HOME LAB BOM

Generation 8 HOME LAB Bill of Materials

Last Updated 11/19/2025

NOTE: Exciting news! My Gen 9 Workstation Home lab is currently in development, and I’m thrilled to start sharing blog posts about it. Stay tuned for updates — great things are coming soon!

Overview:

Below is the BOM for Gen 8 Workstation Home lab and an Archive section for my older home labs. My current Gen 8 Workstation is one Windows 11 PC based on VMWare Workstation 17. I have nested 3 x vSphere 8 hosts (VCSA, ESXi, and vSAN ESA) hosts and a Windows AD/DNS/DHCP/NTP. The overall plan for my home lab is to use it for vSphere Nesting and Testing. Read further below for an itemized list.

Why Generation 8? To track my home labs I call them Generation plus a number. Initially, that number would be incremented when I did a hardware refresh but as of Generation 7 I aligned this number to the version of vSphere.

Gen 8 – VMware Workstation

BOM:

Storage (NAS):

  • Asustor Lockerstor 10
    • 2 x 10GBe Onboard
    • 2 x 2.5Gbe Onboard
    • SATA Drives: 5 x 3TB, 4 x 8TB, & 1 x 10TB
    • 2 x Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe Internal SSD 

Network:

  • Core VM Switches:
  • 10Gb Network: (DAC Cables and SFP+ can be included)

Battery Backup UPS:

Check out my playlist on how to build a Nested vSAN ESA from start to finish.

ARCHIVE: Previous Home Lab Information

Home Lab Gen 8: (01/2023 – 12/2024)

Home Lab Gen 7: (09/2020-02/2023)

Home Lab Gen 5: (01/2020 – 09/2020)

Home Lab Gen 4: (10/2016 – 2019)