Home lab introduction: what to run on a single NUC or mini-PC

Why a home lab?

A home lab is a personal infrastructure for learning, testing, and self-hosting. It’s the fastest way to:

• Learn Proxmox without risk to production data
• Try out clustering, Ceph, PBS, SDN in a sandbox
• Self-host services (Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, Vaultwarden, etc.)
• Build a portfolio of infrastructure work
• Have fun

The investment is modest: a single mini-PC with 32-64 GB RAM runs a surprisingly capable lab. The most important thing is to start — the perfect hardware setup doesn’t exist, and waiting for it is the enemy of progress.

Hardware: pick your tier

For your first lab, I’d recommend the mini-PC tier. Specifically:

• Intel NUC 12/13 or Beelink EQ12 / SER5 — quiet, low power, plenty of CPU
• AMD Ryzen 7 5700U/6800H based mini-PCs are also excellent — usually cheaper
• MinisForum UM580/UM690 if you want more cores
• Skip the very cheapest Celeron/N100 chips — they work but you’ll outgrow them in months

RAM is the real limit

CPU matters less than RAM for a lab. VMs eat RAM. A typical lab VM uses 4-8 GB; an LXC uses 256 MB-2 GB. With 32 GB:

• 4-6 small VMs, OR
• 2 VMs + 10 LXCs, OR
• 1 “big” VM (8 GB) + several LXCs

64 GB is the sweet spot for a serious lab.

Storage

Two SSDs minimum:

• 1× NVMe for the OS / Proxmox install (256 GB is plenty)
• 1× NVMe or SATA SSD for VM storage (500 GB-2 TB)

A spinning HDD adds noise and heat. Skip it. If you need bulk storage, a NAS on the network is a better answer than an internal disk.

Networking for the home lab

You’ll need:

• A managed switch if you want VLANs (otherwise, skip)
• A separate router/firewall for the lab network (OpnSense, pfSense, OPNsense on its own box)
• Wired Ethernet for the lab — Wi-Fi is a poor fit for VM traffic

Most home labs start simple:

flowchart TD
  Internet([internet]) --> Router[ISP router<br/>192.168.1.1]
  Router --> NUC1[NUC<br/>Proxmox node 1<br/>192.168.1.10]
  Router --> NUC2[NUC 2<br/>Proxmox node 2<br/>192.168.1.11]

When you outgrow that, add VLANs. The networking lessons cover that.

Power, noise, heat

A mini-PC draws 15-40 W idle. A real server draws 200-600 W idle. The difference matters:

• Power cost: a server running 24/7 costs ~$300/year in electricity at $0.15/kWh
• Noise: server fans are loud; mini-PCs are silent
• Heat: server waste heat can warm a room; mini-PCs are negligible

What to run

A common starter set:

• Pi-hole or AdGuard Home — network-wide ad blocking (LXC, very lightweight)
• Caddy or Nginx Proxy Manager — reverse proxy with auto-TLS (LXC)
• Vaultwarden — password manager (LXC)
• Nextcloud — file sync, calendars, contacts (VM, needs more RAM)
• Jellyfin — media server (VM)
• Home Assistant — smart home hub (VM or dedicated hardware)
• A Linux test VM — for trying things out
• A Windows test VM — for cross-platform testing

Don’t install everything at once. Add services as you need them.

What NOT to do

Common beginner mistakes:

• Over-buying hardware — you’ll outgrow it anyway, and a cheaper lab you’ll actually use beats a dream lab you’ll never set up
• Putting the lab on the same VLAN as production — when your tinkering breaks DNS, you don’t want it to break the whole house
• No backups — at minimum, configure PBS to back up the lab to a USB drive
• Skipping documentation — write down your VM IDs, IPs, and what’s what. You will forget.
• “I’ll just experiment on prod” — no. Always test in the lab first.

The home-lab mindset

A home lab is for learning, not for production. Expect things to break. Expect to reinstall Proxmox every few months. Don’t run important data on it without a tested backup.

When you do break things, document what broke and how you fixed it. That documentation becomes muscle memory and eventually becomes your professional portfolio.

Key takeaways

• Start with a mini-PC + 32-64 GB RAM
• Skip the server hardware until you actually need it
• RAM is the limiting factor, not CPU
• Network on a separate VLAN if you can
• Don’t put important data on the lab without backups
• Iterate often

Knowledge check