Home Lab in 2026: Is It Still Worth It? | The IT Guy Show Episode 023

Josh from Keep It Techie joins me for a conversation about home lab ownership in 2026, what it actually costs, what it gets you, and when it stops making sense.

This one started as a personal question I have been sitting with for a while. I have a Dell PowerEdge R720 sitting in a colocated data center in Kansas City. It is old, loud, power-hungry, and costs me $70 a month in colo fees. I have 3 gigabit Google Fiber at the apartment. At some point the math stops working in favor of the colo, and this episode is me thinking out loud about that trade-off with someone who has been through it.

Josh makes the case that home labs are still worth it in 2026, but the calculus has changed. Raspberry Pis and compact prosumer hardware have lowered the entry point considerably, but electricity and heat are real costs that blade server enthusiasts tend to underestimate until the AC bill arrives. We talked through his recommendation for the 45 Drives HL8 as a quiet, apartment-friendly storage solution, the Cloudflare tunnel approach for self-hosting without exposing ports, and the perpetual networking rabbit hole that neither of us has fully escaped.

There is also a longer thread in here about career advice, getting started in IT, and why not everyone needs to chase cybersecurity just because it is trending.

Josh’s channel is also quietly helping me prep for my Linux+ exam, which he did not know until I mentioned it on air. Worth subscribing to if you are building out your home lab or your Linux skills.