leolion | 3 tháng trước | 4 min read

Building a Home Server with Proxmox

I’m running a few personal websites for writing and doing random research related to SEO, or running AI models to experiment with new open source applications mainly for learning Từ khóa: proxmox, docker, solar.

I’m running a few personal websites for writing, researching miscellaneous things related to SEO, or running AI models to test new open source applications mainly for learning and research purposes. The monthly cost of renting a VPS isn’t that high, but if you add it up, it still feels wasteful because I almost never use up even the minimum hardware capacity. Thinking about it, I’ve also got a spare PC at home, so what if I turned it into a VPS?

Why I want to build a home server

Right now I mostly use a laptop, so I only turn on the PC a few times a month. I’ve calculated the cost of running the PC 24/7 by plugging in a device to measure its power consumption and also limiting the hardware to see if I can increase or decrease the actual power usage based on operating needs. I found that virtualizing the hardware and configuring limits for CPU, RAM, and GPU usage can significantly reduce wattage while running. On top of that, I’m already using solar power and paying for two internet lines, so it’s pretty ideal to turn my home into a server.

Okay, so now let’s get started building a cloud server/web server at home. What’s the most optimal approach? Consider this a hands-on exercise for me to learn about networking and computer hardware.

Project goals

How to make full use of the hardware power of the machine running the server
Be able to independently control the services running on this server, avoiding a single service overloading the entire server system
How to safely move data and maintain the servers with zero downtime
Back up and restore the server easily, and quickly recover the operating system when a system-wide error occurs

With these goals in mind, at first I tried installing Linux, a fake Synology, etc. However, the problem was always uncontrolled resource usage, so sometimes even when nothing was being used, the machine was still running at full capacity.

Of course, there’s still the option of setting limits on each container, but it’s hard to scale up when needed.

Option to limit hardware resources in Docker Compose

Add the following limits into the stack when deploying a container to set hardware limitsservice:mem_limit: 512mmem_reservation: 128Mcpus: 1

The final solution I arrived at was to choose a virtualization platform that emulates different operating systems on a single piece of hardware. This makes it easy to replace and expand hardware without causing downtime.

Learn more about hardware virtualization options

Introduction to Proxmox

Proxmox is an open-source platform that integrates virtualization and container management tools, designed to provide a comprehensive solution for managing complex IT environments. Developed by Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, Proxmox supports KVM and LXC virtualization, allowing users to run virtual machines and containers on the same platform. With an intuitive web interface and many powerful features such as clustering, high availability, and backup, Proxmox helps optimize resources and simplify system management workflows. This tool is particularly suitable for businesses and organizations that need a powerful and flexible virtualization solution, with low cost thanks to its open-source nature.