The best home server is two servers. One that is a NAS and the other is for Virtual Machines. Proxmox and TrueNAS are what I consider the top option. The reason for this, the NAS is you backup system. Proxmox backs up to the nas. If you only have one machine then you have no backup. I think a lot of people pushing what is the best for everything are leading new homelabbers down the path of data loss.
You can have both on one server, for example in poxmox if you have two discs you can have a backup server on one disk and do the virtualization on the other or simply a raid
Makes sense to me, thanks for the comment, im looking to make a small home server for me and my housemates so we can share school files and also run pihole and a minecraft server for us, im thinking Ubuntu server but im not very adept with the command line so i might just use the normal Ubuntu with the desktop stuff. What do you think?
Makes sense to me, thanks for the comment, im looking to make a small home server for me and my housemates so we can share school files and also run pihole and a minecraft server for us, im thinking Ubuntu server but im not very adept with the command line so i might just use the normal Ubuntu with the desktop stuff. What do you think?
Christian if it wasnt for your videos I would have never gotten the courage and motivation to install linux, portainer, and a ton of containerized services. Our home has been transformed. Greatly appreciate the awesome content you make. Thanks for everything!
I have been using Proxmox for years and I highly advise it. The web interface is fantastic and simplifies server management and backups. Personally I use LXC (containers) as they have less overhead than KVM for most internal services. I do use KVM for outward services as Personally I like selinux for security. Speaking of security I think that is a consideration on servers and I would highly advise using selinux or apparmor. Another option if one wants to run a few servers such as a web server is to use one of the various services such as linode. For a basic server they are less expensive than hardware and there is the additional cost in that most internet providers limit upload speed unless you upgrade the basic service. I stopped running windows servers decades ago the cost is too high.
I’ll second that, I’m using an old Dell R610 with proxmox. My firewall, private Minecraft server and other various file sharing/backups are managed from that one hypervisor.
@@Hazmatguy117 Mine are similar, but I thought about putting firewall in the all-in-boom, but I just got a another chasis and threw my old hardware there to run OPNSense on top of Proxmox. Just what if it got destroyed.
Been going through the same exploration myself for the past 15 years and I am proud to say, we have similar setups. I just wish your content was available then like it is now. Regardless, love your channel. It’s on my top recommendations for family and friends who are interested in this space. Videos are inspiring and keeps me motivated to continue to learn. Thanks for sharing.
@@Anuitu2u the unraid file system means most normal people can just throw together an array with old drives they already own. to use ZFS you need alike drives that are decent. That alone makes it cheap. Plus the support it gives makes it worth it. Free is not cheap, unraid is only $60. People need to eat, and need money to develop stuff.
@@veneratedmortal4369 then, I'm more cheap than any of that. I didn't know the advantages of unRAID filesystem yet. And, even ProXmox have zfs capability, I didn't use that. Forget about $60, sorry, but my whole setup probably less than that amount money. Maybe, if I use a server scale hardware, unRAID is one of the choice. So, I'm really thankful to the ProXmox developers here, they make a really good product for free.
Do you think UnRAID is good to use for a simple home setup with no extra disks or anything? Basically just using the hyper to run several OS not really for the NAS stuff. Any thoughts? $60 isn’t bad and I’m willing to buy just wondering if it’s worth the investment for future use maybe even if I’m not doing much with it now.
I've been using Open Media Vault for a while. One of it's advantages, is that you can take drives with data already on them, and build the NAS around them. Most of the other NAS platforms seem to want to wipe the drives to start with. I also built a small Ubuntu server at work. Thanks to the abundant resources on the web I was able to do it successfully. Although, my advice is to keep track of what you installed when, as you build it (software wise) so that when you screw up, you can redo everything quickly, and if needed, rearrange the packages as you install them. After you're happy with it, there's one or more web gui's for administering it.
I personally like the idea of using Intel Nucs as Raspberry Pi alternatives and instead of PiOS I use Proxmox to bring some applications (Adguard, unbound, tvheadend, zabbix, etc.) to my internal network. On my Backup Server I use OMV, just because I wanted to have a GUI on my backup server. My main server runs unraid for over two years now and I'm totally happy with it. I also like the helpful and friendly unraid community. 👍
What the advantages of Intel NUCs than micro Dell Optiplex with the same gen processor? Well, not counting the Celeron NUCs, isn't the Micro Optiplex is better? NUCs is overrated. And, I believe the Optiplex is abundance in my country than the NUCs.
@@Anuitu2u the footprint of the Nuc is smaller. And I don’t know how it is with the Dell, but with the Nucs you have very good control over the fan curve in the BIOS. That’s very important for me, since I want them to be as quiet as possible. When I buy a Nuc from eBay, I first open the device, clean the fan and renew the thermal paste. Then I go into the bios, and then I adapt the fan speeds to my needs. After this, the Nuc is totally quiet. And I’m not sure, how good you can do that with the Dell. I think the differences between these devices are marginal, so if you prefer the Dell over the Nuc, then go for it.
Hi Christian. Thanks for the video. I am running Proxmox on three workstations in a cluster with HA and TrueNAS Scale on its own workstation. I found the Dell and HP workstations were cheaper and work really well for what I do in my home / lab. I really enjoy your videos and look forward to more.
Glad I watched to the end for the mention of XCP-ng, though I think it deserved a spot in the hypervisor chapter. IMO, it's a best-of-breed system, especially when combined with Xen Orchestra. Anyone who is serious about using their homelab as a learning platform would be well served by spending some quality time with it.
Hi Christian. Thanks for the vid! My homelab consists of Proxmox VE+Backup Server (VM, LXC, Docker, Backup) and a Synology (NAS, data-backup, VMs, share+sync Data, video surveillance, Cloud sync., Photos, VPN, Wordpress). Synology is a very reliable, fast and secure homelab solution. All gui managed by DSM. A hint for your next vid: "battle" Synology vs TrueNAS. Have a good time !😀
I self host six domains, two mail servers, dns, pihole for local dns, and more on 4 four old laptops with Proxmox VE. One laptop does all domains, another for dns servers, another for mail servers and a reverse proxy. The last one does two backups per day of all the others. It's simple, has built in UPS (batteries) and uses little power. I use proxmox mail gateway and Proxmox Backup Server. Very reliable. Debian, Almalinux, Alpine are my go to Operating Systems.
Building my first Proxmox machine changed everything for me in what I can do, and experiment with, at home. I highly recommend trying it out. You don't need a very powerful machine to spin up your first instance. Just as long as the CPU fully supports virtualization features, which is very common, but not universal.
Some folks mentioned Unraid. I would put that on the same level as TrueNAS. Slightly different target group, but what makes it really strong is the huge community behind it. All being said, I have switched to TrueNAS bare matal and Proxmox HA cluster on HP Thinclients myself. I also have few services running in cloud.
The recommendation to stop at some point looking for alternatives and go with your Solutions is really one of the Gold nuggets of this video! You'll get to this point after a long and hard journey. If you have too much time, sure take that path but the outcome will be less than using that time to master the Main components. .. And please.. don't jump on every hypetrain! A very good Video!
Thanks man i am trying to build my own NAS system and wasnt really sure how, i looked into TrueNas Core but now that you mentioned TrueNAS Scale i looked up the differences and it is a really great piece of software exactly for what i need.
