Proxmox or not

Operating Systems & Open Source Open Source & Web-Based
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Hello, thy the greatest community that I know of,
at this right moment the issue (or the idea) has reached my mind. I’ve got 2nd pc to server purpose of network server ( to act as network storage via smb, and as multimedia center (in my case “Emby” )), and it’s being used as such for 2 months. Therefore I’ve found out that there could be more use for it (maybe pfsense in vm), also I need some kind of monitoring (web based if possible). Thinking to change filsystem to zfs as well so i can upgrade storage w/o issues (no need for redundancy) so …
TL;DR
Shall I install Proxmox on system that is running currently or wipe everything and fresh install of Proxmox or some other alternative to virtualized managment system. Or any other constructive idea that could make my decision easier (any other kind of setup software/os wise). Also the little thing that is important, often, when there is storming outside, I like to shutdown->unplug from wall all my pc-s (I had rough experiences in past).

Thanks in advance.

| CPU: Intel Pentium G2020|
| RAM: 4GB DDR3 |
| HDD: 1x WD Black 80GB 2x WD Blue 320GB 1x WD Blue 1TB |
| NIC: 1x Gigabit (hopfully will buy 2nd soon) |

P.S. Would like @SgtAwesomesauce to give his opinion on this topic.

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the G2020 doesn’t support VT-D, which means you won’t be able to pass through a NIC or other network hardware to your VMs, and 4gb is a bit barebones for a multi application proxmox box.

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It’s a bit on the weak side, but you could definitely do it.

My recommendation is that you use something along the lines of docker instead. It’s gonna be more lightweight and will fit in your specs better.

It’s also good to note that everything @tkoham said applies and is accurate, however, passthrough really isn’t necessary.

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yeah, not for most things. it is a relevant detail depending on what results he wants though

on a machine this lean meant for networked apps I’d recommend using jails and rancher/docker with fbsd

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the general idea behind connectivity will be
(My PC) -gigabit> (“server<storage/emby”) -100Mbps> Adsl

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Proxmox is fine, but they do three things I dislike.

First, the interface is butt ugly. The lack of a responsive, modern web control panel is a serious detriment to Proxmox now.

Secondly, the nagware. There are patches that remove the “You don’t have a valid subscription”, but having to apply a patch to use Free Software just rubs me the wrong way.

Finally, they tend to do their own thing rather than building on existing software stacks. While it’s based on Debian, you get a special Proxmox kernel and control utilities that break compatibility with Debian itself.

My personal suggestion would be to avoid the control panel thing entirely. With a single server, there’s no need for more complicated setup since you don’t have high-availability or failover.

Headless server, using KVM, managed via virt-manager.

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Have you looked into freenas? I think they support an emby plugin out of the box and you get the benefit of native ZFS. You can use jails to separate each app without having to bother with virtualization, and virtualized networking on freebsd based operating systems is much more consistent than on linux.

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Hmm interesting toughs

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The other option would be openmediavault. Supports zfs and docker and all that. Plug-ins for emby and plex, samba/nfs and all that.

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ZFS on linux isn’t feature complete or as performant on cheap hardware, so I wouldn’t recommend it.

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hmm zfs is not a “must” am just seeking for expandable filesystem

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Freenas should do that for you, Like I said. (Freenas isn’t linux)

On linux you’re better off with ext4+mdadm/lvm

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mhm dunno bro, this freenas seems slow af, needs like 5min to get ready for work after bootup, webgui bugged in legacy and slow af in “modern”… gonna explore it more to see if its only in my case

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@tkoham I’ve managed to get freenas working properly, it might be the hardrware but, compared to stock debian 9 with smb/emby/webmon, it’s slow af. Takes at least 5min to power up (to be in state ready for use) … *compared to debian 5sec from pressing power button to get into ssh, only emby would take like 20sec and it would be ready, unlike on freenas it takes ages for every service to start up, also web interface is slowwwwwwwwwwwww like browsing web pages on n-gage #longlivesymbianos
good things I havent scrapped my debian install form other hdd Kappa123

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I ran proxmox but moved to esxi, I dont pass the 8 cores max per vm and its more commonly used in industry. Thats the main reason I went there for my choice of Hypervisor

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yeah boot times are a bit slow, but this thing is supposed to be 24/7 right?

I’ve never had the web interface be sluggish, maybe it’s some out of the box misconfiguration with the new version? I’d ask the freenas forums.

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mehh, will stick to it for a week, if i get annoyed by it, ill sw back to debian or test openmediavault, only thing that h8 now is that i would need to wipe storage AGAIN … only 300gb but my conn to it is 100Mbps, 5h of transfers bro … if filesystem isnt mountable in my main pc…

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@tkoham can you tell me is there a way to make like 1 single domain to be the only 1 that i use so i can acess all plugins with different ports?
ex: Domain: “home-server” (http://home-server opens freenas webgui, http://home-server:9091 opens transmission, http://home-server:8081 opens emby … etc… also am beeing against DHCP for each plugin running (if i put static ip it doesnt wanna start plugin…(

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http://doc.freenas.org/11/freenas.html

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4GB of memory in FreeNAS is pretty low. I wonder if that’s what’s slowing it down.