Advice on upgrading Ubuntu home server to Proxmox: disk config

[andy88]

Hello, new user here. For the past 5 years, I've been running an Ubuntu server from a 2009 macmini located at my parent's house in a different country. What started as a fun project turned into a reliable setup, serving as a Plex server, backup for my family's computers, and an offsite backup for myself, as well as a way to host my Obsidian vault. I've been managing it both via SSH and Real VNC. Drive wise, it’s only got one internal SSD on which Ubuntu runs (on an un-encrypted EXT4 partition) and various usb3 external drives formatted with EXT4 LUKS. Connection wise, a 1gigagbit up and down connection is available, but obviously up to now the dated hardware has been the bottleneck.

Now, I've decided to upgrade my setup with a Dell Optiplex 7080 10500T with 16GB RAM. This machine offers two NVME slots and one SATA slot. I bought it with just one single 256GB NVME SSD installed. My plan is to install Proxmox, run an Ubuntu VM on it, and potentially start using more VMs in the future as my needs grow. This approach would make it easier to do reagular backups of the Ubuntu VM, restore it to a previous state, experiment in a testing VM, make radical changes without being physically present.

I’ve been thinking to implement the following, with the aim to minimise cost, maintenance and issues requiring physical access:

1 Add another 256GB NVME SSD, for a total of two, and create two ZFS mirrored pools: one unencrypted for Proxmox and one encrypted for the VMs.

2 Add a third SSD (1TB SATA) ext4 encrypted. Use this drive for personal data storage and also to receive regular backups of the VMs.

3 Keep the rest of my data on a couple of external USB3 drives connected to the machine, EXT4 encrypted.

4 Install Tailscale to enable remote access to Proxmox.

5 Manage the Ubuntu VM from abroad by either connecting to Tailscale and then SSH-ing into it, or using Real VNC.

As a total beginner in this, any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm open to any suggestion or alternative. One thought could be to skip ZFS mirroring and have Proxmox boot on one 256GB drive and the VMs on the other, but I'm concerned about potential drive failures that would require immediate physical presence.

Thank you in advance!

 

[esi_y]

Now, I've decided to upgrade my setup with a Dell Optiplex 7080 10500T with 16GB RAM. This machine offers two NVME slots and one SATA slot. I bought it with just one single 256GB NVME SSD installed.

Lots of people will have something to say here if you disclose what NVMe was included.

My plan is to install Proxmox, run an Ubuntu VM on it, and potentially start using more VMs in the future as my needs grow.

It's a great opportunity to start with containers, if you had not already been doing so. Ubuntu had LXD, PVE is very much on par with that with its own LXC stack. If you had used them before, you could have just migrated them now.

This approach would make it easier to do reagular backups of the Ubuntu VM, restore it to a previous state, experiment in a testing VM, make radical changes without being physically present.

So your IPMI is a parent call to reboot it, if need be, correct?

I’ve been thinking to implement the following, with the aim to minimise cost, maintenance and issues requiring physical access:

1 Add another 256GB NVME SSD, for a total of two, and create two ZFS mirrored pools: one unencrypted for Proxmox and one encrypted for the VMs.

In my opinion this is making things worse, you can have PVE on LUKS (with a bit of manual effort), or you can have SED SSD and not worry about LUKS at all. I would not mirror, I would add a second drive if need be. For disaster recovery, there's the backups.

2 Add a third SSD (1TB SATA) ext4 encrypted. Use this drive for personal data storage and also to receive regular backups of the VMs.

No off-site backups at all? You can run even just e.g. duplicity job into some cloud storage.

3 Keep the rest of my data on a couple of external USB3 drives connected to the machine, EXT4 encrypted.

Offline?

4 Install Tailscale to enable remote access to Proxmox.

I would prefer a site-to-site IPsec to some place "safe" like a could bastion host instead, with dedicated gear, could be something simple like EdgeRouter-X. Definitely would not be opening ports on that PVE host or relying on 3rd party secure relays ...

5 Manage the Ubuntu VM from abroad by either connecting to Tailscale and then SSH-ing into it, or using Real VNC.

Or SPICE.

As a total beginner in this, any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm open to any suggestion or alternative. One thought could be to skip ZFS mirroring and have Proxmox boot on one 256GB drive and the VMs on the other, but I'm concerned about potential drive failures that would require immediate physical presence.

How much of a problem is downtime for you?

Thank you in advance!