I tried all the other hypervisors over the years but Proxmox just works the best. It totally changed everything. Absolutely love it. I only need one quiet server in my rack and it just runs everything flawlessly. I use an older Asrock board with dual Xeon e5 2690 v2 with 256 gigs of ecc reg. All the parts were used and inexpensive... also have two TrueNAS servers with more than enough disk space. Lots of headroom to play with for my needs. Virtualize everything !
i agree with christian, do whats good for you. There are so many things you can do, its best to determine your needs for hardware and projects and then go from there. Great video!
I watched 40 hours of videos before I chose a Server OS. While I watched, I learned a lot about what servers were. My needs were modest as as a solo user. Now, in November 2023, I have picked TrueNAS Scale. I could set it up with about 12 stages of implementation, to arrive at something that does the basic things I want. It took me just one day, as a novice.
As a devops engineer I deploy a ton of vms and containers and if I'm given the choice, 90% of the time they're running the current Ubuntu LTS. No licensing issues or drama, very well put together and easy to hack into and excellent cloud provider support.
Right now I'm using CasaOS. It's not really an operative system but a front-end that aims to be a very user friendly NAS alike OS. To be honest, I can't believe how much I fell in love with this "os" because it's super simple, intuitive and user friendly. In fact, thanks to this program I finally understood how docker images work. So if someone new to self-hosting reads this comment, I do encourage you to check it out.
Gotta say, this was a fantastic video and I really appreciated the deep walk through on each option and why one might go with each of them. The fact that your choice wasn’t the choice you recommended for starting out, with an explanation of why, just really cemented your credibility. Glad I came across your channel and you’ve earned a subscriber!
I used xenserver for a long time. But since 2 or 3 years i use proxmox and i will stick with it now 😉 I like the ability to control it via API. I also made a small dashboard in node-red so i can check and boot my VMs from my phone or tablet with just a few buttons (just for playing in homelab) Also planning to do a short introduction/tutorial on how i did this, but in german 😜
1) pick reliable high capacity storage/NAS prebuilt system, such as Synology, unlike TrueNAS you'll get proper file manager and intuitive users/shares management 2) grab some used PC, make sure to have decent SSDs for ZFS pools, pick Proxmox and start virtualizing, use mapped NFS share from Synology to quickly access installers 3) feel free to virtualize TrueNAS (Scale) in Proxmox, Truecharts are amazing, and with recent 2022.12 TrueNAS Scale release, it's finally possible to bulk-upgrade apps from the GUI
I'm currently running my homelab with 2 nodes proxmox cluster, such an amazing and powerful Virtualisation system with all things that I need. It runs containers, VM, and even a virtualized firewall. It runs smooth, no issues. And for Nas, truenas scale is quite amazing too, great performances with ZFS, applications, external backup for my entire homelab
Thanks, I'm about to build a home sever and don't really need VM and this is the problem that's been running around in my head. Anyone who has built any IT system first time knows you'll end up rebuilding and rebuild as you learn the downside of you first choices. This video helped me a lot even though it's a year old now.
This is truly define my entire cases. From Linux then Proxmox, finally I end up using TrueNAS Scale. Just want a simple home storage server with additional task. After watch this video I know I do not make a wrong decision. Love this video. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Christian, good video. Just a clarification: Hyper-v server it’s free, it is the hyper-v role on windows server standard or Datacenter which is not free because you must pay the standard or Datacenter edition of windows server. The hyper-v capabilities are the same between all the editions, including the free one. The difference between the free and the STD and Datacenter (aside the GUI, which is missing in the free edition, and the other Windows roles, not available in the free one) is only related to how many windows server VMs (named vOSEs) are licensed on a host: zero for the free edition, 2 for the standard, unlimited for the Datacenter. Aside Proxmox, I do not have knowledge on it, if you must choose between the free esxi and the free hyper-v, this one in my opinion is the right one instead of esxi, because hyper-V gives to you all the features, including the virtual machine migration, hardware hot add, clustering support, and so. The free esxi is really limited, as you said in the video, it gives you just the basic virtualization features. Nothing more.
Christian.. THANK YOU for always including Windows. The reality in the real world here in the USA is that many business and Industrial Control Systems are Windows based and experience with those is key to getting those jobs. THANK YOU!!
Brilliant video. The most important tip I understood from all that is to stop looking for alternatives and just dive in - I have stalled on my new home lab project for the last 8 months now simply because I was too afraid of using the wrong thing and having to do it all again.
I have a ProxMox server at home. I love how easy it is to set up custom containers for things such as my dyndns client, my Home Assistant, piHole, Gitea. And, I can still run virtualized Windows Server, different linux servers or Windows 10 and 11.
I agree with most of what you said and like you said the use case is always the key. Personally I use Proxmox on a china 4x 2.5Gb port for home assistant, 3CX, pihole and adguard (10 watt CPU running at 4%) on process on each cpu core. unRaid for plex server (Nvidia p2000 for enc/transcoding) for just the ability to add another drive whenever the size (same or lower than parity) and ONLY spin up the drive needed to watch content (don't need the whole array to spin up) which it turn saves power when getting more and more drives because the library is expanding. TrueNAS scale for the easy on use for docker and the use of zfs. Just waiting for the another china 4x 2.5Gb port for opnsense box.
Debian Linux and Ubuntu Server would also be my first recommendation for a beginner, although I use FreeBSD for all my stuff (which I think is even easier to learn). Windows Server is also a good idea for starting a homelab, especially if you want to get a job as a sysadmin since almost all companies today use it.
I use FreeBSD on the desktop and NAS at home myself. A lot of the sites I know of and the company I work for use Windows as their primary server OS, though Linux is around.
Openmediavault is extremely stable and running continuously on my home server for 3+ years, I have made breaking changes maybe 3 time during initial setup, and once best configuration is achieved, never looked back. Planning to upgrade the complete hardware but will keep the same OS.
I have windows server 2022 using docker, jellyfin for win, gaming server for 7 days to die, hyper v runing fedora, pi hole etc. Trust me its 10000x faster to setup than linux and has less issues! I have been runing 3 years 24/7 its great!
@@dakbuhlmao1645 thats a myth its just the linux comunity is so toxic they will say linux is so much betterrrrr in everything. I litteraly run windows servers and its exactly the same. It comes down to hardware and if you mean faster by some syntetic tests that you cannot see in real life than maybe yes you are right!
- Esxi's biggest issue is, that you need an additional storage server (iscsi etc). - Trunas Scale feels still a bit beta to me and is pretty limited. - Xcp-ng is basically dead anyway, i don't even know anyone who uses that. - Proxmox with zfs/lvm and lxc containers is just brilliant, they even have an mainline kernel, actually 6.1. In my opinion there is simply nothing that can reach Proxmox. Sure there are some missing gui features, like some zfs Management (manage datasets/adding cache/log/vdev) or zfs snapshots is a basic feature that's highly missing. But for that you have cli and zfs autosnap etc. Proxmox allows mapping over mountpoints datasets or any folder directly to vm/container, which is insanely nice. Basically just the gui is a bit limited, but you have all the possibilities over cli and there is nothing you can't realize. Im a really big fan of Proxmox and love what the guys are doing there, especially Lamprecht is doing the most work, glad god he is such a motivated guy. Hopefully he never leaves Proxmox. Maybe im sounding like a small fanboy, but i just love Proxmox, it ticks every wish you have. I have a cluster of 4 Servers btw, 2 of them are at home, main and a small backup, 1 is at my mum and the last one is a dedicated server from hetzner. All connected over opnsense/wireguard. Maybe one thing i would love is, better docker support, since docker and zfs, mhhh... I have docker running in an lxc container, which works excellent, but it took initially a bit to find out the correct cgroup2 rights and module options for zfs etc. This could be made easier, with an additional lxc option (like fuse etc). But yeah, the gui is a bit limiting, however you have the cli! Probably a good way to learn for some either. Cheers
I like unraid for a home server. It has the biggest community and support plus is the most flexible with putting drives in your array. Great on a budget when most people are using old drives of different sizes.
