We talk a lot on this channel about on-premises virtualization and building your own private clouds. But there’s a whole other side of the world that doesn’t live in a rack in your company’s server room — it lives in public cloud and hosted private clouds. Late last year, I had the opportunity to meet the company OpenMetal.io, whose entire fo... Read More

Watch the Full Video Introduction Proxmox Datacenter Manager might already be dead, and an open source project may have just killed it. Buckle up, friends, cause this is going to be wild! Hey there homelabbers, self-hosters, IT-pros, and engineers. Rich here! I get a lot of emails from vendors, software makers, and people who are hoping I... Read More

Back in October 2024, I introduced you to VergeOS as a compelling alternative to VMware, covering its architecture, user interface, and overall user experience. This time, we’re going to walk through the installation of VergeOS — step by step — from burning the ISO and installing the OS all the way to spinning up your first virtual machine. Le... Read More

Hey there homelabbers, self-hosters, IT-pros, and engineers. Rich here! Just recently, I left pfSense for UniFi. It was a tough decision, but the right one. In a previous video, I landed on and purchased the UDM Pro Max as a replacement for my homebrewed pfSense firewall. Late last year, an opportunity came up to get my hands on an EFG at a gr... Read More

When Veeam began expanding beyond just VMware and Hyper-V, I was ecstatic. Backup is the long pole in the tent for enterprise virtualization, and that expansion finally gave us real freedom in where we could run — and move — our workloads. But there was still a catch. Running Veeam meant running Windows. And for many organizations, that was a... Read More

Canonical MicroCloud Setup and Walkthrough Summary 🧩 Overview MicroCloud is a lightweight, self-hosted private cloud by Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu). It combines LXD, MicroCeph, and MicroOVN into one automated stack. Designed for edge computing, homelabs, and small enterprise environments. Provides high-availability compute, stor... Read More

Am I a TRAITOR to pfSense?! Switching to the UniFi UDM Pro Max For years, I’ve been one of the loudest pfSense advocates around. I’ve built firewalls, tested hardware, and shown you every trick I’ve learned along the way. But sometimes, even the most loyal of us have to stop, take a breath, and ask: is it time to move on? That’s what this po... Read More

Virtualization is going through one of the biggest shakeups in decades. With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware causing disruption across the industry, many IT leaders are searching for stable, innovative alternatives. I recently sat down with Jeff Ready, President and CMO of SCALE Computing, to talk about the state of virtualization, SCALE’s ex... Read More

If you’re thinking about building your first homelab or self-hosting environment, you’ve probably asked yourself: What’s the ideal system to start with? Big servers are great, but they can be power-hungry, expensive, and take up too much space. Enter the Minisforum NAB9 Plus — a mini-PC that just might check all the right boxes for your first ... Read More

Fresh off the showroom floor at Nutanix .NEXT 2025 in Washington, D.C., the worst-kept secret in the virtualization world has finally been confirmed: Nutanix is officially embracing disaggregated storage by allowing select third-party storage vendors into its once tightly controlled ecosystem. And the first major player through the gates? Pure... Read More

There are some incredibly well-built storage platforms, like TrueNAS SCALE, that allow you to take your own hardware and turn it into a complete, turn-key storage solution. These platforms remove the complexity of building a storage server manually. I use TrueNAS SCALE for all things storage in my homelab, and it’s great. But this got me think... Read More

If you’ve been following 2GuysTek for any length of time, you know how much I enjoy unique and interesting servers in my homelab. From my first dual-node Supermicro server to the quad-node setup, I’ve always sought out hardware that brings something special to the table. This year is no different, as I’ve kicked off 2025 with a significant upg... Read More

Big News from Proxmox Server Solutions Proxmox Server Solutions surprised us all with an exciting announcement: the alpha release of Proxmox Datacenter Manager (PDM). Designed to provide a centralized overview of nodes and clusters, PDM enables basic management tasks—such as migrating virtual guests—without cluster network requirements. This ... Read More

Whelp, here we go again. If you haven’t heard the news, Broadcom has once again made sweeping changes at VMware—this time targeting VMUG and, specifically, VMUG Advantage. And if you’re a homelabber, self-hoster, or an IT professional like me, this is some disheartening stuff. Big news dropped last week at VMware Explore Barcelona when Broadc... Read More

At the end of our “Life after VMware” series, we started to get comments and suggestions that we should regularly release videos on the state of the virtualization landscape since it’s changing so rapidly that it’s hard for a lot of people to keep up. So, we’ll be doing these videos every few months to check in and see what’s changed and evolv... Read More

How did we even get here? Welcome to the final-final video on evaluating your options if you’re coming from the world of VMware and ESXi. This video is my opus, my coup de grâce, the finale of this series that has taken up practically four solid months of my time. In this video, I’m going to attempt to aggregate and summarize as much of the i... Read More

With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, many homelab enthusiasts and small to medium businesses are seeking alternatives to VMware ESXi. Today, we delve into Proxmox VE, comparing it to our once-beloved VMware. If you missed our previous video on XCP-ng, check it out here. The Proxmox Origin Story Proxmox was founded in 2005 by Linux develope... Read More

Welcome, friends! If you can believe it, this is the fourth installment of our series on evaluating alternative hypervisors now that Broadcom is making VMware untenable for homelabs and small to medium businesses. In the last three videos, we focused on XCP-ng, Proxmox, and Hyper-V as alternatives to ESXi. If you haven’t seen those videos, che... Read More

With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, many homelab enthusiasts and small to medium businesses are reconsidering their virtualization options. VMware’s uncertain future has prompted a search for reliable, open-source alternatives. One such option is XCP-ng, a powerful and cost-effective alternative to VMware ESXi. Background on XCP-ng XCP-ng... Read More

As Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware makes VMware ESXi increasingly untenable for homelabs and small to medium businesses, it’s time to consider alternative hypervisors. This is the third installment in our series, following our evaluations of XCP-ng and Proxmox VE. Now, let’s delve into Microsoft Hyper-V, the third most requested hypervisor. ... Read More