What is a home lab, why do you need one and how can you get started?
What is a home lab?
A home lab is a concept in the Information Technology field that describes a technology sandbox environment that allows a learner to get hands on experience with complex systems in order to gain industry skills and further their career.
Put simply: Set up enterprise technology at your home so you have a safe space to learn how it works.
Why do you need a home lab?
Whether you are trying to land your first Information Technology role, or you are trying to move up from Service Desk into more specialized roles, a home lab is a valuable catalyst to a successful career.
Setting up enterprise systems in your home allows you to get real experience configuring tools that are used to run businesses in the real world.
The Information Technology field is competitive and if your goal is to excel then a home lab will give you a significant edge over those that do not take the time to prioritize one.
What do you need?
I am going to try to keep this guide as free as possible by leveraging trials and free services. The main exception to this is at a minimum you will need a decent computer.
Additionally, the goal of this guide is to create a realistic, scalable entry point so as your knowledge grows you are able to add more services without making your previous investments obsolete.
Computer with Windows installed
Computer that will be used for your server. (All data will be wiped on this device)
Flash Drive
Access to the Internet
Compute
To get started you need a computer. This is the only time where spending a bit of money is unavoidable. The good news is that the computer you use can be of virtually any power level and age. If you have old computers laying around (including laptops) then you are good to go. If not, you will need to source one from somewhere.
You are looking for as many CPU cores and as much RAM as possible. These resources can be spread across as many devices as you have on hand.
Get creative with this, I personally use an army of Lenovo tiny form factor PCs in a cluster as they are silent, take up minimal space, and due to my career in IT have been quite accessible.
Next, you need to get an operating system installed that will serve as a foundation for creating and running virtual machines. Proxmox is the obvious choice here as it is free and is very similar to enterprise virtualization products.
Download the latest ISO and save it somewhere on your computer
You will also need a tool called Rufus, this will allow you to upload the ISO onto the your USB flash drive so that you can boot to the Proxmox Installer.
Accept any prompts and click create with the default settings
Wait for Rufus to tell you it is finished
A Word About Backups
The home lab outlined here has no mention of backups. This is because a proper backup solution is going to cost money in the form of drives or cloud storage. A home lab by nature is supposed to contain non production data. If your home lab begins to become something that you care about then you should consider investing in a cloud backup solution.
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