I have an ESXi server that's probably over a decade old at this point. I basically wanted one that could do anything, and there weren't many alternatives at the time. I've been using Freenas as a VM under it, but now I'm moving to mainly using TrueNAS Scale on its own server. I like it, but I don't understand what I'm doing most of the time, and find myself just changing different options and checking the logs for errors until I find a combination that works. Containers may be a better way of doing things, but they sure seem a lot more complicated than VM's. It should get easier once I learn what everything actually does.
Great video! Personnally I don't really like the idea of running systems that are administered using their own specific web interfaces like Proxmox/Truenas. I usually much prefer having a regular Ubuntu or Debian server as a bawe system which I can manage the way I want and host secondary systems with KVM / Virtmanager or Docker. To make it easier, Cockpit web interface with its zfs, vm, etc plugins makes it nearly as user friendly as proxmox or truenas for moderatelly simple use cases.
For me, many years ago when I was in this boat, the solution was very very simple... Some flavor of Linux, so I put Ubuntu on my home server. Ran that for quite some time, but got fed up with the rebuild times when major version upgrades happened, as it never upgraded correctly, forcing me to rebuild the server and its services each and every time. (This was in 2010) So afterwards I was experienced enough, and I spent some time rebuilding it under Arch Linux and since then, it has just worked for me. Of course it evolved further as the storage transitioned from mdadm RAID 6 to ZFS, but one thing was clear early on... Windows just couldn't cut it.
Thank you, exactly what I was looking for. I personally don't need Linux-level customizations (so it doesn't make sense for me.), simplicity is more of what I'm looking for. 😁 Again, thank you.
I'm going to be building a server this year with 128GB of ram and an intel xeon E5 2695 v3. My plan is to do FreeNAS scale (maybe vsphere if i'm feeling rich) as the host and then several VM's, both windows server and linux, to run all sortts of things from AD, DNS and DHCP, to maybe a couple of game server and a security camera system for my flat. This video proved interesting.
Can't wait for the next video ! I'm starting with some NAS stuffs but now Hypervisors make me excited to try since it sounds much more controlled and can build many stuffs on. Wait for the next video so I can feel more confident building my very first home server.
Running a Proxmox cluster with 3 nodes. Main server is an HP ML350 Gen9, network box is a VMWare Edge 680 that's been converted to Proxmox, and third is a micro HP desktop. Most services are running in LXC's, except two. The router/firewall is a full VM and a second vm for Windows that has a GPU for streaming games.
Hi Christian, great video. My home server journey has culminated in me using two older Dell servers, both running Proxmox. One server (R720) is my "play" server but which also includes an Ubuntu server running my family's NextCloud services, a Windows 11 Pro VM as the household print server and another Ubuntu server VM running pihole. The "main" server (T620) runs a TRUENAS Scale VM to which is passed a HBA controller and attached drives using majority of RAM. The other VM, with a Quadro P2000 gpu passed through, runs an minimal Ubuntu desktop (handles nvidia drivers on install) running the family Plex Server.
Great analysis Christian. Totally agree; at some point people should pick a solution and run with it. Constantly looking for something better just makes people dissatisfied with life! BTW, I have an ESXi server, a Proxmox server I am about to swap out with a more powerful box, and a TrueNAS box I am about to use to replace my 5 year old Synology NAS. Plus I plan to set up either pfSense or OpnSense on another box. And then I plan to dive into setting up the software for it all.
I use QEMU/KVM and it doesn't disappoint. I feel like I have so much more control and i can load the Distro that i want on top of the hypervisor. Plus its a hybrid hypervisor in that it is technically type 2 but runs JUST like a type 1. I have had ZERO issues. Tons of different interfaces (CLI, Libvirt for desktop UI, and Cockpit for web UI) it's simple and yet powerful
Finally someone said the truth: there are too many choises and you have to try several, pick what you like and settle, run with that and master everything about it .
I enjoy the videos, Christian, and this one confirmed my choice of Proxmox & TrueNAS Scale for my homelab. I use workstation class machines and I am about to do some hardware upgrades and reconfigurations now that I have "a plan". :-) Keep up the good work.
I completely agree that at some point you should stop choosing and start using. It is not perfect. That's OK. Use what you made. Make something else. You can always return for more later.
I've been deploying TrueNAS systems (their official hardware) for small office clients. It's one of the most inexpensive ways to get safe local storage and replicate offsite to a cloud provider or zfs-send/recv to an offsite backup server. When needed I'll run a windows server VM on it and/or linux vm. It's a good, inexpensive alternative to getting a full server from dell/hp.
I use OpenBSD pf for my router/firewall, TrueNAS Core for storage, Windows Server for Group Policy with an iSCSI connection to TrueNAS, CentOS and Windows 10 for desktops with a mix of Cisco and Edgemax PoE switches and VirtualBox for VM's. Soon going to be building a TrueNAS Scale box for Docker apps. It's quite the mix mash of hardware and software cobbled together over the years.
I've run Hyper-V for years. It's most likely a hypervisor with the smallest feature set, but it does everything I want, so I'm ok with it. The main reason I like it is that I can manage it PowerShell. The only other PowerShell-enabled hypervisor I know is VMware and I'm not going to run that. But, since Microsoft is no longer releasing free Hyper-V hypervisors past the 2019, I'm most probably going to migrate to Proxmox once the support for Hyper-V 2019 ends. If Proxmox has an API I can use, I'll probably just create a PowerShell module to continue to manage VMs using PowerShell.
one thing I have learned by watching dumpster fires in motion is... DIY is always going to save you money... and after seeing someone cry over a $100k bill from Amazon for their cloud based solution it rings ever more loudly, self hosting and if you are a company co-location. If you are a family, buy one of those IBM desktops with 6 SATA outputs and a few IO things and you will find it to be quite fruitful when you sit down with a pen and paper and decide what you want the server to be. ALSO!!! second hand with brand new HDD and a SSD for a boot drive will in fact make you appreciate the results because... they will just work, this is my first linux box and it's an enjoyable learning experience.
I think it really comes down to the definition of full crazy. If your job is in IT or potentially in IT. I think it makes great sense to deploy several servers depending on if your field is more cyber security based/network based or more systems administrator/programming based or you're a dev ops guy. I personally have a bunch of proxmox VMs but i know you wont see proxmox in the wild so I would spin up esxi just to keep the vmware navigation skills sharp. At the end of the day our interests will be attracted to a certain aspect of IT and ultimately what we alliw for ourselves is subject to budget and availability. But really this is just a really round about way to say the best way to do something is get all the things xD
I agree with the comment about Proxmox being less enterprise friendly than ESXi. I found Proxmox to be intimidating, but installing a desktop environment such as Mate right on the host machine itself made setting up VMs bit easier without the need to log in from another PC to do basic tasks and is more secure if you just want to allow logins from the "localhost" using the desktop environment.
I climbed onboard the SUSE-wagon with SuSE Linux 5.3 and never left. In 2007 I abandoned OS/2 and went all Linux and today I use openSUSE LEAP on desktop, server, laptop and Tumblewed on my phone - all bare metal - all but the phone is driven by level 1 CPUs.
