Why You Should Have a Home Lab
Home labs are – in my opinion – one of the single greatest ways to develop core skill sets in IT; be it networking, administration, automation, and much more. If you have worked a job in an IT environment, you are usually limited with the amount of tinkering and exploring you can do. With a home lab, it's all yours; you break it, you fix it.
Home labs can be incredibly enriching and rewarding. You have to depend on Google, forums, and your peers for nearly everything. Because you're setting the environment up from scratch and practicing continuous maintenance, the amount you learn is unparalleled. It's my opinion that you can learn much more in a short time in your home lab than on the job.
If you search online for images of home labs, you are going to find mixed results. There are a lot of home-labbers with some very elaborate setups. The good news is that home labs come in all varieties. You may not start with much, but in the future, you too may have a very elaborate setup.
The Home Lab Experience
Home Labs Are...
- A monetary commitment
- A time commitment
- Marketable resume enhancements
- Job interview subject matter
- A wealth of knowledge
Skills One Can Learn in a Home Lab
- Virtualization
- Server Administration
- Network Engineering and Administration
- Systems Engineering and Administration
- Cybersecurity (Red and Blue)
- Software Development
- DevOps (CI/CD)
- Database Administration
Lab Equipment Scouting
Minimum Recommendations
- At least two network interfaces for redundancy and NIC bonding
- At least two disk bays
- 128 GB to 256 GB SSD for the operating system
- 1TB+ SSD or 10,000 RPM HDD for storage
- At least a single quad-core, hyperthreaded CPU
- Enterprise-grade preferred (eg. Intel Xeon, AMD Threadripper)
- More CPU cores allows for larger workloads
- Motherboard capable of utilizing 64GB+ RAM (preferrably server RAM)
- A system that will grow with you
Small Form Factor Computers
If space is an issue – or you are not planning on using a server rack – there are some small computers that have decently powerful specifications with a small footprint.
- Intel NUC
- Minis Forum
- Beelink Mini PC
- HP Mini Workstations
- Dell OptiPlex
- Asus ExpertCenter
- MSI Pro Mini PC
- Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny Desktops
- Laptops
Some Form Factors to Consider
- Stick PC
- Mini PC
- Laptop
- Tower
- Rackmount
Equipment Scouting Process
You should have a good idea of what kind of system you want before you start looking. What form factor are you looking for? What are the minimum specifications you prefer?
Some Questions to Consider
- CPU
- Which CPUs are compatible? How many sockets?
- GPU
- Which GPUs are compatible?
- RAM
- What is the maximum amount of RAM?
- Number of pins?
- Double data rate (DDR)?
- Frequency?
- What is the maximum amount of RAM?
- Disks
- How many disk bays?
- 3.5" or 2.5" disks?
- If 3.5", do you want a 2.5" adapter?
- How many disk bays?
- Power Supply
- How many network ports? Speed?
Examples of Good Buys*
* Updated for June 2023
Tower and Rackmount Servers
1U and 2U labelling — be advised that they are very loud under heavy workloads, consume more electricity, and require a server rack to mount them.If you're looking to get the most value for your money, rackmount servers are the way to go. You can often find very good deals on rackmount servers with:
- Multiple CPU chips (lots of cores)
- High quantities of RAM (hundreds of gigabytes)
- Large amounts of storage (tens of terabytes)
This is largely possible due to the massive size of the server case and the motherboard. The tradeoff being that they are very heavy, very loud, consume more electricity, and require a separate server rack to mount them.
I'd recommend putting in some different system specs into LabGopher and seeing what you can find. I think you'll be surprised how cheap some of these servers can be. Some of the servers may be many generations older as well.
Mini PCs
- $500.00 (free shipping)
- Quad-core, hyperthreaded Intel i7-8705G
- Dedicated graphics
- 64 GB RAM
- 512 GB NVMe SSD
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet
- $749.00 (free standard shipping), currently on sale
- Brand new
- Octa-core, hyperthreaded AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX
- AMD Radeon 680M Graphics
- 64 GB RAM
- 1 TB SSD
- 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet
- $379.99 (free shipping)
- Hexa-core, hyperthreaded Intel i7-8700T
- 32 GB RAM (32 GB max per vendor, chipset supports 64 GB)
- 1 TB SSD
- Gigabit Ethernet
- $179.00 (free shipping)
- Quad-core, hyperthreaded Intel i7-7700T
- 16 GB RAM (32 GB max per vendor, chipset supports 64 GB)
- 512 GB SSD
- Intel Gigabit Ethernet
Home Lab Design
Everyone's home lab will look different, mainly due to the fact that everyone's homes are different. Perhaps your house is wired with network cabling, perhaps not.
Perhaps you have a room down in the basement far enough away to insulate the noise of a server rack. And maybe, you have patch paneling installed with multiple network drops throughout the house.
Maybe, you live in an apartment with a single network drop where the internet service provider's (ISP) equipment is installed. In this case, maybe you only have single modem and wireless router.
The point is: work within your constraints. You may be happy with a simple setup or you may want to make changes later as time, money, and circumstances permit.
Where Do I Start Building My Lab?
Step 1
- Modem: $
Depends on your ISP and Internet service type. You may want to upgrade your modem to a more high performance model. Make sure it’s compatible with your ISPs requirements. - Router: $ – $$$
Depends on the quality router you get and the feature set (can also build your own pfSense router). You should aim for a router with 802.1q VLAN support - 8 Port Managed Switch: $
Gigabit managed switches with 802.1q are surprisingly affordable. Brands like Netgear will do just fine for the home network. Just make sure it’s managed. - Virtualization Server: $$ – $$$
Probably the most expensive item on this list, with good reason. Just make sure you use SSDs where possible.
Step 2
- 802.1q Compatible Wireless AP: $ – $$$
Not as important, but will enhance your home security by creating VLANs and firewall rules for different wireless networks.
Step 3
- Raspberry Pi Cluster: $ – $$$
Have some fun with some IOT projects. Not required, just a suggestion as a next step.
Step 4
- Use your imagination. Think of some projects you're interested in. Check out YouTube videos online from other home lab creators.
Supplemental Links
Lab Equipment Links
LabGopher (eBay aggreator)
eBay
Mercari
OfferUp
Newegg
Memory.net (RAM upgrades)
Server Monkey
The Server Store
Got Equipment?
Start deploying your home lab environment!
0xBEN
Vendor Links
- Recommended hypervisor for your Virtualization Server: Proxmox VE
- Excellent open-source firewall software: pfSense
- Very powerful SDN switch compatible with Proxmox: Open vSwitch
- Containerized Linux compatible with Proxmox: Linux Containers (LXC)
- The tried and tested VPN server, great for home labs: OpenVPN
- Extremely fast and lightweight tunneling: Wireguard
- No static IP address? No problem: No-IP (Dynamic DNS)
