Top 10 Home Lab Tools I Use in 2024

A look at my top 10 home lab tools in 2024 that I use in the lab every day. These tools have made my home lab experience smoother and more efficient. These span everything from hypervisors, software, hardware, and utilities. No tool roundup is the same for everyone, but hopefully you will find something on the list that is helpful!

Introduction - 0:00
Sponsor of today's video - 0:51
1. Proxmox VE - 1:34
2. VMware ESXi - 2:33
3. Ventoy - 3:32
4. Docker - 4:21
5. Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) - 5:33
6. Ansible - 6:18
7. Unifi Network Solution - 7:21
8. TinyPilot KVM - 8:16
9. Synology NAS - 8:58
10. GitLab - 9:48
Wrapping up my top 10 home lab tools - 10:14

[parl-]

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_kegan]

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!

[korrupted]

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

[TechSportz]

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

[robertkerr]

ventoy sounds awesome for the reasons stated!

[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?

[JoeNgera]

Thanks so much for this on. It was so helpful

[kristopherleslie]

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

[CLPANC]

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.

[johnharrison]

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

[ryanmalone]

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.