Perfect Home Lab 2024 and Minisforum Giveaway!

[@VirtualizationHowto]

***Update*** Will be announcing the winner of the Minisforum MS-A1 in this weeks video, so stay tuned! Also, A word of caution! The winner of the giveaway will be only announced on subsequent video. I will never ask for money or for you to download an app. If you see a comment like that it is a scammer! Thank you!

[@SECHOMARU24]

@@VirtualizationHowto Good to know even tho would've been cool to be the winner. Lol

[@SECHOMARU24]

@@VirtualizationHowto Good to know. even tho, would've been cool to be the winner

[@HikaruGCT]

Memory tiering is not new and it’s been in Linux kernel for decades it’s called swap esxi simply rebranded it and tried to earn money on it proxmox have this and have had this for years

[@ELGee1]

@@VirtualizationHowto a so i only need to watch the next video that i have won. Nice🤪

[@HDLife]

Thank you for the knowledge

[@minisforumofficial]

Thanks a ton to @VirtualizationHowto for hosting this awesome giveaway with our product! 🎉 We're thrilled to be part of it and can’t wait for one of your amazing followers to win a Minisforum MS-A1 mini workstation. Best of luck to everyone entering! 💖🙌

[@SeanWoods-u9p]

Thanks for being a part of the community. I really like the low price point and huge feature set. If I had a vote with a v2 unit it would be to have a low powered Xeon G chip. Also a iLo option with the ability to have 128GB of ram. Again the units we have today is great, but I wanted to pass along the feedback.

[@rhb.digital]

Nice videos... I have 3 Morefine mini PCs running Proxmox. Works great.

[@tazukia743]

Find all your homelab content very useful, thanks!

[@DonaldHurst-u7x]

I've been using a Minisforum mini workstation for my home lab for about two years. Best ever.

[@coreydufeal2778]

Been watching from Trinidad and Tobago. Thanks to your many videos I had a workable homelab on an HP EliteDesk 800 G1. It may struggle to do most of what I am anticipate but atlest I have a relaiable NAS and Homebridge system.

[@Javi.Ramirez3]

Thank you for the outstanding video. Looking forward to also recreating my home lab and Minisforum is definitely the way to go.

[@Gina-AQG]

This is exactly what I needed. I’ve been overwhelmed with options, ideas, products and potential. Looking for a solid start. Don’t want to make expensive mistakes.

[@AndresMolinaR]

New subscriber, but I have seen your videos for a coupke of weeks already, and started testing proxmox VMs with an old Macbook pro 2011 some environments, pretty good content, especially the one where you top a miniPC with dozens of containers. After seeing that video, I decided to purchase a Minisforum on sale on Amazon. What a cool device and excellent for labs.

[@jasonnguyen8281]

One of the most powerful machines in a tiny package, excellent for virtualization and anything workstation/server related.

[@crisvalerio9976]

Its really insteresting too see how PC’s have evolved over the years and to see so many options available. Thank you for making good and interesting homelab videos, you dont see them that often. At least in depth.

[@EveryLittleThings]

I came here to learn more about virtualisation on a homelab environment as i found your content educational and also interesting. Your sharing is giving me ideas on how to embark on my on my own journey of homelab. Thanks

[@richardtham]

Love how detailed the breakdown is. Also, the option of using NVME storage as RAM

[@wwhhkg]

Good learning from your video! Still exploring a better improvement for my home lab especially hardware choices.

[@hieusaturated]

Love your videos! Also minisforum really knocked it out of the park with the ms-01 and ms-a1 line.

[@Brian-L]

Interesting lab arrangement, thanks for sharing. Currently running Esxi on a dual Xeon R720/128G/6TB. Also have a 6TB FC StorEdge array and 9 TB QNAP NAS used as cold backup storage. All were “gifts” from the e-waste bin. About 75 cents a day for self-hosted everything and then some on multiple redundant enterprise hardware seems a trivial cost when compared to an HA arrangement of minisforum products. Fun stuff!

