Got a spare computer? Turn it into a powerful home server! This guide walks you through setting up Proxmox, handling hardware, and remote access with WireGuard.

So, you got a new computer.

Maybe it’s a small, quiet box you found online, or maybe it’s an old desktop that was just collecting dust. It has that new-project energy. That “I could do something cool with this” feeling.

But then comes the big question: What now?

If you’re anything like me, your mind starts racing. Could it be a media center? A place to back up files? A laboratory for tech experiments? The answer is yes, to all of the above. You’re on the verge of building your first home server. And it’s way more fun and less intimidating than it sounds.

Let’s walk through turning that box into the digital heart of your home.

First, a Quick Look at the Hardware

You might have popped it open and found some interesting parts inside. I recently heard about a machine that had a hybrid Intel Optane and NVMe SSD drive.

If you’ve run into one of these, you might be scratching your head. What’s the Optane part for?

Here’s the simple version: Intel Optane was designed as a cache to speed up slower, traditional hard drives (the spinning kind). It was a pretty neat idea at the time. But here’s the thing—it was meant to help a slow drive feel fast. Your NVMe SSD is already fast. Really fast.

So, for a home server project in today’s world, that Optane portion is mostly useless. It adds a layer of complexity you just don’t need. My advice? Just ignore the Optane functionality. Treat the drive as a standard NVMe SSD. If the drive is too small for your ambitions, you might even consider swapping it out for a simple, larger NVMe or SATA SSD. Keep it simple.

Giving Your Server Its Brain: Meet Proxmox

Okay, hardware sorted. Now, what software do you run on this thing? You could just install Windows or a standard version of Linux, but if you want to unlock its true potential, you’ll want a “hypervisor.”

Think of a hypervisor as a lightweight base camp for your server. It lets you run multiple, separate operating systems all on the same machine, all at the same time. It turns one computer into a dozen little computers.

The best place to start? Proxmox.

It’s free, incredibly powerful, and has a huge community behind it. You install Proxmox first, and from there, you can easily create “virtual machines” (VMs) and “containers” (LXCs).

Don’t let the terms scare you. It’s basically like digital Lego. You can spin up a new container in seconds to try something out and then tear it down just as fast if you don’t like it.

What can you build with these digital Legos? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
* Ad-Blocker: Install Pi-hole to block ads across your entire home network. No more annoying banners on your phone or smart TV.
* Media Server: Set up Jellyfin or Plex to organize your movies and TV shows into a beautiful, Netflix-style library you can stream anywhere.
* Smart Home Hub: Run Home Assistant to finally unify all your random smart plugs, lights, and sensors into one amazing interface.
* Personal Cloud: Use Nextcloud to create your very own private Google Drive or Dropbox for your files and photos.

Suddenly, this little box is doing a lot of heavy lifting for you, and you’re learning a ton along the way.

Accessing Your Lab from Anywhere

Your server is humming along at home, but what if you’re at a coffee shop or traveling and want to check on it, grab a file, or show a friend your new media setup?

This is where remote access comes in. It has two parts: connecting securely and then controlling the machine.

For the secure connection, the best tool for the job right now is WireGuard. It’s a modern VPN (Virtual Private Network) that creates a super-fast and super-secure “tunnel” from your laptop or phone directly to your home network. It’s like having a very, very long Ethernet cable that follows you everywhere. Setting it up is a great weekend project, and once it’s running, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Once you’re connected via WireGuard, you can control things. Proxmox has a great web interface that lets you manage all your virtual machines. And if you’ve set up a VM with a desktop (like Windows or Linux Mint), you can use standard Remote Desktop (RDP) or VNC software to see and use its desktop as if you were sitting right in front of it.

It’s a Journey, Not a Destination

And that’s really it. You start with a box. You install a powerful base like Proxmox. You start building things you find useful or fun. You figure out how to access it from anywhere.

Don’t worry about getting it perfect on day one. The real fun of a home lab is the process itself. The tinkering, the problem-solving, and the “aha!” moment when your new service finally clicks on.

So go ahead, plug it in, and start building. You’ve got this.

Discover the common journey of a home lab enthusiast, from a simple IKEA cube setup to a full-blown wall-mounted server rack. It happens faster than you think.

