Hi everyone,

I’ve been running a home server with Arch Linux (i7-3770, 16 GB RAM) for a few years now. It’s a mix of Docker containers and some services directly on the host system. I’m trying to move everything to containers though.

For storage, I’m currently using a 256 GB SSD for the host system and three 6 TB HDDs in a RAID 5 for data storage. Backups are currently stored on the same hardware (not the best idea, I know) with Borg Backup.

I wanted to upgrade and rebuild my home server setup as I have a PC I don’t use anymore (i7-8700K, 32 GB RAM), two 18 TB HDDs, a 256 GB PCIe m.2 SSD and a 1 TB PCIe m.2 SSD.

So my available hardware is this:

  • PC 1 - i7-3770, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SATA SSD, 3x 6 TB HDD
  • PC 2 - i7-8700K, 32 GB RAM, 256 GB PCIe m.2 SSD, 1 TB PCIe m.2 SSD, 2x 18 TB HDD

Initially, I wanted to just move everything to PC 2 and be done with it but I’ve stumbled upon Proxmox and wanted to check if it makes sense to build a nice setup with this. At least some of the Docker containers could be converted to LXC or VMs. The rest could stay as Docker containers in a VM I guess.

I could do something like this:

  • PC 1 as a Proxmox Backup Server host
  • PC 2 as a Proxmox VE host

A lot of data on the current 12 TB RAID 5 doesn’t need to be backed up so 12 TB just for backup storage should be enough.

I’m not sure if that’s the best/most efficient way to use this mix of hardware, maybe someone has a similar setup or other advice :) I’m also trying to save as much energy as possible even though that might be hard with 2 physical servers. (Does Proxmox BS turn off HDDs when they’re not in use?)

I’m not super fixed on Proxmox although it does look like it’s easy to manage without a lot of maintenance involved.

  • Novac@feddit.deOPEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    How would I handle backups though? I have some data I should definitely back up in some way, e.g. Nextcloud or paperless-ngx. A mirror is good but doesn’t replace a backup :D

    That’s why I brought in Proxmox Backup Server, not sure if that’s overkill though or if I can backup using Proxmox VE itself. I’ve also read about people running Proxmox Backup Server as a VM inside Proxmox. That way I only have one physical machine but I’m not sure how complicated it would be to access the backups if the Proxmox VE host itself goes down.

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah that is one reason to keep the other host.

      In my case what I do is backup the Proxmox Backup Server VM to my desktop PC over the network, so if my Proxmox host fails I can:

      • Reinstall Proxmox on the host or some other host
      • Restore the Proxmox Backup Server VM that’s saved on my desktop PC
      • Once that’s running, I have access to all the other backups and can restore the rest of the VMs and Containers

      Obviously that’s assuming the drives haven’t failed for some reason, if that’s the case I also backup important stuff with Restic inside each VM and Container, and that gets stored on Wasabi S3 or Backblaze B2. Those backups are if everything else fails, a lightning strike takes it all out, or there’s a fire or something. They would require rebuilding from scratch, but the important data is at least saved.