A homelab is, as its name implies, a lab at home. However, instead of beakers and chemicals it’s composed of computer hardware and software. It’s used by many types of people from amateurs to hobbyists to IT professionals to learn, to experiment, and for fun.
I was first “introduced” to homelabbing in one of my Bachelor classes at UTSA—it was called Cyber Attack and Defend I taught by Jose Mireles. The first task was to set up the virtual environment where we would be working in for the rest of the semester. It consisted of a pfSense Router, Kali VMs, virtual switches, a Metasploitable 2 VM, a Windows XP VM, and a Windows 7 VM. We were free to choose whatever we wanted for the final project, so I decided to add onto the virtual network by setting up a NAS using OpenMediaVault. In hindsight, one could say that this was my first foray into the world of homelabbing. However, at the time, I saw it as more of an extension of the coursework.