I won’t lie and say it was Proxmox when I built my first home server. It was Ubuntu Server, which I had extensive history and experience using. I eventually ended up in Proxmox, but the journey here could have been skipped entirely if I had started from scratch with a Linux-based hypervisor. I recently rebuilt my home lab from scratch and Proxmox was front and center, creating a home-based data center.
Proxmox offers the best of both worlds
Great for self-hosting and data storage
Before trying Proxmox I would always look at the server and network attached storage (NAS) as two completely separate elements. They only shared internals because the software they ran and the tasks they handled were very different. Not so with Proxmox. It may be a hypervisor, but it allows the platform to be used for almost anything in a home lab. Need a NAS? Proxmox can handle this. Self-hosting? This too. this a lot versatile.
But even if you choose not to use Proxmox for everything, it’s now the default OS for my servers. TrueNAS happily eliminates the 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 any other flavor of Unix allows for some powerful servers to be built. With Docker containers, it’s easier to go from nothing to a bustling home lab.
Cracks may begin to appear here. For example, when I first started one of my home-based servers with Ubuntu Server, there wasn’t really a way to remotely manage it with a functional web UI. I couldn’t just load the URL in the browser on any device connected to the network. SSH serves perfectly, but sometimes I don’t want to work on login or run long commands on the touch screen. I wanted something a little easier to use.
Even if you’re an absolute Linux beginner and want to move away from using prebuilt NAS enclosures or add a slightly more capable system, Proxmox is still the way to go.
It’s surprisingly easy to learn and use
You will go from zero to hero in no time
Proxmox is nowhere near as scary as it seems at first. Of course, the installation process may not be as elegant as Windows, macOS, or even Synology’s DSM, but it doesn’t need to be. This will be the only time you see it with a single home server. I’ve only had to reinstall Proxmox once, and that’s because I did something indeed fool That’s the beauty of Proxmox. It is the base system for other OS installations and software.
If you want to learn more about Linux and virtualization, integrate self-hosted services, access cool technology like Pi-hole, and experiment a bit yourself, Proxmox is one of the best solutions. I currently have a cluster of three nodes. Two of these are almost identical business class desktop systems Intel Core i5-7400 CPU and the third one is Minisforum U850 with Core i5-10210U.
These aren’t powerful systems by any means, especially considering I’m trying to run my entire home lab on a single server with a 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper, but they’re also incredibly friendly to my renewable energy installation and monthly utility bills. I can run everything – and by everything, I mean a NAS that stores all the services and all the data – all for north of $1 a day. That’s about $37 a month and $450 a year.
It’s All About Savings (No, Seriously)
Compare that to the cheapest Netflix subscription, which starts at $9 a month. This service costs more than $100 per year. You’ve got plenty of streaming services up and running, not to mention cloud storage and maybe even Microsoft Office. All of this adds up and probably exceeds what I paid for a fully loaded NAS and three Proxmox nodes running my entire home lab and smart home.
If you want to maximize savings, this can be achieved by using a single pre-built NAS or a custom build with an OS that supports containers. Another way is to use Proxmox to run TrueNAS or other NAS software in isolation with all your services. That’s the beauty of Proxmox and the wider home lab… it’s very flexible and adaptable to personal requirements. It’s a pleasure to launch Home Assistant and automate everything.
I should have started with Proxmox from day one
Does it all (and more)
Proxmox is not the easiest operating system to interact withnor is it the best Linux distro for beginners. In fact, it will probably encourage you to delve deeper into these topics. Things like hardware switching, storage pools, backups, and clustering can still get complicated and still break me to this day. Running local LLMs is great if you can align all the stars; otherwise, you’re in for a world of pain. The difference is that Proxmox gives you a better foundation for solving them.
I’d probably run into the same or different issues with another platform, and the web UI included in Proxmox makes everything easy to manage. If I want to test a new service, I can create an isolated environment, experiment with it, and delete everything if it doesn’t work. Snapshots and backups also make it a lot easier to restore when an update, configuration change, or suspicious overnight idea goes wrong. Honestly, snapshots are so good that I stick with them for migrations.
I no longer have to decide whether a server will be dedicated to storage, smart home management, media streaming or general self-hosting before I install another OS. I know what to use as the main glue to hold everything together. Proxmox allows you to perform multiple roles simultaneously while keeping each workload reasonably organized and isolated.
But it wasn’t a mistake to start with Ubuntu Server. Had I used Proxmox before, I would have gotten the same Linux experience without limiting the entire server to a single operating system. After rebuilding everything from scratch, Proxmox became part of my home lab, at least I thought, and it can be hard to see that as the end goal. Whether you’re starting with a legacy desktop or planning a multi-node cluster, this is the OS I wish I had chosen from the start.
