

For a ‘dyi’ ‘rack’ you can get a LACK table from IKEA. https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack
Esxi is on its way out after the purchase of Broadcom and the price increase of 300%. Proxmox is one way forward but others are also exploring Hyper-V, Open Shift, and XCP.
Jim’s Garage just released a 2 part series (so far) on home labbing with video 2 being for proxmox installation.
https://wwelw.youtube.com/@Jims-Garage/videos
Would using the Proxmox Helper Scrips be a good option here?