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I apologize if this seems to broad of a question but I am currently 42 years old and I have put all spare money into my current desktop that I put together I would like some simple suggestions to throw together a homelab. I currently attend WGU and I am working towards my Bachelors of Science in Networking Engineering. Thank you for any responses because this is my first post.

6 Spice ups
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Check out MS Azure.
They have a bunch of free services you can use that won’t require the purchase of any hardware.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-services

What sorts of items are you wanting to play around with?

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On the Networking side, have a look at Cisco Packet tracer.

Free courses

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Welcome to the community! We’re happy to have you!

In that case, are you running Windows Professional? If so, you should be able to install the Hyper-V role if you want to play around with their hypervisor. I’ve never been a huge fan of the way virtual switching works with Hyper-V, but it’s probably a better option if you’re looking for real-world networking experience than a Type-2 hypervisor.

If you’re not on Windows and/or if you’d prefer to not go down the Microsoft rabbit hole, there are a bunch of free Type 2 hypervisors that you could use to build a virtual lab. I personally have experience with Virtualbox and VMWare Player (though the licensing for this has changed since I’ve used it, so I’m not 100% sure on the current status of that one.) Both have tons of documentation available.

If you’re on Linux, you’ve also got the option of KVM/QEMU which is super powerful, but I’ve had mixed results using it on a machine that is also my primary desktop. I personally prefer the route of installing Proxmox on cheap machines and hiding them in my basement. :joy:

For networking GNS3 is supposed to be pretty great. I don’t have much experience with it myself, but I also have the luxury of having a few old switches laying around to play with :slight_smile:

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I agree with @Josh-J-Spiceworks, GNS3 is a great network visualization tool. I have used the current and previous iterations.

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+1 for Virtual Box and GNS3. You should be able to get a used Cisco Catalyst switch on Ebay for under $100. GNS3 is great for emulating routers, but it can’t directly emulate Cisco switches.

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