Suggestions to cover my use cases appreciated (setup recommendations)

[vincemue]

Hello everybody,

3 month ago i got a refurbished Fujitsu Q956 Mini PC to try out Proxmox and further possibilities for private use. It was more to learn and play around a little bit. Before I had no knowledge about VMs, Linux in generall and docker and so on. I got some very basic knowledge now I would say, I have read a lot, I tried to document my learnings and I can find my way through documentations. So I am willing to learn and use the console but I do not want/need to become an expert.

But now that I know, that I want to keep some kind of home server, I was looking into my possibilities to upgrade to a little bit more robust/advanced setup and was hoping to find some input from the experts.

Because I found a lot of answers to my questions in this forum already, I was hoping to find some more when posting directly.

You can find my use cases and thoughts below.


Current Hardware used

Fujitsu Q956 Mini PC​

CPU: Intel i5 6500t - 4 Cores / 4 Threads​

GPU: Intel HD 530 (in CPU)​

RAM: 2x8GB DDR4 - SODIMM​

Drives:​

• 120GB SSD in 2,5"
• empty 2,5" SSD/HDD in 5,25" slim ODD bay
• empty 1x m.2 SSD

​

4TB WD My Cloud NAS​

Current Setup

Fujitsu Q956 Mini PC​

• Proxmox
  • VM: Home Assistant
  • VM: Ubuntu & Cockpit --> public access
    • Docker & Portainer
  • LXC: Ubuntu & Cockpit --> local access only
    • Docker & Portainer

4TB WD My Cloud NAS​

• Periodic Backup of Proxmox VM/LXX
• Storage for docker container data
• data and photo storage

Use Cases

1. I want to be able to run Proxmox as hypervisor
2. I want to be able to run home assistant publicly accessible via Cloudflare tunnel
3. I want to be able to run a few containers like cloudflare tunnel, wiki.js, receipe management, heimdall and so on
4. I want to be able to test additional stuff like a game server and others interesting services
5. I want to have at least 8TB of NAS storage for data and photos, which also can be accessed via mobile phone
6. I want each use case above to have a backup and be recoverable in case of a hardware failure without too much effort.
   1. I want to have snapshots where feasible
   2. I want to save the most important personal data (max 30GB) additionally to a cloud service

Hardware at spare

• 256GB 2,5“ SSD
• 500GB 2,5“ SSD (currently used by another PC)
• 500GB 2,5“ HDD
• 1TB NVME m.2 SSD

My thoughts

• First I thought I could be able to use the 3 SSD/HDD bays in the Fujitsu Q956 to achive all of my use cases when adding truenas, nextcloud and a lot of storage capacity, but I realised, that the storage capacity for 2,5“ HDDs is very limited and expensive (max 5TB to my knowledge)
• Also I want my personal data and photo storage a little bit more secure and not to be deleted just because I dont know what I am doing.
• Then I thought about to keep home server and NAS separate
• For the home server somehow use the 3 SSD/HDD bays to run and backup Proxmox, VMs/Container, Container Data, like adding 128GB NVME for Proxmox and 2 x 500GB SSD for everything else including backup and snapshots
  • I read a lot about ZFS mirror for this case but not sure, if it would be the solution here
• For the NAS I thought about a 2 x 8TB consumer setup in RAID1
• Then I found, that most NAS systems today also allow to use VMs, apps and docker containers which made me question my need of a separate home server.
• At this point my brain began to think in circles and I decided that I need some external input

Here I am, open for any inputs and thoughts about my current setup and proposals for the to be setup.

Many thanks!

 

[Dunuin]

First I thought I could be able to use the 3 SSD/HDD bays in the Fujitsu Q956 to achive all of my use cases when adding truenas, nextcloud and a lot of storage capacity, but I realised, that the storage capacity for 2,5“ HDDs is very limited and expensive (max 5TB to my knowledge)

Actually only 2TB for enterprise HDDs and 1TB for consuemr HDDs, as you want CMR HDDs and avoid SMR HDDs for server workloads like ZFS, what TrueNAS is using.

Also I want my personal data and photo storage a little bit more secure and not to be deleted just because I dont know what I am doing.

Then you should read up on the 3-2-1 backup strategy. So 3 copies of everything on 2 different media and 1 offsite.

For the home server somehow use the 3 SSD/HDD bays to run and backup Proxmox, VMs/Container, Container Data, like adding 128GB NVME for Proxmox and 2 x 500GB SSD for everything else including backup and snapshots

• I read a lot about ZFS mirror for this case but not sure, if it would be the solution here

Mirroring your disks is highly recommended. Disks will die sooner or later and with mirroring you don't lose the data changed since your last backup and you won't end up totally screwed because ordering new disks, setting up every again, restoring backups might take multiple days where oyu won't be able to access your important documents, your smart home won't work, ...
But keep in mind that ZFS is demanding. Needs alot of RAM (ECC recommended), durable SSDs with powerloss protection (not those cheap consumer SSDs you probably got), needs a lot of CPU performance when doing heavy IO, no SMR HDDs, ...

For the NAS I thought about a 2 x 8TB consumer setup in RAID1

Just make sure not to get SMR HDDs. Most 8TB disks should be CMR, but there re also a few SMR disks.

Then I found, that most NAS systems today also allow to use VMs, apps and docker containers which made me question my need of a separate home server.

Then you will have to decide what you want or use both. Proxmox is just good hypervisor without any built-in NAS functionalities. Those NAS OSs like TrueNAS, OMV, Unraid are good as a NAS, not great as a hypervisor. But if you don't care that much about virtualization, something like a TrueNAS Scale might be enough for your needs.
But in case you want to virtualize something like a TrueNAS on Proxmox, you probably want something bigger than a mini PC.

 

[vincemue]

thanks alot for your input. very much appreciated.

But keep in mind that ZFS is demanding. Needs alot of RAM (ECC recommended), durable SSDs with powerloss protection (not those cheap consumer SSDs you probably got), needs a lot of CPU performance when doing heavy IO, no SMR HDDs, ...

that could mean, that mirroring the disks would be sufficient? in my case ZFS could be a little bit overkill and without ZFS I might be able to use my cheap consumer SSDs for the homeserver part?

But if you don't care that much about virtualization, something like a TrueNAS Scale might be enough for your needs.

to be honest I even thought about something prebuil, like from Synology, but I did not dig too deep yet.

 

[Dunuin]

that could mean, that mirroring the disks would be sufficient?

Raid never replaces a backup. You still need backups and those backups shouldn't be on the same disk or raid array your VMs/data are. In case you don't got a dedicated NAS I would get another disk just for backups. Or even multiple backups disks (see 3-2-1 rule) and a mirror still counts as a single copy, not as 2 in case of the 3-2-1 rule.

in my case ZFS could be a little bit overkill and without ZFS I might be able to use my cheap consumer SSDs for the homeserver part?

Raid is always wearing those SSDs faster. But ZFS especially fast. Problem is that PVE only officially supports ZFS and btrfs as software raid and both are copy-on-write filesystems with a lot of wear. While btrfs might be not that demanding, it is also not that mature and using it in ZFS is a experimental feature.
Mdraid works fine, but isn`t officially supported. For that you would need to install a Debian 11 with mdraid1 and then install the PVE packages on top of that Debian: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_11_Bullseye