I just spent a good chunk of today migrating some services onto new docker containers in Proxmox LXCs.
As I was updating my network diagram, I was struck by just how many services, hosts, and LXCs I’m running, so counted everything up.
- 116 docker containers
- Running on 25 docker hosts
- 50 are the same on each docker host - Watchtower and Portainer agent
- 38 Proxmox LXCs (19 are docker hosts)
- 8 physical servers
- 7 VLANs
- 5 SSIDs
- 2 NASes
So, it got me wondering about the size of other people’s homelabs. What are your stats?
Do folks actually interact with all these services regularly?
In my case, yep. I believe in as much separation between services as possible, so each service essentially resides on its own docker host, whether physical or Linux container.
That said, some of my services are stacks of multiple containers. For example. my DNS service is a pair of Pi-hole DNS servers, each running their own Pi-hole container, but each one also running containers for Cloudflare tunnel and telemtry export to Prometheus.
Immich has a stack of 6 containers, Piped a stack of 5. So, out of the 66 containers (that aren’t Portainer agent or Watchtower), it probably condenses down to around half that number (eg. the 25 docker hosts I have, plus a handful or two others).
each service essentially resides on its own docker host, whether physical or Linux container.
This is the way. Multiple simple dedicated systems is so much easier to maintain than a single “do everything” server.
It’s what docker and Proxmox were born to do!