I’m still running a 6th-generation Intel CPU (i5-6600k) on my media server, with 64GB of RAM and a Quadro P1000 for the rare 1080p transcoding needs. Windows 10 is still my OS from when it was a gaming PC and I want to switch to Linux. I’m a casual user on my personal machine, as well as with OpenWRT on my network hardware.
Here are the few features I need:
- MergerFS with a RAID option for drive redundancy. I use multiple 12TB drives right now and have my media types separated between each. I’d like to have one pool that I can be flexible with space between each share.
- Docker for *arr/media downloaders/RSS feed reader/various FOSS tools and gizmos.
- I’d like to start working with Home Assistant. Installing with WSL hasn’t worked for me, so switching to Linux seems like the best option for this.
Guides like Perfect Media Server say that Proxmox is better than a traditional distro like Debian/Ubuntu, but I’m concerned about performance on my 6600k. Will LXCs and/or a VM for Docker push my CPU to its limits? Or should I do standard Debian or even OpenMediaVault?
I’m comfortable learning Proxmox and its intricacies, especially if I can move my Windows 10 install into a VM as a failsafe while building a storage pool with new drives.
I don’t know about your first need (“MergerFS”) but if you find useful, I have an old Intel NUC 6i3SYH (i3-6100U) with 16Gb RAM and I was running with Windows 10 for Plex+Arr and also HomeAssistant in VirtualBox. I was running into issues until I switched to Proxmox. Now I’m running Proxmox to run Docker with a bunch of containers (plex+arr and others) and also a virtual machine which has HomeAssistant and everything was smooth. I have to say that there is a learning curve, but it’s very stable.
Seconding this, I’m currently running Proxmox on 3 small NUC-type PCs (two Dell Optiplexes and a Topton from AliExpress). The Topton has a slower Celeron, the two Dells have a i5-6500 and i3-8100t and are both very snappy running a few different containers and VMs (including HomeAssistant).