Proxmox Server

Introduction

This is the server that will sit under my desk until I move house. It has the hostname Pear.

Create Virtual Machine from a template

it is possible to create a new VM based on a fixed template. The two possibilities are a full clone or a linked clone. the linked clone is the preferred as it should need less storage but the full clone would be completely independent of the template so it will use more storage and take longer to create.We can go down that rabbit hole when we look ant Ansible in a big way. For now just understand that we can call a new vm using the qm clone command. the will be more details to follow.

Proxmox

Hardware Specification

The Main components were purchased in 2024 as follows

The Cpu is AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Processor (16Cores/32Threads, 105W TDP, Socket AM4, 72MB Cache, Up to 4.9 GHz Max Boost, no cooler) £369.98

The cooler is Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans (Brown) £99.95

Mainboard is Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE Motherboard - Supports AMD Ryzen 5000 Series AM4 CPUs, 5+3 Phases Pure Digital VRM, up to 4733MHz DDR4 (OC), 2xPCIe 3.0 M.2, GbE LAN, USB 3.2 Gen1 £103.48

128gb Ram is configured as two sets of CORSAIR VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 64GB (2x32GB) 3200MHz CL16-20-20-38 1.35V (CMK64GX4M2E3200C16) £112.20 for one set

Power supply is Corsair RM750x 80 Plus Gold Fully Modular ATX 750 Watt Power Supply £109.00

The case is Fractal Design Node 804 - Black - Compact Computer Case - mATX - High Airflow - Modular interior - 3x Fractal Design Silent R2 120mm Fans Included - Water-cooling ready - USB 3.0 -Window Side Panel £99.95

SSD is Crucial P3 Plus SSD 4TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 Internal SSD, Up to 4800MB/s, Laptop & Desktop (PC) Compatible, Solid State Drive - CT4000P3PSSD801 £189.99 and £159.99

Three 16 TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives make up the hard disk storage.

Configuration

Access

The IP Address and port of the host is 192.168.0.110:8006. I have my virgin media router forwarding all incoming traffic to 192.168.0.125 so it will go directly to the Pfsense firewall. All of the terminals can also send traffic to the WAN port of Pfsense. Edit with the change to Vodaphone the network address changed to 192.168.1.0/24 so Proxmox console is now 192.168.1.111:8006 and the WAN port of Pfsense is 192.168.1.125

Storage

The main storage is the three 16TB hard drives configure into ZFS z1 so that they have one redundant disk. As one disk is redundant, obviously, it has 32TB of storage available.

I couldn't get PCI passthrough to work reliably without significant effort and some expense so I set up ZFS on Proxmox itself or more precisely on the Debian Linux that Proxmox resides on. Unfortunately, that means that I have to do any config on the CLI. I may write some scripts to perform some of the admin tasks or more likely setup a Nginx container to automate as much of it as possible.