Homelab Ideas: 25 Real Projects to Start and Grow Your Home Lab
Looking for homelab ideas? Here are 25 projects I either run in my own lab or have planned next, organized by where you start and how your lab grows.
Edy Werder
Best Hypervisor for Home Lab in 2026 – I Tested 5 Free & Powerful Options
When I started building my home lab, choosing the right server was only half the story. The other half? Picking the best hypervisor. After all, it’s the hypervisor that actually runs your virtual machines—so it plays a huge role in how flexible, efficient, and manageable your home lab setup is.
Best Mini PC for Proxmox 2026 – Compact Power for Your Home Lab Setup
If you are looking to run the best mini PC for Proxmox, you are not alone. Mini PCs are increasingly popular among homelab enthusiasts seeking a powerful, compact, and energy-efficient virtualization setup.
Best Homelab Firewall in 2026 – Software and Hardware Compared
I run a FortiGate at the edge of my own homelab, in front of a Proxmox cluster and several VLANs. Before updating this guide, I asked the homelab community what they actually run in 2026.
Securing SSH with Two-Factor Authentication: A Linux and Proxmox Guide
As a system administrator, securing SSH access is crucial for protecting my servers. That's why I've implemented two-factor authentication (2FA) on my Linux and Proxmox systems. In this guide, I'll walk you through the process of securing SSH with 2FA, step by step.
Fail2ban vs CrowdSec: which one I actually use in my homelab
For years, Fail2ban was the first thing I installed on any server I put online. It is light, it is simple, and it just works. I never had a reason to look further. Then CrowdSec kept coming up in homelab circles, and I wanted to know if it was hype or a real upgrade over the tool
Best Server for Home Lab 2026: A Buying Guide for Refurbished Tower, Rack & Renewed Options
A home lab is great for getting hands-on experience with different technologies. It is the ideal setup for testing products or configurations in a quiet environment.
Proxmox Backup Server Verify Slow on NFS? How a $175 SSD Fixed It
Is your Proxmox Backup Server verify slow? Mine ran for 8.5 hours every single day. Backups were fine. Restores worked. But the daily verify dragged on from morning into late afternoon. I assumed it was my gigabit network. I was wrong.
How to Update Proxmox Manually
Knowing how to update Proxmox manually keeps you in control of when patches and kernel updates hit your server. This guide covers both the command-line and the web GUI approaches.
Proxmox Backup Server: What It Does and How to Set It Up
If you run a homelab or manage a few servers for a small business, Proxmox Backup Server is the solution for data protection. Without a dedicated backup server, your virtual machines live on a single node. One disk failure and you rebuild everything from scratch.