[@janhoremans8776]

Thanks for showing your setup and the memory tiering ❤❤. Until I find a use case, an old gaming laptop with a synology NAS is my homelab. No need for HA and failover yet 😅.

[@sunnymind]

Really enjoying your channel. Got my home lab set up and as someone who has been in IT since the 60’s and now retired, this keeps me learning

[@vsuarezp]

Never crossed your channel until today. You have a new subscriber. Also thank you and Minisforum for the opportunity to win an amazing mini PC.

[@alcohonis]

I have ms01 and I love it. I use them for customer demos. I pre stage them at home and drop them off for demo/poc. Great stuff.

[@CAMOMONKEY513]

I have a Proxmox home lab on a NucBox after watching your videos. My skills are growing as my lab set up grows. Thanks for getting me started.

[@cassildaandcarcosa294]

I have the MS-01, its great little machine! great video.

[@Paulywogg]

I picked up a UM890Pro a month ago, and based on it, i'd gladly support having more of their gear in my network.

[@lovefreedom-democracy4843]

I love this channel, and the knowledge it gives me, I like the way you speak slowly so that people with an average level of English listening can catch up. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the community.

[@The33IBit]

The channel offers great content for homelabs. I’m currently building my own homelab. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

[@charlesnewman7777]

I've been using Minisforum PCs for my homelab for over a year now, and I'm super happy with what they offer!

[@markhamlee]

My homelab is a k3s cluster that's a combination of Beelink SER5 devices for the control plane and HP 1L mini-pcs for the worker nodes: Two, G6s, a G5, a G4 and a Lenovo 1L as well. Medium term plan is to have G6s for the control pane and MS-A1s or O1s for the worker nodes. Either way, best of luck everyone

[@chrisk6815]

I have enjoyed your videos for many years and have used your knowledge over and over when trying out different things in my homelab.

[@parejma1]

I’m still building my home lab and looking for the best hardware and software.. Your videos helped me a lot in this journey and I learnt so much so far… thank you.

[@akaWook]

Awesome setup for a home lab in 2024 - Thanks for the helpful content! 🖥

[@Calimus25]

I Recently found out about the Minisforum MS-01's thanks to this channel. They are perfect as I was looking to reduce power costs in my home lab. So now, I have 2x MS-01's running esxi 8. Storage is provided by an old Cisco UCS C240mx M4 running Trunas Scale & 7tb of SSD storage. Need to get something like the terramaster so I can go full low power. Network stack is also Unifi, can't beat it for the cost, ease of maint and reliability. Big thanks for putting this channel out there and generating content!

[@abelgarcia6890]

Just started watching your videos in last few months. Starting to get into Home Lab, proxmox vm, and Linux stuff. Keep up the good videos.

[@tonyfpv2686]

Just started in this journey of building a home lab. I recently discovered your channel, and I see a good number of videos that I can use on this trip to learn more. I hope I can add this machine to my newborn home lab. Good luck to everyone.

[@bassey1735]

Mini PCs offer compact design, efficient performance, and versatility, perfect for space-saving computing needs.

[@chriswood7607]

Great work thanks Brandon. I've been using Intel NUC's in my homelab for years. I have three 6th gen running Hyper-V, and three 8th gen running ESXi with vSphere 7. Very power efficient with enough CPU & memory to build out a real-world environment. The part I'm missing so far is shared storage, but that's not stopped me building out enough lab to consolidate my real-work skills with vSphere/Microsoft AD/MEM etc. Will defo take a look at that Terramaster NAS.

[@BrianHoney]

We have a minisforum system at our office- first time using a mini PC! Like it very much so far.

[@md.imranhossen2503]

Awesome setup! The combination of Mini PCs with NVMe memory tiering and the TerraMaster NVMe NAS is brilliant for a powerful yet energy-efficient home lab. Your choice of VMware vSphere really shows the potential for a modern, cost-effective solution. Thanks for sharing!

