Best Practices for Home Server Using Proxmox?

[NodeCraft]

Hi everyone,
I'm setting up a home server using Proxmox on an old PC and I'm new to this platform. I plan to run a couple of virtual machines for basic tasks like media server, file storage, and maybe a personal website later.

Can anyone share some best practices or beginner tips for performance, backup, and network setup?
Thanks in advance!

 

[UdoB]

Can anyone share some best practices or beginner tips for performance, backup, and network setup?

You are asking for multiple books - or at least chapters - here. ;-)

Some random hints from my personal mindset:

• whatever you build: test your setup heavily before relying on it
• build with redundancy --> use ZFS mirrors as the fundamental storage
• prepare automatic backup from the beginning, for simplicity using just a "vzdump" based construct with a a spare HDD
• build a separate/independent PBS for primary backups
• add a second PBS with the famous 3-2-1 rule in mind
• if you want 24*7 availability build a cluster - a single machine will fail some day
• if you want real 24*7 availability think UPS + redundant network - both is overkill for my Homelab

The most important detail: have fun!

 

[news]

Use Server Hardware and use zfs with enterprise storage device.
do not use a mini pc.
use a modern platform from intel or amd.
you must have a cpu with virtualization support, use 8 cpu core, so you have 16 vcore with Hyper-Threading.
32 GByte ecc ram are good, 64 GByte ecc ram or more is better.

 

[NodeCraft]

• whatever you build: test your setup heavily before relying on it
• build with redundancy --> use ZFS mirrors as the fundamental storage
• prepare automatic backup from the beginning, for simplicity using just a "vzdump" based construct with a a spare HDD
• build a separate/independent PBS for primary backups
• add a second PBS with the famous 3-2-1 rule in mind
• if you want 24*7 availability build a cluster - a single machine will fail some day
• if you want real 24*7 availability think UPS + redundant network - both is overkill for my Homelab

Thanks for sharing all these tips! Really helpful mindset, especially for someone like me just starting out with Proxmox. Appreciate the detailed advice!

 

[NodeCraft]

Use Server Hardware and use zfs with enterprise storage device.
do not use a mini pc.
use a modern platform from intel or amd.
you must have a cpu with virtualization support, use 8 cpu core, so you have 16 vcore with Hyper-Threading.
32 GByte ecc ram are good, 64 GByte ecc ram or more is better.

Thanks for the solid advice! I’ll definitely follow your suggestions — especially the part about ECC RAM and a virtualization-supported CPU. Appreciate the clear guidance!

 

[ferengie]

If you use ZFS - you need RAM, more RAM ...

 

[UdoB]

If you use ZFS - you need RAM, more RAM ...

Well..., you definitely want as much RAM as you can justify for yourself. (( Not only for ZFS but because "RAM" is the limiting resource in my Homelab universe. Always! ))

The sane default is to limit ARC to use "just" 10 percent : https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#sysadmin_zfs_limit_memory_usage

I am fine with this - especially as all the other filesystems also require some RAM to do its job. "ZFS needs RAM" is NOT a valid argument against using it.

 

[news]

You can setup für 1 TB datastorrage aprox. 1 GB of ram.