Oh…wow. That’s quite the loaded question. How much time do we have? ::checks watch::

The short answer is that almost every technical skill I’ve learned or improved (and some non-technical ones like public speaking as well) has been a result of my home lab. I just needed the right push/motivation/use case to dive into it.

The first iteration of my home lab started 20 years ago while I was in college. I started my lab because I wanted more hands on experience, and my curiosity pushed me forward from there.

So…it really depends on what skills you want to develop and where you want to start your career. IT is a very large area.

The best thing you can do is find problems you have and use your lab to design and implement a solution.

In general, I would say the following:

1. Troubleshooting- Build things in your lab just to break them. Learn how to figure out what you broke and how to solve the problem.
2. Networking - Build a network. Understand how applications and services talk to each other. Learn a little about TCP/IP and basic routing. It doesn’t need to be complex (unless you want to go for your CCIE)
3. Virtualization - Build out a small virtual environment. Use it to run a few applications or services for personal use. This is also good because you can put multiple services on the same piece of hardware.
4. Share what you’re doing - A big part of IT is communications skills. Once you start doing something interesting, share it. Blog. Find user groups for the technology you’re interested in and talk about how you use your lab to learn it. Good communication skills will get you further than good technical skills.