A personal look at building a complete home lab, from securing a rare JetKVM to configuring a 10GbE network with Ubiquiti gear and a Mac mini.

It’s a familiar feeling for anyone who builds things. You have a project—a home network, a workshop, a PC build—and it’s almost perfect. There’s just one missing piece that lives in the back of your mind. For me, that piece was a JetKVM.

After weeks of searching, I finally found one. And yes, I paid way too much for it. The kind of price that makes you wince a little when you click “buy.” But when it arrived, I was immediately impressed. The thing is surprisingly heavy and feels incredibly well-built. It’s a neat little device that solves a very specific problem, and holding it, the sting of the price started to fade.

Of course, the first thing I wished it had was Power over Ethernet (PoE). It’s the one feature that would have made it absolutely perfect. But nothing ever is, right? It works great, and that’s what matters. Getting the JetKVM was the final push I needed to call my home lab setup “mostly complete.”

A Quick Tour of the Rack

The whole system is built into a DeskPi Rackmate T2. It’s a compact and clever solution that keeps everything tidy. For now, there are a few 3D-printed blank panels filling the gaps while I figure out my final 10GbE NAS situation, but the core is solid.

Here’s a quick rundown from top to bottom:

• Connectivity & Core Switching: It all starts with a 2.5g fiber connection from my ISP, which runs into a Ubiquiti UCG Fiber gateway. From there, it hits the heart of the network: a USW Pro XG 8 PoE. This 10g switch acts as the core, routing everything and managing a couple of VLANs to keep my main devices, guests, and IoT gadgets safely separated.
• Wiring & Patching: Everything is wired up with CAT6a cables running through two patch panels. Clean wiring is one of those things that takes time but is so worth it for troubleshooting and peace of mind.
• The Mac Mini Workhorse: Tucked in the rack is an M4 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM. It’s a quiet, power-efficient little beast. Right now, it’s running a containerized version of Home Assistant, but I’ve got my eye on playing with container orchestration tools like Kubernetes or Docker Swarm down the line.
• Secondary Switching: A smaller USW Flex 2.5g PoE switch branches off the core. This handles additional wired clients and will eventually support some UniFi Protect cameras I plan to add.

How It All Works Together

The 10g switch is really the star. It gives the whole network a massive amount of internal bandwidth, which is great for file transfers and ensures there are no bottlenecks. The VLANs are essential for security—I don’t necessarily want my smart toaster talking to my work computer, and this setup prevents that.

The wireless side is just as important. I have two U7 Pro XGS access points, and they are ridiculously fast. I’ve clocked speeds around 1100Mbps over the 6GHz band. It’s the kind of performance that makes you forget you’re not plugged in with a cable.

That “Mostly Complete” Feeling

Is it finished? Not really. A home lab is never truly “finished.” There’s always something to tweak, a new service to spin up, or a better way to organize the rack. My next project is a proper 10GbE NAS to take full advantage of the network’s speed.

But for now, it feels complete. It’s stable, powerful, and does everything I need it to, from running my smart home to delivering incredible Wi-Fi speeds. It was a journey to get here, capped off by overpaying for that one last piece. And honestly? It was worth it.