Best way to setup a virtualized router

[thimplicity]

Hi,
I have a mini PC on the way from China and plan to install 3 things on there:

- pfsense as our router
- pi-hole
- home bridge

I plan To install 8GB ram and a 256gb NVMe drive in it. My question is: What is the best way to initialize proxmox with the correct sizes for local and local-lvm? Is there an option to influence both during the installation or do I need to fiddle around with adjusting partition sizes after the fact? Can I create snapshots on one of those two or do I need a third partition?

Thanks

 

[LnxBil]

Is there an option to influence both during the installation or do I need to fiddle around with adjusting partition sizes after the fact?

LVM was invented to not fiddle around with partition sizes. That is the whole point of it. So, if you want to go the LVM route, just do a normal install.

Can I create snapshots on one of those two or do I need a third partition?

Again, no partions. Just install with lvm-thin as the underlying storage and you're golden.

 

[thimplicity]

LVM was invented to not fiddle around with partition sizes. That is the whole point of it. So, if you want to go the LVM route, just do a normal install.


Again, no partions. Just install with lvm-thin as the underlying storage and you're golden.

Thanks, will check that out! Would that enable me to use the whole disk?

 

[LnxBil]

Thanks, will check that out! Would that enable me to use the whole disk?

Partitions where use to
a) have a boot (BIOS-boot or EFI) partition
b) if a) then divide the rest of the space to a volume manager like LVM or ZFS
otherwise, partitions are obsolete and useless.

So to your anwser: Yes use the whole disk as a physical volume for your volume group.

 

[Dunuin]

And you can tell PVE how much of the storage you want for the root filesystem and how much to store guests. See chapter "advanced LVM installation options" in the installation guide: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Installation

 

[marcosscriven]

Side note - what mini pc? What NICs does it have?

Just to warn if they are not Intel ones, you’re going to have problems with pfsense throughput otherwise.

 

[thimplicity]

Side note - what mini pc? What NICs does it have?

Just to warn if they are not Intel ones, you’re going to have problems with pfsense throughput otherwise.

I ordered this one with the N5105:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003991560461.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000023.2.44084824JJdCyg

4xIntel i225-V B3 2.5G RJ45 LANs

 

[patch]

mini PC on the way from China and plan to install 3 things on there

As performance wise it is mostly a router I would

• Reserve 1 NIC for Proxmox and the other virtual machines
• Pass through the other NICs to pfsense so it can optimise network throughput and use hardware offloading where it helps