Some Questions for TechSnap From an aspiring SysAdmin

Hello Alan & Chris!

I am an aspiring System Administrator, and I'm starting building a Home Lab to learn on my own time in addition / alongside the classes I am taking.  I have been setting up and testing visualizations on my desktop, but I'm looking to get some older / refurbished server grade equipment to try more thing out that I can keep up all the time.  So the advice I have received thus far is to look on ebay for equipment such as "Dell Poweredge 1950's or 2950s" marked as "Free Shipping" that accept Best Offers, and similar recommendations for a 24 or 48 port Gigabit Cisco Switch that can also be managed via a Console Port to get used to that as well.

In addition to this I am looking to get a pFsense box so I can get used to setting up that, and have a solid firewall to keep my Home Lab equipment etc behind; I also want to eventually have a mini FreeNAS to also get some experience with that as well as ZFS (and of course to use to store my library of videos, books etc in.)

I plan to try all different kinds of operating systems, Windows Servers, Linux Servers, and of course FreeBSD

I would like to hear your recommendations on what I should get, as well as where I should get it.

My budget for the next few months is about $600, and probably another $1000 a few months after that.

Thanks for any info that you have time to provide!

Sincerely,

"A Geeky Guy"