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?
  • lemonaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Proxmox exclusively with unprivileged LXCs, which themselves host other docker containers/stacks managed with Dockhand (a more modern alternative to both Portainer and Dockge). I have a very tiny low power machine so I have to be kind with my resources, therefore no VMs. But LXCs are simpler anyway. I can easily pass devices like /dev/tun for tailscale and i forget the name of the iGPU for accelerated workloads (for Immich, Nextcloud).

    Reasoning: with containers it’s easy to make mistakes without dire consequences (just docker compose down -v and start over). The LXCs are easy to back up and restore. They hold internal running state of whatever docker containers I run in them.

    Pro tip: don’t map host paths using the UI (mp0 etc), use lxc.mount instead. This will let you continue to have snapshots of your LXCs whereas the other approach makes your LXC incompatible with snapshots.

    Good luck!