost | $902.81 |
So, based on that I have about $1100 to spend. Although I have plenty of room, I am sticking with used equipment. The only exception I am making is my firewall appliance.
Purchasing New Equipment
I was able to find 2 Dell PowerEdge R610s for $157 each, well within budget. My shipping costs to my location are really high, so I have to keep that in mind. Even with the shipping costs, I still consider these a bargain and they meet my needs. These servers also come from the same vendor as my previous purchases (PC Server and Parts), so I know they will arrive in good condition and operate well.
Next I need a firewall appliance, for this I am going straight to a vendor because their site is a lot cheaper than Amazon. This appliance from Protectli has 4 NICs, a quad core processor, and a small SSD. This is more than enough to run pfsense (and it was already tested for it), so it will easily meet my needs and be a step up from my current options for under $300.
Total Costs
With those 2 purchases I have all the equipment I will need, and significantly under my max budget! The only other purchase I might make is a rack to store the equipment and a PDU. For now, I just have to wait for them to arrive. I plan to start sometime in December. While I wait, I am going to work on my remote access solutions, determine what IDS/IPS I am going to use (Suricata, Snort, or Bro), and finalize my design of how this will all fit together.
| Device | Qty | Unit Cost | Shipping | Total Cost |
| HP ProLiant DL360 | 1 | $149.99 | $112.89 | $262.88 |
| Dell PowerEdge R510 | 2 | $238.99 | $75.00 | $552.98 |
| Cisco Catalyst 3560 | 1 | $69.00 | $17.95 | $86.95 |
| Protectli FW4B | 1 | $282.00 | $7.00 | $289.00 |
| Dell PowerEdge R610 | 2 | $156.99 | $111.00 | $424.98 |
| Total Cost | $1616.79 |
This is interesting. I have always dreamed of doing something like this. I hope you will continue sharing your journey. Goodluck
Thanks, I plan to continue sharing throughout the build once the other servers arrive. I appreciate the early support.
Hi Matt,
Awesome stuff! We need more of this to help people understand what is possible at very reasonable costs.
We do something similar on 3 servers, but with Kolla-Ansible setting it up from within a container on one of the 3 servers. Check out “inmotion on demand openstack” if this link doesn’t come through – https://www.inmotionhosting.com/cloud/private/openstack-on-demand
If you want to see it in action sign up and let me know and I can get you a free test cloud. It is fully private so the Kolla-Ansible playbooks are right there for you to see how it was done. It is in a beta, so fair warning!