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.

  • Jason@lemmy.weiser.social
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    1 year ago

    Definitely a trade off between energy and security. I have PBS running on an old laptop backed up to Backblaze and wouldn’t change it for anything, though. Proxmox backups are flawless and have saved me so many times. But yeah, 16GB of RAM with that processor is overkill for PBS and will probably consume more energy than is needed.

    If everything is Dockerized anyway, you could just skip the step where you backup to PBS and use something like Kopia to backup your Docker volumes to a network share or offsite, rebuilding with compose or whatever if you have an issue.