u/Areldion

I want to get my feet wet with homelabbing. My use cases are mainly:

1. Setting up VMs to experiment with different linux distro's
2. Locally hosting webservers for some personal projects
3. Setting up a NAS, ideally with redundancy.

I was considering getting an HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF from eBay. Apparently it can fit two 3.5" drives. My question is:

Is 2 3.5" drives enough for my use cases? Should I just get a tower or even a small rack? If so, which ones should I look for from eBay or FB Marketplace?

I have a background in IT but not in sys admin or networking really (though I obviously want to improve those areas). For a budget of say $600 including storage, what is the best bang for my buck?