Hi I am looking for alternatives to unraid with docker support and the ability to add VM’s.
Unraid’s combination of features is unique, you may be interested in e.g.
- Proxmox- mostly VM oriented, happens to require storage management
- True nas core (has web ui, has VMs, you install linux in a VM and do dock ncer there).
- DIY Debian (or any other distro), has Web UI (e.g. portainer; cockpit) and all the other stuff, if you install and setup everything.
- Rockstor, mostly Storage, not sure about exact feature set
- OpenMediaVault,
- …?
x2 for this suggestion… You learn so much more doing it yourself, rather than keeping the curtains closed like Unraid / Proxmox.
Don’t fixate too much on “the gui” … if you’re learning this for a career, knowing the command line that the gui covers up is invaluable.
Proxmox is probably the closest thing to Unraid in terms of flexibility.
Really any distro would work if you’re just looking for docker and VMs.
Probably want to keep an eye on TrueNAS Scale, given that it’s just Debian underneath, so can forego the Linux VM.
Thanks for all of the suggestions, I still want to use the machine as a NAS with various media storage capabilities along with VM’s and Dockers.
The same suggestions apply really. The only difference is in how you configure it.
Proxmox. Then just follow an instruction for Debian on how to install docker-ce. You could configure NFS or Samba on Proxmox directly, but I suggest you make it a VM instead.
Like others suggested before, I’m using proxmox for a host OS on my home server and docker in a virtual machine with portainer and I think I can recommend this setup, however it’s sometimes a bit infuriating that proxmox is not integrated with docker in some way :- /
You can install docker with portainer on the host alongside proxmox but then you basically have two panels to manage some part of the system… and both aren’t aware of each other.
(because proxmox supports containers, but they act there more like very lightweight virtual machines rather than application containers known from docker).
You can also install docker in a container on proxmox (privileged container I think) but I’m not sure how docker then deals with ZFS subvolumes. If that configuration works at all (haven’t tested it) then you’ll have a very easy resource hotplug and unplug for the docker host from proxmox panel.