[@fandrade]

I am just starting my HomeLab and I love your content, it is helping alot!

[@javierpm8056]

Until now I have not been able to afford one of these MS-A1s. Let's see if there's any luck. Good video.

[@DavidBrown-if6hg]

Just started up my homelab journey and watching your videos has helped so much. Just picked up some used mini PCs from eBay and hoping to set up my first Proxmox cluster soon.

[@zoglplayer329]

I started my homelab by using two NUC systems. Mini PCs are awesome when it comes to power efficency. Minisforum has some very interesting models in their lineup. Definitely worth a look.

[@kpw-kenchan]

Thanks for your videos bro. That Mini-Forum is really decked out for such a small footprint. I have a small lab on Proxmox and Truenas with some old hardware. But yes power efficiency is really out the window lol

[@antoniooliveira8599]

Rebuilding my homelab and have been going back and forth between ms-01 and hp microserver. Might do both now.

[@elsammael]

Thank you for the video. I am running 3 MS-01 too with Proxmox. I love these little machines.

[@josephkarman]

Started my homelab experiment a few months ago haven’t looked back keep up the great content!!

[@Ifebamba]

Following this channel for some months now. Gradually improving my home lab with your videos. Thank you!

[@AnilShrish]

Great video! The Minisforum Mini PC sounds like the perfect upgrade for a home lab. Thanks for the helpful breakdown and the awesome giveaway opportunity!

[@tejaswi-singh]

I got started on a laptop as my first homelab server by just watching your videos, great content, keep it up!

[@timiamcrypto2202]

Thanks for giving us this update. I have loved the Minusforum mini pcs for some time now.

[@thedigitalcaesar]

Thanks for the great content. You've tought me a lot. I'm still in the power hungry phase and trying to move toward lower power. The MS01 is intriguing alternative but I'd also need to find a solution to replace all the spinning rust drives. Still a ways to go to catch up.

[@olokelo]

I plan to rework my proxmox homelab soon moving to smaller machines. Minisforum MS-01 mini is the best currently available device for this task. Thank you for featuring it in your videos.

[@dany376]

I love all of this innovation, making these mini PC's with some great options.

[@Westminster86]

Thanks for the breakdown. As someone just getting started, been watching lots of videos on how to get all the services I want up and running.

[@pfeaser]

Just starting out my homelab journey with a TrueNas install on old workstation hardware. Thank you for all of the great homelab and self-hosting content!

[@adventureseeker423]

Love the video! Very inspiring and love to see others setups! So interesting how much power can be packed into smaller and smaller homelab devices.

[@markmonroe7330]

Excellent presentation. Thank you. Been looking at the MS-A1 for the homelab.

[@xenossighted4490]

Great video! I'm using iSCSI LUNs in my lab as well. Currently on Proxmox but also thinking of shifting back to VMware despite all the Broadcom drama, simply to help keep my professional skills sharp.

[@fordi_steve]

Thanks for posting this video, it was just what I was looking for. Been following Minisforum since they released the MS-01.

[@vasquezmi]

Thank you for your dedicated effort to imparting us with wisdom on your journey.

[@sc00by71]

Great video Brandon, loving the content and relevant videos. Agreed on the moving away from enterprise gear in a home lab. My R720XD (unRaid) plus R620 (proxmox) and Brocade switches chew through 700 watts around the clock. Definitely planning to lower power consumption with more efficient options like those from Minisforum.

[@gavinskurrie]

Brilliant channel! Has made my homelab life easier as a newbie!

[@dylanusher]

Trying to breakaway from using my 2012 Mac Mini Server for virtulization. MS-A1would be an amazing upgrade! Shout out from Perth, Australia.

[@psantosh3873]

Been exploring to setup home lab. Came across your channel and it’s been fun learning.

[@fadiraouf5128]

I am following you for over a month and I am learning a lot, thanks.

[@ahhhhhhhgabe]

discovered your channel 'cause i'm setting up Proxmox on an old work laptop. that mini PC looks neat! Keep up the great work!

