Background

Hello fellow self-hosters and homelabbers, A few weeks ago I was able to fill my new NAS with the proper hardware I needed to expand on my earlier setup.
Due to the new capabilities I also wanted a fresh restart. But the more I think about doing one thing, the more I hit other road blocks amd think about doing Y.
So I wanted to ask how you would solve my goal.

My current (main) setup:

  • Hardware: 11th Gen i5 Nuc with a 8TB HDD attached via USB
  • OS: Debian 11
  • Software: OMV6 for management and Docker for a diverse set of containers
  • Current containers: HortusFox + MongoDB, *arrs-stack, Jellyfin, uptime kuma, unifi network application + mariaDB, traefik, wallos

Current available hardware for use:

1x 13th gen i3 NUC running Proxmox 8.2
1x 11th gen i5 NUC
1x uGreen DXP4800+ NAS with 4x15TB HDDs in Raidz2. The OS is TrueNAS scale

My plans:

  • NAS storage made accessible via NFS to the proxmox VE.
  • NAS storage mainly planned as mass-storage for Jellyfin.
  • Reimage my 11th gen NUC with a bare-metal Debian install for Docker.
    (I will not virtualize on the 11th Gen NUC because I can’t pass the iGPU to the VM and not really interested in LXC containers)

Problems and questions I have at this moment:

1: Should I do a media-storage VM only utilized for serving media and do the computing on another VM or do a general VM for both?

  • Upside to an all-in-one VM: Less problems with serving storage between many different nodes and keeping it organized.
    Upside to specialized VMs (storage & compute VM): Better focus on ressources like CPU and RAM.
    2: Should I place my whole docker stack again on the 11th Gen NUC or place the stacks in their own VM(s)? Example:
    service stack in service-focused VM
    media-focused stack in media VM (which also serves the files for jellyfin)
    Jellyfin bare-metal/dockerized on NUC 11th Gen

I hope someone can maybe help me untangle my grown mess and plans. My skills with Linux are not very deep and very beginner level. If you are willing to help please be patient with stupid questions.

If you have any better solutions, pointers to research, (blog) articles on architecting such solutions, examples how you solved storage/management or just willing to help me, I’d be very grateful :)

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I have one VM for running Docker stuff (i.e. the arr stack, jellyfin, etc.). Unless your hypervisor supports docker containers natively, separating them is just going to make it more difficult for you for no good reason.

    I don’t run anything else in Docker right now, but if I did, I’d probably stick it in the same VM for now to save on overhead. If it was enough to be its own stack, I’d separate it.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      You mean I should plug my stack directly into LXC containers in proxmox?
      What are my benefits over running docker stack in a media-storage VM which I will spin up regardless?

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I don’t think Proxmox LXC containers support Docker well, if at all, so no.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I didnt mean that literally ;)
          You said I should abandon the docker platform in favor of utilizing the LXC container world? Can’t you use Docker inside a LXC container? But that sounds like more work vs a proper VM