tl;dr: Proxmox or bare metal? Containers yes/no? What is your use case?

I used a Dell R710 when I first started self-hosting, it ran ESXi with one VM for each service I wanted. Restarting the server required me to first shutdown each VM in order and then the whole host. When setting up a new service to host I had to create a new VM (allocate RAM, disk etc), install the OS (I ran Debian) and then follow instructions for how to setup the service. This mostly was not a problem but one software I never managed to get working was Apache Guacamole.

Nowadays I have a Dell Optiplex I salvaged for parts, got a new case and all my HDDs from my R710. Because it has much less RAM and an old Intel i5 (6th or 7th generation), I decided to get into Docker. With Docker containers you write your compose file and it will just work. No more need to dig through documentation for which version of a dependency to use, how to handle if two services on the same host need different versions (this was part of the reason for one VM/service). With Docker, I can try out a software in seconds and have it configured to my liking in minutes.

Today I have NixOS (bare metal) and it comes with Podman which uses systemd. Hence restarting my OS (albeit not that often, almost never unless I mess up my config) is a no-brainer because Podman via systemd will manage everything. Adding, stopping or removing containers in general is easy. I have a script running as a service which will stop a container, create a BTRFS subvolume snapshot, start the service again and start borg backup to backup from the snapshot.

For me using Proxmox would just an extra layer of complexity I don’t need. I only have one server and I am the only user.

Questions:

  • Do you use Proxmox instead of a bare metal installation?
  • Do you use containers or do you install manually?
  • What is you use case that requires your setup the way it is?
  • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    37·
    2 days ago

    I used to be bare metal Debian, but I moved to ProxMox for a few reasons.

    1. Backup and restore is a breeze, and the UI makes things human friendly.
    2. It makes it easier to separate my wiki notes in an LXC so that I can still see them if I’m doing maintenance on my main server VM that requires restarts.
    3. There is essentially no noticeable performance reduction.

    It works, it’s easy, and the simplicity has saved my butt a few times. I don’t think I’ll be switching, and I’d recommend it to anyone running a homelab. I still use docker to manage most of my services inside a VM.

    • trilobite@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      I secon running docker apps on a Proxmox VM. It has saved my homlab admin time significantly.

      • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I could, but it’s more convenient for me to have it served up by an LXC container on the server. I’m usually interacting with things on a laptop or a phone, so it’s just easy being able to have a tab open with my wiki served through Tailscale, and ProxMox makes sure it stays backed up to an external drive and the cloud so I don’t lose anything.

        The few times I’ve had a critical error with ProxMox, it’s been super simple to do a fresh install and just restore my daily backup.

        There are many ways it could be done, but this way has been mine, and it’s worked for me.