It always starts with something small.
\n\nFor me, it was a single Raspberry Pi. For a friend, it was an old laptop he wanted to turn into a file server. It’s the little project you start on a whim. The one you think will be simple, clean, and tucked away in a corner.
\n\nAnd often, it starts in an IKEA cube.
\n\nIt’s the perfect beginning. It’s cheap, looks clean, and hides the mess. You set up your first device, run a few simple programs, and feel pretty good about it. Your own little slice of the cloud, right at home. But then, the itch begins.
\n\n## The “What If?” Phase
\n\nYou start thinking, “What if I added more storage?” or “What if I ran another service?”
\n\nThat one little server was great, but now you want to run Plex for your movies, Home Assistant for your smart devices, and maybe a Pi-hole to block ads. That single IKEA cube starts to feel a little cramped.
\n\nSo you get another one.
\n\nNow you’ve got a stack. Two cubes. Maybe one for the server and one for the networking gear. The cables are starting to look a little more… creative. But it works. You’ve got more power, more storage, more grunt. You’re happy. For a while.
\n\n## When Furniture Isn’t Enough
\n\nThis is the tipping point. It’s the moment you realize you’ve outgrown your clever furniture solution.
\n\nHeat becomes a problem. The back of those cubes doesn’t have great airflow, and your little machines are starting to run hot. Cable management goes from being a fun puzzle to a genuine nightmare. You need to unplug one thing and suddenly three other things get pulled out with it.
\n\nYou start looking at what the “serious” people use. And you see them: wall-mounted server racks.
\n\nSuddenly, you’re measuring wall space and looking for studs. What started as a small, contained hobby is now about to become a permanent fixture in your home. You’ve evolved. You’re no longer just hiding a computer in a box; you’re building a proper command center.
\n\nGoing for a rack is a big step, but it solves a lot of problems:
\n\n* Airflow: Racks are open and designed to keep things cool.
* Space: You can fit more gear, neatly and securely.
* Management: Everything is accessible. No more digging around in a dark cube.
\n\nIt’s a beautiful, organized, and slightly terrifying evolution.
\n\n## The Work Is Never Really Done
\n\nHere’s the secret: you’re never really finished.
\n\nOnce the rack is on the wall, you start thinking about the next upgrade. And if you’re running all this important stuff, you’ll quickly realize you need to protect it.
\n\nThis leads to the next logical, and crucial, purchase: a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).
\n\nI’ve seen people use smart plugs to monitor power, and they live in constant fear of accidentally tapping the wrong button in an app and shutting everything down. It’s a terrifying thought. A UPS solves this. It’s a big battery that sits between your gear and the wall outlet. If the power goes out, it keeps everything running long enough for a safe shutdown. It also protects your expensive hardware from power surges. It’s not just a nice-to-have; it’s peace of mind.
\n\nThis whole journey—from a single box to a wall of tech—is a familiar one. It’s a story of curiosity, of solving problems, and of a hobby that has a tendency to get delightfully out of hand. If you find yourself measuring your wall for a server rack, don’t worry. You’re just following a well-worn, and very rewarding, path.

Curious about homelabs? I share my journey of building my first one, the services I’m running, and why it might be your next favorite hobby.

I’ve been playing around with something new for the last month, and I’m genuinely excited to share how it’s been going. I built my first homelab. And honestly, it’s been working surprisingly well.

If you’re wondering what a homelab is, you’re not alone. I was in the same boat not too long ago. Think of it as a personal playground for tech stuff, right in your own home. It’s a space where you can experiment with servers, networking, and software without the risk of breaking anything important. For me, it started with a simple idea: I wanted more control over my digital life and a place to learn new skills.

So, What’s in My Homelab?

My setup is pretty modest. It’s not one of those giant server racks you see in movies. It’s basically a dedicated computer running a few services using Docker containers. If you haven’t heard of Docker, it’s a tool that lets you run applications in isolated environments called containers. It’s like having a bunch of mini-computers all running on one machine, which is perfect for a homelab.

Here’s a peek at what I’m running:

• A Media Server: This is probably the most-used service in my lab. I’m using Plex, which organizes all my movies and shows and lets me stream them to any device, whether I’m at home or on the go. It’s like having a personal Netflix, but with my own collection.
• Network-Wide Ad Blocker: I set up Pi-hole, which blocks ads on every device connected to my home Wi-Fi. It’s amazing how much faster and cleaner web pages look without all the clutter. My phone, my laptop, even my smart TV—all ad-free.
• Personal Cloud Storage: Instead of relying solely on Google Drive or Dropbox, I’m running Nextcloud. It gives me a private space to store files, photos, and documents. I can access them from anywhere, and I know exactly where my data is—on my own server.
• A Monitoring Dashboard: To keep an eye on everything, I set up a dashboard with Grafana. It shows me how my server is performing, how much memory is being used, and whether all my services are running smoothly. It looks complicated, but it’s surprisingly straightforward to set up.

