Oh, I’ve really wanted to self-host and do something like that, but I didn’t wanna spend too much more money than I have (recently bought drives and a bay) and figured I’d use old/outdated/broken laptops to save money and be environmental, but I’ve been thwarted by proprietary chargers (an old Acer) and screens not turning on (a broken Mac). I’m a college student so I don’t wanna drop my money too much in a month (gotta learn to budget somehow right?). Might ask my college IT if they’ve got old shit around instead.
Using castoff hardware is a classic first homelab setup. You dont need an actual server to setup a homelab either. Old desktops do the job well enough. I personally run a cluster of 3 of the small desktops i recommend in my last comment, if slightly beefer models. They work great. This site keeps a comprehensive list.
If you’re looling for next steps, this is a great general guide. Id personally recommend proxmox of the options he lists. Its a hypervisor that will let you slice up your physical server into virtual machines, letting you split out services like a pihole/*arr stack/jellyfin/kodi in a very sane way.
Linuxserver.io has a huge list of services that you can host with containers inside those virtual machines.
Oh, I’ve really wanted to self-host and do something like that, but I didn’t wanna spend too much more money than I have (recently bought drives and a bay) and figured I’d use old/outdated/broken laptops to save money and be environmental, but I’ve been thwarted by proprietary chargers (an old Acer) and screens not turning on (a broken Mac). I’m a college student so I don’t wanna drop my money too much in a month (gotta learn to budget somehow right?). Might ask my college IT if they’ve got old shit around instead.
Using castoff hardware is a classic first homelab setup. You dont need an actual server to setup a homelab either. Old desktops do the job well enough. I personally run a cluster of 3 of the small desktops i recommend in my last comment, if slightly beefer models. They work great. This site keeps a comprehensive list.
If you’re looling for next steps, this is a great general guide. Id personally recommend proxmox of the options he lists. Its a hypervisor that will let you slice up your physical server into virtual machines, letting you split out services like a pihole/*arr stack/jellyfin/kodi in a very sane way.
Linuxserver.io has a huge list of services that you can host with containers inside those virtual machines.