When I set up my first home server, I won’t lie and say it was Proxmox. It was Ubuntu Server, something I had extensive history and experience in. I eventually ended up on Proxmox, but the journey here could have been skipped entirely if I had started with the Linux-based hypervisor from the beginning. I recently rebuilt my home lab from the ground up and Proxmox was front and center, creating the best data center in the home.
Proxmox offers the best of both worlds
It’s great for self-hosting and data storage.
Before trying Proxmox, I always saw a server and network attached storage (NAS) as two completely separate elements. They only shared internal parts, as the software running on them and the tasks handled were very different. That is not the case with Proxmox. It may be a hypervisor, but it allows you to use the platform for almost everything within the home lab. Do you need a NAS? Proxmox can handle it. Self-hosting? That too. Is very versatile.
But even if you choose not to use Proxmox for everything, it’s now the default OS for my servers. TrueNAS happily enjoys countless terabytes of storage available across the network, but it’s Proxmox that brings it all together with self-hosted applications. Using Debian, Ubuntu Server, FreeBSD or some other version of Unix allows you to create some powerful servers. It’s much easier to go from nothing to a bustling home lab with Docker containers.
That’s where cracks can start to appear. For example, when I first booted up one of my home servers with Ubuntu Server, there wasn’t really a way to manage it remotely with a functional web UI. I couldn’t simply load a URL into the browser of any device connected to the network. SSH is perfectly useful, but sometimes I don’t want to work on access or bother running long commands on a touch screen. I wanted something a little easier to use.
Even if you’re an absolute Linux beginner and want to move away from pre-built NAS enclosures or want to supplement one with a slightly more capable system, Proxmox is still the way to go.
It’s surprisingly easy to learn and use.
You’ll go from zero to hero in no time
Proxmox is not as daunting as it may initially seem. Sure, the installation process may not be as refined as Windows, macOS, or even Synology’s DSM, but it doesn’t need to be. This will be the only time you’ll see it with a single home server. I only had to reinstall Proxmox once and that’s because I did something In fact dumb. That’s the beauty of Proxmox. It is an underlying system on which other operating system and software installations can run.
If you are in the camp of wanting to learn more about Linux and virtualization, want to consolidate self-hosted services, want to get into some interesting technology like Pi-hole and feel like experimenting a little, Proxmox is one of the best solutions. I currently have a cluster of three nodes. Two of these are almost identical. enterprise class desktop systems with an Intel Core i5-7400 CPU, and the third is a Minisforum U850 with a Core i5-10210U.
These are not powerful systems by any means, especially since I tried to run my entire home lab on a single server with a 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper, but they are also incredibly friendly to my renewable energy installation and my monthly utility bill. I can have everything running, and by everything, I mean all the services and a NAS that stores all the data, all for just over $1 a day. That’s about $37 per month and $450 per year.
It’s about saving (no, seriously)
Compare that to a Netflix subscription, the cheapest starting at $9 per month. This service costs more than $100 each year. There’s a good chance you have several streaming services running, not to mention cloud storage and maybe even Microsoft Office. All of this adds up to and probably exceeds the amount I’m paying for a fully featured NAS and three Proxmox nodes running my entire home lab and smart home.
If you want to maximize savings, this could be achieved by using a single pre-built NAS or a custom build with an operating system that supports containers. Another way is to use Proxmox to run TrueNAS or some other NAS software in an isolated instance along with all its services. That’s the beauty of Proxmox and the wider home lab… it’s very flexible and can be tailored to personal requirements. Being able to start Home Assistant and automate everything is a pleasure.
I should have started Proxmox from day one.
Does it all (and much more)
Proxmox is not the easiest operating system to interact withnor is it the best Linux distribution for beginners. In fact, it will probably encourage you to delve even deeper into those topics. Things like hardware transfer, storage pools, backups, and clustering can still get complicated and still trip me up to this day. Running local LLMs is brilliant if you can get all the stars to align; Otherwise, you’re in for a world of pain. The difference is that Proxmox gives you a much better foundation to address them.
You would probably encounter the same or other issues with another platform, and the web UI included with Proxmox makes it easy to manage everything. If I want to try a new service, I can create an isolated environment, experiment with it, and remove it completely if it doesn’t work. Snapshots and backups also make it much easier to recover when a late-night update, configuration change, or questionable idea goes wrong. Honestly, the snapshots are so good that I’m sticking with them for migration too.
I no longer have to decide whether a server will be dedicated to storage, smart home management, media streaming, or general self-hosting before installing an operating system. I know what I’m going to use as a base glue to hold everything together. Proxmox allows hardware to take on multiple roles at once, keeping each workload reasonably organized and isolated.
But starting with Ubuntu Server was not a mistake. If you had used Proxmox before, you would have gotten the same experience with Linux without limiting the entire server to a single operating system. After rebuilding everything from scratch, Proxmox has become the part of my home lab that I think about the least, and it can be hard to see that as the end goal. Whether you’re starting with an old desktop or planning a multi-node cluster, what you wish you had chosen from the beginning is the operating system configuration.