Why Bother Building a Homelab?

I get it. This might sound like a lot of work for things you can get from other services. And you’re not wrong. But for me, the process was the point.

Building this little lab taught me so much. A month ago, I barely knew what a Docker container was. Now, I feel comfortable deploying new services and troubleshooting problems. It’s a practical way to learn about technologies that are used in the professional IT world.

There’s also the privacy aspect. By self-hosting services like cloud storage and a media server, I have complete control over my data. I’m not handing it over to a big corporation, and I can customize everything exactly how I want it.

And honestly, it’s just fun. It’s a hobby that’s both challenging and rewarding. There’s a real sense of accomplishment when you get a new service up and running perfectly.

Thinking About Starting Your Own?

If any of this sounds interesting, you might be a good candidate for starting a homelab. You don’t need a powerful, expensive server to begin. You can start with an old desktop computer or even a tiny Raspberry Pi.

My advice? Start small. Pick one thing you want to do. Maybe you want to block ads with Pi-hole or set up a simple file server. Find a good tutorial, take your time, and don’t be afraid to break things. That’s how you learn.

I’m still at the beginning of my journey. There are so many other services I want to try, like a password manager, a recipe organizer, or maybe even a home automation hub. The possibilities feel endless. If you have any ideas for services that could be a good addition, I’d love to hear them. Let me know what you’re running in your own lab!

Started a home lab for fun and now wondering if it should be your career? Explore why it’s okay for your tech passion to just be a rewarding hobby.

It often starts with a simple problem.

“I wish I could share files more easily at home.” Or, “I’m tired of seeing ads everywhere.” So you get a Raspberry Pi or dust off an old computer you had in the closet. You follow a tutorial, type a few commands into a black screen, and suddenly, it works. You’ve created something.

That feeling is powerful.

So you do it again. You set up a media server. Then a network-wide ad blocker. Before you know it, you’re learning about Docker containers, networking, and firewalls. Your little project has snowballed into a full-blown home lab, a stack of blinking lights that hums quietly in the corner.

It stops being just a hobby. It feels like you’ve stumbled into a whole new world. And that’s when the big, slightly scary question pops into your head: “Should I be doing this for a living?”

The Hobbyist’s Dilemma

If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not alone. I’ve talked to a lot of people who get deep into home labs—people who are students, artists, engineers in completely unrelated fields, or retirees. They spend their nights and weekends learning skills that are directly transferable to a career in IT, DevOps, or network engineering.

It’s a strange crossroads to be at. You’re passionate about what you’re building. You love the challenge, the problem-solving, and the endless learning. It feels more engaging than your actual day job or field of study.

But then the doubt creeps in.

You wonder what the job is really like. Is being a DevOps professional actually fun? Or is it a stressful grind of fixing other people’s problems? You imagine a world where you can’t just build what you want. Instead, you’re stuck maintaining a system someone else built a decade ago, navigating office politics, and hearing the dreaded phrase, “We can’t change that. It’s just how we’ve always done it.”

The fear is that turning your passion into a paycheck might just kill the joy that got you started in the first place.

It’s Okay If It’s Just for Fun

So, here’s the simple answer: You don’t have to choose. It is perfectly fine—and incredibly common—to be a wildly passionate “amateur.”

Think about it this way: plenty of people are amazing home cooks. They buy fancy knives, perfect their sourdough starter, and host incredible dinner parties. Does that mean they should all quit their jobs and open a restaurant? Of course not. The pressure of turning a profit, managing staff, and dealing with health inspectors would suck the joy out of it for many.

Your home lab can be the exact same thing. It can be your kitchen, your workshop, your studio. It’s a place for you, by you.

Here are a few reasons why keeping your tech passion as a hobby is a powerful choice:

• You Have Total Freedom: You are the boss. You decide what services to run, what hardware to buy, and when to tear it all down and start over. There are no tickets, no deadlines, and no one telling you that your idea is out of scope.
• The Learning is Pure: You learn because you’re curious. You can spend a whole weekend figuring out a complex networking problem just for the satisfaction of it, not because it’s a requirement for your job. This is learning in its purest form.
• It Makes You Better at Everything: The skills you gain from running a home lab—critical thinking, project management, and deep-level problem-solving—are valuable in any field. A biomedical engineer who understands server infrastructure is a better engineer. A writer who can automate their own backups is a more efficient writer.
  

