I have a trusty UnRaid server that has been running great for almost 3 years now, with some kinks and headaches here and there, but mostly very stable. Now I’m entertaining the idea of setting that box up with ProxMox, and running UnRaid virtualized. The reason being that I want to use UnRaid exclusively as a NAS and then run all dockers and VMs on ProxMox (at least that’s how I’m picturing it). I would like to know your opinion on this idea. All I have is Nextcloud, Immich, Vaultwarden, Jellyfin, Calibre, Kavita and a Windows VM I use to update some hardware every now and then. I mainly want to do that for the backup capabilities in ProxMox for each instance. Storage is not a concern, and I have 64GB of ECC Ram running in that box. What are the Pros and Cons, or is it even worth it to move all this to ProxMox?
You’re thinking about this wrong way though. Why are trying to abstract the thing that keeps your disks working properly? What’s your gain here?
Oh, ok. Mainly 3 things:
- Manage all my containers and VMs over ProxMox instead of inside UnRaid directly, effectively leaving UnRaid to be just manage storage only.
- This, from my understanding, will in turn allow me to play with container options other than docker (docker is awesome, I know, but it also has limitations), effectively opening new roads of knowledge to me. UnRaid doesn’t even support Kubernetes or LXC.
- Easier VLAN management in the server side. I have to play with firewall permissions on my PFSense to allow some containers to talk to others. ProxMox, being VLAN aware, would allow me to eliminate those permissions from PFSense and just manage interconnectivity via ProxMox.
While I’m aware that I can even compose dockers in UnRaid if there’s no UnRaid docker template available, it’s not the most user friendly way for managing those containers, in my opinion.
Another reason is that I’m always trying to learn new things, and from my limited experience with ProxMox (I’ve only been playing with it for about a month or so on an old rig), ProxMox is incredibly easy and powerful when it comes to container and VM deployment. The management options seem to be infinite.
Your point is very solid, which is why I’m contemplating segregating UnRaid and ProxMox into 2 separate rigs as opposed to virtualizing UnRaid.
These are hard decisions. Keep just 1 rig and spend way more time and probably migraines configuring this, or just build a new rig for ProxMox and migrate all my containers and VMs to it, which is faster, but will come at a higher monetary price, including power consumption.
Just get a separate host for whatever the VM stuff you want. You won’t need to worry about messing anything related to storage up, AND you’ll be able to mess with all the networking stuff without impacting your NAS.
If you’re just trying to run some simple services, just get a $300 Ryzen minipc. Plenty powerful for what it sounds like you’re looking to do.
Yeah. I told my wife what I wanted to do, and she actually would rather have me spend the money than risk spending too much time if and when I break something. I’m thinking a minispc Ryzen 9 or a Ryzen 7 venus, set it up with a 4TB NVMe. That should do the trick. It’s a bit over 300 bucks, but will be a bit more future proof. 64GB DDR5, and fire it away.
