[Noob] Home server architecture help - vms vs containers or just a single linux install

Hi all, I’ve recently upgraded my desktop and want to use my old (4770k 4x4 tb hdd) pc as a home server. I’m however not sure what the best choice for setting up my software is. I’ll start with what I want to run on the server.

  • pi-hole
  • plex
  • some network storage solution (not sure which one yet)
  • one or two small game servers
  • probably some cool thing ill think of later

however, I have no clue if I should go with proxmos and run a vm for each task. use containers or just setup a single ubuntu install and download all services on there. I’m kinda new to setting up my own servers so all advice is appreciated!

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I use VMs on proxmox for anything I need to passthrough a device or for any OS that can’t use or if I don’t want to use the kernel proxmox is using. Otherwise I like to use containers since they’re lighter on resources and boot pretty much instantly.

For instance I have Plex and Steam on one VM with a GPU passed through so both things can fully utilize the GPU. Things like a personal wiki, pi-hole, and VPN can be run inside a container no problem

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Running KVM virtual machines allows you to use non-Linux operating systems like Windows or a BSD. You can also run Linux-based appliance distros like OpenMediaVault.

Containers also run quite well inside virtual machines, so they’re not mutually exclusive. If you decide to get into Kubernetes, setting up a cluster of virtual machines is a very common starting place.

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