  Your Day Job Doesn’t Define You

  That little server rack in your closet doesn’t have to be a sign that you’re in the wrong career. It can just be a sign that you’re a curious person who loves to learn and build.

  Your home lab is your personal playground. A place to experiment without consequence. A creative and technical outlet that you control completely. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that.

  So whether you’re a student, a lawyer, a doctor, or a barista, your place in the world of tech is valid. You don’t need to be a professional to be passionate.

  What about you? What do you do for a living, and what does your personal tech playground look like?

Follow my personal journey of building a homelab, from a simple Synology NAS for files to a massive Proxmox server for virtualization and media.

It’s funny how hobbies start. Sometimes it’s a deliberate choice, and other times you just sort of stumble into it. For me, my homelab journey was definitely the second one. It didn’t begin with a grand plan for a server rack and a wall of blinking lights. It began with a simple need: I had to store my school files.

The Humble Beginning: One Simple NAS

My first “homelab,” if you could even call it that, was a Synology NAS. It was a straightforward, reliable little box. Its main job was to make sure my schoolwork was safe and accessible. That’s it. No fancy media streaming, no complex virtual machines. Just files.

For a while, that was enough. It did its job perfectly. But if you’ve ever tinkered with tech, you know that “enough” doesn’t always stay enough for long. The curiosity bug starts to bite.

The First Real Upgrade: Getting Serious About Media

The next step came when I wanted a better way to manage my media. That’s when I brought a Mac Mini into the mix. I set it up to run Plex for streaming and the “Arrs” (software like Sonarr and Radarr that help manage media collections).

This was a solid setup. The Synology handled the files, and the Mac Mini had enough power to serve everything up smoothly. The two devices worked together well. My needs were met. But the itch was back. I started wondering, “What else could I do? What if I wanted more control? More power?”

The Great Leap: Building a Proper Server

In the last month, I decided to go all in. I moved from my simple consumer-grade setup to a full-blown enterprise server running Proxmox.

For anyone new to this, Proxmox is a hypervisor. Think of it as an operating system for your server that lets you create and run multiple other operating systems inside it, all at the same time. These are called virtual machines, or VMs.

My main storage is now a TrueNAS VM. This is where things get a little technical and, I think, really cool. I have two special storage controller cards (HBAs) in the server that I “pass through” directly to the TrueNAS virtual machine. This means the VM gets to talk to my hard drives directly, with no middleman, giving it full speed and control. It’s a powerful and efficient way to manage a huge amount of storage.

The Mac Mini has a new job now, too. It’s a central backup station for all my family’s Apple devices using a great tool called iMazing.

A Look Under the Hood

So, what’s actually running this whole operation? I managed to get my hands on a decommissioned Nutanix server, which is built from Supermicro parts. It’s a beast.

Here’s a quick rundown of the specs:

• Server: Supermicro 2U Chassis (Model: CSE-829U)
• CPU: 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6140 processors. That gives me a total of 36 cores and 72 threads.
• Memory: 384GB of DDR4 ECC RAM. The “ECC” part is important—it stands for Error Correcting Code, which helps prevent data corruption.
• Storage (OS/VMs): Two 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSDs in a mirrored setup for speed and redundancy.
• Storage (Main Pool): 12x 16TB Seagate drives managed by TrueNAS.
• GPU: An NVIDIA RTX A2000 with 12GB of VRAM. This is fantastic for Plex, as it can handle multiple video transcodes without breaking a sweat.
• Networking: A 10GbE NIC and a 10GbE switch to make sure data moves between devices lightning fast.
• Power: Dual 1000W power supplies for redundancy and a CyberPower UPS to keep everything running safely if the power goes out.

My 3-2-1 Backup Strategy

Having a powerful server is great, but all that data is worthless if it’s not backed up properly. I follow the classic 3-2-1 rule: three copies of my data, on two different types of media, with one copy off-site.

1. The Proxmox server and Apple device backups (from the Mac Mini) are first backed up to my old friend, the Synology NAS.
2. The Synology NAS then uses a tool called HyperBackup to send an encrypted copy of everything to BackBlaze, an online cloud storage service.

This way, even if my house and all my hardware were to disappear, my most important data would still be safe in the cloud.

It’s been quite a journey, from a single NAS for school files to this powerhouse in a rack. It’s a hobby that’s always evolving, and I’m constantly learning. If you’re just starting out, don’t be intimidated by setups like this. Start small, solve a problem you have, and let your curiosity guide you. You might be surprised where you end up.