What kind of homelab? You can run kubernetes cluster and use that network for internal comm , then run all docker apps you want using 10.x addresses....Use cloudflareD as your ingress controller if you need outside contact (few requirements you need to have in place but its relatively easy) You won't do much with 8 GB of ram, tell your friend to stop being cheap....lol. This is where old laptops converted to run debian/ubuntu/whatever linux come handy, a few small nodes make a decent cluster giving you redundancy and security. YMMV. Do more research as well.