Would Proxmox Fit My Use-case?

[Zer0Cool]

First off, Hello! I just discovered Proxmox and find it to be very compelling. Please be patient with me as I know only what I could discover in the last ~hour of knowing about it.

I have a home server running Windows Server 2016 Essentials. It acts as the domain controller, file/media server, client backups, and acquiring media. I have it running on an i5-4430 (4c/4t), 8GB ram, 120GB sata SSD for Win OS and 4x4TB WD Reds for storage.

It has served its intended purpose for years but I have considered upgrading so that I can virtualize different roles to compartmentalize things and to allow room to grow.

I would have a Win Server 2016 with Essentials role as I do now to act as DC, file server and client backups. I would then setup another VM (either Win Server 2016 or Linux, maybe Debain/CentOS/etc) to act as a media server that both acquires the media and serves it up via Plex. I am considering adding to that a 3rd Win Server VM to act as a RemoteApp server. Beyond that I may have a few more VM's that do not need to run 24/7 for now (dev environment, testing, etc).

With the above in mind I am considering upgrading the hardware (8c/16t, 32GB ram+, etc) and was leaning towards ESXi (free) as the base for it all. If Proxmox can meet my pretty low needs then I will likely use it instead.

So I guess the Proxmox specific questions i have:

• I am confused if the free use of Proxmox can be updated or if updates to the OS/packages is only possible via the subscription?
• The subscriptions are in another currency other than US $, is it possible to pay without converting currencies?
• Can Proxmox be installed on a DOM, SD card or internally attached USB drive instead of a SSD/HDD (without a whole lot of fuss...out of the box or with minimal extra config) similar to ESXi?
• What are the requirements for NIC teaming? ESXi is very particular about what NIC's are supported in general, let alone teaming. Could I for example use USB 3 GB NICs with Proxmox or less expensive chipsets like realtek?

More generic questions:

• With Proxmox, is my current server able to handle my needs without upgrading hardware? I guess specifically would the CPU (4c/4t) be ok? I know 8GB RAM is a bit low but upgrading it would be cheaper than a whole new build.

Sorry for the long post. Thank you for the consideration. I am excited to see what the possibilities are with Proxmox!

 

[t.lamprecht]

Hi!

I am confused if the free use of Proxmox can be updated or if updates to the OS/packages is only possible via the subscription?

It can be updated just fine The Test and no-subscription repository are fully open and can be accessed by anyone, see https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_Repositories for more details about each repository and how to set it up.

The subscriptions are in another currency other than US $, is it possible to pay without converting currencies?

Yes, contact our master reseller https://shop.maurer-it.com/ or one of our US based resellers for that: https://www.proxmox.com/de/partner/reseller

Can Proxmox be installed on a DOM, SD card or internally attached USB drive instead of a SSD/HDD (without a whole lot of fuss...out of the box or with minimal extra config) similar to ESXi?

You can do this, but not that easily with our own installer. But, you can always install Proxmox VE on top of Debian: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Stretch

What are the requirements for NIC teaming? ESXi is very particular about what NIC's are supported in general, let alone teaming. Could I for example use USB 3 GB NICs with Proxmox or less expensive chipsets like realtek?

Yes, as long as it supported by our Linux Kernel, which nowadays isn't a real problem anymore. I used USB3 GB NICs for testing just fine

With Proxmox, is my current server able to handle my needs without upgrading hardware? I guess specifically would the CPU (4c/4t) be ok? I know 8GB RAM is a bit low but upgrading it would be cheaper than a whole new build.

Compute wise, yes, I think he could handle it. Memory is in fact a bit low, but that depends on how muchg your VMs plan to use. For dev/testing you could also look into our Linux Containers, which are more lightweight and do not allocate all Memory at start. (There's ballooning with VMs, but sometimes the guest OS has problem with it).
Hope I could help, have fun with Proxmox VE.

 

[Zer0Cool]

Very helpful, thank you for your input.

Seems hardware support is much better in Proxmox vs ESXi, which is good.

I was thinking about the hardware requirements. I am guessing "over provisioning" CPU/RAM isnt an issue in Proxmox? If its not, I think I could do:

• Win Server 2016 Essentials - 2 cores, ~2-3GB RAM
• Win Server 2016 Media/Plex - 4 cores, ~2-4GB RAM
• RemoteApp - For now I could put this on the back burner with my current hardware, its more an interest than a need.
• Everything else - use containers or VM and keep it off when not used.

If Proxmox doesnt play nice with installation on DOM, sd or usb sticks I guess I could install it to the 120GB SSD basically like I have done with Win 2016 now. I was hoping to leave as many drives free for storage/VM's as I could but an SSD for the OS wont put a big dent in my total available storage.

