I have three separate servers at home, and while I was in the process of a migration, I had four servers in operation. All three of them are running Proxmox, though not as a cluster. That fourth server I used was a TrueNAS Scale machine that served as my introduction to home labbing, and that introductory piece now lives as a VM on one of my machines. Throughout it all, one piece of hardware has proved invaluable: my portable monitor.

All of these machines have something in common: they're controlled over the network. Either by a web GUI or by SSH, they're each controlled remotely. So, when something goes wrong, I typically lose remote access for a start. At that point, I have two options for troubleshooting: lug the server over to my desk where my monitors reside, or bring a monitor to the server. And that's where the portable monitor comes in.

I hadn't used my portable monitor for years

Yet it saved me anyway

I reviewed a portable monitor for XDA years ago, and while I still occasionally used that monitor in university, it sat unused following my graduation for a long, long time. Yet when I first started experiencing network-related issues on TrueNAS Scale, I had no remote way of debugging. That's when I remembered the portable monitor, and I dusted it off and set it back up.

Since then, that portable monitor has lived beside two of my servers, and occasionally gets some use when debugging a boot-up problem, a network issue, or even when making a quick BIOS change. It's powered by USB-C, and both of the servers that it resides with are capable of providing USB-C power. Paired with the mini HDMI cable that connects it, I can simply move the cable to one server or the other as needed, giving me immediate console access to figure out what's going on.

Recently, I experienced my first real difficulty, which the portable monitor saved me from. I use a PCIe passthrough to a HexOS instance on the same machine that runs OPNsense, turning it into a hybrid router/NAS combo. However, when I added an NVMe drive to increase the Proxmox storage pool, I hadn't realized that the address of my SATA controller would change, and even though it makes sense that it did, I no longer had internet. None of my devices could connect to OPNsense, and OPNsense itself didn't have internet, either.

Hooking up my portable monitor allowed me to easily figure out what exactly had gone wrong, and while it took a lot of debugging to figure out that the HexOS passthrough address now coincidentally referred to one of my NICs (so OPNsense couldn't use it anymore), it would have been significantly more annoying to have to lug my monitor over to the server, as unlike the other servers that I run which can move, this particular server is fixed in place given that it needs to connect to the ONT for authenticating with my ISP.

On top of that, this meant I could keep my PC up and running, with a continuous ping to the gateway running on full screen in Windows Terminal. In the meantime, I was moving the portable monitor back and forth between two of my servers so that I could also check whether they could connect to each other or not. Without a portable monitor, even this process would have been cumbersome. The servers are close enough together that moving the portable monitor wasn't an issue, but far enough apart that lugging my PC's monitor between the two would have been frustrating.

A portable monitor has been invaluable for my home lab

When catastrophic failure strikes, that's when it's worth it

The brand of portable monitor doesn't matter, nor does the resolution or the screen size. Literally anything that can show you an HDMI output will do, as in nearly all cases, you'll be interfacing with either your BIOS or a command line. I can't recommend it enough, though, as it's massively helped me in ways I never expected. Debugging is a lot easier, and being able to move between servers quickly and efficiently when something breaks means that I spend less time lifting a big, heavy monitor around and more time figuring out what went wrong.

It's a fairly simple addition, mind you. I know that some people have a spare monitor lying around that'll get the job done, or feel that they don't need one, and that's fair enough. While I would have felt I fell into the latter camp, I was surprised by how useful it ended up being. I now leave a USB-A to USB-C cable with my portable monitor that sits by my server, alongside a USB-C to USB-C cable to power the monitor, basically serving as an instant rescue kit to hook up a keyboard when necessary.

If you've been on the fence regarding a portable monitor for your home lab for a while, I personally highly recommend one. If you've never faced a catastrophic failure like the one I did, you mightn't understand the benefits. But if you had, and you had to lug a monitor around, figuring stuff out, I'm sure you'll get it. Many of these monitors, including my one, can even be powered by a powerbank or a laptop, so you can make it really portable by powering it that way, as well.