New Proxmox Server HELP!

[MarcMorgan]

Hi All,

So I need some guidance.

I have a windows 10 machine that I use for my Plex server and CCTV and downloads all rolled into one. I want to use Proxmox on the below machine which is currently my Win10 OS.

SPECS

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming AMD X470 (Socket AM4) DDR4
ATX Motherboard

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Twelve Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor

Kingston HyperX Predator RGB 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4
PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit

Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 Nitro+ 8GB HBM2 PCI-Express
Graphics Card

Samsung 970 EVO Plus Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4
NVMe Solid State Drive

Storage

2x 10tb Seagate
1x 8tb seagate
1x 6tb segate
1x4tb seagate
A few other 1tb drive
1tb Samsung 970 m.2 vms
A few ssds 240gb - 500gb

The above is mainly for Plex

What I want to do if possible is to use this machine and install Proxmox, install the OS on a 16gb usb and have this as as raid which another 16gb

Create multiple VMs

Plex
CCTV - blue iris (dedicated storage inside this machine)
Pi hole
Torrents and sabnzb
Nextcloud
Windows VM gaming to have GPU passthrough or have GPU for Plex not decided yet
Other test VMs for Windows servers etc

My main concerns are how can I set up the drives to have it as JBODS

SSDs for cache (Plex and anything else I may need)

M.2 1 500gb for Windows gaming pc
The other 1tb m.2 for VMs

I'm brand new to all this. I have another machine using Promox to play with.

I don't care about redundancy for Plex so no RAID. CCTV maybe.

How can I go about settings this up. Help please!

 

[Scot]

Don’t install proxmox on a usb device. They will die rather quickly.

 

[MarcMorgan]

Don’t install proxmox on a usb device. They will die rather quickly.

Thats fine i have plenty of SSD 160GB - heard it will use all the size of them so happy with that.

 

[SoMoney]

Hi All,

So I need some guidance.

I have a windows 10 machine that I use for my Plex server and CCTV and downloads all rolled into one. I want to use Proxmox on the below machine which is currently my Win10 OS.

SPECS

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming AMD X470 (Socket AM4) DDR4
ATX Motherboard

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Twelve Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor

Kingston HyperX Predator RGB 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4
PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit

Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 Nitro+ 8GB HBM2 PCI-Express
Graphics Card

Samsung 970 EVO Plus Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4
NVMe Solid State Drive

Storage

2x 10tb Seagate
1x 8tb seagate
1x 6tb segate
1x4tb seagate
A few other 1tb drive
1tb Samsung 970 m.2 vms
A few ssds 240gb - 500gb

The above is mainly for Plex

What I want to do if possible is to use this machine and install Proxmox, install the OS on a 16gb usb and have this as as raid which another 16gb

Create multiple VMs

Plex
CCTV - blue iris (dedicated storage inside this machine)
Pi hole
Torrents and sabnzb
Nextcloud
Windows VM gaming to have GPU passthrough or have GPU for Plex not decided yet
Other test VMs for Windows servers etc

My main concerns are how can I set up the drives to have it as JBODS

SSDs for cache (Plex and anything else I may need)

M.2 1 500gb for Windows gaming pc
The other 1tb m.2 for VMs

I'm brand new to all this. I have another machine using Promox to play with.

I don't care about redundancy for Plex so no RAID. CCTV maybe.

How can I go about settings this up. Help please!

I did something similar where I wanted a striped zfs volume but Proxmox does not allow you to do it from the storage menu since its a terribly risky setup.

EXAMPLE putting two nvme disks together with the name "JBOD"

root@pve:~# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1 259:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
nvme1n1 259:1 0 931.5G 0 disk

root@pve:~# zpool create JBOD /dev/nvme0n1 /dev/nvme1n1

- Now that jbod is made, Add that JBOD to pve and give it access to all groups
- Datacenter, Storage, Add, ZFS, JBOD

 

[Dunuin]

I'm not sure if it is a good idea to virtualize a GamingPC. Vitualization always has has some overhead and the result won't be as responsive as a bare metal install.

You really should consider buying a dedicated server for all the NAS, plex, torrent and CCTV stuff. That way all that won't slow you down if its on an dedicated machine and you can power down the PC and don't need to let it run 24/7.

 

[MarcMorgan]

I'm not sure if it is a good idea to virtualize a GamingPC. Vitualization always has has some overhead and the result won't be as responsive as a bare metal install.

You really should consider buying a dedicated server for all the NAS, plex, torrent and CCTV stuff. That way all that won't slow you down if its on an dedicated machine and you can power down the PC and don't need to let it run 24/7.

Hi

Thanks, Yeah i should - i just wanted to play with Proxmox, i maybe end up moving my Graphics card out Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 Nitro+ 8GB HBM2 - I just seen so many people use it as a passthrough and game on it, i dont mine the odd drop outs on FPS as long as i can play action games without it lagging etc.

