Virtualization, the innovation that has cut costs across the board for both business and the hobbyists home lab. Buying parts to build one box that is capable of setting up and managing a whole network made up of firewalls and servers while being able to manage the resources of the host. The home lab no longer needs to be made up of old parts off the floor or in a Tupperware box, thrown together to make one server for one function. Now that one server made of old parts can be responsible for many servers, cutting costs of needing multiple servers and allowing the mind of the home lab enthusiast to run wild and free with exploration, learning and innovation.
Being able to build once and setup/configure many times in one sitting is also advantageous. Setting up virtual networks to learn more about packet flow, firewalls, security and how kernels interact with virtual switches and port groups. Make a mistake, that is okay! Select delete and start over till you get it right. Try new things, new tools, not sure what something can do, isolate it within its own network and take it for a spin. Virtualization is the single reason why I have been able to learn and build so much, then go further.
How do you go further from this though? Try building 3 hosts to virtualize within and connect them together on a 2nd physical network to talk to each other and now you have a Cluster. Depending on how you built them, you could have a HA (High Availability) Failover Cluster. But then you can add to that and move servers within one host to another host in the Cluster while it is still running. Look a little closer and now you might see that you have the beginnings of a Datacenter. Maybe you want to rebuild your 3 hosts to have the same hardware, own network and a double physical firewall, one with a security subscription and now you have the makings of a little piece of the cloud within arms reach.
This is all so cool, but if you don’t have the funds or resources to do all that above, you can always just install software on your PC and start virtualizing there or if you can’t do that, fire up Windows and enable Hyper-V, its built in and free! Yes, Microsoft Windows offers virtualization software called Hyper-V in every current copy of Windows, isn’t this exciting!
(Easiest Way) Enable Hyper-V in Windows 10/11 Home or Pro Edition – 2023 – YouTube
There is a video for you to get started and begin downloading a small army of *.ISO’s to install and start exposing yourself to other software suites!
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