Moving on from conceptual decision; it is important that I create requirements and guidelines.

What do I want to achieve? I think that is the key question from this; as I believe all other questions stem from this.
The Home lab will be stationed in the home office; as such noise, temperature and size are going to be a significant factors in my decision when building & setting this up.

The next step to determine will my use for the home lab.
Requirements:

  • Router running pfsense
    • LAN for Main Internet Supply (1 Gbps Fiber)
    • VLANs for Guest, Security, IOT (at different security levels) and Webserver
    • OpenVPN Server to connect to LAN from outside
    • Adblocking/DNS Blocking
    • VPN setup for connecting to the internet privately and access off-region subscription services (PIA, ExpressVPN etc)
    • Low Power
    • Low Noise
  • Switch
    • At least 1 POE 1Gbps Port
    • 24 1 Gbps Port
    • SFP/RJ45?
    • Future Expandability
    • Low Power
    • Low Noise
  • NAS/SAN on Freenas
    • 10-15TB Storage
    • 64GB Ram
    • Serve iSCSI Shares (for Proxmox VMs)
    • Hourly/Daily/Monthly backups
    • Low Power
    • Low Noise
  • Application Server on Proxmox (w/ storage fed by iSCSI)
    10 Gbe SAN/NAS Connection
    1 Gbe Main Network Connection
    • Plex Server
    • Web Server (Apache on Ubuntu)
    • MySQL Server
    • Grafana Dashboard & Influx DB
    • Microsoft Active Directory
    • Nextcloud & MariaDB
    • macOS Server
    • Video Transcode Server
  • Main Desktop
    • Windows 10 Pro
    • Multi Tasking Capable System
    • Drive two 4K Displays
    • 1440p 60hz Gaming Performance
    • NVME Boot Drive
    • Main Storage iSCSI
    • 10 Gbe Connection Storage
    • 1 Gbe Internet Connection
  • UPS

NB: This is not an exhaustive list (yet!); as such I will try and keep it updated as I go through this process.
By enclosing all of this within a rackmount server; the idea is that all of the equipment will be secure, maintained centrally and in the event of a house move can be shifted with minimal fuss.
Furthermore, I wish to have the best value per power as electricity as a measure of consideration to environment and cost. Also, noise and heat will also have to be considered as the rack/system will be in my office.
I am hoping to source many of the required parts from the used/refurbished enterprise market to utilize enterprise features (i.e. IPMI, Power Management).