mini proxmox build idea pfsense, pi hole, etc

[Antwan]

ok so i currently have a dell c6145 both nodes populated so 8 15 core AMD Opteron's with 256gig ram in each,
Im running truenas witch is running plex and transmission
Windows and ubuntu server for some testing
pfsens and pihole

Now this is all set up just for learning but its a a lot of hardware thats running not to utilised so my plan is this

I picked up an i3 4gen pc today with 8gb memory
i was wondering if it was woth loading proxmox on to that with pfsense pihole and maybe even plex,
Plex with a large 3tb drive that way i wont need the server running when im not tinkering
only issue is there can be upto 3 devices accessing plex at anytime in my house (maximum is 6 but we are never all in different rooms)

If plex is pushing it would it be worth while proxmox and pf sense pi hole and some other tools on the unit or would you suggest i just run pfsense only on it and keep the rest as is maybe use pfsense built in add blocker

any info would be apreciated

 

[retrojp]

Not sure how power hungry the bigger server is, but I would have put proxmox on the big server and then virtualised your truenas, pfsense and so on although, my dedicated server is only a xeon 1231v3 with 32gb ram, and with everything I have on their virtualised/containers there always seems to be plenty resources. I don't transcode on the fly with plex, but I think it could handle a stream or two if push came to shove (my old i7 3770k would manage). I have truenas and pfsense virtualised and seems to work well. Passed through a nic for pfsense, but you could virtualise the nic (works with openwrt, but never fully tested), and i passed through the raid card for truenas.

 

[Antwan]

its a guzzler its got 8 16 core cpus 512gb of ram and 12 3tb drives and im hardly using it i just thought it was good test bed with loads of over head and i got it for cheap. so what iv done so far is add and extra nic to the little i3 i got installed proxmox, of sense pihole and kemp. Running with just my basic network at home on i.e kids xbox and my laptop as a terst load is very little so today ill try moving the server through it and disable the isps router totally see how it dose with all my devices and services running,

I think having a little pc woth all the routers tasks and management on is a better bet then on one server it looks like
also if I mess up the other one playing around i can just start again and not kill the whole network. i nay even thow some extra hdd in there with and smb share for backups. i know it would be alot for that little system to run nas a back up system all the time but it might be worth having it hold some isos and vm back ups etc

 

[patch]

I picked up an i3 4gen pc today with 8gb memory
i was wondering if it was woth loading proxmox on to that with pfsense pihole and maybe even plex,

Sounds like a good idea to me.
That way

• if either your test bed server or DIY router server go down, you can readily fire up a VM on the other, ensuring minimum down time
• You can re-use your understanding gained from experimenting with your main sever
• a relatively small server should be enough for you Firewall / DNS, minimizing power costs.
• Not as sure about Plex & truenas, probably depends on their usage, so you may have to experiment

 

[Antwan]

yes that's my thinking and as for truenas i might just go for a windows vm i can turn on if needed just with a link to my nas on the other server so in a pinch i could drag over some films and tv for the kids if i thought it would be down a while or even just store the iso files if i do something really bad like i did yesterday and lost all my dns and routing some how so want to start again and see where i went wrong. as time goes on im probably going to get another server for testing on and as my knowledge grows implement it on to the main server