In part one of my rack-mounted VM Server build, I’m not installing anything yet—I’m laying out the full parts list and, more importantly, why I picked each piece. The goal here is a real-world home lab box that can run a bare-metal hypervisor (I’m leaning Proxmox or VMware ESXi in the next episodes), live in a rack, and still be practical to service. I walk through the core platform—micro-ATX motherboard, DDR5 memory, NVMe for fast boot/VM storage, and a big HDD option for bulk capacity—so you can see how I’m balancing performance, expansion, and cost. I also spend time on the 2U rack case, because that’s where builds like this usually get “interesting.” I go over fitment, airflow, and the little modifications that make a compact rack chassis actually usable with consumer parts. On top of that, I’m experimenting with a 10G interface for faster networking, and I show the open-air test bench I picked up so I can validate components before I commit everything to the rack. If you’re planning your own VM server, this video is the planning blueprint: parts, constraints, and the reasoning that saves you time later.