So I am brand new to homelab using a laptop from 2010 that I am running proxmox with VMs (home assistant, virtual desktop and docker container utilizing portainer). I think scraping by is an understatement. I want to find a mini pc that I will set up the same way (boot into proxmox), and would like to add NAS. I do not care on model, but would like to spend around $100-150 for something use. Are there minimum system requirements that I should look for so that I don’t need to update in a year or so?
I am slowly getting started on my journey, but basically have no clue what I’m doing. I’m a civil engineer and for the past few years have finally been branching out into other areas of interest.
Anyways, I found 10 Optiplex SFF on govdeals from a nearby large university. They are older, with 7th gen i5, 16gb ram, and 256gb ssd each. I got all 10 for 40 bucks, I’m still amazed tbh.
They aren’t top of the line, but they are great to just mess with. I currently only have 4 in use for various things as I feel my way around via self education. It’s fun and nice that if I somehow obliterate them, I’m only out $40.