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!
Not all things run as containers.
VMs can though =D
More random home lab things I've recently learned
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Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#42Can 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!
Maybe my use case is abnormal, but I allocate the majority of my resources to a primary VM where I run everything, including containers, etc. but by running Proxmox now I can backup my entire server and even transfer it across the network. If I ever have some software to try out, I can do it in a new VM rather than on my main host. I can also ‘reboot’ my ‘server’ without actually rebooting the real computer, which meant less fan noises and interruption back when I used an actual rack mounted server at home.
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#43One of my favorite CyberPower perks is their RMCARDs for network monitoring: It's a separate module that works in basically all of their rackmount UPSes. You can replace the entire UPS without having to pay for the little mini web server again, it'll just pop right into the new unit.
It's a neat chip but I couldn't bring myself to spend in excess of the price of the UPS ($439.00 for RMCARD at time of writing). I ended up hooking my UPS via USB to my existing home server via NUT and it's been working well.
It is a little hefty for a homelab-level setup, but the impressive bit to me is that they've kept compatibility with it longer than we've replaced UPSes at work (it looks like the RMCARD205 and 305 were introduced in 2018), so instead of paying for that hardware built into each unit, the RMCARD has been a one-time purchase we can bring from unit to unit.
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#44I'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.
Where’d we get this term? I hear “home lab” and I think of having equipment to accomplish something new, not… running ordinary server software in fairly ordinary ways. Like Tony Stark designing his suits has a “home lab”. People 3D printing Warhammer figures or with a couple little servers running PiHole and Wireguard and such… not so much?
I’ve had one or two machines running serving stuff at home for a couple decades [edit: oh god, closer to 2.5 decades…], including serving public web sites for a while, and at no point would I have thought the term “home lab” was a good label for what I was doing.
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#45I just learned about the whole homelab thing a week ago; it's a much deeper rabbit hole than I expected. I'm planning to setup ProxMox today for the first time in fact and retire my Ubuntu Server setup running on a NUC that's been serving me well for last couple years. I hadn't heard about mealie yet, but sounds like a great one to install.
I have Proxmox running on top of a clean Debian install on my NUC, I wanted to allow Plex to use the hardware decoding and it got a bit funny trying to do that with Plex running in a VM, so it runs on the host and I use VMs for other stuff
I have an Intel (12th Gen i5-12450H) mini-pc and at first had issues getting the GPU firmware loaded and working in Debian 12. However upgrading to Debian 13 (trixie) and doing apt update and upgrade resolved the issue and was able to pass the onboard Intel GPU through Docker to a Jellyfin container just fine. I believe the issue is related to older linux kernels and GPU firmware compatibility. Perhaps that’s your issue.
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#46I just learned about the whole homelab thing a week ago; it's a much deeper rabbit hole than I expected. I'm planning to setup ProxMox today for the first time in fact and retire my Ubuntu Server setup running on a NUC that's been serving me well for last couple years. I hadn't heard about mealie yet, but sounds like a great one to install.
If you want to go another, related rabbit hole, check out the DataHoarder subreddit. But don't blame me, if you’re buying terabytes of storage over the next few months :)
don't blame me if you’re buying terabytes of USB drives and pulling out the hard drives
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#47I just learned about the whole homelab thing a week ago; it's a much deeper rabbit hole than I expected. I'm planning to setup ProxMox today for the first time in fact and retire my Ubuntu Server setup running on a NUC that's been serving me well for last couple years. I hadn't heard about mealie yet, but sounds like a great one to install.
A Few Moments Later
There is time dialation in the homelab vortex ... what feels like a few hours can turn out to be years in the real world.
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#48The best thing I did for my homelab is unplug the raspberry pis and throw them into the crate of no-longer-used-but-wont-throw-away electronics. Switching to an ancient tower PC with on paper poorer specs significantly improved performance and reliability across the board and no more weird issues due to SD cards and flaky network. No worries about causing a house fire with sketchy power supplies. No having to make compromises to make it work like a regular PC with using external drives and no difficulty finding compatible software. Pis are amazing little devices, but my experience from the first gen to v4 is that they are temporary solutions or for use cases that don't have high reliability needs. Just buy a cheap mini PC for the same price and you have so many more options and benefits from the get go.
Re: More random home lab things I've recently learned
#49Can 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!
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