How to Start Your Home Lab

In this post, I cover the perks of running a home lab, scouting for equipment, and home lab design.

2 years ago   •   7 min read

By 0xBEN
Table of contents

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

⚠️
These are strictly recommendations. Work within your constraints and graduate up as your circumstances permit.
  • 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

Does it come with any components pre-installed and will you need to upgrade any of those components?
  • 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?
  • Disks
    • How many disk bays?
      • 3.5" or 2.5" disks?
      • If 3.5", do you want a 2.5" adapter?
  • Power Supply
  • How many network ports? Speed?





Examples of Good Buys*

* Updated for June 2023

Tower and Rackmount Servers

⚠️
If you decide to invest in rackmount servers — look for 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.

LabGopher :: Great server deals on eBay



Mini PCs

Intel NUC 8 VR Hades Canyon NUC8i7HNK, Radeon 64GB RAM / 512GB NVMe A+ 735858351584 | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Intel NUC 8 VR Hades Canyon NUC8i7HNK, Radeon 64GB RAM / 512GB NVMe A+ at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
  • $500.00 (free shipping)
  • Quad-core, hyperthreaded Intel i7-8705G
  • Dedicated graphics
  • 64 GB RAM
  • 512 GB NVMe SSD
  • Dual Gigabit Ethernet



Minisforum UM690/UM590/UM560XT
Venus Series UM690
  • $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



Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro Core i7-8700T 32GB DDR4 NEW 1TB SSD Win 11 WiFi Mini PC | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro Core i7-8700T 32GB DDR4 NEW 1TB SSD Win 11 WiFi Mini PC at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
  • $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



Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro I7-7700T @ 2.9GHz 512GB 16GB WIN10PRO WIFI | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro I7-7700T @ 2.9GHz 512GB 16GB WIN10PRO WIFI at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
  • $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?

I made the network flat here, as I want to imagine that people with wired homes are not in the majority.

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

LabGopher (eBay aggreator)
eBay
Mercari
OfferUp
Newegg
Memory.net (RAM upgrades)
Server Monkey
The Server Store



Got Equipment?

Start deploying your home lab environment!

Home Lab
Why You Should Have a Home LabHome 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



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