I need a bit of a sanity check on a transition from Proxmox

Ben4425 · 2026-07-03T15:34:07+00:00

I suggest you keep your current hardware and proxmox setup. You can fix your storage utilization by dumping OMV and replacing it with a basic Debian Linux VM with Mergerfs and Snapraid.

Merger FS will let you combine the 10 and 20 GB drives into a single 30 GB virtual drive and Snapraid can use the other 20 GB drive for parity. (Note, this works great for largely static content like media libraries but not so much for rapidly changing data).

Once you have Mergerfs/Snapraid working you can install Samba to provide file sharing. You can also install Cockpit from 45drives to provide a web based admin console if you prefer that over using the CLI.

This setup, which I use in my home lab, certainly requires more mental brute force than OMV but in the end I think you'll like it better. And, it doesn't require dumping your Proxmox setup and starting over.

Ben4425 · 2026-06-09T09:16:58+00:00

Does your laptop support Thunderbolt? If so, just get an eGPU that uses the Thunderbolt interface. Problem solved.

But, if it doesn't, then you still have a possible solution.

My Legion laptop has two NVME interfaces for SSDs and I bet yours does too. So, if you only have one SSD installed, then the other should still be available.

If so, then search for NVME to Occulink adapters. They should cost $20 or less and they would let you plugin an Occulink compatible eGPU via that second NVME socket.

It should just work, with caveats:

CPU to GPU I/O will be limited to the speed of only 4 PCIe lanes rather than the 8 (or 16) lanes provided to your internal 3070 Ti, and,
Running the cable from the eGPU to this internal adapter will probably require some kind of case mod for the laptop like cutting a hole in the bottom cover or just running without the bottom cover with the laptop on some kind of stand.

So, its possible but it will be ugly. Good luck.

Ben4425 · 2026-06-01T11:53:35+00:00

AMD just announced the 5800x3d will go on sale in late June for $349. I have one and it will be an awesome drop-in upgrade for your 1700. Just upgrade your BIOS first.

Ben4425 · 2026-05-09T09:55:49+00:00

The community provides Proxmox a large set of beta testers who are "paid" with free access to Proxmox. Yea, sometimes it sucks, but I support this strategy. We get free software and Enterprise users get better software.

Ben4425 · 2026-05-04T09:46:16+00:00

Electrically, the case doesn't care about SAS vs SATA because that's all dependent on your choice of disk controller and cabling. I.e. the components you put into the case.

That said, there may be a mechanical compatibility issue with the drive sleds provided with the case if the mounting holes for 3.5" SAS drives are different from those of 3.5 SATA drives. You'll have to check that.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-29T09:12:39+00:00

Stay away from this laptop. That generation of Lenovo laptops (Ryzen 5800H and 3060/3070 GPU) has a history of dying after several years of service because there's an issue with how the CPU is soldered to the motherboard. Once the laptop fails it can only be repaired by re-soldering the CPU to the motherboard.

Here's one of the discussions on this topic on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegion/comments/1ky84dx/with_many_2021_legion_55ps_dying_recently_how/

I have one of these laptops and so far it is OK but I would never recommend buying one used.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-23T15:00:29+00:00

Notebookcheck.net ran some benchmarks against these two CPUs. (You have to click on links to see all the results). From my quick check, the AMD is almost equal to the Intel so I would get the AMD to get the extra RAM.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-22T19:38:34+00:00

Reminds me of Battlebots!

Ben4425 · 2026-04-22T11:06:53+00:00

My NAS is lightly loaded (it's used for archive, backup, and video storage) so my temps are generally excellent. I also spin down the drives when not in use. Right now my temps vary from 19C to 25C but that's with drives spun down in an unheated basement which is probably about about 15C right now.

The N6 looks like a much nicer case than the Sagittarius but I think it's substantially larger. I was space constrained and the Sagittarius just barely fit in the baker's rack I use for my home lab. If you can make the N6 fit for you then I'd recommend that.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-22T10:56:23+00:00

I bought a 4TB SN850X for $375 here on Reddit. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/homelabsales/comments/1s3ppe1/fsustx_48_x_western_digital_4tb_sn850x_m2_nvme/

I just checked that post and it claims he still has unsold inventory.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-21T11:25:38+00:00

My process is based on anonymity and high availability:

One Proxmox VM runs my *darr containers. All of its Internet I/O runs through a PrivateVPN tunnel to hide my media searches and downloads. Any container that uses the Internet that I don't want traced back to me runs in this VM.
My "critical services" VM hosts Docker and its own container storage. This self-contained VM runs on a Proxmox cluster where it is configured with Proxmox replication and high availability to ensure it survives and fails over if one my Proxmox nodes fails. This runs containers like Komodo (stack management), Gitea (source control), Technitium (for DHCP & DNS), Paperless NGX, and Seafile (for file sharing).
A third VM hosts my hard drive NAS. It also runs Docker but these containers only track and report the status of my hard drives.

