Introduction

For years, VMware ESXi was the foundation of my homelab — stable, dependable, and familiar. Then Broadcom acquired VMware, and the writing was on the wall.

The free ESXi license disappeared. Support for consumer-grade hardware like MiniPCs and NUCs became problematic. The platform that had “just worked” for years was now actively working against the homelab use case.

Enter Proxmox — an open-source virtualization platform built on Debian Linux, offering KVM, LXC, ZFS, and native clustering without a licensing fee.

When I first got into IT, devices ran continuously. My first lab was an impressive tower from 1999 with substantial disk and memory banks, a quality CPU cooled by a massive copper heatsink and a 12cm fan. During the night, those components produced noise comparable to a helicopter. Neighbors complained. I didn’t sleep well.

The lab evolved over the years. Not just for noise reasons, but prioritizing cost-effective hardware that could replicate a simplified production environment. The goals today are very different from 1999: