VMware
The Base Level Infrastructure of the stack is the Virtualisation platform. When I only has the single NUC I was using the Free Base version of ESXi. With the Second one I also just started with the base level ESXi. but I really wanted to be able to have a central management point for both service, and I have used vSphere in the past. In spending some time on the internet researching home lab setups I found out the the VMware User Group (VMUG) offered a full annual licence of ALL of VMware’s virtualisation products. So I signed up and and shortly thereafter I had vSphere running and managing the Hosts and Virtual machines.
Linux – Diet Pi
I have been using Raspberry Pi devices for a few different things about the place. and I stumbled across the DietPi Os. DietPi is effectively a usability layer over the top of a base Debian install. It also strips out a lot of the unneeded software and service. but you can still apt-get pretty much any standard Debian package, and add any repo’s that you may need. The cool thing with DietPi is that it runs on all different hardware, so moving it from ARM on Raspberry Pi 4 to a VM in my lab was very easy. I have kept my PiHole on DietPi, as well as running my local home bridge instance, both are virtualised and running the x86_64 variant. The PiHole machine is my home base, where I do most of the work and use shell scripts install random bits of software (that aren’t dockerized). I also (used to) use it to fetch and distribute all the LetEncrypt SSL certs for my internal services. its has nice menu system for selecting and installing software, as well as configuration of the hardware, and OS features.
Linux – Debian
The base OS for the docker containers and anything that needs a Bare Metal OS is Debian, Ia m using the minimal net install, so keep the size and bloat down. The main reason I am using debian (after spending a lot of time in CentOS and RHEL) is because I have fallen in love with apt. It. Just. Works. and its one less thing I need to muck around with and fix to get going.
Windows
For Demos and Labs I am using Windows Server 2022, and Also running Windows 10 as a client in some of my demo labs.