Hi,
I have been running an ESXI home server since a few years, and now that I got new hardware I would like to move to Proxmox. Obviously I had only VMs on the previous install and I am not fully familiar with ZFS nor LXC yet (although I m reading a lot about those at the moment).
So I am now thinking about how to structure the new environment. Needless to say that I have dozens of questions
First here is my hardware :
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1275 V6 (with integrated GPU HD P630)
RAM: 64GB ECC DDR4 PC-19200 - 2400Mhz
MB: MSI C236M Workstation
SSD: Samsung PM983 NVMe 960GB (1366 TBW) - Power Loss Protection
HDD: WD White SATA 10TB
PCIe: Digital Devices Cine CT V6.1 DVB tuner
USB: 6TB External HDD
Spare:
PCIe: Nvidia GT710 GPU (maybe used for TVHeadend HW transcoding)
SSD: Samsung 860 EVO SATA 1TB (200 TBW?) - Consumer grade (maybe used for VM backups or some caching ?)
I am looking for running those services :
- Plex Media Server
- Unifi Controller
- TVHeadend / Oscam
- Home Assistant OS
- Media storage with network share and automatic backup (USB HDD, OneDrive)
Installation :
My first concern is how to structure Proxmox OS and VM/LXC storage. I have read many opinions about redundancy, SSD endurance, etc. and I think that for such a basic home usage I will go for one of those simple options :
1) Single SSD Samsung PM983 for OS and VM/LXC
Advantage is that the SSD is server grade with high TBW and has power loss protection. I am new to ZFS but it looks like it's possible to install everything on a single disk using this option during OS install.
2) Dual SSD : buy a cheap 120GB for Proxmox OS and use the Samsung PM983 only for VM/LXC
I read that this option is better for VMs data redundancy in case of Proxmos OS failure, although I am not 100% sure why. Disadvantage is that the PVE OS would run on consumer grade SSD with less TBW and no power loss protection.
Services (VM, LXC, Guest OS,...) :
Then comes the way to structure the services that I want to run, and how to handle the media storage (movies, photos, music, ...).
In ESXI I was running one Debian VM for Unifi Controller, one Debian VM for TVHeadend / Oscam, one Home Assistant OS VM, and a Windows Server 2016 VM for Plex on which I simply added the 10TB HDD for media storage, shared it with SMB, and backup it with a mix of OneDrive synchronization and regular USB HDD sync.
1) Storage: I feel like I could optimize the way I use the media storage part, but I am not sure how to keep the OneDrive synchronization capability without much hassle. I have seen that Proxmox has a builtin network sharing service of a ZFS storage, so I could use that for the 10TB HDD but how to make automatic backups of the data via OneDrive and external HDD ? Would it work with a Windows VM with full access to the disk data ? How would Windows access the disk, via the SMB share ? Or is it possible to somehow make it appear as a local drive within the VM ?
2) Plex Media Server : I would like to use the integrated GPU for HW transcoding, which includes HDR and 4K videos. I have read on plex support (https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/) that the Intel GPU works better on Linux so my idea was to use a LXC for PMS with a GPU passthrough. Does that sound like a good option or would you recommend something else (Debian VM, Windows VM) ?
3) Unifi Controller : I think that it s easy to run it in a LXC as well, not much to say about it I guess.
4) TVHeadend / Oscam : again I thought about the LXC. Since I am not familiar with LXC yet, do I need to passthrough the PCIe Tuner or does the container see it from the Proxmox host system ? I would also like to use some HW encoding capabilities via the Nvidia GT 710 if that's possible. I guess that I would need to use passthrough again ?
5) Home Assistant OS : I will keep HA as a supervised OS in a VM as I find it easier to maintain. An alternative would be to go for the container option and then create more containers for Maria DB, Node Red, etc. but as I don't use those for any other purpose than HA I don't see the point of making it more complex, but I am happy to hear your opinion if you disagree.
6) Spare SSD : I still have a consumer grade 1TB SATA SSD that I could use, but what for ? I initially thought about VM backups, but would it be useful for any caching purpose to save some endurance on the main SSD ?
Thank you so much if you kept on reading till here and I am sorry if my questions are foolish or inaccurate, I still have a lot to learn about Proxmox.
