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 build it, you break it, you research it, you fix it.

The Home Lab Experience

Home Labs Are...

• A monetary commitment
• A time commitment
• Marketable resume enhancements
• Great to talk about in job interviews
• A source of immense 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
• And more!

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.

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? How many cores per CPU?
• GPU
  • Which GPUs are compatible?
• RAM
  • What is the maximum amount of RAM?
    • Number of pins?
    • How many DIMM slots?
    • 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're looking to get the most value for your money, rackmount servers are the way to go. Due to the massive size of the server case and motherboard, you can often find very good deals on rackmount servers with:

• Multiple CPU (lots of cores)
• High quantities of RAM (hundreds of gigabytes)
• Large amounts of storage (tens of terabytes)

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

LabGopher

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!

eBayIntel

• $500.00 (free shipping)
• Quad-core, hyperthreaded Intel i7-8705G
• Dedicated graphics
• 64 GB RAM
• 512 GB NVMe SSD
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet

Minisforum UM690S

MinisforumMinisforum

• $575.00 (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!

eBayDell

• $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!

eBayDell

• $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

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 | Firewall: $ – $$$
  Depends on the quality router you get and the feature set (can also build your own pfSense firewall). You should aim for a router with 802.1q VLAN support
• 8 Port Managed Switch: $
  Gigabit managed switches with 802.1q are surprisingly affordable. Brands like Netgear will do just fine for the home network. Just make sure it’s managed.
• Virtualization Server: $$ – $$$
  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

• Mini PC Cluster: $ – $$$
  Eventually, you'll need to extend your virtualization capabilities beyond just one server. You can easily purchase some mini PCs, install the hypervisor, and cluster them to your existing virtualization server to expand resources.

Step 4

• Use your imagination. Think of some projects you're interested in. Check out YouTube videos online from other home lab creators.

Visualizing a Server Cluster

Creating a cluster is a great way to add more CPU, RAM, and disk when low. You can then migrate existing VMs and Linux Containers to — and create new ones on — your new Proxmox node (if that's the hypervisor you end up choosing).

If you're still somewhat new to Proxmox, new to home labbing, or the concept of clustering servers is eluding you, I hope this diagram will help.

Supplemental Links

Lab Equipment Links

LabGopher (eBay aggreator)
eBay
Mercari
OfferUp
Newegg
Memory.net (RAM upgrades)
Server Monkey
The Server Store
PCSP — PC Server & Parts

Got Equipment?

Start deploying your home lab environment!

Proxmox VE 8: Converting a Laptop into a Bare Metal Server

In this project, we will take a look at an in-detail process of setting up a Proxmox home lab on a bare metal server.

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