A home lab is the best way to learn IT infrastructure. And it’s fun.
Why a Home Lab?¶
- You’ll learn more than from any course
- A testing environment for experiments
- Self-hosting services
- Fun for geeks
Hardware (From Cheapest)¶
Raspberry Pi (1-2K CZK)¶
Pi-hole, Home Assistant, small NAS. Low power consumption, quiet.
Mini PC (3-8K CZK)¶
Intel NUC, Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny. Enough power for Docker + a few services.
Old PC / Server (5-15K CZK)¶
Dell Optiplex, HP ProDesk. A second-hand treasure. Add RAM and an SSD.
Dedicated server (15-50K CZK)¶
Dell PowerEdge, HP ProLiant. For serious labbing. Watch out for power consumption and noise.
Operating System¶
- Proxmox VE — virtualization + containers, free, web UI
- Ubuntu Server — simple, Docker native
- TrueNAS — for NAS/storage focus
Must-Have Services¶
- Pi-hole — DNS ad blocking
- Traefik/nginx proxy — reverse proxy with SSL
- Portainer — Docker UI
- Nextcloud — your own cloud
- Gitea — your own Git server
Budget¶
Start with a Raspberry Pi for 1500 CZK. Expand gradually. The main thing is to start.
home labself-hostinghardware