I Love the Look & Feel of TrueNAS Scale. I can't get VMs working yet for some reason; I'll have to dig into your vids. I haven't professionally set up servers in almost 2 decades, I loved using Win2k Server over Server 2k3. I tried setting up Linux Servers but I was still a Uber N00b back then, Now Im an Old Uber-N00b
Hi Christian, from what I can tell you're running Proxmox and TrueNAS on separate bare metal machines. A year ago you've made a video "How to run TrueNAS on Proxmox?". Have you had any further experience with that since then? I'm thinking of running such a setup myself (Proxmox bare metal and a TrueNAS VM), because I really like what Proxmox offers in terms of VM management, but I also want to manage a ~30 TiB+ NAS. I've found that some people online advise against this specific setup, but not necessarily with any concrete arguments. Would love to hear your take on this if you had some further experience with actually running this kind of setup. Thanks
Moin, netter Überblick. Bringst eine Gute Energie rüber! Werde hier definitiv nochmal vorbeischauen ;) Gut, dass du das mit "Linux als OS" noch im Nachgang erklärt hast. Das hat dir glaube ich einige Kommentare erspart :D ;) weiter so! offtopic: auch respekt an dein flüssiges englisch. aber doch immer wieder erschreckend wie man es ab sekunde 1 raushört, wenn jemand aus germany kommt.
Vielen Dank für das Lob :) am Anfang haben mich die Linux fanboys Kommentare gestört, aber mittlerweile ist mir das egal XD Hauptsache euch gefällt der Content :)
@@christianlempa Ja, du sagst es. Kommentar Sections sind leider oft toxisch und können teilweise demotivieren. Deshalb hab ich extra mal was positives dagelassen für die Motivation ;) bleib dran und weiter so :)
it´s always a charm to watch youre videos. Great explanations, easy for beginners advanced users. after 25 years (gandalf the grey bearded :) ) more or less the same stuff as you do (who is responsable for all that mess? you made this damn f*** GOOD videos? :) right, YOU are (in a good way manor) Proxmox Cluster (3 Node) Proxmox (1 Node), Unraid, TrueNas Scale, Kubernetes, Rancher, Portainer, HA, Sophos (phys.), OPNSense (phys) and a lot of APPS in all kinds. Keep going ... input, input input.... :)
I went down the home server rabbit hole a few years back and couldn't settle between Proxmox, TrueNAS, and Unraid so I have 3 Dell R710's running one of each OS . I went from testing them to just leaving them and using all 3. Unraid is kinda my main one since it handles everything that needs to stay on 24/7. Proxmox is for all my VM's and testing of OS's and updates. TrueNAS is my storage that has a Dell PowerVault MD1220 attached. Dell R210II is my pfSense firewall. I have a Dell R430 that I don't use for anything since I have no clue what to use it for. A small 1U for Guacamole server. I have all the iDRAC's setup but sometimes I just want to manage them from the rack itself so I use the Dell 1U monitor and the Dell 2U KVM. 10Gb NIC on all the servers with CAT 6A throughout the whole house.
a long time ago I used esxi , but after it began to be installed only on corporate hardware, I switched to kvm... thx for proxmox, looks amazing il try it
After years of using ProxMox I wasted years trying other Open Source ( app solutions ) then a few months ago when I found out about TrueNas Scale, I stopped looking since they now have about 800 Apps to host! Plus the community is Big so there is Support for each other! so when in doubt just jump in a Discord to ask and people will help! But more than anything thanks to TH-camrs like you! we are able to follow tutorials on what we are trying to achieve :D So yes, ProxMox + TrueNas Scale =
TrueNas on Proxmox. Best of both worlds IMHO. With nesting you can have dedicated VMs or containers inside TrueNAS or like I do both and LXC containers as well as normal VMs all on one Proxmox server. A little complicated to configure, but once you do it, then it just works.
my home server for ssh and apache is running linux-mint but i am also using it as a media center for watching movies or emulators on the projector. and it has a direct connection to a synology NAS with 4 drives. for all my photos from my photography hobby. as you said there is no perfect solution. but this works amazingly well.
Great Video! Virtualization really is the key! For me, the free features that esxi offers are more than enough. The setback is due to the hardware, as it is not friendly with generic storage/network devices. I think Proxmox would be an excellent alternative for me, but I haven't tried it yet.
Very cool video Christian 👍 I am looking forward to your homelab tour video! I use different proxmox ve on bare metal and a proxmox backup server what is a perfect solution for all virtual machines! For file server I actually use an Ubuntu vm with NFS. I actually play with a Windows Server 2016 as CIFS file server because I love the static ntfs permission structure with AD-Groups! MA, be I built a AD-domain and join all my ubuntu-servers, then I can use different AD users for every server 😜 I am actually not happy with docker using volumes directly on my nfs or cifs shares (I mount the shares on the ubuntu-vm, where I run docker) because of the specific rights of some images. I tried Truenas too, but I prefer proxmox as hypervisor and I like running important services an dedicated hardware.
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The best home server is two servers. One that is a NAS and the other is for Virtual Machines. Proxmox and TrueNAS are what I consider the top option. The reason for this, the NAS is you backup system. Proxmox backs up to the nas. If you only have one machine then you have no backup. I think a lot of people pushing what is the best for everything are leading new homelabbers down the path of data loss.
You can have both on one server, for example in poxmox if you have two discs you can have a backup server on one disk and do the virtualization on the other or simply a raid
@@andreu6700 run proxmox / esxi as the main os, and have a hardware raid within the same server, that's where i'm going
Makes sense to me, thanks for the comment, im looking to make a small home server for me and my housemates so we can share school files and also run pihole and a minecraft server for us, im thinking Ubuntu server but im not very adept with the command line so i might just use the normal Ubuntu with the desktop stuff. What do you think?
Makes sense to me, thanks for the comment, im looking to make a small home server for me and my housemates so we can share school files and also run pihole and a minecraft server for us, im thinking Ubuntu server but im not very adept with the command line so i might just use the normal Ubuntu with the desktop stuff. What do you think?
Whst will you do if you have Amprere dev kit hardware 😂
Christian if it wasnt for your videos I would have never gotten the courage and motivation to install linux, portainer, and a ton of containerized services. Our home has been transformed. Greatly appreciate the awesome content you make. Thanks for everything!
I have been using Proxmox for years and I highly advise it. The web interface is fantastic and simplifies server management and backups. Personally I use LXC (containers) as they have less overhead than KVM for most internal services. I do use KVM for outward services as Personally I like selinux for security.
Speaking of security I think that is a consideration on servers and I would highly advise using selinux or apparmor.
Another option if one wants to run a few servers such as a web server is to use one of the various services such as linode. For a basic server they are less expensive than hardware and there is the additional cost in that most internet providers limit upload speed unless you upgrade the basic service.
I stopped running windows servers decades ago the cost is too high.
I’ll second that, I’m using an old Dell R610 with proxmox. My firewall, private Minecraft server and other various file sharing/backups are managed from that one hypervisor.
@@Hazmatguy117 Mine are similar, but I thought about putting firewall in the all-in-boom, but I just got a another chasis and threw my old hardware there to run OPNSense on top of Proxmox. Just what if it got destroyed.
Been going through the same exploration myself for the past 15 years and I am proud to say, we have similar setups. I just wish your content was available then like it is now. Regardless, love your channel. It’s on my top recommendations for family and friends who are interested in this space. Videos are inspiring and keeps me motivated to continue to learn. Thanks for sharing.
Don’t like his explanation of why he doesn’t like hyper V. Uhhh it had limited features 15 years ago. Well duh
"the linux distro that you're using doesn't matter so much" (pulls out popcorn)
Sounds like something an Ubuntu user would say
I‘m using UnRaid for my HomeServer setup. As NAS, HyperVisor and Docker Host. It‘s fun to work with and a huge Community if there are questions.
It's the most flexible for my array of old random drives as well.
Unraid is too expensive. FreeNAS scale seems to do a equally good job and is free.
@@Anuitu2u the unraid file system means most normal people can just throw together an array with old drives they already own. to use ZFS you need alike drives that are decent. That alone makes it cheap. Plus the support it gives makes it worth it. Free is not cheap, unraid is only $60. People need to eat, and need money to develop stuff.
@@veneratedmortal4369 then, I'm more cheap than any of that.
I didn't know the advantages of unRAID filesystem yet. And, even ProXmox have zfs capability, I didn't use that.
Forget about $60, sorry, but my whole setup probably less than that amount money.
Maybe, if I use a server scale hardware, unRAID is one of the choice. So, I'm really thankful to the ProXmox developers here, they make a really good product for free.
Do you think UnRAID is good to use for a simple home setup with no extra disks or anything? Basically just using the hyper to run several OS not really for the NAS stuff. Any thoughts? $60 isn’t bad and I’m willing to buy just wondering if it’s worth the investment for future use maybe even if I’m not doing much with it now.
I've been using Open Media Vault for a while. One of it's advantages, is that you can take drives with data already on them, and build the NAS around them. Most of the other NAS platforms seem to want to wipe the drives to start with.
I also built a small Ubuntu server at work. Thanks to the abundant resources on the web I was able to do it successfully. Although, my advice is to keep track of what you installed when, as you build it (software wise) so that when you screw up, you can redo everything quickly, and if needed, rearrange the packages as you install them. After you're happy with it, there's one or more web gui's for administering it.
Use ansible. Never install anything manually.
I personally like the idea of using Intel Nucs as Raspberry Pi alternatives and instead of PiOS I use Proxmox to bring some applications (Adguard, unbound, tvheadend, zabbix, etc.) to my internal network.
On my Backup Server I use OMV, just because I wanted to have a GUI on my backup server.
My main server runs unraid for over two years now and I'm totally happy with it. I also like the helpful and friendly unraid community. 👍
Intel NUC is probably cheaper than RPi right now too...
@@magnuswright5572 Yes. And ebay is flooded with Nucs. At least here in Germany.
What the advantages of Intel NUCs than micro Dell Optiplex with the same gen processor?
Well, not counting the Celeron NUCs, isn't the Micro Optiplex is better? NUCs is overrated. And, I believe the Optiplex is abundance in my country than the NUCs.
@@Anuitu2u the footprint of the Nuc is smaller. And I don’t know how it is with the Dell, but with the Nucs you have very good control over the fan curve in the BIOS. That’s very important for me, since I want them to be as quiet as possible. When I buy a Nuc from eBay, I first open the device, clean the fan and renew the thermal paste. Then I go into the bios, and then I adapt the fan speeds to my needs. After this, the Nuc is totally quiet. And I’m not sure, how good you can do that with the Dell.
I think the differences between these devices are marginal, so if you prefer the Dell over the Nuc, then go for it.
Hi Christian. Thanks for the video. I am running Proxmox on three workstations in a cluster with HA and TrueNAS Scale on its own workstation. I found the Dell and HP workstations were cheaper and work really well for what I do in my home / lab. I really enjoy your videos and look forward to more.
Glad I watched to the end for the mention of XCP-ng, though I think it deserved a spot in the hypervisor chapter.
IMO, it's a best-of-breed system, especially when combined with Xen Orchestra. Anyone who is serious about using their homelab as a learning platform would be well served by spending some quality time with it.
Hi Christian. Thanks for the vid! My homelab consists of Proxmox VE+Backup Server (VM, LXC, Docker, Backup) and a Synology (NAS, data-backup, VMs, share+sync Data, video surveillance, Cloud sync., Photos, VPN, Wordpress). Synology is a very reliable, fast and secure homelab solution. All gui managed by DSM. A hint for your next vid: "battle" Synology vs TrueNAS. Have a good time !😀
I self host six domains, two mail servers, dns, pihole for local dns, and more on 4 four old laptops with Proxmox VE. One laptop does all domains, another for dns servers, another for mail servers and a reverse proxy. The last one does two backups per day of all the others. It's simple, has built in UPS (batteries) and uses little power. I use proxmox mail gateway and Proxmox Backup Server. Very reliable. Debian, Almalinux, Alpine are my go to Operating Systems.
Building my first Proxmox machine changed everything for me in what I can do, and experiment with, at home. I highly recommend trying it out. You don't need a very powerful machine to spin up your first instance. Just as long as the CPU fully supports virtualization features, which is very common, but not universal.
Some folks mentioned Unraid. I would put that on the same level as TrueNAS. Slightly different target group, but what makes it really strong is the huge community behind it. All being said, I have switched to TrueNAS bare matal and Proxmox HA cluster on HP Thinclients myself. I also have few services running in cloud.
The recommendation to stop at some point looking for alternatives and go with your Solutions is really one of the Gold nuggets of this video! You'll get to this point after a long and hard journey. If you have too much time, sure take that path but the outcome will be less than using that time to master the Main components. .. And please.. don't jump on every hypetrain!
A very good Video!
Thanks man i am trying to build my own NAS system and wasnt really sure how, i looked into TrueNas Core but now that you mentioned TrueNAS Scale i looked up the differences and it is a really great piece of software exactly for what i need.
I tried all the other hypervisors over the years but Proxmox just works the best. It totally changed everything. Absolutely love it. I only need one quiet server in my rack and it just runs everything flawlessly. I use an older Asrock board with dual Xeon e5 2690 v2 with 256 gigs of ecc reg. All the parts were used and inexpensive... also have two TrueNAS servers with more than enough disk space. Lots of headroom to play with for my needs. Virtualize everything !
i agree with christian, do whats good for you. There are so many things you can do, its best to determine your needs for hardware and projects and then go from there. Great video!
This video and this comment thread is solid gold for someone starting out in this tech space. My thanks to everyone.
Thank you so much 😊
I watched 40 hours of videos before I chose a Server OS. While I watched, I learned a lot about what servers were. My needs were modest as as a solo user. Now, in November 2023, I have picked TrueNAS Scale. I could set it up with about 12 stages of implementation, to arrive at something that does the basic things I want. It took me just one day, as a novice.
As a devops engineer I deploy a ton of vms and containers and if I'm given the choice, 90% of the time they're running the current Ubuntu LTS. No licensing issues or drama, very well put together and easy to hack into and excellent cloud provider support.
Right now I'm using CasaOS. It's not really an operative system but a front-end that aims to be a very user friendly NAS alike OS.
To be honest, I can't believe how much I fell in love with this "os" because it's super simple, intuitive and user friendly. In fact, thanks to this program I finally understood how docker images work.
So if someone new to self-hosting reads this comment, I do encourage you to check it out.
You should try Unraid it's paid but honnestly I was on casaos before and it changed my life
Gotta say, this was a fantastic video and I really appreciated the deep walk through on each option and why one might go with each of them. The fact that your choice wasn’t the choice you recommended for starting out, with an explanation of why, just really cemented your credibility. Glad I came across your channel and you’ve earned a subscriber!
