HowToHomelab.md

How to Start A Homelab in 2025

Before starting to buy hardware/software it is important to have an idea of what you are looking to do.

Do you want to have an environment to build systems and test and learn from? Do you need a functioning lab to host services to use? Do you need to share the services? Do you need large storage?

The most important part of starting a homelab is having a starting point.

• What’s your budget
• What’s your operational costs budget

The budget aspect of a homelab is one of the most important ones to start with. Homelabs do not need to be expensive but can be very quickly, and having limits for budget is important.

Budget Factors

• Electricity/Internet Costs
• Cost of Equipment (Servers, PCs, Hard drives, memory etc)
• Software (If applicable)
• Backup equipment

Now with some of the budgeting out of the way we can move more to what is the goal of the homelab

What Do You Want Your Homelab To Do?

Homelabs can serve many purposes: host services, be a place to test and learn from and much more. But it is important to have an idea of what you are looking to do so you can build yours to do what you need.

Do you want to host a media server and some services to go along with it?

Do you want to have a virtual environment to test new operating systems and configurations on?

Having an idea of what you want to do before buying hardware and building a lab is important. If you don’t have a plan you may end up buying to much or not enough hardware and be stuck with to much or not enough budget for you lab.

Here is a playlist of some Proxmox projects I have done that are all doable on budget friendly hardware like a mini pc: Proxmox Projects

After having an idea of what you want to do with your homelab you can start to see about what you want to run your homelab on.

What Should You Run Your Homelab On?

I am a big advocate for budget friendly homelabs and its a focus on my channel. Almost all of my projects are built off of budget friendly hardware or systems that are under 200 dollars (USD) (Before Tariffs)

Some of the most beginner friendly homelab systems are mini pcs and that is because they are all over eBay and very affordable.

Another site good for finding mini pcs is LowCostMiniPcs

Of course there are other sites but these are some I have used with success.

Maybe you want something more than a mini pc and that’s fine too. r/homelab has a great wiki with info on other server equipment: Homelab Subreddit Hardware Wiki

Ill also add their entire wiki since it has a ton of great info I used back when I was building my first lab: Entire Wiki

The important take aways of picking out hardware is the cost of hardware to operational costs (if it is a concern)

Some older Dell or HP servers may be a cheaper option than some new mini pcs or even newer servers however the power they draw and heat and sound may not be worth it in the long run. If this may be a concern for you, keep this in mind when picking hardware for you new lab.

Here is another tool for finding good deals on hard drives: Hard Drive Tool

What Software To Use?

Now that you have a base idea of what you want to do with your lab, the hardware you want to use, it comes time to decide what to run it all on.

There are many different options and again comes back to what the purpose of your lab is.

A common homelab server operating system is Proxmox. Proxmox is free and works on a very wide range of systems. The community is large and finding support or answers is most of the time very easy.

Proxmox is a virtualization software. It creates a base system that from there you can run virtual machines or containers off of. This is very popular among the homelab community.

With recent changes to ESXI, Proxmox is the only virtualizer ill talk about since I have the most experience with it and is most popular with the community. Proxmox

If your not looking for a dedicated box to run virtual machines off and want something more for storage and running containers, a NAS operating system may be a good option.

TrueNAS is a free nas operating system that can easily be setup to create network storage as well as run containers off of for additional services. TrueNAS

Open Media Vault is another, however doesn’t fully support the use of containers. Open Media Vault

Here is a playlist on the above mentioned NAS Software’s: NAS Playlist

Now What?

Now hopefully you have made some decisions on what you want to use in your lab and what you want to do with it and its time for the fun part: setting up the server and building projects!

Here is a playlist with a mix of videos on setting up Proxmox as well as Proxmox Backup Server and projects to go along with it: Proxmox Projects

Of course this isn’t everything about homelabbing and there is much much more to it, but this is an overview of enough to get started. There is so many resources on homelab that you will always be able to find something new.

Good luck and enjoy your homelab!