My own network is, today, all UNIX. In the late 1990s and very early 2000s I had a large Windows lab at home because I was learning Microsoft technologies having come from a background of Solaris and Linux. I was a heavily Solaris user before I had ever experienced Windows at all, although I have been using DOS since ~1985. So during that time, I had a slew of Windows servers and desktops including Windows-based routers, file servers, domain controllers, DNS, DHCP and IIS. But I work far more heavily in Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris and it makes much more sense for my own equipment, especially given the cost, overhead and complexity of Windows, to work with UNIX. But if my goal was to be learning Windows, I would have that at home for sure.

Regarding backups, do you have any recommendations for what software to use? I imagine that you have quite a bit of experience with various backup solutions that offer “home versions”.

Lastly, I believe a project such as this might qualify as a tax write-off in the US. I’m obviously not a CPA, but a quick Google search brought me to , and a lab such as this sounds as if it would fall under the deduction requirement of being “education that maintains or improves your job skills.”

Out of interest, with your local network have you deployed many production servers? What is the split of OSes?

With the costs of Windows Server licenses and demise of Technet, Windows Server seems like an expensive habit. Whilst some services can be deployed to Linux, such as DC’s with Samba4, web/app servers with LAMP etc. There’ll always be something that just don’t work…such as Spiceworks.
How would you handle these services?