How to Start a Homelab for $0

When I decided to switch my career to DevOps, I made a huge mistake that cost me months of progress. Want to know what it was? I waited way too long to start my homelab.

I thought I needed expensive equipment and a big budget. I couldn't have been more wrong.

In this video, I'll show you how I could have kickstarted my DevOps journey much earlier - for absolutely free. You'll learn how to build a powerful homelab using stuff you probably already have lying around or by using 100% FREE cloud services.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER

JOIN MY COMMUNITY

3:15 The Beauty of Clustering
6:00 Option 1: Old Laptops
10:55 Opton 2: 100% FREE cloud options

MY FAVORITE GEAR

SCREEN RECORDING SOFTWARE

SOCIAL MEDIA

#cloudnative #devops #coding #vim #neovim #commandline #terminal #tmux #markdown #writer #zettelkasten #pkm #obsidian #note-taking #study #linux #techcareer #techjobs #technology #cloudengineering

[mischavandenburg]

Check out my newsletter for free weekly homelab tips and tutorials:

[pravinkumarone]

Learning linux on an old laptop and make it as a small homelab. It's the best way to learn things by breaking and fixing.

[fedpredev]

I recently discovered your channel and I love your content! I am a software engineer and you noticed me to finally learn more about DevOps. Keep it coming!

[chrisa.]

Great content, Mischa! I just stumbled on your channel, and this is a great intro to homelabbing.
I would like to point out that the Oracle Free Tier ARM instances have a max of 24GB RAM, just for accuracy sake. Thanks for the video!

[kalemztech]

Hi Mischa! Also, I am not a DevOps but have been studying cybersecurity for some time and a cheap laptop is the best way to test your abilities! Keep going!

[varuntech]

If you are school/college student you can apply for GitHub students developer pack which can give you 100$ credit on azure for 1 year without any credit/debit card. You can renew until your GitHub students pass expire, which will expire when your school/college ends.
BTW thanks for your information. I learnt a lot from your channel. Keep doing it.

[glrydagrind]

Great tips. Can’t wait to run an app I’m building from my think pad

[alyx]

Hi, mischa can you make a video on how you learn? I have been doing labs and note taking however I don't feel like I am learning.

[gmeister]

A few things. First, I want to truly commend your endeavors. It's a good thing people like you are out there. Secondly, I think you should turn to other DevOps, not just beginners. As an experienced DevOps engineer, I would wish to see other forms of content as well. Lastly, I understand why you promote Microsoft Azure and I think it's venerable, but besides (maybe) AKS, their merits pale in comparison to the other Cloud Providers. I've had a horrible experience with it, no matter how I interacted with the cloud (TF/TG, CLI, UI, native tools).

[gustavoch]

I watched your Zettelkasten course on Udemy and I really loved it! Thank you for the great content!
A quick question: if someone is not interested in journalling at all, could he follow your system without using the daily notes?

[reubenthomas]

Hey Mischa! If I start with a Mac Mini, and sometime in the future, I want to add more nodes to it, will the other machines need to run macOS? Or can I use the other options you mentioned as additional worker nodes?

[sattamini]

Running it on your own working computer if you run ubuntu desktop is not a option? I have always tested stuff directly on my ubuntu. Would be glad to know if there is any disavantages...

[lbnlhxv]

How do you expose your homelab to the Internet but on the same time secure your home as you have exposed your Ports

[-haris-]

What software is he using for writing etc.

[huntervssk]

I have a question. did the distro really matters? Can I use another distro like nixos or void instead ubuntu server or that distro its like a standard?

[MrWyYu]

Honestly, love and respect, but what do you actually need this for? i would like to understand more of what devops means but having a laptop and installing ubuntu is not telling much of a story yet. looking forward to you comming videos

[tomiyokasensei]

There’s something special about a device powered on all the time and consuming electricity and theres something beautiful about you finding out that you don’t have money left to pay for cluster of electricity bill.

PS: I know I’m exaggerating but I still felt like writing it !