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Can somebody explain the whole proxmox thing? I haven’t used it, I use k3s. I don’t get why people use VMs for stuff when there’s docker. Thanks!
it's so you can have a machine to run docker on, basically. especially useful if you want multiple of those, and also helpful if you don't want one of them anymore.
Can somebody explain the whole proxmox thing? I haven’t used it, I use k3s. I don’t get why people use VMs for stuff when there’s docker. Thanks!
Outside of that:
Docker & k8s are great for sharing resources, VMs allow you to explicitly not share resources.
VMs can be simpler to backup, restore, migrate.
Some software only runs in VMs.
Passing through displays, USB devices, PCI devices, network interfaces etc. often works better with a VM than with Docker.
For my setup, I have a handful of VMs and dozens of containers. I have a proxmox cluster with the VMs, and some of the VMs are Talos nodes, which is my K8s cluster, which has my containers. Separately I have a zimaboard with the pfsense & reverse proxy for my cluster, and another machine with pfsense as my home router.
My primary networking is done on dedicated boxes for isolation (not performance).
My VMs run: plex, home assistant, my backup orchestrator, and a few windows test hosts. This is because:
- The windows test hosts don't containerise well; I'd rather containerise them. - plex has a dedicated network port and storage device, which is simpler to set up this way. - Home Assistant uses a specific USB port & device, which is simpler to set up this way. - I don't want plex, home assistant, or the backup orchestrator to be affected by issues relating to my other services / k8s. These are the services where small transient or temporary issues would impact the whole household.
Also note, I don't use the proxmox container support (I use talos) for two reasons. 1 - I prefer k8s to manage services. 2 - the isolation boundary is better.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's so you can have a machine to run docker on, basically. especially useful if you want multiple of those, and also helpful if you don't want one of them anymore.
Makes backups of the KVM VM running docker easy too right
Can somebody explain the whole proxmox thing? I haven’t used it, I use k3s. I don’t get why people use VMs for stuff when there’s docker. Thanks!
I also use K8s at work, so this is a nice contrast to use something else for my home lab experiments. And tbh, I often find that if I want something done (or something breaks), muscle-memory-Linux-things come back to me a lot quicker than some obscure K8s incantation, but I suppose that's just my personal bias.
Several of my VMs (which are very different than containers, obviously - even though I believe VMs on K8s _can_ be a thing...) run (multiple) docker containers.
I went in thinking that maybe there's something to learn for my grand total of 1 ThinkCentre M910q "homelab", but this author's setup is on another league, I'm sure closer (or surpassing) the needs of a small/medium company!
It’s another league, but I don’t get the point of mixing enterprise rack-mounts with Raspberry Pis.
The Dell is essentially the main machine that runs everything we actually use - the other hardware is either used as redundancy or for experiments (or both). I got the Pi from a work thing and this has been a fun use case. Not that I necessarily recommend it...
Not sure I understand the need to use a Raspberry Pi here. They're cool and all, but wouldn't a regular old PC be simpler to setup, maintain, and attach hardware to? It's a hobby--and you can do whatever you want, but I wouldn't involve a Pi in a home server setup unless I specifically needed something it bought me, like the small form factor, low power usage, GPIO pins and so on.
I've recently learned that "homelab" is a specific thing meaning you run certain software (like Proxmox), and not a generic term for running a 'server lab' at home.
some people think it's not "homelabbing" unless you're doing things the way it's done at large scale. i think these people are aiming to enter IT as a career and consider a homelab to be a resume project. but proxmox and kubernetes are overkill, imo, for most homelab setups. setting them up is a good learning experience but not necessarily an appropriate architecture for maintaining a few mini PCs in a closet long te…
It's funny. I did this (before it really became a more mainstream hobby, this was early 00s), but now that I work in ops I barely even want to touch a computer after work.
Can somebody explain the whole proxmox thing? I haven’t used it, I use k3s. I don’t get why people use VMs for stuff when there’s docker. Thanks!
Whatever uses that storage usually runs in a Docker inside an LXC container.
If I need something more isolated (think public facing cloudflare) - that's a separate docker in another network routed through another OPNSense VM.
Desktop - VM where I passed down a whole GPU and a USB hub.
Best part - it all runs on a fairly low power HW (<20W idle NAS plus whatever the harddrives take - generally ~5W / HDD).
I've recently learned that "homelab" is a specific thing meaning you run certain software (like Proxmox), and not a generic term for running a 'server lab' at home.
I personally enjoy the big machines (I've also always enjoyed meaninglessly large benchmark numbers on gaming hardware) and enterprise features, redundancy etc. (in other words, over-engineering).
I know others really enjoy playing with K8s, which is its own rabbit hole.
My main goal - apart from the truly useful core services - is to learn something new. Sometimes it's applicable to work (I am indeed an SWE larping as a sysadmin, as another commenter called out :-) ), sometimes it's not.