Home Lab

[penfold]

I'm looking for some feedback. Many moons ago I had access to create my "own learning lab" while I was working in Edu. However, since I left I found my access is a lot more restricted and getting my own personal instance of things setup required setting up my own personal home lab to be able to deploy new machines and do testing and learning etc.  This was extremely useful while I was learning different things that I was working on but had limited access to test machines and internal policies made it very difficult to be able to just spin up new instances whenever I needed it.  It also allowed me to test things which I didn't have access to in work, but allowed me to get a much better understanding of how things worked.  I would like to spend some time learning more technologies beyond what I have direct hands on access to.  

 

I did look into some of the free tiers for cloud - but my concern here is that I could quickly end up spending a lot of money for learning cloud specific content that it would be costly over time. My main concern is that I am not looking to get certified in AWS for example, but I want to understand the concepts behind so that I can apply it to any vendor.  I have realised that I know basically nothing about how to deploy machines anymore - the last time i was involved in that in my day job was deploying a VM which was running on VMWare nearly 10 years ago.  So my thinking was that I could build my own home lab and learn about deployment "concepts" and also then use this to learn security topics against the machines, containers etc that I am deploying myself. That way it will help me learn how to deploy things securely and verify by performing vuln scanning, deploying vulnerable systems for evaluating etc.   This could potentially allow me to learn a wider skillset but without the specific Vendor knowledge.  It should also allow me to get the hands on experience I am missing when learning the theory on some of the online courses available.

 

So I started looking at building my own home lab for deployments and learning things to keep the cost as a one off and also learn about how to deploy images quickly so as I need something i can deploy fast in a similar method to cloud deployments.  The other thing is that I don't want to be buying licences to cover anything that I will be doing as it would likely be machines for a specific topic and then discarded. As such, anything with windows should be fine using the grace period and from what I read, free alternatives are available for learning concepts. 

 

Do any of you still have a home lab used for learning things or look at the pro/con of home lab vs using cloud resources?

[penfold]

Bumping this thread for the people coming back after the summer and potentially more visibility.  In addition I'm curious based on the fact I am currently going insane in my current work and need to focus on something else.

[notsogenius]

I've used home labs before - for slightly different circumstances for example whilst studying for my MCSE a few years ago (or a few more), AZ 800/801 more recently as some of the technologies are more on prem focused. On a different tangent I've got a fair old lab which I used for my CCNA. 

 

I've configured it up previously with an MDT install that allowed me to deploy a Windows server instance, throw on a few apps and patch it with some downloaded windows updates. The guide here on edugeek I found pretty useful for that setup. I've been meaning to update that so it uses MCM (MECM/SCCM) so it mirrors my workplace so I can use it for experimenting.

 

I've used an old HP Z800 stuffed with ram and disks with a pair of hex xeons which was lovely for alot of the above but is definitely long in the tooth now (not even Win11 compatible). In hindsight I should have configured my home gaming PC with alot more RAM and more disk space which has tended to be my limitation with virtualization. 

 

I am lucky to an extent as I'm encouraged to tinker around in virtual machines at work (I run a Hyper V host to test bits on my own station at work) for varying uses - app deployment for example.

 

With the above the only cost has been the hardware, i've generally used free eval copies of windows (definitely re-arming some servers a few times) 

 

I think as much as anything I'd have a think about where you really want your direction to be, say for example (and using some of my own circumstances as part of that) you wanted to work with some hybrid infrastructure, some of the Microsoft certs have a good path for stuff you should pick up (not saying all mind) so even if you're not looking to take the exam, following along with a course or two (udemy has some good ones - John Christopher has some good varying courses on there). Think about what you want to achieve and then go from there on how you'd go about it.

 

Hope that's helpful - I tend to throw myself into a cert from time to time to give me some variety and because they align with my job I can justify some work time for that. 

[steve]

I've recently started to have a play around with proxmox. Great so far easy deployment of VMs, containers etc. I bought a couple of cheap Lenovo mini Pcs off ebay. Lots of pre-created scripts that will let you quickly deploy a big array of options: Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts

 

For cloud I'd have a look at developing your IaC skills. Look at something like terraform or OpenTofu with Git / GitLabs. Once you abstract yourself from the GUIs for deployment it doesn't really matter to an extent which cloud provider you're working with.

