BEGINNER 2-3 hours

Setting Up a Home Lab for IT Practice

homelabnetworkingvirtualization

A home lab is the single best investment you can make in your IT career. Here’s how to build one from scratch without breaking the bank.

What You’ll Need

At minimum, you need:

  • A machine with 32GB+ RAM — old enterprise servers, refurbished Dell OptiPlex, or even a beefy NUC
  • A managed switch — even a cheap TP-Link managed switch works
  • Storage — SSDs for VM performance, HDDs for bulk storage

Step 1: Choose Your Hypervisor

For learning purposes, I recommend Proxmox VE:

  1. Download the Proxmox VE ISO from the official site
  2. Flash it to a USB drive using Rufus or balenaEtcher
  3. Boot from USB and follow the installation wizard
  4. Access the web UI at https://your-server-ip:8006

Step 2: Set Up Networking

Create a virtual network for your lab:

  • Management VLAN — for accessing your hypervisor
  • Lab VLAN — for VMs to communicate
  • Internet VLAN — controlled outbound access

Step 3: Deploy Your First VMs

Start with these essentials:

  1. pfSense/OPNsense — firewall and router
  2. Windows Server — Active Directory, DNS, DHCP
  3. Ubuntu Server — for Docker containers and services
  4. Kali Linux — for security testing (optional)

Step 4: Add Services

Once your base infrastructure is running, start adding:

  • Pi-hole for DNS-level ad blocking
  • Portainer for Docker container management
  • Grafana + Prometheus for monitoring
  • Nginx Proxy Manager for reverse proxy

Pro Tips

  • Snapshot before every change — you will break things
  • Document everything — keep a wiki or notes repo
  • Join r/homelab — great community for ideas and help
  • Start small — you don’t need enterprise gear to learn enterprise concepts

The best way to learn IT is by doing. Build, break, fix, repeat.