Building a Homelab

last edited Fri, 25 Apr 2025 07:20:41 GMT
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There are a variety of reasons for setting up and maintaining a home labaoratory, and nearly all are beneficial for gaining experience outside of a professional or academic environment. Before setting up a homelab, it's important to assess the underlying goal you have in mind. What will the purpose of your homelab be?

• attack simulation
• security research
• test beds for software development
• network analysis

Performance Specifications direct link to this section

• Host OS 1GB RAM + 1 core
• VM 2GB RAM + 1 core

Hardware direct link to this section

Aim to use whatever you have to save on spending. You can rent a cloud-based environment but having a dedicated lab in your physical reach is an invaluable experience. Dedicated hardware isn't mandatory, a spare desktop or even a laptop with 4GB of RAM is an option for a locally-hosted lab.

• routers
• switches
• old computers and SBCs
• monitors
• storage
• RAM

Software direct link to this section

• server optimized Linux distributions
  • Alpine
  • Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, etc.)
• Windows Server

Network Mapping direct link to this section

• use a diagramming tool to organize your desired network setup
  • create visual representations of your ISP, modem, firewall, switche(s), access point(s), wi-fi, server(s), desktop/laptop(s), sandboxes
  • you can can include granular details
• isolate traffic from the rest of the netork
• allow machine to be updated
• different software can be utilized to manipulate network traffic
  • VMware Workstation 'Host only' and 'LAN segment'

Routing direct link to this section

• reserve your local IP address in your router's DHCP settings
  • homeserver should always have this static address