 

For managing and maintaining VM configuration most things have moved to the cloud for clients (Intune / JAMF / etc). Ansible / chef are potentially things to look at for Linux. For non specific OS management and security have a look at STIGs: Security Technical Implementation Guides These are definitely what we are starting to move towards - using published security baselines for hardening of systems. And it doesn't really matter to us how we get the baselines on, we want to know they are applied and that they continue to be applied - be that in Intune, group policy, ansible, Azure Machine Configuration or any other management tool.

 

Other than that in general I've not really found any vendor agnostic training out there for free. It tends to be geared towards certs or use of a particular cloud provider. Maybe have a look at the various cloud well architected frameworks, these can be a bit more generic about how to design, build and manage cloud services - I've used ChatGPT at times to pull these together and make it a bit more vendor agnostic or look at the differences between them.

[Davit2005]

I used to run a complete AD at home with Azure for email, etc. but since I don't get involved in AD or VMWare anymore I only run Windows if absolutely necessary. These days I run ProxMox and only my Gaming PC and CNC PC run windows for compatibility whilst a MAC Mini does everything else. Work wise my role is network related i.e. firewall, NAC, WiFi, etc. and I have setup GNS3 at home for doing networking labs with Juniper and Aruba CX

 

As you mention, go on premise you are limiting yourself to local AD. Whilst if you go Google/MS365 you are going to be limiting yourself to Cloud technologies/management, so do you setup all 3? So I'd look at the direction you intend to go. In reality employer should fund training if they require special knowledge but we know that unlikely happens. A previous employer did put me through CCNA, whilst I completed CCNA in 2003 previously and did a MCP many years back both off my own back and money even though that employer was not keen as saw it a threat.

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2025 by Davit2005

[penfold]

12 hours ago, notsogenius said:

I've used home labs before - for slightly different circumstances for example whilst studying for my MCSE a few years ago (or a few more), AZ 800/801 more recently as some of the technologies are more on prem focused. On a different tangent I've got a fair old lab which I used for my CCNA. 

 

I've configured it up previously with an MDT install that allowed me to deploy a Windows server instance, throw on a few apps and patch it with some downloaded windows updates. The guide here on edugeek I found pretty useful for that setup. I've been meaning to update that so it uses MCM (MECM/SCCM) so it mirrors my workplace so I can use it for experimenting.

 

I've used an old HP Z800 stuffed with ram and disks with a pair of hex xeons which was lovely for alot of the above but is definitely long in the tooth now (not even Win11 compatible). In hindsight I should have configured my home gaming PC with alot more RAM and more disk space which has tended to be my limitation with virtualization. 

 

I am lucky to an extent as I'm encouraged to tinker around in virtual machines at work (I run a Hyper V host to test bits on my own station at work) for varying uses - app deployment for example.

 

With the above the only cost has been the hardware, i've generally used free eval copies of windows (definitely re-arming some servers a few times) 

 

I think as much as anything I'd have a think about where you really want your direction to be, say for example (and using some of my own circumstances as part of that) you wanted to work with some hybrid infrastructure, some of the Microsoft certs have a good path for stuff you should pick up (not saying all mind) so even if you're not looking to take the exam, following along with a course or two (udemy has some good ones - John Christopher has some good varying courses on there). Think about what you want to achieve and then go from there on how you'd go about it.

 

Hope that's helpful - I tend to throw myself into a cert from time to time to give me some variety and because they align with my job I can justify some work time for that. 

This is very similar to what I did in the past.  And to be honest, I found it really useful to learn the newer deployment skills to enable me to test the things in the area I was working in at the time (as I wasn't doing this in my day to day job)

 

Training wise, my employer has limited budget (as always) but we have been through some major restructuring also so I'm kind of looking to improve my overall skills in case I am one of the ones in the next restructure.  I have access to pluralsight which has some good courses, but I don't want to necessarily go down the cert route now, but I definitely want the ability to get hands on experience so if I see any other job I am interested in I am able to transition.  I also setup Hyper-V on my old computer, but I found that I quickly ran out of RAM and HDD space and eventually Hyper-V broke and I couldn't repair it and gave up.  As a result, I am a little reluctant to re-use my day to day PC as a learning lab because if something breaks, I don't want to be troubleshooting something I use for personal use. This is why I was thinking of a dedicated machine again.

One area I would like to increase my knowledge is DevSecOps as I know very little of modern day deployments and I feel I need to understand this for any future roles, including my current one.