Hi everyone,
I've been running a home server with Arch Linux (i7-3770, 16 GB RAM) for a few years now. It's a mix of Docker containers and some services directly on the host system. I'm trying to move everything to containers though.
For storage, I'm currently using a 256 GB SSD for the host system and three 6 TB HDDs in a RAID 5 for data storage. Backups are currently stored on the same hardware (not the best idea, I know) with Borg Backup.
I wanted to upgrade and rebuild my home server setup as I have a PC I don't use anymore (i7-8700K, 32 GB RAM), two 18 TB HDDs, a 256 GB PCIe m.2 SSD and a 1 TB PCIe m.2 SSD.
So my available hardware is this:
- PC 1 - i7-3770, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SATA SSD, 3x 6 TB HDD
- PC 2 - i7-8700K, 32 GB RAM, 256 GB PCIe m.2 SSD, 1 TB PCIe m.2 SSD, 2x 18 TB HDD
Initially, I wanted to just move everything to PC 2 and be done with it but I've stumbled upon Proxmox and wanted to check if it makes sense to build a nice setup with this. At least some of the Docker containers could be converted to LXC or VMs. The rest could stay as Docker containers in a VM I guess.
I could do something like this:
- PC 1 as a Proxmox Backup Server host
- PC 2 as a Proxmox VE host
A lot of data on the current 12 TB RAID 5 doesn't need to be backed up so 12 TB just for backup storage should be enough.
I'm not sure if that's the best/most efficient way to use this mix of hardware, maybe someone has a similar setup or other advice :) I'm also trying to save as much energy as possible even though that might be hard with 2 physical servers. (Does Proxmox BS turn off HDDs when they're not in use?)
I'm not super fixed on Proxmox although it does look like it's easy to manage without a lot of maintenance involved.
Desktop systems tend to eat a lot of power even at idle so this may be challenging. It's possible that 3 lighter machines would use less power than even one of those servers although you should use a power meter to test at the wall as there are often tweaks you can make.
Make sure there aren't any dedicated GPUs installed as they tend to contribute significantly.