[@unboxuptech]

I recently subscribed to this channel and learned a lot, especially about setting up servers. Although I don't have a home lab yet, I've started gathering hardware for a build. I currently have a Beelink mini PC and I'm really impressed by the Minisforum devices. I plan to buy one soon. These mini PCs are amazing little machines. My next step is to start my own home lab to learn some new things, and it's been fun. Thanks for the homelab content!

[@FeMedinaRe]

Just starting my homelab journey thanks to you. I really like virtualization and I' looking forward to keep learning from you. Thanks a lot!

[@dohn1989]

The Mimisforun MS series offers exceptional performance while keeping a small, efficient footprint. It would be the ideal addition to optimize my current thin client home lab setup, enhancing overall system capability.

[@pbleisch]

Love minisforum gear. I use 3 NAB6 Lite nodes for my Kubernetes workers. Would have gone with MS-01s but the budget was .. well.. the budget.

[@leviwestman3707]

Almost a year and half into building my home lab and having a blast and learning a lot for my current job

[@jycok1412]

I was always interested in tech going back to watching TechTV but I started my homelab journey after started working with containerization and seeing the power that technologies like Docker and Podman offer. With MiniPCs, the energy savings over enterprise gear has opened the door for many people to explorer the interesting tech world we have.

[@Jochimin]

I'm really excited about the chance to win the Mini Forum MS-01! This setup sounds amazing, especially with that processor and the amount of RAM. It would be a fantastic addition to my home lab, allowing me to explore and learn even more about virtualization. Good luck to everyone!

[@timwebb6290]

My homeland is based on a raspberry pi for blocking and a couple of dell micros running kvm with cockpit. After watching some of your videos I am hoping to move to a proxmox cluster. Thanks for making such informative and accessible content.

[@bocci572]

Been currently working on my lab. Just getting started and the MinisForum would be an awesome addition. Currently have an old laptop that I have proxmox on. Thanks for putting out great videos

[@tickspoon]

What a great time to be a home-labber, I’m a huge fan of the power to energy efficiency the mini pc’s offer

[@arupmisra9799]

started home lab couple of years back and learnt a lot of new things. many of them were from your channel. so thanks. i still havent quite come to terms with using nvme to securely store the data for long term i.e. backing up precious data

[@edwinmoralesacosta6219]

Finally i found a video that makes sense. I am a newbie on this topic, Thank you so much for sharing!!

[@JokingChickenn]

Minisforum mini pc's look perfect to run as a low-power vm machine in my network closet. Was thinking of replacing my current 100w idle server hardware because power costs have gone up a ton...

[@cbiggers]

Great video. Always love seeing information on building better homelabs.

[@bruncats]

I've been on the look for a great VM host to start my homeland adventure and your channel is great to assess mini-pcs with that purpose in mind. So many others think of mini-pcs as gaming stations, which is far from my plans. Thanks Brandon!

[@colterharbin]

Just started my homelab, currently have a few docker containers setup on my Synology NAS, but setting them up on a mini PC would probably work a lot better! Thanks for the video!

[@CarlosIgal-rc4qm]

Thank you for your great video. I am currently starting my journey into the homelabs so a minisforum MS-A1 could be a fantastic addition.

[@stmusil]

I’ve been running a homelab in various forms since around 1990. I started with one old PC and Linux, and today my homelab has several physical servers running VMware ESXi as the hypervisor. I also have multiple 10Gbit switches and a QNAP NAS device. Currently, there are around 40+ virtual machines running on it, with various operating systems and services.

[@collinprice7864]

Thank you for the awesome Home lab content! Running my home lab off a Beelink mini PC, but would love some redundancy so hope this comment helps lol I have been really kicking myself for not getting the 01 or A1…

[@luigiaversa6776]

Nice video! Thank you for putting this together!

