Advise : Home server configuration

[cult]

Hy,

I have tried to set up a home server for shared medias and learning purpose (plex, openvpn, linux, virtualization, networking, dev, etc.) and i need advices and orientations on my setup and configuration.

Here's my hardware specs (Ryzen 5600x, Asus B550-F Motherboard, 32G DDR4 3200mhz, 1 nvme 250g and 1 HDD 8TB)

So far, here's my setup :

1. One VM with Ubuntu Server (2vCPU, 4G RAM) : 3 containers with portainer (1 Qbittorrent with OpenVPN, 1 Reverse Proxy Nginx, 1 Portainer). I mount the samba disk shared with OMV on the server and I share the disk with one container. I will eventually install Plex on another container when everything is going to be stable
2. One VM with Openmediavault (4vCPU, 16G RAM) : This VM i have passthrought my 8TB HHD Ext4 and I shared it with Samba/CFIS

I did install the qemu agent on all the VM and activated it on Proxmox option, I don't use memory balloning and i set a boot order so the samba shared boot in first. I will eventually install another VM with a Linux distro with GPU passthrought. I dont need RAID for now.

Here's my issues and my feelings :

1. When i download files with qbittorent container that is hook on the samba share disk, Proxmox indicate that the two VM use 90% of the memory, but when i look inside the VM with htop i only see 1 or 2g of ram being use. When the task is finished, the memory usage stay the same on Proxmox.
2. I dont see the samba share on my nvidia shield
3. I don't feel that my configuration is the best and the most efficient way to do this
4. I have a 2.5g NIC and dont know if it's properly configurate

I will take any advices, tips or any links that will help me on my journey.

Thanks for your time and your advices and very sorry for my poor english skill

 

[cult]

i forgot to mention, that I conect to the Samba/CIFS on my main Desktop (Windows 10).

 

[Dunuin]

Here's my issues and my feelings :

1. When i download files with qbittorent container that is hook on the samba share disk, Proxmox indicate that the two VM use 90% of the memory, but when i look inside the VM with htop i only see 1 or 2g of ram being use. When the task is finished, the memory usage stay the same on Proxmox

Your Proxmox is most likely right. htop is displaying "available" RAM like "free" RAM but in reality that RAM is used. Run free -h inside your VM and look what it tells you how much RAM is "free". Most likely that VMs uses 12GB or something like that for caching (shown by free -h as "cache/buff"). Look at LinuxAteMyRam.com for more info.

1. I dont see the samba share on my nvidia shield

Do you see the share on other hosts?

1. I have a 2.5g NIC and dont know if it's properly configurate

Run some benchmarks using iperf3 and see if you get 2.5Gbit.

 

[cult]

First, Thanks a lot for your help, I realy appreciate the pointers. I read the linux ate my ram and i try the free -m or free -h command. Like the article said, my memory is all there and available :

here the free -h result :


here what proxmox show :


That been said, do this memory optimisation generate impact on the power consumption ?

For the second point, I finally manage to get samba work on Kodi, i just flush all my configurations and my shared folders in openmediavault and start all over again. Now it's working like a charm. I can access the share disk on my docker containers, on my windows desktop and on my android device.

I din't have time to benchmarks my network speed with iperf3 but i will this week. I need to get more information on the tool and on the linux drivers system.

Sorry for my poor english writing skill.

Thanks!

 

[Dunuin]

First, Thanks a lot for your help, I realy appreciate the pointers. I read the linux ate my ram and i try the free -m or free -h command. Like the article said, my memory is all there and available :

here the free -h result :
View attachment 30789

here what proxmox show :
View attachment 30790

So proxmox should show 1.5 GB used not 3.36 GB. Then I would guess you didn't installed the qemu guest agent (run apt update && apt install qemu-guest-agent inside your guest) and didn't activated the guest agent in the VMs options. Only if you do that proxmox can use it to ask the guest OS how much memory it uses. If the guest agent isn't available it will just look how much RAM the KVM process uses that is virtualizing your VM and I guess this process is using 3.36 GB RAM. You can check that with htop on your host if you have installed it.

That been said, do this memory optimisation generate impact on the power consumption ?

Which memory optimization?

I din't have time to benchmarks my network speed with iperf3 but i will this week. I need to get more information on the tool and on the linux drivers system.

A simple iperf3 test is quite easy. You run it on one machine as a server iperf3 -s and on another machine as a client iperf3 -c IP.of.the.server. Should be enough if you just want to see if 2.5 Gbit can be reached.

 

[cult]

So there a probleme because I have install the proxmox agent on all my VMs and I turn the option "On" in Proxmox for each VM.

 

[cult]

on one machine the service was not running because it was not persistent. I run the command systemctl enable... and i got a error message. I reboot the machine and check the status and the service is up and running... i will monitor this