Proxmox Clusters worth it?

mersh, 10 months ago

Absolutely. You’re going to be paying for more overhead but I’ve never regretting setting up a cluster. I run mine on a t5500, a dl360 gen 6, and a raspberry pi as a witness.

On the cluster I’m running pfsense, file shares, home assistant, a pihole, and a Debian vm with docker that has containers running radarr, sonarr, watchtower, plex, jackett, and mealie. Also spin up various VMs for testing.

snapsofnature, 10 months ago

That’s nice! I’m looking to make media server as well.

mersh, 10 months ago

I switched to moving all of my media services from VMs to containers and haven’t regretted it. Highly recommend that as your approach.

I left xteve off the list of services as well. Very useful if you plan on doing IPTV.

nachom97, 10 months ago

for sure a proxmox server is great, id just say don’t go for the cluster just yet. Frankly, most self hosted stuff is dockerized and thats a huge plus. And it seems you already have that sorted out (id even ask you if casa OSs fileshare and an external drive could handle the NAS aspect).

I say this not to be a killjoy, but because I have a proxmox node I both overbuilt (for small services and running off a UPS) and underbuilt (for multiple big VMs) all because bought it to, and i kid you mot, “use it for NAS, and a window VM and run other random things that I don’t know yet”. 2 years in and i still don’t know what those random things are.

So, my two cents: start cheap get a node to learn and understand where you want to go from there.

Hyacin, 10 months ago

Yes, yes, yes, yes. For the tiny amount of overhead, even the remote console is worth it. Especially when you get into crazy “omg I have so much hardware” homelab territory and have stuff strewn over half your home. Being able to rely on Proxmox being pretty rock solid (if you’re careful and smart about your upgrades and not constantly insisting on running bleeding edge), and being able to access the consoles and ‘reset buttons’ of all your VMs from a single computer is AMAZING.

snapsofnature, 10 months ago

Yeah I’m trying not to get to the point where half my house is computers… 😂

That does sound really good though! Thanks!

TheWoozy, 10 months ago

I’ve got a 3 node cluster. They are a hodge-podge of weak, old hardware. Yes, it’s worth it. Don’t worry about HA and automatic migration. It’s nice to have a single interface to all the nodes. Also look into the proxmox backup server (PBS). It’s a very nice backup system.

snapsofnature, 10 months ago

Thank I will definitely be looking into PBS!

Nomad64, 10 months ago

The primary reason to virtualize is to maximize the “bang for your buck” on your hardware. Containers are great, but have their limits.

So long as you have a desire to learn it (and the budget), I say dive in with Proxmox and see how you can put that hardware to use. VMWare ESXi is more common in a business/enterprise setting, but costs money to for anything beyond the basic functionality after the evaluation period.

snapsofnature, 10 months ago

Ok great! I’m doing it to just learn and tinker with. Thank you!

tjr, 10 months ago

Proxmox is all I use for VM hosting, it is well worth it IMO, I colo metal and I host several virtual machines on it, webservers, ircds, kbin, etc. I specifically use Virtual Machines (KVM) however, it does have the ability to do containerization too (LXC).

snapsofnature, 10 months ago

Ok sweet! What are you running currently on them?

tjr, 10 months ago

gitlab, several docker containers, kbin, ircds, a bouncer, 3-4 web servers, a couple seperate mysql servers, Handshake DNS hosting and Handshake nodes