Recently started my little homelab. The hardware consists of:
Comcast modem in bridge mode (I use this because it means unlimited data is $10 instead of $30)
TP-Link TL-SG116E - cheap 16 port managed switch I bought off ebay
Dell Wyse 5070 extended with an Intel T350 4-port NIC running on opnsense
Belkin RT3200 running openwrt running as an access point
Have already messed around with setting up opnsense (Adguard Home, Zerotier), and going to keep playing with it. I've thought about installing proxmox on the mini PC, connecting an external USB hard drive, and running it as a server and router, but that seems a little jank. Planning on getting some more parts to throw together a small server. You can't really see it in the picture but the cables are still a little messy.
It's beautiful!
Once you get something running proxmox you will fully go down the rabbit hole!
You will be thinking about k8s clusters, DNS and domain management, redundancy & availability, services for this, that and everything!
Before you know it you will have a rack of 8 servers doing various things, 2 UPSs, a standby generator and a backup 5G wan connection!
Or, you know, as much of that as you want.
I've tried proxmox! Don't currently have any hardware to run it but excited to do it. Part of the reason I don't want to put it on the mini PC is that I can't connect 3.5" drives over sata. I want to use the PC I plan on building as a combo server/NAS.
I am planning on a lot of services, but we'll see about the rack of servers.