Ask any longtime homelab operator what they'd change if they started over, and the answers cluster around the same handful of decisions — not exotic gear, but foundational choices made too late: the hypervisor, the storage layout, the network backbone, and the power/backup plan. This synthesis pulls together the recurring regrets from r/homelab threads, TrueNAS and Proxmox documentation, and hardware coverage from outlets like ServeTheHome and Tom's Hardware, plus the internal SpecPicks build guides most relevant to each fix.
The Regret List: What Homelab Builders Say They'd Change First
| Rank | Change | Why it gets delayed | Cost of waiting |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hypervisor choice (Proxmox over ESXi) | "It already works" inertia | Painful mid-life migration |
| 2 | Storage layout (ZFS pool design, NVMe placement) | Storage grows organically, one drive at a time | Re-architecting a live pool under load |
| 3 | Network segmentation + faster backbone | Feels like overkill for one server | Retrofitting VLANs/cabling later |
| 4 | UPS + clean shutdown automation | Cheap to skip, invisible until it isn't | Corrupted VMs after a power blip |
| 5 | Documentation + tested restores | Not urgent until something breaks | Rebuilding from memory during an outage |
The pattern across nearly every "what I'd do differently" thread on r/homelab is the same: nothing on this list is exotic hardware. It's sequencing — doing the boring, structural work before the lab has years of VMs and data depending on the old decision.
Hypervisor Choice: Proxmox vs. ESXi
The biggest single migration wave in recent homelab history has been ESXi holdouts moving to Proxmox VE after Broadcom discontinued VMware's free tier for individual users. Builders who delayed the switch describe the eventual move as far more disruptive than it would have been on a fresh install — every VM needs to be exported, storage needs to be re-mapped, and any ESXi-specific automation has to be rewritten.
| Proxmox VE | VMware ESXi (post-Broadcom) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost for home use | Free, community repo | Free tier discontinued |
| Container support | Built-in LXC alongside full VMs | VMs only |
| Management | Web UI, no separate vCenter needed | vCenter recommended for multi-host |
| Clustering | Native, free | Requires paid licensing |
For anyone standing up a first 2026 homelab stack with OPNsense, Proxmox, and TrueNAS, starting on Proxmox avoids the migration entirely. The lesson from ESXi refugees isn't "Proxmox is strictly better" — it's that hypervisor lock-in compounds the longer a lab runs, so the decision is worth front-loading rather than revisiting after dozens of VMs exist.
Storage: The ZFS and NVMe Question
Storage layout is the second-most-cited regret, and it splits into two related mistakes: picking a filesystem without redundancy in mind, and bolting NVMe cache or special vdevs onto a pool after the fact instead of planning for them at creation time.
ZFS, as documented by TrueNAS, remains the default recommendation for homelab NAS builds because pools carry checksumming and snapshot support that simpler filesystems don't offer — but ZFS pool geometry (mirrors vs. RAIDZ, vdev count) is largely fixed once data lands on it. Builders who under-provisioned drive bays or picked RAIDZ1 when they needed RAIDZ2 describe rebuilding the whole pool from backup as the single most time-consuming redo in their lab's history.
On the NVMe side, guides like best SSDs for a Raspberry Pi homelab NAS and budget SSDs for retro and homelab builds both make the same point: buying enough NVMe capacity and a controller that supports it on day one is cheaper than adding a cache tier to a pool that's already full and in production. Actual throughput and latency gains from adding NVMe cache vary heavily by workload and pool design — treat any specific number quoted online skeptically unless it's tied to a documented benchmark for a comparable pool.
Networking: 10GbE, VLANs, and Bonded NICs
Networking upgrades are the classic "I didn't know I needed it until I needed it" purchase. A single Proxmox host with local storage runs fine on gigabit. The moment a separate TrueNAS box, a second Proxmox node, or regular VM backups enter the picture, gigabit becomes the bottleneck for migrations and restores.
The 2026 Homelab Stack guide covering OPNsense, Proxmox, TrueNAS, and 10GbE lays out why builders increasingly treat a 10GbE switch and matching NICs as part of the initial bill of materials rather than a later add-on: retrofitting means new cabling, new switch ports, and re-terminating runs that were sized for 1GbE. VLAN segmentation (isolating IoT, guest, and management traffic) has the same profile — it's straightforward to set up on a fresh OPNsense install and considerably more work to graft onto a flat network with dozens of devices already assigned static IPs.