I used xenserver for a long time. But since 2 or 3 years i use proxmox and i will stick with it now 😉
I like the ability to control it via API. I also made a small dashboard in node-red so i can check and boot my VMs from my phone or tablet with just a few buttons (just for playing in homelab)
Also planning to do a short introduction/tutorial on how i did this, but in german 😜
Oh super, das würde mich sehr interessieren
1) pick reliable high capacity storage/NAS prebuilt system, such as Synology, unlike TrueNAS you'll get proper file manager and intuitive users/shares management
2) grab some used PC, make sure to have decent SSDs for ZFS pools, pick Proxmox and start virtualizing, use mapped NFS share from Synology to quickly access installers
3) feel free to virtualize TrueNAS (Scale) in Proxmox, Truecharts are amazing, and with recent 2022.12 TrueNAS Scale release, it's finally possible to bulk-upgrade apps from the GUI
I'm currently running my homelab with 2 nodes proxmox cluster, such an amazing and powerful Virtualisation system with all things that I need. It runs containers, VM, and even a virtualized firewall. It runs smooth, no issues.
And for Nas, truenas scale is quite amazing too, great performances with ZFS, applications, external backup for my entire homelab
16:30-17:00 is 🔥🔥. The best tips on the video! Just found you last month, keep up the amazing content! Danke!
Thanks, I'm about to build a home sever and don't really need VM and this is the problem that's been running around in my head. Anyone who has built any IT system first time knows you'll end up rebuilding and rebuild as you learn the downside of you first choices. This video helped me a lot even though it's a year old now.
Glad it helped you :)
This is truly define my entire cases. From Linux then Proxmox, finally I end up using TrueNAS Scale. Just want a simple home storage server with additional task. After watch this video I know I do not make a wrong decision. Love this video. Thanks for sharing!
This is very timely and helpful as I am going to build my first home server this week. Thank you!
Hi Christian, good video.
Just a clarification: Hyper-v server it’s free, it is the hyper-v role on windows server standard or Datacenter which is not free because you must pay the standard or Datacenter edition of windows server.
The hyper-v capabilities are the same between all the editions, including the free one.
The difference between the free and the STD and Datacenter (aside the GUI, which is missing in the free edition, and the other Windows roles, not available in the free one) is only related to how many windows server VMs (named vOSEs) are licensed on a host: zero for the free edition, 2 for the standard, unlimited for the Datacenter.
Aside Proxmox, I do not have knowledge on it, if you must choose between the free esxi and the free hyper-v, this one in my opinion is the right one instead of esxi, because hyper-V gives to you all the features, including the virtual machine migration, hardware hot add, clustering support, and so.
The free esxi is really limited, as you said in the video, it gives you just the basic virtualization features. Nothing more.
Christian.. THANK YOU for always including Windows. The reality in the real world here in the USA is that many business and Industrial Control Systems are Windows based and experience with those is key to getting those jobs. THANK YOU!!
Thanks :)
Building my first home lab. Thanks for ending the argument, finally! Proxmox and TrueNAS for me!
Brilliant video.
The most important tip I understood from all that is to stop looking for alternatives and just dive in - I have stalled on my new home lab project for the last 8 months now simply because I was too afraid of using the wrong thing and having to do it all again.
Thank you so much 😊
I have a ProxMox server at home. I love how easy it is to set up custom containers for things such as my dyndns client, my Home Assistant, piHole, Gitea. And, I can still run virtualized Windows Server, different linux servers or Windows 10 and 11.
I REALLY like this video.
It's essentially everything I needed and had links for what it didn't include and it didn't take half an hour..
Glad you enjoyed :)
I agree with most of what you said and like you said the use case is always the key.
Personally I use
Proxmox on a china 4x 2.5Gb port for home assistant, 3CX, pihole and adguard (10 watt CPU running at 4%) on process on each cpu core.
unRaid for plex server (Nvidia p2000 for enc/transcoding) for just the ability to add another drive whenever the size (same or lower than parity) and ONLY spin up the drive needed to watch content (don't need the whole array to spin up) which it turn saves power when getting more and more drives because the library is expanding.
TrueNAS scale for the easy on use for docker and the use of zfs.
Just waiting for the another china 4x 2.5Gb port for opnsense box.
I love it to hear a fellow german talking about tech.
I personally just use proxmox at the moment
I run proxmox without a single VM, but everything in LXC's, so much more efficient. Regardless, it is an amazing OS.
Debian Linux and Ubuntu Server would also be my first recommendation for a beginner, although I use FreeBSD for all my stuff (which I think is even easier to learn).
Windows Server is also a good idea for starting a homelab, especially if you want to get a job as a sysadmin since almost all companies today use it.
how almost all companies use windows server wtf, 96% of the servers use linux, even microsoft itself haha
I use FreeBSD on the desktop and NAS at home myself. A lot of the sites I know of and the company I work for use Windows as their primary server OS, though Linux is around.
Microsoft put themselves out of this market the day they abandoned Windows Home Server.
TrueNAS will be the hands down winner by the end of 2023 as SCALE matures
Openmediavault is extremely stable and running continuously on my home server for 3+ years, I have made breaking changes maybe 3 time during initial setup, and once best configuration is achieved, never looked back.
Planning to upgrade the complete hardware but will keep the same OS.
I agree. OpenMediaVault has been excellent for me.
An in depth video on backup for Truenas Scale apps would be interesting and a great idea 💡 ☺
I have windows server 2022 using docker, jellyfin for win, gaming server for 7 days to die, hyper v runing fedora, pi hole etc.
Trust me its 10000x faster to setup than linux and has less issues! I have been runing 3 years 24/7 its great!
but linux is lighter and faster than windows server
@@dakbuhlmao1645 thats a myth its just the linux comunity is so toxic they will say linux is so much betterrrrr in everything.
I litteraly run windows servers and its exactly the same. It comes down to hardware and if you mean faster by some syntetic tests that you cannot see in real life than maybe yes you are right!
- Esxi's biggest issue is, that you need an additional storage server (iscsi etc).
- Trunas Scale feels still a bit beta to me and is pretty limited.
- Xcp-ng is basically dead anyway, i don't even know anyone who uses that.
- Proxmox with zfs/lvm and lxc containers is just brilliant, they even have an mainline kernel, actually 6.1. In my opinion there is simply nothing that can reach Proxmox.
Sure there are some missing gui features, like some zfs Management (manage datasets/adding cache/log/vdev) or zfs snapshots is a basic feature that's highly missing. But for that you have cli and zfs autosnap etc.
Proxmox allows mapping over mountpoints datasets or any folder directly to vm/container, which is insanely nice.
Basically just the gui is a bit limited, but you have all the possibilities over cli and there is nothing you can't realize.
Im a really big fan of Proxmox and love what the guys are doing there, especially Lamprecht is doing the most work, glad god he is such a motivated guy. Hopefully he never leaves Proxmox.
Maybe im sounding like a small fanboy, but i just love Proxmox, it ticks every wish you have.
I have a cluster of 4 Servers btw, 2 of them are at home, main and a small backup, 1 is at my mum and the last one is a dedicated server from hetzner. All connected over opnsense/wireguard.
Maybe one thing i would love is, better docker support, since docker and zfs, mhhh...
I have docker running in an lxc container, which works excellent, but it took initially a bit to find out the correct cgroup2 rights and module options for zfs etc.
