So you want a homelab. Maybe you’ve been lurking on r/homelab for months, staring at rack builds that cost more than a used car. Maybe you’re an IT engineer at work and want a place to break things without a ticket being raised. Either way - good news: you don’t need to spend a fortune to get started.
This guide is for people who want a useful homelab, not a showpiece.
What Is a Homelab, Really?
A homelab is any setup at home where you run servers, virtual machines, containers, or network gear to learn, experiment, or self-host services. It could be a repurposed old laptop or a full rack of enterprise gear. What matters is that it’s yours to break and fix.
Common reasons people run homelabs:
- Learn Proxmox, Docker, Kubernetes, or networking in a safe environment
- Self-host services like Nextcloud, Jellyfin, or Vaultwarden
- Practice for IT certifications (CCNA, VCP, etc.)
- Run home automation
- Get off subscription services and own your own data
Step 1: Define What You Actually Want to Do
Before buying anything, answer this honestly: what will you actually run?
| Goal | What you need |
|---|---|
| Learn Linux & Docker | Any old PC with 8GB RAM |
| Run VMs with Proxmox | 16-32GB RAM minimum |
| Home media server | Lots of storage, modest CPU |
| Network lab (VLANs, firewalls) | A managed switch + router hardware |
| All of the above | Used enterprise server or mini PC |
Don’t buy a rack server “just in case.” Start with what solves your current goal.
Step 2: Choose Your Hardware
The Budget Option - Used Mini PCs (~?100-250)
Mini PCs like the Beelink SER5, HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini, or Dell OptiPlex Micro are the sweet spot for beginners in 2026. They’re:
- Silent enough for a home office
- Power-efficient (15-25W idle)
- Powerful enough to run Proxmox with 3-4 VMs
- Available in bulk from corporate fleet refreshes
Look for: Intel i5 8th gen or newer, 16GB+ RAM, NVMe SSD. The SSD makes a bigger difference than the CPU for most homelab workloads.
The “I Want a Proper Lab” Option - Used Rack Servers (~?100-400)
HP ProLiant DL360/DL380 G8-G10 and Dell PowerEdge R720-R750 machines regularly appear on eBay and local IT resellers for very little. You get proper ECC RAM, hot-swap drives, IPMI/iLO remote management, and expansion headroom.
The trade-offs are real though: these machines are loud, power-hungry, and physically large. A DL380 G9 can idle at 100-150W. Over a year, that adds up on your electricity bill. Factor that in.
A good rule of thumb: if you’re running it 24/7, power efficiency matters. If it’s only on when you’re using it, raw specs matter more.
What to Skip
- Raspberry Pi as your main server - great for learning, terrible as a workhorse. The SD card will fail, the I/O is limited, and you’ll outgrow it quickly.
- NAS devices as compute - NAS boxes (Synology, QNAP) are great for storage, not for running VMs.
- 10GbE networking on day one - you don’t need it. 1GbE handles everything until you’re regularly moving large files across the network.
Step 3: Install Proxmox
Proxmox VE is the go-to hypervisor for homelabs. It’s free, open-source, and lets you run both VMs and containers (LXC) from a single web UI.
Installation is straightforward:
- Download the Proxmox VE ISO from the official site
- Flash it to a USB drive with Balena Etcher or Rufus
- Boot your machine from USB and follow the installer
- Access the web UI at
https://your-ip:8006
When it’s up, dismiss the “no valid subscription” warning (you don’t need a paid licence for home use) and create your first VM.
Good first VMs to spin up:
- Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS - the standard Linux learning environment
- A Docker host - one VM running Docker Compose handles most self-hosted services
- pfSense or OPNsense - if you want to get into network segmentation and VLANs
Step 4: Set Up Basic Networking
You don’t need a managed switch on day one, but you’ll want one eventually. A cheap Cisco SG300 or TP-Link TL-SG108E (about ?30-50 used) gives you VLAN support for separating your lab traffic from your home network.
Why VLANs matter: If something in your lab gets compromised or misconfigured, you don’t want it able to talk to your personal devices. A simple lab VLAN keeps your homelab isolated.
Basic network layout that works well:
VLAN 1 - Home devices (phones, laptops, TV)
VLAN 10 - Homelab / servers
VLAN 20 - IoT devices (smart home, cameras)
OPNsense running as a VM on Proxmox can manage all of this - but that’s a whole separate guide.
Step 5: Run Your First Service
Once Proxmox is up and you have a Docker host VM, run something useful. Here’s a minimal docker-compose.yml to get Uptime Kuma running - a simple status page for all your services:
services:
uptime-kuma:
image: louislam/uptime-kuma:1
volumes:
- ./data:/app/data
ports:
- "3001:3001"
restart: unless-stopped
Save that as docker-compose.yml, run docker compose up -d, then open http://your-vm-ip:3001. You’re self-hosting.
From here, the path is clear: add more services, learn more tooling, and break things in a way that teaches you how to fix them.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Overbuying hardware before you know what you need. Start small. You can always add more.
Skipping backups. Whatever you run, back it up. A 3-2-1 strategy (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite) sounds like overkill until you lose something.
Running everything on one VM. Separate concerns. Your media server doesn’t need to be on the same VM as your network monitoring stack.
Never documenting anything. Future-you will forget why you configured something. Write it down - even a simple markdown file in a private Gitea repo is better than nothing.
What’s Next?
Once you have a Proxmox node running and a couple of services up, the natural next steps are:
- Set up a reverse proxy (Nginx Proxy Manager or Traefik) so you can reach services by name instead of IP and port
- Add a Cloudflare Tunnel for remote access without opening ports
- Try OPNsense for proper network segmentation
- Look at Ansible for automating your VM provisioning
The homelab rabbit hole is deep. The good news is that every mistake teaches you something you’d never learn in a vendor training course.
Running a homelab yourself? Drop a comment below with what you’re running - always curious what setups people have.