Bonded/LACP NIC configurations for redundancy fall into the same "cheap now, annoying later" bucket — enabling link aggregation on switch and host at build time avoids a maintenance-window reconfiguration once services are depending on uptime.
Power and Cooling: The Boring Upgrade That Pays Off
UPS coverage and clean-shutdown automation rank consistently in "wish I'd done this sooner" threads for a simple reason: it's invisible until a power blip corrupts a VM's virtual disk or takes a ZFS pool offline mid-write. NUT (Network UPS Tools) integration with Proxmox and TrueNAS is well documented and inexpensive relative to the cost of restoring from backup after a dirty shutdown.
Power efficiency is the other recurring theme — older enterprise servers pulled from eBay draw meaningfully more idle wattage than modern SFF or mini-PC builds, which is part of why guides like Raspberry Pi 4 8GB vs. a used mini PC for a 2026 beginner homelab and the general trend toward downsized homelabs keep gaining traction: builders who started with loud, power-hungry rack servers report right-sizing down to efficient mini-PCs or SBC clusters once the novelty of "more cores" wears off. Specific wattage and dollar-per-year savings depend heavily on local electricity rates and the exact hardware being replaced, so treat any flat percentage claim online as directional rather than precise.
Documentation and Backups: The Upgrade Nobody Budgets For
The single most repeated regret across homelab retrospectives isn't hardware at all — it's not writing anything down and not testing restores. A pool of VM configs, IP assignments, and DNS records that only exists in one person's memory becomes a real liability the first time that person is troubleshooting an outage under time pressure. The fix costs nothing but time: a simple wiki (even a single markdown file in a git repo) covering IP allocations, service dependencies, and — critically — a documented, periodically-tested backup restore procedure.
A Practical Priority Order
For anyone starting fresh or planning the next round of upgrades, the recurring advice across r/homelab, ServeTheHome, and Level1Techs threads converges on roughly this order:
- Hypervisor and storage filesystem — decide Proxmox/ZFS (or your equivalent) before VMs and data accumulate.
- Network backbone and segmentation — cable and switch for 10GbE and VLANs even if you don't need the throughput yet.
- UPS and clean-shutdown automation — cheap insurance against the failure mode that corrupts data.
- Right-size the hardware — an efficient mini-PC or SBC cluster (see the Raspberry Pi 4 8GB Jellyfin/Pi-hole/Home Assistant homelab writeup) often beats a louder, power-hungrier server for typical self-hosting loads.
- Documentation and tested restores — the step everyone skips and everyone regrets skipping.
On the software side, keeping local-inference stacks current matters too — homelabs running local LLMs have their own churn, as covered in Gemma 4's stealth update fixing tool calling for local rigs and what the Intel-Scaler vLLM 0.21.0 update changes for Arc and Intel GPU rigs — both examples of the same underlying lesson: staying a version or two behind on core infrastructure software tends to cost more time later than keeping it current does now.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the single most impactful homelab change to make early? Picking a stable hypervisor and storage layout before the cluster grows — both are far more disruptive to change later than to choose carefully up front.
Is Proxmox better than ESXi for a home lab? For hobbyist use, most homelab operators now default to Proxmox: it's free without licensing tiers, ships a web UI, and supports LXC containers alongside full VMs, which matters more since Broadcom discontinued ESXi's free tier.
Do I need 10GbE networking at home? Only once storage traffic — NAS backups, VM migrations, media libraries — becomes the bottleneck. A single server with local disks is fine on gigabit; add a separate NAS and that changes.
Should I use ZFS for homelab storage? It's the default recommendation from TrueNAS and most homelab guides for its checksumming and snapshot support, but it benefits from ECC RAM and enough memory headroom to be worth the added complexity.
How much should I budget for a UPS? Enough for a clean automated shutdown, not necessarily hours of runtime — an entry-level line-interactive unit is the commonly recommended starting point.
What's the most commonly regretted skipped step? Documentation and a tested backup/restore process — builders consistently report not feeling the cost until a drive failure or botched upgrade forces a rebuild from memory.
Citations and sources
- https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/
- https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-virtual-environment/overview
- https://www.truenas.com/
- https://www.servethehome.com/
- https://www.tomshardware.com/
- https://www.level1techs.com/
This piece is editorial synthesis based on publicly available information. No independent first-party benchmarking is reported.