This could be made easier, with an additional lxc option (like fuse etc).
But yeah, the gui is a bit limiting, however you have the cli!
Probably a good way to learn for some either.
Cheers
Just want to let you and the algo know that this is super valuable content. Thank you!
Proxmox Host NAS with SSDs and Backups. Works very well, and better performance than i expected.
I like unraid for a home server. It has the biggest community and support plus is the most flexible with putting drives in your array. Great on a budget when most people are using old drives of different sizes.
I have an ESXi server that's probably over a decade old at this point. I basically wanted one that could do anything, and there weren't many alternatives at the time. I've been using Freenas as a VM under it, but now I'm moving to mainly using TrueNAS Scale on its own server. I like it, but I don't understand what I'm doing most of the time, and find myself just changing different options and checking the logs for errors until I find a combination that works. Containers may be a better way of doing things, but they sure seem a lot more complicated than VM's. It should get easier once I learn what everything actually does.
Great video! Personnally I don't really like the idea of running systems that are administered using their own specific web interfaces like Proxmox/Truenas. I usually much prefer having a regular Ubuntu or Debian server as a bawe system which I can manage the way I want and host secondary systems with KVM / Virtmanager or Docker. To make it easier, Cockpit web interface with its zfs, vm, etc plugins makes it nearly as user friendly as proxmox or truenas for moderatelly simple use cases.
We have been running proxmox in our local home environments. So far so good.
For me, many years ago when I was in this boat, the solution was very very simple... Some flavor of Linux, so I put Ubuntu on my home server.
Ran that for quite some time, but got fed up with the rebuild times when major version upgrades happened, as it never upgraded correctly, forcing me to rebuild the server and its services each and every time. (This was in 2010)
So afterwards I was experienced enough, and I spent some time rebuilding it under Arch Linux and since then, it has just worked for me.
Of course it evolved further as the storage transitioned from mdadm RAID 6 to ZFS, but one thing was clear early on... Windows just couldn't cut it.
I've been very happy with XCP-ng on my server hardware. I found it advantageous to have a somewhat normal Linux hypervisor.
Thank you, exactly what I was looking for. I personally don't need Linux-level customizations (so it doesn't make sense for me.), simplicity is more of what I'm looking for. 😁 Again, thank you.
I'm going to be building a server this year with 128GB of ram and an intel xeon E5 2695 v3. My plan is to do FreeNAS scale (maybe vsphere if i'm feeling rich) as the host and then several VM's, both windows server and linux, to run all sortts of things from AD, DNS and DHCP, to maybe a couple of game server and a security camera system for my flat. This video proved interesting.
Can't wait for the next video ! I'm starting with some NAS stuffs but now Hypervisors make me excited to try since it sounds much more controlled and can build many stuffs on. Wait for the next video so I can feel more confident building my very first home server.
Excellent advice and explanations. I really enjoyed it. Thanks Christian !
Thanks! :)
Running a Proxmox cluster with 3 nodes. Main server is an HP ML350 Gen9, network box is a VMWare Edge 680 that's been converted to Proxmox, and third is a micro HP desktop. Most services are running in LXC's, except two. The router/firewall is a full VM and a second vm for Windows that has a GPU for streaming games.
Hi Christian, great video. My home server journey has culminated in me using two older Dell servers, both running Proxmox. One server (R720) is my "play" server but which also includes an Ubuntu server running my family's NextCloud services, a Windows 11 Pro VM as the household print server and another Ubuntu server VM running pihole. The "main" server (T620) runs a TRUENAS Scale VM to which is passed a HBA controller and attached drives using majority of RAM. The other VM, with a Quadro P2000 gpu passed through, runs an minimal Ubuntu desktop (handles nvidia drivers on install) running the family Plex Server.
Sounds like a lot of busy work.
It was initially but, now all done, very little maintenance.
thanks.. always fun to see your clips and ideas, can agree with you on this choice both with proxmox and truenas, looking forward to the next upload
Thank you for describing my own setup perfectly! :D Proxmox on my actual server with an Ubuntu VM and an rPi just running its own OS + docker
Great analysis Christian. Totally agree; at some point people should pick a solution and run with it. Constantly looking for something better just makes people dissatisfied with life!
BTW, I have an ESXi server, a Proxmox server I am about to swap out with a more powerful box, and a TrueNAS box I am about to use to replace my 5 year old Synology NAS. Plus I plan to set up either pfSense or OpnSense on another box. And then I plan to dive into setting up the software for it all.
Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like a good idea
I use QEMU/KVM and it doesn't disappoint. I feel like I have so much more control and i can load the Distro that i want on top of the hypervisor. Plus its a hybrid hypervisor in that it is technically type 2 but runs JUST like a type 1. I have had ZERO issues. Tons of different interfaces (CLI, Libvirt for desktop UI, and Cockpit for web UI) it's simple and yet powerful
Finally someone said the truth: there are too many choises and you have to try several, pick what you like and settle, run with that and master everything about it .
Thx! Good feedback :)
@@christianlempa Cheers :)
Clear, honest, informative and well articulated. Thank you.
I enjoy the videos, Christian, and this one confirmed my choice of Proxmox & TrueNAS Scale for my homelab. I use workstation class machines and I am about to do some hardware upgrades and reconfigurations now that I have "a plan". :-) Keep up the good work.
Thank you :) glad it helped!
I completely agree that at some point you should stop choosing and start using. It is not perfect. That's OK. Use what you made. Make something else. You can always return for more later.
I've been deploying TrueNAS systems (their official hardware) for small office clients. It's one of the most inexpensive ways to get safe local storage and replicate offsite to a cloud provider or zfs-send/recv to an offsite backup server. When needed I'll run a windows server VM on it and/or linux vm. It's a good, inexpensive alternative to getting a full server from dell/hp.
That is the best overview of so many versatile tools and solution. Thank you so much for you wonderful, hyper-Informative ;-) content.
I use OpenBSD pf for my router/firewall, TrueNAS Core for storage, Windows Server for Group Policy with an iSCSI connection to TrueNAS, CentOS and Windows 10 for desktops with a mix of Cisco and Edgemax PoE switches and VirtualBox for VM's. Soon going to be building a TrueNAS Scale box for Docker apps. It's quite the mix mash of hardware and software cobbled together over the years.
This is a great video, so far I've settled on Windows but this does present a great argument on alternative options
I've run Hyper-V for years. It's most likely a hypervisor with the smallest feature set, but it does everything I want, so I'm ok with it. The main reason I like it is that I can manage it PowerShell. The only other PowerShell-enabled hypervisor I know is VMware and I'm not going to run that.
But, since Microsoft is no longer releasing free Hyper-V hypervisors past the 2019, I'm most probably going to migrate to Proxmox once the support for Hyper-V 2019 ends. If Proxmox has an API I can use, I'll probably just create a PowerShell module to continue to manage VMs using PowerShell.
one thing I have learned by watching dumpster fires in motion is... DIY is always going to save you money... and after seeing someone cry over a $100k bill from Amazon for their cloud based solution it rings ever more loudly, self hosting and if you are a company co-location.
If you are a family, buy one of those IBM desktops with 6 SATA outputs and a few IO things and you will find it to be quite fruitful when you sit down with a pen and paper and decide what you want the server to be.
ALSO!!! second hand with brand new HDD and a SSD for a boot drive will in fact make you appreciate the results because... they will just work, this is my first linux box and it's an enjoyable learning experience.
