Home Labs are changing in 2025
Why do I say this? Well, I am like everyone and just monitoring and reading and hearing what others are talking about. There seem to be several things that many will be changing in their labs in 2025 and I am not the only one seeing these changes happening. Some of them are pretty obvious, but I just wanted to toss my thoughts into a post and get everyone’s take on things that I see changing in home labs in 2025.
Table of contents
Things I see changing
Below is just a few of my thoughts on trends and things changing moving into this next year that I think many are thinking about.
- Hypervisor changes
- Mini PCs
- More cloud services
- AI will accelerate learning
- More DevOps and GitOps
Hypervisor changes
So many are already doing this, but changing their hypervisor in the lab is happening for many. Many VMware fans are not so much fans any more with the licensing changes, the changing up of VMUG. Even the vExpert program will no longer provide licenses to those awarded without certification.
I have seen many responses to these changes and seeing these as negative. However, I do think there will still be the core group of VMware loyalists that will likely get certified and continue to use the platform.
All in all though I think there will be lots of changing going on this next year. Are ones less and less focused on the hypervisor itself? I think so. I know I have become less hyper-focused on VMware technologies and much more focused on containerized workloads with Docker and Kubernetes as well as DevOps and GitOps disciplines.
Home lab enthusiasts in general are also using things like TrueNAS to host everything, not just storage. These open-source NAS operating systems are gaining popularity and new ones coming onto the scene, like HexOS. As these platforms continue to mature, I think they will continue to be very appealing to the home lab community and even more so as we move into 2025.
Mini PCs
There is another movement that I think is happening in mass and that is a move to mini PCs for running home lab resources. Back in the day it was super cool to see a rack of 6 R720’s at that time running connected to a “big iron” SAN or running HCI technologies.
I still have a love for enterprise gear and definitely kudos to those that can afford running a rack full of enterprise servers year round. However, I have found that I am less interested in the power consumption and heat dissipation related to enterprise servers.
There are so many great mini PC options that can be used to run home lab services well. The Minisforum MS-01 this year has shown us just how powerful and capable a mini PC can be. I am hopeful we continue to see this trend continue into 2025 with even better models and improvements on models like the MS-01. Will there be a Minisforum MS-02 in 2025?
More cloud services
Also, i think more are getting comfortable with having a hybrid approach to home labbing where they may even have some services exist in the cloud or hosting part of their infrastructure in the cloud. I know for me, I am hosting a public DNS zone that I am using for my home lab environment in Cloudflare and also using cloud-based services like Twingate for VPN connectivity.
What about you? Are you incorporating a hybrid approach to your home lab at the end of 2024 going into 2025?
AI will accelerate learning
We are already seeing this. AI is accelerating learning at an unprecendented scale. I know if you are like me, AI has been able to 5x your existing skills, whether it be coding, troubleshooting, configurations, etc. If you want to learn DevOps and things like Kubernetes and have been intimidated in the past by YAML files and other configurations, AI can drastically lower the barrier of entry and help you get past little syntax things before that would have been a show stopper possibly that if you couldn’t find a good blog post on, we were just simply stuck.
Now, even most learning platforms that you sign up for are incorporating some type of AI into the platform. I have found that AI acts like your own personal “gray beard” that has the experience and answers that you may not have due to lack of experience, etc. Having something like this to bounce questions off of is incredible.
More DevOps and GitOps
Another trend, I think fueled even more by AI as well is the transition to DevOps and GitOps. Since AI is making the barrier to entry lower with some of these skills, I think we will see many more adopting these skills and getting familiar with them in 2025.
I know I have been heavily getting more into DevOps and GitOps in my home lab and production environments, even for on-premises infrastructure. Take a look at some of these recent posts I have made on various DevOps/GitOps topics:
- 5 GitOps Tools that you need to know!
- 10 Best DevOps Tools Going Into 2025!
- FluxCD Install and GitOps Simple Example
Wrapping up
Lots of cool things in store for home labbing in 2024. I am sure everyone has great plans for their particular lab environments this coming year and have a direction you are headed. Drop a comment below and let me know what your home lab plans are, I would definitely be interested in seeing some of the projects you will be tackling coming up this next year. Take care!
