Homelab recommendations

[Oaktree]

Hi ya'll, this will basically be verbatim to the post I made on the discord.

I'm thinking of building a homelab but I don't have the server equipment at this time. I basically want to use to it do network / security labs and to essentially learn platforms / vendors. Anyone got any recommendations for hardware? I'm thinking of using Proxmox + EVE-NG to get started once I have the equipment. My plan is to virtualize most of it on the server. Also I'm trying to save money

Any tips would be helpful as well.

 

[Bearcatz]

I guess it depends what you're fixin to learn.

One thing I think's worth mentioning... I've been the business of servicing small and medium sized businesses for about a decade and a half now, and I only heard of proxmox like a couple weeks ago. It could be great, crap... I don't know, but no one we service uses it, so I don't bother learning it.

 

[Oaktree]

Proxmox is simply a open source alternative to ESXi. I didn't want to have to spend extra money for an ESXi license. It's just being used here as a hypervisor. I'm going to use it to virtualize a couple environments to learn CCNP/Security via EVE-NG for example. Likely other use-cases as well like various security testing.

My main ask here is what recommended hardware (that's still relatively inexpensive) could I use to get started on this front? I've seen people recommend used optiplex or microservers for example. As long as it has enough ram.

 

[Bearcatz]

You don't need a paid license to use ESXI, but you don't get all the extra fancy bells and whistles. Might not be too bad to fool with it, too, since you'll actually see it in use in enterprise. There's networking related stuff there too to try out and know, though.

A while ago I used I think GNS3 to play around with Cisco stuff, but today's stuff isn't much different than yesteryear's in terms of switching. I don't know if they include Firepower in the Cisco exams these days, but that's just a pile of hot garbage anyway. Maybe it can be virtualized somehow, or maybe you can get your hands on a cheap 5506 to mess with.

Hardware... Idk, I like Precision t5810's with Xeon 2630 v4's for around the house. They're cheap enough and these processors seem to be pretty good bang for the power usage buck. There's cheaper stuff out there. Make friends with the local PC hardware scrapper and maybe you'll score something better free even.