When I was a kid, my home lab consisted of test tubes and beakers, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), acetic acid (vinegar), and the occasional boom, followed closely by the sound of my mom in the distance yelling, “David Allen Gewirtz, you stop that right now.”
When the scold transitioned from “David Gewirtz” to “David Allen Gewirtz,” I knew I was in trouble. To be fair, nothing prepared my nontechnical mom and dad to raise a future engineer. I was forever taking things apart, blowing things up, lighting things on fire, combining previously working appliances into not entirely working proto-robots, and otherwise doing science they were ill-prepared to either understand or manage.
Today, however, when we talk about a home lab, we’re talking about something far less combustible: a home server that people can use to create an at-home data center and experimental IT laboratory.
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All it takes is an old PC and a Linux distro. My home lab consists of a bunch of out-of-service Intel-based Mac minis loaded up with Debian and running a pile of Docker containers. I haven’t done so yet, but one of my near-term home lab projects will be to dedicate a Mac mini to running a series of local AI LLMs for experimentation. It would also be nice to use an AI without it running home and reporting everything to Big Brother at OpenAI, Redmond, or Google.
Helping you land that IT job
I like using my home lab for project experimentation. But what I really want to stress in this article is how helpful a home lab can be for you if you’re looking for a job in IT. Let’s look at 10 ways a home lab can help.
1. Hands-on experience
When I left engineering school, I had a number of big projects under my belt. I’ve always been a project-oriented person. That was the case in college as well. When I first hit the job market, I was competing against a lot of other engineering graduates. Many of the hiring managers were wary of new graduates with no experience.
But I had experience. I could point to all the projects I had done and explain everything about them. As such, my practical tech experience was much more like someone who had been in the workforce for a few years. I landed my first few jobs fairly easily. To be fair, I wasn’t competing against AIs for entry-level gigs. But in our current AI-polluted employment environment, practical hands-on experience is even more important.
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With a home lab, you can build projects, including configurations with Docker, Kubernetes, Proxmox, Linux server administration, network segmentation, and more. You can distribute your servers, either virtually or with a couple of old Linux machines, and practice networking and server orchestration.
Then, when it comes time for an interview, you’ll have a much stronger story to tell.
2. Safe environment for failure
Blowing up my mom’s kitchen was not exactly a safe environment for failure. But breaking systems on your home lab is.
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I did some AI configuration experimentation a few weeks ago. The AI went horribly wrong, breaking my Docker installation beyond all repair. Because it was all running on a home lab server, I just reset the machine and started over. Nothing in production was harmed. I learned a valuable lesson about the limits of the AI’s practical knowledge.
3. Experimentation with tools and platforms
Whether it’s installing any of the hundreds of available Docker containers, tinkering with a pfSense firewall, or familiarizing yourself with SIEM (security information and event management), you can try these technologies out, learn at your own pace, and have a story to tell when you’re done.
4. Improved troubleshooting skills
Do you know how often all of these technologies work right out of the box? Uh, never. Do you know what that’s an opportunity for? Yep, learning to troubleshoot. The more you work with these tools, the more you learn and the more you have to fix. Being able to fix something is often a more valuable skill than setting it up in the first place.
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And, at the risk of repeating myself, you’ll have a story to tell when you’re done.
5. Better understanding of system integration
As you learn about how all these different elements (OS, networking, storage, firewalls, automation, AI, cloud, and so forth) interact in a real, working environment, you’ll see how they fit together. You’ll be able to learn more about interop, staging, DevOps, and more.
6. Confidence and autonomy
One of the outgrowths of managing your own servers is that you know you can successfully manage servers. You know you have the skills necessary (or can find and learn the skills) to do whatever you need to get those devices up and running, connect them to others, and keep them running.
That confidence is valuable, especially in interview scenarios, because when you know (for real) that you’re capable of the job, that internal congruence comes across during the interview.
7. Fairly frugal learning
You can’t click a link or read a social post without some entity or another trying to separate you from the contents of your wallet, especially when it comes to online classes and the various bootcamps.
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When it comes to having a home lab, you don’t even need to dedicate a whole computer to it. You could launch a virtual machine on your PC or Mac. I like the practice of taking old, out-of-service machines and repurposing them. My home lab, which has four or five servers, cost me nothing because those machines were sitting on a shelf, gathering dust before I deployed them.
8. Prep for certifications
While certifications can be costly, they are often necessary for certain jobs. Home labs are clutch for studying for certifications like CompTIA or any of the vendor certifications, whether from Microsoft, Red Hat, Cisco, or otherwise.
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Some of those certifications require simulated environments to be able to meet the requirements, and a home lab does that for you.
9. Building a portfolio
Whether you document your projects in a resume, a LinkedIn post, a blog post, a YouTube video, or through a GitHub repo dedicated to your projects, the home lab gives you the opportunity to do projects and then talk about them.
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Portfolios aren’t considered as important for IT folks as they are for, for example, artists. But having a solid portfolio and projects you can reference and even showcase can go a long way toward making a credible case for why you’re the right person for the job.
10. Stronger interview performance
I alluded to this throughout the other points, but it deserves its own mention. Getting an interview can be a challenge. Making it through the interview (or series of interviews) is often even more of a challenge.
If you have real stuff to talk about — real experience on your own projects — you’ll be a lot more interesting. You’ll also demonstrate understanding that doesn’t come just from reading a blog post. All that can make you a far more compelling candidate.
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The benefits of experience
I’ve been running a home lab since way before they were called that. I’ve done major IT and data center projects at home since before there was home broadband (I had to install commercial connectivity services to do it). All that experience has informed everything I’ve worked on since. I still keep a small fleet of servers running for many of my projects. The servers I run at home are mostly for experimentation. The ones I run in the cloud are my customer- and client-facing production machines.
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Michael H. Clark, who is a member of the Homelab Enthusiasts Facebook group, told me, “My home lab has evolved over the years, and has been a great way to learn things like virtualization, server and domain management, etc. Having a home lab has enabled me to know more about what I can do and manage in my work environment. I have been able to test features and settings for a better understanding, or if a feature or function works as intended, without impacting a production environment.”
He says, “You don’t need to have a mini data center to benefit from a home lab and gaining experience and confidence. Starting with even a simple repurposed desktop or laptop allows you to tinker.”
Bonus benefit: keep your skills from atrophying
It’s been decades since I got my engineering degree and even 10 years since I earned my masters. The tech industry has changed a lot in the past decade. Heck, it’s changed a lot in the last 10 months!
One of the reasons I keep a home lab and constantly do projects is so my skills aren’t trapped back in an earlier era. I’m always training up, always working on projects to keep my skills current and relevant. The home lab, in addition to my coding environment, has been a core tool to help keep me current. If you’ve got some older skills, the home lab can have that benefit for you as well.
Just do it
Getting started is easy. Find an old PC or Mac, pick a Linux distro (although you could also go the Windows Server route), and start adding capabilities. Learn and make notes as you go. We have a ton of articles here on ZDNET about installing, configuring, and maintaining Linux and almost everything else in the IT stack you’ll be working with. I’ll share an article soon about setting up an old Intel Mac mini as my home lab.
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What about you? Have you set up a home lab, or are you thinking about building one? What kinds of projects are you using it for, or hoping to explore? Do you think hands-on experimentation is a good way to prepare for IT work? Have you used your lab to prep for certifications or job interviews? Let us know in the comments below.
You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
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Source: Robotics - zdnet.com
