A newbie question.

[Tex-]

Hi,

Warning, I'm totally new to this.

I'm making preliminary studies for my project. Basically, the goal is to transform a PC (2 years old) into a Swiss army knife.

I want to add disks and memory to make :

1. A DIY NAS for cold (if not frozen) storage. Some of you veterans would say : "easy". I have a very old NAS that probably die some day. So I'm planing...
2. Making VMs (mostly Linux Debian, I guess) to provide compartmented development environments. Run it when i need, and put them to sleep when I'm done.

The actual PC does it all (dev environments) in one machine. I want separated environments for simplicity’s sake.

This PC has one 256Go SSD as the main storage.

My questions are about the ProxMox install.

• Is Proxmox will install one partition (256Go) and I will be able to do everything I described ?
• Or if we get to set up partitioning (some advanced option, I guess) What's the best for the config i want ?
• What would be the best file system for one SSD disk ? I like file systems that can recover files (some snapshots)

PS: Tried to watch videos and tutos, but those do not answer my questions.

Thanks in advance.

 

[_gabriel]

Proxmox is designed for headless PC, then remote in from another PC.

if you want all in one and if you prefer filesystem, then install regular Linux, using virt-manager will be more suited.

installing desktop environment over PVE can be done, but not supported
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Workstations_with_Proxmox_VE_and_X11

 

[Tex-]

Proxmox is designed for headless PC, then remote in from another PC.

if you want all in one and if you prefer filesystem, then install regular Linux, using virt-manager will be more suited.

installing desktop environment over PVE can be done, but not supported
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Developer_Workstations_with_Proxmox_VE_and_X11

Hi,

Yes, accessing those VMs remotely is the goal. Turn on a VM for mail, or coding... Good for me. Even compilation won't be a CPU power sink big enough to cripple the PC. So Proxmox would be "all seeing eye" in this configuration.

My previous message was kind of short, I didn't want to bother with a big text.

Let's say it will look like this:

Phase 1 :
*Recycled PC Server (the DataCenter ?) with only one SSD as main drive.
|_Proxmox
|_Vm01
|_Vm02
|_Vm03

Accessing those WMs with other PCs. And I can do whatever I want with those VMs. Adding/ removing (hence the storage question), etc.

Phase 2 :
Adding a controller card like one of those (link)
Adding 4 Hard drives or more.
And add a NAS software to the setup (trueNas, OMV, etc.)

So it becomes
*Recycled PC Server
|_Proxmox
|_NAS01
|_Vm01
|_Vm02
|_Vm03

This NAS will be used as a replacement for a cold storage NAS. And as a mirror of the main NAS (I got 2).


I wonder if I should leave the graphic card in there (GTX 960).


Have a nice day.

Thanks.

 

[MagicFab]

Hello,

Regarding running a desktop environment on the same PC, despite it not being supported as mentioned, it's rather trivial. My suggestion would be to :

1. Install Proxmox as usual first, the link mentioned above has all the info needed - because this is the easiest way to get Z-RAID with at least 2 disks (see below)
2. Then install whatever desktop environment you want

Proxmox will use all the disk space available (and it's not much by default, like any Debian server/minimal install).

If using only one SSD your setup is a bit risky. Keep in mind Proxmox has high I/O use and if you're not using enterprise-grade storage, expect high failure rates on your disks.

Perhaps consider having at least a Z-RAID mirror configuration from the beginning (using 2 disks, via the installer). Practice removing one disk from RAID and replacing it, always have a spare disk available (so, start with 3 SSDs). Try to get DC (datacenter) grade disks, they don't have to be new to start testing.

TEST, TEST, TEST -> until you get comfortable with disk-failure and replacement scenarios, don't rely on this setup.

RAM is an important consideration too, depending on VMs requirements I'd say 32GB is maybe enough, more is better.

Last but not least, have a backup plan. At the very least, backup on internal or external storage on the same system, better if you do this on a separate NAS (again, ideally using RAID-1 or equivalent on 2 disks). PRACTICE DOING RECOVERY - or plan to lament your lost data & work.

You mention cold storage, perhaps having an air-gapped setup. Check out the documentation about using offline repositories, also look online for "air-gap system debian setup".