[_peeley]

I agree. For most people just starting out, it's a lot more worthwhile to get a single cheapo repurposed desktop or a single Raspberry Pi to run PiHole or something on and then expand from there. My homelab[0] started as a single Pi running PiHole and has expanded to four machines running everything I need from Jellyfin to Calibre to DNS, etc.

That being said, when I finally got around to rackmounting and upgrading some of the other hardware in my lab, this "beginner"'s guide was really helpful.

[0] https://blog.janissary.xyz/posts/homelab-0

[buybackoff]

Please, do not use Raspberry Pi for a homelab unless you are 100% sure your workload is OK with it. I've just sold mine after ~2 years it being in a box in a closet. It's just to weak, too useless. I value my power socket slot more that RPi. If ARM is important, especially Mac Mx, the lowest Mac Mini is not that expensive. RPi is close to zero in performance. It could be just some unnoticeable VM in Proxmox/AnotherHypervisor performance-wise.