Five amazing things you can do with Proxmox

Five amazing things you can do with Proxmox

Proxmox is usually considered the definitive working system for home-lab operations, and for good cause. Whether or not you’re planning to construct a devoted house lab or simply studying the fundamentals of DevOps, Proxmox lives as much as its popularity with its easy but feature-laden UI, KVM+LXC help, ZFS file system, and a great deal of different helpful services.




Nevertheless, Proxmox has loads of purposes in addition to testing out new working techniques, and listed here are a few enjoyable issues you are able to do with the virtualization platform.

5: Construct a container paradise

That includes a devoted container for each attainable house lab activity



In contrast to digital machines, containers are much less resource-intensive in your host machine. As such, you may simply whip up a number of containers within the common house lab with out taking too many hits to the efficiency.



Whereas most freshmen will not be conversant in LXC containers, they’re surprisingly environment-friendly at working regular containerization duties. For instance, you may simply configure Plex, Nginx, Navidrome, Pi-Gap, Radarr, Guacamole, Wireguard, and a handful of different providers on Proxmox. And that’s earlier than you embrace nesting Docker containers inside their LXC counterparts.

Why construct a separate NAS when you may flip your own home server into one?

Probably the greatest features of Proxmox is how straightforward it's to deploy digital machines and interface further peripherals like storage drives to them. The truth is, there are a number of methods you should use your Proxmox server as a NAS hub.



As an illustration, you may deploy a Debian/Ubuntu VM and arrange SMB shares on the OS after allocating some further drive house to it. Subsequent, you may set up CasaOS or Nextcloud to show the essential NAS into an easy-to-access private cloud. When you’re into self-hosting TV exhibits and films, you may select between Kodi, Plex, Jellyfin, and a handful of different providers to scratch that media streaming itch.



Alternatively, those that desire devoted NAS working techniques can go the TrueNAS Core/Scale route. Certain, it could be a bit of overkill; however, a minimum of you’ll get strong app help on your Proxmox-powered NAS.

3: Make Dwelling Automation straightforward

Dwelling Assistant for the win!

When you’re the proud proprietor of a battalion of sensible devices and IoT merchandise, you could be conversant in how tedious it's to handle every gadget individually. Fortunately, working techniques like Home Assistant could make automating your sensible house a breeze with their add-ons and scripting instruments.

The most effective half? You don’t must relegate a whole gadget to Dwelling Assistant as you put in it on high of a Proxmox VM on your own home server!

2: Construct a Hackintosh

Regardless of sounding complicated, it is fairly straightforward to arrange



Hackintosh was the very first project I attempted out once I put together my Proxmox house lab—and let me let you know, the outcomes have been mind-blowing. That’s as a result of I ran macOS on a Ryzen processor and an Nvidia GPU; those are just about the worst mixture for a Hackintosh. To place that into perspective, I’d beforehand used the identical system to put in macOS through a number of strategies, together with instantly on high of the {hardware}, and the process had failed miserably each single time.



Proxmox, then again, was in a position to run macOS on my outdated system. Emboldened by this success, I even ran some common macOS applications on a more powerful Proxmox server, and I’m completely happy to report that over half of those purposes labored with none points. What’s extra, the Hackintosh setup process is pretty easy, as all it's important to do is run a script within the shell and look forward to Proxmox to arrange Apple’s flagship desktop working system on your own home lab.

1: Create a gaming server

An actual ache to configure, however, it's worth all the hassle



As ridiculous as it could sound, it’s attainable to run most fashionable video games inside a Proxmox VM and count on excessive body charges with none of the efficiency points anticipated from gaming on a digital machine. In fact, the method is nowhere near easy, as it's important to embark on a tedious journey to enable GPU passthrough, which might take a variety of trial and error. After that, you’ll must subject your self to the ache of fine-tuning a Windows 11 VM to stream your video games to different gadgets on your own home community.




However, when you have the grit to see this venture through to the top, you’ll be rewarded with a robust Proxmox digital machine that’s as spectacular for gaming as it's for on a regular basis house lab duties!

What’s your favourite Proxmox venture?

With Proxmox’s unbelievable virtualization prowess, there’s much more you are able to do in addition to these 5 initiatives. For instance, you may set up Pterodactyl on a separate Debian digital machine and use it to run Minecraft, Workforce Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike: 

International Offensive servers inside your own home lab. When you’re keen on taking part in with obscure Linux distros, you should use your Proxmox machine to run all of your favourite working techniques—on the identical time, I'd add. Whereas it’s all the time higher to run OpenWRT on a separate system, you may nonetheless arrange the OS inside a Proxmox digital machine and use it to calibrate firewall guidelines to maintain your own home secure from cybersecurity threats.