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The basic requirements are a router, WiFi and a switch.  Cheap SOHO routers like the many Linksys, ASUS and so on routers try to do all of these things at once. However, if you are looking into self hosting, you aren't a typical user and should try for a more...

The first thing you'll need is a router.  Most people will, surprisingly, be fine with a basic cheap plastic piece of crap running proprietary firmware that acts as basically your entire network.  Some will want to replace the official firmware with something ...

Unless your router comes with enough Ethernet ports for your whole network, you'll need at least a primary switch.  If you've got a large number of physically networked devices, you might need multiple switches.  Ultimately, the number of devices and their loc...

As I mentioned in the Router and Basic Networking Requirements pages, you should have at least one separate WiFi access point to handle wireless connectivity.  If your building is big enough, you may very well need multiple access points. Sadly, I don't actua...

So, there's basically four types of servers most people will want in their home lab. This first and most common is storage aka a file server.  There's a range of hardware to discuss here. The second is appliance type servers.  They're usually single board co...

I'm starting here because this is, by far, the most common server people will want. Simply put, it's a device that centralizes storage on your network.  There's a lot to say about the software side but not actually a whole lot to discuss for the hardware. Yo...

Honestly, you can use almost anything for this.  However, I'm going to give pretty much the same recommendations as I did with the file server. The biggest difference is, for the sake of performance, efficiency and cost, I'm going to strongly steer you toward...

This could be anything from smart home control panels to HTPCs.  Pretty much, any app or small suite of lightweight apps will fall into this category. In most cases, you'll want a cheap SBC to cover you here.  Since Raspberry Pis are actually more meant for l...

I actually don't have a lot of advice on this because there just isn't a lot known about optimal specs for hosting AI.  I'm lumping in other high end servers into this category because high end servers are actually fairly niche.  Personally, the best I could d...

If you're buying one for your home lab, it's most likely going to be used.  Even at the price of a used one off of eBay, they stretch the definition of viable for a home lab. There are only two cases where I'd really bother to recommend one and that's if you'...

Yes, this is such a contentious topic I made an entire section just to say it's a waste of money. Does it help reduce errors?  Absolutely. Unless you're running some truly mission critical services, it's just not worth the cost.  You're more likely to suffer...

RAID is redundancy.  Clusters are redundancy.  It's about keeping services available, not preventing data loss. Backups are about preventing data loss. For a long time, the 3-2-1 backup rule has been considered the most reasonable solution most of us will ge...

pfSense SHADY; OPNSense not so much For real, I'll write more about this later.

This is fairly dead for SOHO routers but you can still install it on the same hardware as pfSense or OPNSense, if you want a more simple alternative.  Talking about stuff like OpenWrt. I'll write more about this later.

So, you can use nearly any OS to host a file server.  However, some are purpose built for the task, some do it as a side job and some are just a bare bones server designed to host anything. I'm going to start with Open Media Vault because it's really simple, ...

As I mentioned on the File Server page, this is the de-facto server for anyone wanting to host services.  It's stripped down to only the most necessary apps for the purpose of remote connecting and setting things up.  It's free and it has great community suppo...

Proxmox is purpose built for running VMs and containers.  There's a reason most people pair it with Kubernetes. This is in my top three (with OMV and Ubuntu Server) for a server OS and my pick for clusters and scalability. The biggest limitation is that you'...

Okay, you got me, this one isn't actually a server OS. However, it can actually do just fine acting as a server.  It comes with a full desktop UI and graphical tools.  It resembles Windows.  It's generally the most user friendly and hand holding version of Li...

You're not going to get more hand holding than you'll get with Windows.  This is regardless of whether you talk about Windows 11 or Windows Server. Know that Windows Server comes with limitations that the desktop version doesn't, even though it has a desktop ...

So, none of these are a true OS.  At best, some of them are trying to be an app suite built on top of a Linux distro.  Some are literally just an app you install on whatever Linux OS you want. The thing they all have in common is they try to simplify setting ...