Mini PC as home server with Proxmox for future-proofing? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- payne667 · 2023-12-19 21:28 So I started to dive into the rabbit hole that is self hosting. Got an extremely cheap HP EliteDesk 800 G5 with a i5 9500 8GB RAM (I upgraded it to 16GB already) from my workplace for measly 40€. I installed Ubuntu Server, LXQt, Transmission, hosted my own game server for friends and a small Plex library. But now after acquiring some knowledge in this field I kinda want to wipe everything and start from scratch. I want to install Proxmox as it seems to be a really efficient way to boot up VMs with almost no overhead. My idea is to run Proxmox and then create a VM with Debian and run CasaOS and Portainer to play around with Containers for all my various services. I want to get rid of my current Desktop environment (LXQt) as it is said that it's not really best practice in server hosting. Even though the chances of getting attacked are fairly slim, I want to set up a secure machine. How large would be the overhead for the machine. For example running Proxmox, a Debian-VM and inside a docker container with for example a Terraria game server compared to just running it on bare metal Debian. I think the mini PC is pretty beefy to run this tasks tho. I also really like the idea to backup VM/Servers easily with Proxmox. This brings me to my next topic. The idea is, that I might want to upgrade the Mini PC with a NAS later as it only has 128GB storage. It has a spare slot inside for a 2.5 SSD and even a second M.2. Can I just upgrade 2x2TB on SSD and M.2 SSD and do mirroring with those two? I'm rather unexperienced with NAS. Or should I buy a drive case with HDD slots and connect it via USB to my server? In this case obviously it would be smart to Proxmox in advance when I later want to boot up a separate NAS OS? Or should I just go completely with a separate NAS? I guess the 1x 2.5 inch SSD and 1x M.2 SSD inside the server and mirroring it would be the most energy efficient and most quiet solution? The server is in my living room. Hope you guys can help me out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Agile_Ad_2073 · 2023-12-19 21:58 I have 800 g4 with a i5 8500. 32gb ram. I run proxmox with: Truenas vm 1 Lxc running Pinole 1 vm runining Debian with docker with a shit load of containers 1 lxc running Tailscale exit node. And I could keep adding more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Agile_Ad_2073 · 2023-12-19 22:03 If, like mine you ellitedesk has 3 Sata ports, you should use those. Not usb to add drives. You can then passthrough the sata controller to a vm running true nas a create there a zfs pool.