I'm pretty much new to all things homelab as I've only started looking into it because of my job. I'm relatively new to my position (first job I got after getting my degree), so I wanted to learn more about virtualization and other related tools that could help me.
I want to practice using VMs and such. VMware vCenter, ESXi, PowershellCLI, Microsoft Windows Servers, RHEL, and others. And while my work does provide me a remote production environment for these, it's not always available to me. A lot of other people work on them and I can't really just go in and start messing around.
So I've been looking into getting a homelab setup for myself. I'm just not really sure what I should be going for, though. Do I get a Dell Poweredge Rxx0? I do have a PC of my own that I've been using with Hyper-V and VMware Workstation to create VMs of what I mentioned, but I dunno if I should just get a dedicated server or not? Should I just upgrade my RAM and add in some SSDs on my PC and would that work fine for me?
I respect that.
Just keep in mind that the storage part of any setup you consider is the hard part. It also involves backup, which should be high on your priorities.
As to Windows, l'm indebted to Bill for my livelihood... but for your testing, there is little value in virtualising windows OS: because you already know how Windows works. Go for linux instead, there's a lot more going on there. And you can run linuxes with a lot less ram.