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4 things you can do to turn your Windows 11 machine into a home server
When you’re searching for the best operating system for your home lab, you’ll encounter a myriad of cool distros, ranging from the uber-popular Proxmox to the hardcore, production-centric Harvester. However, you've likely noticed that the majority of these operating systems are Linux distros, while Windows is largely non-existent in the home lab space.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use a Windows machine for home projects. In fact, these four tweaks can turn your Windows 11 PC into a solid self-hosting and experimentation workstation.
Configure Storage Spaces and Network shares
And voilà, you've got a decent makeshift NAS
Believe it or not, Windows 11 ships with all the utilities you’d need in a barebones file-sharing-cum-backup server, meaning you don’t have to dabble with TrueNAS Scale, Unraid, or OpenMediaVault. For a simple NAS setup, you can just modify the network and file-sharing settings to allow other devices on your home network to access the system's contents.
And that’s before you throw Storage Spaces into the mix. While they're not entirely the same as a dedicated RAID configuration, Storage Spaces function similarly by allowing you to harness multiple drives to create mirror and parity pools for a more robust setup. Factor in the third-party snapshot and backup tools you could install on your Windows 11 PC, and it’s clear how Microsoft’s flagship OS can operate as a NAS operating system in a pinch.
How to set up and use Windows as network-attached storage (NAS)
Save money by using an old PC for something new.
Run Type-2 hypervisors
VirtualBox or VMware Workstation Pro: Pick your poison!
Thanks to Type-2 hypervisors like VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Pro, you can deploy virtual machines directly on top of a Windows 11 system and bring most of your home server ideas to life. While they can’t surpass their Type-1 counterparts at performance, VirtualBox and VMware Workstation Pro are equipped with an army of advanced network, storage, and virtualization features.
Plus, they’re extremely simple to set up and operate – to the point where I’d recommend most newcomers to start their home lab journey on a Type-2 hypervisor instead of going with a bare-metal virtualization platform right off the bat. The very fact that it’s possible to run Proxmox inside a VirtualBox VM and still get decent performance is a testament to the capabilities of Type-2 hypervisors for tinkerers.
Enable Hyper-V
You don't need Windows 11 Pro/Enterprise to run Hyper-V
If you need better performance in your virtual machines or want some hands-on experience with an industry-grade hypervisor, you’ll be glad to know that it’s possible to configure Hyper-V on Windows 11 – including the Home version of the OS.
Although you’ll lose out on the Windows Sandbox facility, the rest of the features from the Hyper-V 2019 Server are still there in the Home version of the platform. That said, you’ll need a somewhat decent PC to run virtual machines on Hyper-V, making containers a better option for self-hosting workloads…
Set up Docker Desktop
To host your favorite services
Unlike the sky-high CPU and memory consumption of virtual machines, containerized apps require fairly low resources. Thanks to Docker Desktop, you can deploy most of the popular self-hosted tools on underpowered Windows 11 machines.
While the installation process for Docker Desktop is a bit trickier on Windows 11 than Linux distros, it’s still a fantastic tool for tinkerers running Microsoft’s flagship OS. Just make sure you’ve set up WSL2 properly for the best compatibility and performance.
Virtualization platforms still have their own benefits
If you’ve followed all these tips, you should have a highly capable home lab set up on Windows 11. However, there are a couple of reasons why you should avoid going the Windows route. For starters, the OS hogs resources like there’s no tomorrow, especially once you compare it to the average Linux distro, let alone a dedicated virtualization platform. Plus, security issues are a lot more prevalent on Windows as compared to other operating systems, and I don’t even need to elaborate on the nightmarish update-related issues plaguing the Windows community. But if you've got the patience of a saint and are willing to overlook these problems, there's no harm in setting up your home server on a Windows 11 PC.