All comments are welcome
I have been running an ESXI home server since a few years, and now that I got new hardware I would like to move to Proxmox. Obviously I had only VMs on the previous install and I am not fully familiar with ZFS nor LXC yet (although I m reading a lot about those at the moment).
So I am now thinking about how to structure the new environment. Needless to say that I have dozens of questions
First here is my hardware :
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1275 V6 (with integrated GPU HD P630)
RAM: 64GB ECC DDR4 PC-19200 - 2400Mhz
MB: MSI C236M Workstation
SSD: Samsung PM983 NVMe 960GB (1366 TBW) - Power Loss Protection
HDD: WD White SATA 10TB
PCIe: Digital Devices Cine CT V6.1 DVB tuner
USB: 6TB External HDD
Spare:
PCIe: Nvidia GT710 GPU (maybe used for TVHeadend HW transcoding)
SSD: Samsung 860 EVO SATA 1TB (200 TBW?) - Consumer grade (maybe used for VM backups or some caching ?)
I am looking for running those services :
- Plex Media Server
- Unifi Controller
- TVHeadend / Oscam
- Home Assistant OS
- Media storage with network share and automatic backup (USB HDD, OneDrive)
Installation :
My first concern is how to structure Proxmox OS and VM/LXC storage. I have read many opinions about redundancy, SSD endurance, etc. and I think that for such a basic home usage I will go for one of those simple options :
1) Single SSD Samsung PM983 for OS and VM/LXC
Advantage is that the SSD is server grade with high TBW and has power loss protection. I am new to ZFS but it looks like it's possible to install everything on a single disk using this option during OS install.
2) Dual SSD : buy a cheap 120GB for Proxmox OS and use the Samsung PM983 only for VM/LXC
I read that this option is better for VMs data redundancy in case of Proxmos OS failure, although I am not 100% sure why. Disadvantage is that the PVE OS would run on consumer grade SSD with less TBW and no power loss protection.
Services (VM, LXC, Guest OS,...) :
Then comes the way to structure the services that I want to run, and how to handle the media storage (movies, photos, music, ...).
In ESXI I was running one Debian VM for Unifi Controller, one Debian VM for TVHeadend / Oscam, one Home Assistant OS VM, and a Windows Server 2016 VM for Plex on which I simply added the 10TB HDD for media storage, shared it with SMB, and backup it with a mix of OneDrive synchronization and regular USB HDD sync.
1) Storage: I feel like I could optimize the way I use the media storage part, but I am not sure how to keep the OneDrive synchronization capability without much hassle. I have seen that Proxmox has a builtin network sharing service of a ZFS storage, so I could use that for the 10TB HDD but how to make automatic backups of the data via OneDrive and external HDD ? Would it work with a Windows VM with full access to the disk data ? How would Windows access the disk, via the SMB share ? Or is it possible to somehow make it appear as a local drive within the VM ?
2) Plex Media Server : I would like to use the integrated GPU for HW transcoding, which includes HDR and 4K videos. I have read on plex support (https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/) that the Intel GPU works better on Linux so my idea was to use a LXC for PMS with a GPU passthrough. Does that sound like a good option or would you recommend something else (Debian VM, Windows VM) ?
3) Unifi Controller : I think that it s easy to run it in a LXC as well, not much to say about it I guess.
4) TVHeadend / Oscam : again I thought about the LXC. Since I am not familiar with LXC yet, do I need to passthrough the PCIe Tuner or does the container see it from the Proxmox host system ? I would also like to use some HW encoding capabilities via the Nvidia GT 710 if that's possible. I guess that I would need to use passthrough again ?
5) Home Assistant OS : I will keep HA as a supervised OS in a VM as I find it easier to maintain. An alternative would be to go for the container option and then create more containers for Maria DB, Node Red, etc. but as I don't use those for any other purpose than HA I don't see the point of making it more complex, but I am happy to hear your opinion if you disagree.
6) Spare SSD : I still have a consumer grade 1TB SATA SSD that I could use, but what for ? I initially thought about VM backups, but would it be useful for any caching purpose to save some endurance on the main SSD ?
Thank you so much if you kept on reading till here and I am sorry if my questions are foolish or inaccurate, I still have a lot to learn about Proxmox.
All comments are welcome
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