The Approximately Monthly Zoomer
Proxmox is not that hard
2023-02-12
As it turns out, having a single server run a host (no pun intended) of different things on the same operating system can lead to some weirdness. Having some form of separation between the processes can be helpful - many choose containers and virtual machines and so did I.
Proxmox
For me, the decision to install proxmox came about when I realized, that I experimented less and less on my server for fear of breaking something and causing downtime to the services I want to be locally available all the time. Being able to experiment inside a VM and restore it from a backup or throw it away should the need arise has definitely had a very positive impact on my peace of mind.
With regular snapshots of my minecraft server, I don’t have to worry about my so-called friend playing a practical joke on my meticulously constructed mob grinder.
By using proxmox’s potent klickibunti for managing drives, I was able
to combine all the old vintage SSDs lying around my
house into a single ZFS pool for the less important stuff on my server.
While proxmox does have a nice way of viewing S.M.A.R.T. data and
creating snapshots and backups of VMs, I’d rather not put my precious
minecraft world saves that pool specifically.
One of the programs running on my server leaks RAM. Even though I love going through other people’s spaghetti and fixing RAM leaks, periodically restarting the program’s container seems to be a more pragmatic solution. And with proxmox I can even see its RAM usage over time.
Even if you don’t feel like using any kind of orchestration tool for your containers or config management for your VMs (yet), proxmox is a powerful tool. New VMs and Containers can be set up very easily, the snapshot and backup system is very versatile, and if you’re ready to spend some money you can use its HA tools to migrate VMs to a different node while they’re running. Installing it is as easy as it is to install debian, if not easier. 10/10 would recommend.