Also I was curious, is there a standard/typical storage setup? As of now I have 1x 120GB SSD, which I would use as the OS drive for Proxmox. I then have 4x 4TB HDD's. Looks like I currently have ~7TB of media. I think my file server could get away with only 1-2TB allocated to it (probably less), the rest allocated to my media server except ~1TB or less set aside for other less important VM's. I could pick up 1 more HDD +4TB if I need to. I presume I could have a mix of drives (unlike a raid setup where they should all be basically the same)? I am mostly worried about capacity. Fault tolerance and speed arent a big concern for me. The only place I may want some redundancy is on the file server.

So I guess I am asking what the best plan for storage is given the above.

 

[LnxBil]

A serious remark/question:

If you're so Microsoft-affine, why don't you just run everything with Hyper-V? If your main purpose is to virtualize mostly Windows OS, just do it with Windows virtualization. Feature-wise, there very similar to VMware, XEN, Proxmox VE and such.

Concerning storage, best "time-to-recovery" (or planning for the worst) is achieved by installing Proxmox VE on the RAID of 4x4 TB.

 

[Zer0Cool]

why don't you just run everything with Hyper-V?

That may be something I can consider but I am trying to move away from MS.

Server Essentials makes doing a file server/domain controller super simple, so I am likely to stick with it for that purpose. However for a media server, I am much more likely to move to a Linux base for that as all the software I use in that regard is also Linux compatible. After reading over my posts I can see how I seemed to be leaning towards Win Server for this, but really I shouldnt use it for the media server part.

Also the other VM's I intend to run are almost certainly not going to be Windows. Likely a Linux dev/testing server and a couple of clients to make a virtual lab.

Regarding RAID, I would really like to find something in which I can more selectively duplicate data. For example I dont want to duplicate or have any redundancy in ~7TB of media, but for my file server which will have files I cannot replace (documents, pictures, home videos, etc) I would like to have the ability to ensure it can survive at least 1 physical drive failure. I currently use a product on my Windows Server called Stablebit Drivepool which allows duplication on a per folder basis among other things. Really like it but havent found anything remotely close on the Linux side of things. I dont need something as robust, but would really like to limit duplication to just the limited files on the File server side of things and not the media server or other VM's. Wondering if Proxmox offers anything that may allow me to accomplish something like that.

Thanks

 

[LnxBil]

Really like it but havent found anything remotely close on the Linux side of things.

rsync can be used for that.

Wondering if Proxmox offers anything that may allow me to accomplish something like that.

No, yet I can recommend using RAID-z1 on ZFS (software raid) with 4x4 TB drives, yields 12 TB usable space. With the help of compression, this can be used store more data than 12 TB. With this, you do not have to care about what to duplicate and what not. You can tolerate on disk failure and still have everything. This is a very small price to pay for that. You have all features available in ZFS including snapshots and thin provisioning. In my NAS, I have also stored videos and over 2 TB of images, which are not very compressible, yet I still have a compression ratio of 1.2 over all files including all my VMs. ZFS also have Copy-on-Write-Clones, so that you can clone a VM with near to zero space usage, e.g. you have a Windows 10 Test-Image, clone it twice (normalla approx. 40 GB of space), yet you use only a few MB for that.

 

[alexskysilk]

Can Proxmox be installed on a DOM, SD card or internally attached USB drive instead of a SSD/HDD (without a whole lot of fuss...out of the box or with minimal extra config) similar to ESXi?

You can, but shouldnt. Thumbdrives have notoriously poor write endurance, and proxmox/debian arent set to defer or push its log writes elsewhere by default. If you're comfortable tweaking linux it would be ok, but I wouldnt suggest it to a beginner.

As of now I have 1x 120GB SSD, which I would use as the OS drive for Proxmox.

Get one more and configure a mirror boot volume. Its cheap insurance; when the drive fails your server will keep running.

No, yet I can recommend using RAID-z1 on ZFS (software raid) with 4x4 TB drives, yields 12 TB usable space.

You can do this with Windows Server as well. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/install/configure-server-storage

I presume I could have a mix of drives (unlike a raid setup where they should all be basically the same)?

well, you could in any case- but unless you're using unraid or btrfs they would be a separate volume (without fault tolerance.) neither of those options are practically available to Proxmox.

While you can accomplish all you wanted and more with proxmox, I have to echo @LnxBil's thinking- since your base load is so Windows centric, I'd probably lean towards running all services that dont benefit from compartmentalizing on your Windows Server, and have it serve virtualized/dockerized instances in HyperV.

 

[LnxBil]

You can do this with Windows Server as well. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/install/configure-server-storage

I know. Therefore I already asked if he is MS-affine or not. I'm really looking forward towards ReFS on the Desktop/Laptop if Windows is needed.