My Homelab Tools & Recommendations

Here are the exact tools I use in my homelab — tested in production, not just theory. Some links are affiliate links, which help support this site at no extra cost to you.

Homelab Servers​

• Intel NUC 11 Pro (Amazon)
  Silent, low-power, and great for Proxmox or Talos K8s clusters.

• Dell OptiPlex 7050 SFF (eBay)
  Cheap, reliable option for home virtualization or Docker hosts.

Networking​

• Netgear GS316 Unmanaged Switch
  Great for segmenting VLANs in pfSense without breaking the bank.

• TP-Link Omada EAP610 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point
  PoE, fast, and works well with VLAN isolation.

Storage​

• Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS Drive
  What I use in my Ceph cluster + SnapRAID.

• StarTech Dual-Bay 2.5" to 3.5" SSD Adapter
  Perfect for loading SSDs into hot-swap bays.

Software & Services​

• Cloudflare
  I use their free plan for DNS, tunnels, and access control.

• Proxmox VE
  My main hypervisor for VMs, LXC, and ZFS support.

• Uptime Kuma
  Self-hosted monitoring dashboard I run in Docker.

Want more details or comparisons? Browse the guides »