Hello

I’ve seen many videos and posts that mentions the usage of Proxmox in their homelab setup, and I’ve been wanting to try it.

I have two servers running at my homelab: an OrangePi 5 for HA AdGuard, Omada Controller, HomeAssistant; a Dell Inspiron 3268 repurposed as a server. The latter is which I’m considering Promox.

What is the server config?

  • Dell Inspiron 3268 desktop, Core i3-7100 with 16GB DDR 4.
  • 3 SATA drives: 250gb Crucial MX500, system and 2 Kingspec P3-1TB in a ZFS pool, used for backup.
  • PCIe to M2 adapter with a KingSpec NX-2TB drive also in a ZFS pool.
  • 1 Gigabit ethernet (motherboard0 and 1 2.5Ge ethernet connected to PCIe v1

What is the server currently run and what is used for? (see outputs below)

  • Primarily it’s a NAS / Media server
  • Ubuntu server 23.10
  • Samba server
  • lighttpd (reverse proxy for ALL the containers except for Plex and flaresolverr)
  • xrdp with XFCE desktop environment (server is headless)
  • Docker container running both OpenVPN client and Deluge for privacy
  • Plex (docker)
  • Flaresolverr/ jackett (docker)
  • Radarr / sonarr / bazarr (docker)
  • Portainer to manage containers (docker)

Why I’m considering Proxmox :

  1. Bare metal restart for kernel updates
  2. Lack of a web monitoring tool for the server that is not a lot of overheard
  3. From time to time, I like to explore other distros or new appliances and can’t
  4. You tell me… there may be benefits I’m missing…

I did install Proxmox but think I used it wrong or was unable to realize all the benefits:

  1. My media is on data-pool/media dataset but I was unable to share that with multiple LXC
  2. All my docker configs are mapped as volumes on the host, and are stored on data-pools/apps. I would like to reuse them
  3. I was not sure if I should run a LXC container for each docker, or have a single LXC with everything (exception xrdp / XFCE). I don’t know what would be good practices…
  4. On networking, I wanted to ensure I can map a NIC just to a specific hardware… but had challenges figuring out how to have a NAT like environment
  5. I was planning to have a Windows VM that I can start on demand to use, but stopped on the challenges above

Given my opportunities and challenges, what you would all suggest for me? Keep running on baremetal as is or change to Proxmox?

me@jupiter:~$ lsblk -o MODEL,SERIAL,SIZE,STATE --nodeps
MODEL          SERIAL          SIZE STATE
                              73.9M
                             152.1M
                              40.9M
CT250MX500SSD1 2219E6302473  232.9G running
P3-1TB         0010159006480 953.9G running
P3-1TB         0010159006489 953.9G running
NX-2TB 2280    0010174003295   1.9T live

me@jupiter:~$ zfs list
NAME                    USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
backup-pool             291G   631G    26K  /backup-pool
backup-pool/computers   121G   631G   121G  /backup-pool/computers
backup-pool/documents    24K   631G    24K  /backup-pool/documents
backup-pool/photos      166G   631G   166G  /backup-pool/photos
backup-pool/servers    4.36G   631G  4.36G  /backup-pool/servers
data-pool               520G  1.29T    26K  /data-pool
data-pool/apps         6.90G  1.29T  6.90G  /data-pool/apps
data-pool/home         27.6G  1.29T  27.6G  /home
data-pool/media         486G  1.29T   486G  /data-pool/media

me@jupiter:~$ docker ps --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Image}}\t{{.Size}}"
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                      SIZE
46ffbe41beee   ghcr.io/flaresolverr/flaresolverr:latest   16.1MB (virtual 618MB)
9c6eb995b729   lscr.io/linuxserver/jackett:latest         106MB (virtual 277MB)
ffe5ccd4aae1   portainer/portainer-ce:latest              0B (virtual 294MB)
b28afe33a106   lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:latest          23.6kB (virtual 196MB)
0f7744daf9d6   lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:latest          35.6MB (virtual 335MB)
574c625933b1   binhex/arch-delugevpn:latest               16.5MB (virtual 1.29GB)
8a7f84e40f84   lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest            24.3kB (virtual 340MB)
37e8580600ef   lscr.io/linuxserver/bazarr:latest          23.2kB (virtual 422MB)

Picture of the rack… very cheap 8U rack, depth is just 350mm in depth. GPON and ER-605 at the top. Unloaded patch panel, TL-SG2210MP switch, orange pi 5, Dell server

https://preview.redd.it/dxtgq5czp40c1.png?width=1063&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f82cd6d88fcdebc733ff40150c14ea04fe4c8d9