 

[Dunuin]

Hi

Thanks, Yeah i should - i just wanted to play with Proxmox, i maybe end up moving my Graphics card out Sapphire Radeon RX VEGA 64 Nitro+ 8GB HBM2 - I just seen so many people use it as a passthrough and game on it, i dont mine the odd drop outs on FPS as long as i can play action games without it lagging etc.

Yeah, thats the point. I passed through a GPU to to use a Win10 VM as HTPC (TV directly connected to that GPU so I don't get laggy video output) and for video playback, surfing or work that should be fine. But I wouldn't want to game on it, because it is not super responsive and you can encounter random "lags".

1.) Google the forums for Win10 performance. Often you will get heavy impacts on for example RAM and disk performance.
2.) If you passthrough a GPU you can encounter problems you woundn't have if you use it bare metal. For example, here sometimes the video gets out of sync with the audio. Right now it is rarely happening. because I increased the msi priority, but now it feels like the GPU is slowing down all the other PCIe devices.
3.) your Gaming-Win10-VM will share all the cores with the other VMs. So if another VMs starts a heavy task (scrubing, plex video encoding on CPU, OS/package update) that may cause random slowdowns and while the tasks are running your FPS can drop by 50 or 75%. Its not fun to play if anytime something may kick in thats slows everything down.
4.) if you want to use snapshots/backups your VMs will be frozen. Do a hourly snapshot and your Win10-VM will freeze once every hour for a few seconds.
5.) your gaming hardware is fine for gaming but not ideal for server stuff like virtualization or 24/7 useage where you want efficiency, stability, security and the ability to use alot of RAM slots and PCIe lanes. A gaming PC is like a sports car and a server like a truck. You dont want to pull a heavy trailer with a sports car. For example, in a server I want ECC and not (RGB ) RAM. ECC RAM or even registered ECC RAM isn't great for performance and will be way slower because of the higher latency, but your system will be more stable and your data will be more secure.

In your position I would buy a good second hand tower-server and move all the HDDs/SSDs to that server and use it for all the plex, NAS, torrenting and cctv stuff. And keep that GamingPC as a bare metal installed Win10 gaming/work PC.

 

[Dunuin]

I for example bought a complete and running tower server from ebay for 300€ (363$):

Case: Quiet medium sized tower server from Supermicro (4x 2,5" slots, 4x 3,5" slots, 3x 5,25" slots ,2x 120mm fans)
PSU: 900W 80+ gold from Supermicro
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2620v4 (8 Core 16 Threads, 2.1 to 3.0 GHz, 85W TDP)
RAM: 2x 16GB registered ECC DDR4 2400 MHz
Mainboard: Supermicro X10SRM-F (uATX, 10x SATA, PCIe Slots (electrical) 16x + 8x + 8x, 1x M.2, 2x good Gbit NIC (Intel i350), IPMI, onboard GPU, bifurification)
Heatsink: 92mm fan tower cooler
HDD: 2TB Enterprise HDD
SSD: 200GB Enterprise SSD (Intel S3710 with 3550 TBW left)
GPU: Geforce GT710
PCIe: additional Intel Gbit NIC

I bought it from a retail seller so I got warranty for half a year too and could send it back if it dowsn't fit my needs.

I later upgraded it with:
- additional 2x 16GB RAM (already at the limit. I would better have bought 4x 32GB and sold that 2x 16GB sticks): 120€
- 10Gbit NIC for faster connection to NAS: 33€
- additional 4x 200 GB SSDs (Intel S3710) as VM storage: 130€
- additional 2x 100 GB SSDs (Intel S3700) as system drives: 20€
- additional 2x 3TB HDDs as state storage: already got them
- additional 4 port Gbit NIC (Intel i350-T4): 35€
- moved everything into a quiet 4U 19" ATX case: 80€

That totally would be enough for all your server stuff, don't cost much, everything is reliable and stable enterprise hardware and it only needs around 120W so you save money every month because your electricity bill is way lower (and it pays itself off after 1 or 2 years).


And another point why enterprise grade stuff is great. Look at the TBW of these Intel S3710 200GB SSDs and compare them to your consumer SSDs. They should last way longer because they got 18000 TBW per TB of storage compared to the 600 TBW of a Samsung 970 Evo and the write amplification will be way lower, because it got a build in powerloss protection so it can cache sync writes because the internal RAM cache can't loose data on an power outage.

 

[mhaluska]

Don’t install proxmox on a usb device. They will die rather quickly.

Feel free to use USB device, if it's high endurance (enterprise) USB flash disk or SSD based flash device. Don't use standard consumer flash disk.