Homelab

If you work in IT support or at an MSP, Active Directory is something you deal with every single day. But unless you have a spare Windows Server license and a test environment lying around, it’s hard to actually practice — or break things safely. That’s where your homelab comes in. In this guide I’ll walk you through setting up a Windows Server 2022 VM in Proxmox and promoting it to a functioning Domain Controller. No production systems at risk. No expensive licenses needed to get started. ...

One of the things that surprised me when I started using Proxmox seriously is that it doesn’t just give you one way to run workloads — it gives you three: full virtual machines, LXC containers, and Docker (running inside one of the other two). Choosing between them isn’t just a technical preference; it affects performance, maintenance overhead, and how much of your hardware you’re burning for each service. Here’s how I think about it, and what I actually run on each. ...

When you decide to run virtual machines in your homelab, the first real decision is which hypervisor to use. Three names come up constantly: Proxmox, VMware ESXi, and Microsoft Hyper-V. They all do the same core thing — run multiple VMs on one physical host — but they’re built on completely different philosophies and have very different implications for a homelab setup. I’ve run all three at various points. Here’s my honest take. ...

Storage is the part of a homelab that people tend to figure out twice. Once when they set it up, and once after something goes wrong. I’m running a Synology RS814 with 16TB attached to my Proxmox host over NFS. It works well — DSM is polished, the NFS share just appears in Proxmox’s storage pool, and the drives have been running without complaint for years. But it’s also a 2013 rackmount unit I got as part of a package deal, not something I’d necessarily recommend buying new in 2026. ...

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. ...

Every month you’re probably paying for at least one service you could run yourself - a password manager, cloud storage, a notes app, a photo backup tool. Self-hosting these isn’t just cheaper; it means your data lives on hardware you control. Docker Compose makes this accessible to anyone comfortable with a terminal. You don’t need to be a developer. You just need a machine that stays on, a basic Linux install, and this guide. ...

One of the biggest surprises when I got into homelabbing was just how cheap enterprise hardware can be. Servers that cost €15,000 new, sold for €50-150 on the second-hand market a decade later. Network switches that ran the backbone of a company’s infrastructure, available for less than a pizza. 10-gigabit networking gear that was out of reach for home users a few years ago, now completely affordable second-hand. The reason is simple: businesses refresh their hardware on a predictable cycle — typically every 3-5 years. When they do, the old gear gets sold off, donated, or scrapped. Most of it still has years of useful life left. ...

Proxmox is one of those tools that looks more intimidating than it is. The installation is straightforward, the web interface is clean, and within an hour of starting you can have your first virtual machine running. This guide walks through the full process from scratch. What you’ll need A machine to install Proxmox on (dedicated hardware or a repurposed PC) A USB drive (at least 2GB) for the installer A network connection (wired preferred for the install) A separate machine to access the web interface from Proxmox runs best on dedicated hardware — it’s a Type 1 hypervisor designed to be the only thing running on the machine. Don’t install it alongside another OS. ...

When you decide to build a homelab around virtualisation, the first real decision you face is which hypervisor to run. It sounds like a technical detail but it shapes everything that comes after — how you manage VMs, how you access the interface, what features you get for free, and how much you’ll be fighting the platform instead of learning from it. I evaluated three options seriously: VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Proxmox VE. ...

One of the biggest myths about homelabs is that they’re expensive. They don’t have to be. With a bit of patience and the right approach, you can build a capable setup for a fraction of the cost of buying new. Here’s how I do it. Start with what you actually need Before you buy anything, get clear on what you want to run. This sounds obvious but it’s where most people go wrong — they buy hardware first and figure out the use case later. ...