[@xbrain17]

I visited this channel for the giveaway, but I really liked everything mentioned, specifically the memory tiering feature. I plan to stay subscribed 😊

[@0r_1x]

Glad to see more coverage on the mini PC's. My 1U HPE rackmount servers are frankly anemic in spec compared to their footprint. 64/128GB memory max, 4c hyperthreaded, and no onboard NVME means I lose my PCIE slots. Are these kinds of system mission critical enterprise grade? No, but for a few 0's less in the price tag, I don't also have to purchase OEM parts from a list. I too am still on ESXI, as I have been for my whole career. I have a few years paid in advance on a vMUG subscription. Most of the tools and applications I'm homelabbing with just don't have the same level of support for other hypervisors as they do for ESXI. There's YEARS of knowledge on the internet around just Ansible with VMware for example, and we still use it at work. As always, thank you Brandon. You and a handful of other content creators have been a huge help for many of us!

[@richmaliz]

Great content and just love the Minisforum ms-01's, currently running 2 but have been looking to get a third one to complete my cluster. Keep up the great work.

[@et_phonehome_2822]

Great video describing your home lab. Glad to hear about the memory tearing feature since I had moved away from VMWare awhile back due to issues with my VMs getting corrupted even with a normal shutdown. My home lab is currently running two MS-01 with 96 GB each, but with VirtualBox. I am practically hitting the limit with memory, and also see my CPU is nearly topping out. I preferred these mini PCs due to the price, you can’t beat them compared to these higher end servers. I will revisit the VMWare product as it will definitely help. Not sure if VirtualBox will have a similar feature down the line.

[@elements88xyz]

my homelab journey has been a blast so far, have learned a lot from you throughout my journey. add that minisforum to my hab would be a massive upgrade. :D

[@jackalltrades767]

These mini pc"s are amazing little machines. My gmktec m5 pro was the perfect next step after beginning my home lab with a pi5

[@Galeforce_]

Thanks so much for the continued content - your channel continues to inspire me to be a better sysadmin and home lab enthusiast!

[@RobvandenBoogaard]

I’m a recent subscriber an learned a lot from this channel. Helped me with setting up servers at work. I do not have a home lab (yet), but started scraping hardware for a build. For a serious IT admin, a home lab is a must

[@georgeshapiro301]

I love these mini-workstations. They're perfect not just for home lab-type stuff, but also everything from bookshelf media servers or just giving a parent for a new PC (:P) Good luck everyone (and me)!

[@superserg8899]

This giveaway is amazing! The Minisforum MS-A1 looks like an absolute beast of a mini-PC. With a Ryzen 7 8700G processor, 32GB DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe drive, this system is perfect for both work and gaming. The compact size and powerful specs make it a great choice for anyone needing high performance without taking up much space. I’ve subscribed and can’t wait to see who wins-thank you for such a great opportunity!

[@JayDellinger]

In the process of setting up a homelab. I've only dabbled with proxmox and traditional shared storage. May have to look into VMware a bit more now. Great setup.

[@msolace580]

Long time lurker of the channel. Recently bought a UL100D, for a work pc. The 01 would be a great little box for a firewall/homelab machine!

[@thisoldhooptie]

I mostly use these mini pc under tvs for streaming and notifications. I also keep a spare in each rack for secure access in case of emergencies. I like to use poweredge systems a gen or two back at home to keep things similar to my live colo servers. I find the noise relaxing after more than 20 years in datacenters. Power is not an issue unless you're maxing out the server with a full allocation of spinning drives. The heat could be an issue if you have a small office.

[@Darkk6969]

Those Mimisforun MS series machines are great for home labs. Nice form factor as well. I can see your point of view of using vmware over ProxMox so whatever works for you. Keep the videos coming!

[@TrTai]

Been winding down my old used enterprise servers more after getting my hands on a MS-01. Once memory density and expansion keeps getting better, it's going to be really hard to justify keeping them, just depends on your needs but I'm pretty much with you on your choices for the grand majority of uses. Definitely cool to see Minis Forum giving back to the community like this with you.