Top 10 Home Lab Tools I Use in 2024

[@parl-88]

YES! A coming in-depth video about Nakivo would be awesome. From zero to installed and running. Hopefully you make a whole series of videos about it. And, hopefully you get Nakivo to sponsor them. Thanks and keep up the good work.

[@mt_kegan512]

Great list! I'd add an uptime monitor (ie: uptime Kuma), documentation/wiki (bookstack is terrific), TrueNAS (deserves to be an honorable mention at the worst), DNS content filter, and firewalls (ie pf/opensense) to an "ultimate list" . That's a pretty good foundation for most homelabbers. Of course us homelabbers are never done adding services & servers!

[@C0LPAN1C]

Ventoy is sliced bread. Not sure how I functioned before it! Oh wait I know. 10 separate usb thumb drives for different OSes. 😢. Now I use my 256 GB thumb drive with 30-40 ISOs and imgs, everything from Hirens boot cd, to every new windows, select Linux distros, Android OS, Chrome OS Flex, Citrix, pi img, VMware, unraid, proxmox, and trueNAS. I even managed to embed OpenCore and a few MacOS versions (shhhh don’t tell Apple). Sliced Bread, bruh.

[@korrupted80]

A very good topic and overview of all the virtualization tools for the home lab environment. Excellent job. Thanks Brandon!

[@robertkerr229]

ventoy sounds awesome for the reasons stated!

[@jedilee]

Get well soon brother! Take care!

[@VirtualizationHowto]

I appreciate it

[@JoeNgera]

Thanks so much for this on. It was so helpful

[@kristopherleslie8343]

Let’s see a video for Linux and Windows Ansible usage

[@NTVN-Alex]

What would be cool is how you could combine Ansible and Gitlab to manage your homelab. So, how do you create and maintain an update script for your linux VMs? How do you do the same for Windows maybe? But also, how do you create and maintain a template for a VM?

[@gabrielcavaller4724]

I'd agree this would be ace.

[@TechSportz]

Thanks Brandon - would love to see more about your Ansible setup

[@trexgamer73]

Thanks

[@RealDaryl]

Get well soon

[@ronm6585]

Thanks Brandon.

[@Janemayank]

Love your work! !

[@VirtualizationHowto]

@Janemayank I really appreciate it!

[@johnharrison712]

I don't see anything that Nakivo is free for Homelab? I see is Start a free trial today.

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Hopefully a video is coming soon on this front, stay tuned!

[@ryanmalone2681]

I didn't actually know you could still use VMware in a homelab for $210. That's worth it from my perspective compared to Proxmox.

[@majorgear1021]

definitely not worth it

[@VirtualizationHowto]

ryanmalone2681, I agree. the VMUG Advantage membership is what I have called "the best value in a home lab" that you can buy, considering you get thousands of (even more with the license changes) dollars worth of software for the $210.

[@ryanmalone2681]

@@majorgear1021 Maybe not if you’re broke.