I think it really comes down to the definition of full crazy. If your job is in IT or potentially in IT. I think it makes great sense to deploy several servers depending on if your field is more cyber security based/network based or more systems administrator/programming based or you're a dev ops guy. I personally have a bunch of proxmox VMs but i know you wont see proxmox in the wild so I would spin up esxi just to keep the vmware navigation skills sharp. At the end of the day our interests will be attracted to a certain aspect of IT and ultimately what we alliw for ourselves is subject to budget and availability.
But really this is just a really round about way to say the best way to do something is get all the things xD
I agree with the comment about Proxmox being less enterprise friendly than ESXi. I found Proxmox to be intimidating, but installing a desktop environment such as Mate right on the host machine itself made setting up VMs bit easier without the need to log in from another PC to do basic tasks and is more secure if you just want to allow logins from the "localhost" using the desktop environment.
I climbed onboard the SUSE-wagon with SuSE Linux 5.3 and never left. In 2007 I abandoned OS/2 and went all Linux and today I use openSUSE LEAP on desktop, server, laptop and Tumblewed on my phone - all bare metal - all but the phone is driven by level 1 CPUs.
Great vídeo as an introduction for setting home servers. Hypervisors Proxmox and NAS (Network Attached Storage)
Thanks!
I Love the Look & Feel of TrueNAS Scale. I can't get VMs working yet for some reason; I'll have to dig into your vids.
I haven't professionally set up servers in almost 2 decades, I loved using Win2k Server over Server 2k3.
I tried setting up Linux Servers but I was still a Uber N00b back then, Now Im an Old Uber-N00b
I like to have a bare one Linux distro like Debian with Cockpit, Cockpit-VM, Docker, Portainer and Cloudflared.
Rock-stable and easy to use
Hi Christian, from what I can tell you're running Proxmox and TrueNAS on separate bare metal machines. A year ago you've made a video "How to run TrueNAS on Proxmox?". Have you had any further experience with that since then?
I'm thinking of running such a setup myself (Proxmox bare metal and a TrueNAS VM), because I really like what Proxmox offers in terms of VM management, but I also want to manage a ~30 TiB+ NAS.
I've found that some people online advise against this specific setup, but not necessarily with any concrete arguments. Would love to hear your take on this if you had some further experience with actually running this kind of setup. Thanks
Would like to hear your feedback on this as well Christian
Very insightful. Thanks dude.
Glad it was helpful!
Moin, netter Überblick. Bringst eine Gute Energie rüber! Werde hier definitiv nochmal vorbeischauen ;) Gut, dass du das mit "Linux als OS" noch im Nachgang erklärt hast. Das hat dir glaube ich einige Kommentare erspart :D ;) weiter so! offtopic: auch respekt an dein flüssiges englisch. aber doch immer wieder erschreckend wie man es ab sekunde 1 raushört, wenn jemand aus germany kommt.
Vielen Dank für das Lob :) am Anfang haben mich die Linux fanboys Kommentare gestört, aber mittlerweile ist mir das egal XD Hauptsache euch gefällt der Content :)
@@christianlempa Ja, du sagst es. Kommentar Sections sind leider oft toxisch und können teilweise demotivieren. Deshalb hab ich extra mal was positives dagelassen für die Motivation ;) bleib dran und weiter so :)
@@marioauditore571 Vielen Dank, sowas motiviert mich immer ;) LG!
Katastrophe.. mein Englisch is for Run away 😲 bin persönlich ein großer Fan von VMware seit 10 Jahren aber nicht von den ihren Preisen ..
it´s always a charm to watch youre videos. Great explanations, easy for beginners advanced users. after 25 years (gandalf the grey bearded :) ) more or less the same stuff as you do (who is responsable for all that mess? you made this damn f*** GOOD videos? :) right, YOU are (in a good way manor) Proxmox Cluster (3 Node) Proxmox (1 Node), Unraid, TrueNas Scale, Kubernetes, Rancher, Portainer, HA, Sophos (phys.), OPNSense (phys) and a lot of APPS in all kinds. Keep going ... input, input input.... :)
I went down the home server rabbit hole a few years back and couldn't settle between Proxmox, TrueNAS, and Unraid so I have 3 Dell R710's running one of each OS . I went from testing them to just leaving them and using all 3. Unraid is kinda my main one since it handles everything that needs to stay on 24/7. Proxmox is for all my VM's and testing of OS's and updates. TrueNAS is my storage that has a Dell PowerVault MD1220 attached. Dell R210II is my pfSense firewall. I have a Dell R430 that I don't use for anything since I have no clue what to use it for. A small 1U for Guacamole server. I have all the iDRAC's setup but sometimes I just want to manage them from the rack itself so I use the Dell 1U monitor and the Dell 2U KVM. 10Gb NIC on all the servers with CAT 6A throughout the whole house.
Sounds like you need a small powerplant to run these bad boys.
a long time ago I used esxi , but after it began to be installed only on corporate hardware, I switched to kvm... thx for proxmox, looks amazing il try it
Windows 2016 Server Essentials, Thx for sharing...
After years of using ProxMox I wasted years trying other Open Source ( app solutions ) then a few months ago when I found out about TrueNas Scale, I stopped looking since they now have about 800 Apps to host! Plus the community is Big so there is Support for each other! so when in doubt just jump in a Discord to ask and people will help! But more than anything thanks to TH-camrs like you! we are able to follow tutorials on what we are trying to achieve :D So yes, ProxMox + TrueNas Scale =
Your channel is heaven to me.
Thank you so much :D
that is one solid german (i assume) accent, pleasant to listen to if i may say so.
I love Proxmox too. Its UI is much better than others.
Thanks for the discussion, demo and info, have a great day.
Yep, totally agree with everything you say in this video!
👍 :D
Looking forward to that tour!
Great content and presentation! Love your energy! Cheers!
Thanks so much!
Really useful info as ever. I hope you plan a lot more videos on getting labs setup for noobies getting into it.
Good video Christian! Thanks for sharing it with us!👍😎JP
TrueNas on Proxmox. Best of both worlds IMHO. With nesting you can have dedicated VMs or containers inside TrueNAS or like I do both and LXC containers as well as normal VMs all on one Proxmox server. A little complicated to configure, but once you do it, then it just works.
my home server for ssh and apache is running linux-mint but i am also using it as a media center for watching movies or emulators on the projector. and it has a direct connection to a synology NAS with 4 drives. for all my photos from my photography hobby. as you said there is no perfect solution. but this works amazingly well.
Great Video! Virtualization really is the key! For me, the free features that esxi offers are more than enough. The setback is due to the hardware, as it is not friendly with generic storage/network devices. I think Proxmox would be an excellent alternative for me, but I haven't tried it yet.
Thank you 🙏
Looking forward to you next video!
Very cool video Christian 👍 I am looking forward to your homelab tour video! I use different proxmox ve on bare metal and a proxmox backup server what is a perfect solution for all virtual machines! For file server I actually use an Ubuntu vm with NFS. I actually play with a Windows Server 2016 as CIFS file server because I love the static ntfs permission structure with AD-Groups! MA, be I built a AD-domain and join all my ubuntu-servers, then I can use different AD users for every server 😜 I am actually not happy with docker using volumes directly on my nfs or cifs shares (I mount the shares on the ubuntu-vm, where I run docker) because of the specific rights of some images. I tried Truenas too, but I prefer proxmox as hypervisor and I like running important services an dedicated hardware.