Newbie install

[JensK]

Promox newbie here trying to get a grip of how to build my next homeserver on this platform. I have read a lot of postings in here and are have come around to the following.

I have a existing homeserver setup based on OMV and a number of KVM VMs like Nextcloud, Pihole, Mythtv-backend and iRedmail. I use Snapraid to manage raid since most data is large files that are static.

My motherboard is a Asrock J5005 that I will expand to 32G ram. There is a onboard sata3 controller for 4 disks and i have an PCIexpress expansion board with a sata controller for 2 disks
On the PCIexpress controller i presently have a single 120Mb ssd boot disk
On the onboard controller i have 4 x 6Tb disks

My goal is to make a energy efficient homeserver install based on a virtualisation platform like Promox and have all the different VMs to run as docker installs. So i plan on install Promox, create one or two LXC's with core-debian 11. On these LXCs I would install Portainer and the following docker containers:
- Nginx Proxy Manager
- Netxcloud
- iRedmail
- Mythtv-backend
- Pihole
- Roon server
- OMV nas

My plan is to build the following disk setup:
On the dual sata3 port pci Express controller :
mirrored HD 2 x 500Gb - with boot, Proxmox and container images

On the onboard 4 port sata3 controller
4 x 6Tb in snapraid setup as PCI passthrough to OMV nas container.

OMV nas is used to make NFS and CIFS shares to use for data by the different container apps like iRedmail, Nextcloud, Roon server, Mythtv-backend etc. Same NFS and CIFS shares are shared to my local network

As I understand it ZFS is taxing heavy on the CPU so to keep poweruse low and CPU ressources reserved for the containers, I have chosen to sync via snapraid on the data disks.
The mirrored systemdisks can be backed up to the data disks through NFS

Is this the best design for use under Proxmox or have i got things all wrong? Any input is very welcome - thank you.

 

[Neobin]

There is a onboard sata3 controller for 4 disks

It is not only one, but two controllers:

• 2x SATA 6Gb/s (J5005)
• 2x SATA 6Gb/s (ASM1061)

On the onboard 4 port sata3 controller
4 x 6Tb in snapraid setup as PCI passthrough to OMV nas container.

Did you already verify for sure (practically!), that you are be able to PCIe-passthrough both of the SATA-controllers? Or at least know of a practical report from someone, that it works?
Sidenote: For PCIe-passthrough, OMV has to be a VM and not a LXC.

 

[JensK]

Thank you for your reply. I hadn't noticed that the onboard sata controller actually was two controllers. So it is not possible to make passthrough to a container.

If I want to make directories available to both containers and the local network like personal drives that should be available to Nextcloud (NFS?) as well as CIFS drives on the local network. The same - make directories available to Mythtv-backend as well as CIFS and NFS on the local network.
How do I do that under Proxmox?

Do I run OMV in a VM with passthrough PCI controllers and drives. OMV wil deliver the content of the drives as NFS and CIFS. All the other processes run as docker containers in one or two LXCs and access the disk content through NFS.
Is this the right way?

 

[Dunuin]

Also keep in mind that privileged LXCs are less secure, but only these can directly mount NFS/SMB shares. With the more secure unprivileged LXCs that isn't possible. There you have to bind-mount all data from the host into the unprivileged LXC.

 

[JensK]

Also keep in mind that privileged LXCs are less secure, but only these can directly mount NFS/SMB shares. With the more secure unprivileged LXCs that isn't possible. There you have to bind-mount all data from the host into the unprivileged LIs it possible to run an unproiviledged

I thought that it was possible to mount NFS volumes inside docker containers. If so, I could create an unpriviledged LXC, run Docker inside this with portainer and mount NFS drives to the individual docker containers.
So my setup could be:

• Proxmox install with mirrored 2x1T disks
• Run a VM with OMV as a NAS that gets the two onboard PCI controllers with 4x6Tb disks passed through, OMV services NFS and CIFS shares to network and docker images
• Run one or two LXC containers in which i run Portainer and a couple of docker images. These docker images gets data from their mounted NFS shares

Would that be a usable setup and not the least, would it be efficient use of the available ressources?