Hey everyone, it's been a while since I've posted anything. How's everyone's home lab doing? I've recently decommissioned my WDS server and migrated my imaging to SCCM. So far, it has been fun setting that up. My end goal is to set up orchestration and be able to automate creating Windows servers as well as Linux servers, like Azure, but not as robust. I'm also trying to create a custom UI for OSD to use with SCCM. I'm also re-visiting WSUS and with my home lab gaining more Windows servers, I figure using WSUS to manage my patching instead of going straight to Win Update site will help. Anyway, my focus has been on Microsoft's System Center lately. VMM has been awesome, but still a lot to learn. I hope everyone has a great day and happy home labbing!

I ran an Ubuntu server (vm) for a while and I put BookStack on it for just a knowledge base type thing. I'm not going to lie, I'm not a big fan of OneNote and I don't want to pay money to host my own knowledge base articles. I found WordPress is cool but a little too much for what I was looking for. I discovered BookStack and it's awesome. As Brandon suggested, make one of your favorite apps a docker container, so that's what I did. It wasn't easy setting up, but wasn't that difficult either. I was gifted a Rasberri Pi 4 and I decided to throw Ubuntu on it and make it a "docker" host. This little machine is physically hidden in my house, but connected to my network and I have hardened it like I do my other servers, but running docker on this thing is a game changer! I host this BookStack app for my home stuff and since I work from home, I made a little section for my work stuff too. The only barrier I'm coming across is backing this up since it's technically an arm OS so my backup server won't install the agent on it. I guess I could go the native route and tar it and then send it to one of my network shares, which are backed up. But anyhoo, I've found out that rasberri's are great for docker hosts too!

How to Totally Control DNS in Your Home Lab https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2025/08/how-to-totally-control-dns-in-your-home-lab/

I'm almost at my 20-year mark in IT. I come from the Win 98/2000/NT4 era. One of the most important aspects of me becoming who I am today in the IT field is having a home lab for me to build, tear down, break, fix, and just play around with stuff in. I've experimented in a lot, which is what a home lab is supposed to be. It's helped me excel in my career because a lot of "higher ranked" people don't know the technical stuff like I do which is what's helped me get promoted quickly. I'm not saying I'm chasing that, only going after what I am worth. Home labs are the absolute best investment anyone in IT could make for themselves.

Had to ditch my Hyper-V cluster, went back to ESXi. I've tried ProxMox, but my Windows VMs just struggled performance wise. Hyper-V was good but the cluster kept getting screwed up and I spent more time troubleshooting than it was worth. I had to go back to VMware, at least vCenter/vSphere will almost self-correct most of the time. Anyhoo, I think Docker has finally sparked my interest. I turned my Rasberri Pi 4 into a docker host. Plugged it into the back of my main router for power and ethernet connection and my ras's resources are the limit lol.