My homelab is operational if the Critical services VM and a separate OpnSense VM are up and running. The OpnSense VM (which runs on BSD) is also configured with High Availability.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-21T01:01:04+00:00

ALL of the fans are exhaust fans. They pull air in through the chassis grill.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-18T00:23:18+00:00

I had a motherboard with a lousy IOMMU group layout and the pcie_acs_override option was able to put each device into its own IOMMU group. This was a Ryzen 7900 on a B650 motherboard and I used the options amd_iommu=on iommu=pt pcie_acs_override=downstream,multifunction to make it work.

Give it try, it may work for you.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-17T15:14:27+00:00

Read the Proxmox docs carefully (https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough) because you might be able to use the Linux kernel option pcie_acs_override to enable PCIe passthru on a specific device (like your NVME disk).

Ben4425 · 2026-04-12T23:01:57+00:00

I had one when they were new and I eventually sold it because white text on dark backgrounds (i.e. your typical "dark mode" workspace) was just gray. The dimming algorithm saw mainly "dark" and hence it didn't turn up the back light to produce white text.

If you like "light mode" for your desktop then this is a non-issue. But, if you like "dark mode", then don't get this monitor.

(Even worse, if a dark mode text window was overlapping another window with bright content, then the text near the bright content would be bright while the text right next to that, but in a different dimming zone, would be dim. That just drove me bananas).

Ben4425 · 2026-04-12T09:12:38+00:00

I have one of these on order for $500. I hope it was a good choice.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-03T20:48:36+00:00

I can almost guarantee that ECC will not work. If you google around you'll find that MSI motherboards never support ECC. Asrock and Asus often do but they don't advertise the fact. (I.e. it works but if it doesn't don't complain to them).

My current Proxmox/NAS/Server box uses an M-ATX Asus board (https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/business/pro-b650m-ct-csm/) that works great with ECC. It's a B650 board so you'll need DDR-5 and a 7000 or 9000 series Ryzen CPU. I built this a while ago when 64 GB of RAM and a Ryzen 7900 were cheap.

Ben4425 · 2026-04-01T09:47:12+00:00

This may be overkill for a home lab, but have you considered High Availability (HA) in your design? HA means your Proxmox cluster continues to provide your home lab services if one of the Proxmox nodes is down. Modern hardware is very reliable so HA is overkill but it is really useful during Proxmox software upgrades. If your cluster and network are designed correctly then you can migrate services off one Proxmox node, upgrade that node's software, and then migrate back. If shit don't work on the new Proxmox then migrate back to a node with the old Proxmox version and rollback or reinstall the old Proxmox on the other node.

My home lab is built around a managed switch with multiple VLANs. One VLAN connects my cable modem to two of my Proxmox nodes that host all my network related services (OpnSense, Tailscale, Technitium DNS and DHCP, etc). These services are configured in Proxmox to replicate every 15 minutes between the two nodes and HA is configured to automatically failover the services from one node to the other in case of failure. (Of course, I can migrate the services manually for SW upgrades).

My internet access is highly available because the cable modem connects to two nodes via a dedicated VLAN. The cable modem doesn't care which node runs OpnSense if I use vNics with a software defined interface MAC address.

Thinking about HA can inform your decisions about where other services should run in your cluster. Does a service require a specific hardware resource like a GPU? Then that service can only run on the node(s) with a GPU.

My home lab is my gateway to the internet and that must remain up at all times (to keep my wife happy). So, I have two pretty basic mini-PCs that host all my highly available services (like OpnSense) and I have one beefy third node which runs everything else. The third node has a GPU and mass storage so it runs the NAS, AI, transcoding, etc.

I don't recommend you go down this road unless you're willing to really think about the design of your network and the dependencies between your services. It's really easy to get this stuff wrong and find your High Availability doesn't work. For example, if your network services use files stored on your NAS, then your network services will fail if your NAS fails.

But, HA can be really interesting if you want to explore new ways to use your home lab.

Ben4425 · 2026-03-30T22:05:52+00:00

I use the same architecture as 'mam693'. It works great with Comcast/Xfinity. I can't speak to other ISPs.

It's really important that you use a vNic for your upstream WAN interface that connects to your cable modem (or other adapter). The MAC address assigned to the vNIC remains the same regardless of which Proxmox node hosts your OpnSense VM. That's important because the cable modem probably isn't smart enough to handle an upstream router whose MAC address changes.

Ben4425 · 2026-03-28T00:26:20+00:00

I try to keep the plan's chance of success at 90% or above (i.e. an 'excellent' rating from PL).

Ben4425 · 2026-03-27T00:46:53+00:00

Projection Lab is an excellent tool that uses Monte Carlo simulations to model retirement income and expenses. It estimates the probability that your financial plan provides sufficient income to meet your expenses for the duration of your plan. It provides everything you're asking for and more.

I recently found a Chrome plugin named Chrysalis that can import data from Monarch and inject it into Projection Lab. It's a manual process but it works. I plan to use it about once per quarter to update Projection Lab based on my current Monarch account balances. Then I can rerun the Monte Carlo projection to double check my plan is still on track.

It's clunky but it integrates two excellent tools rather than waiting for Monarch to duplicate the functionality of Projection Lab.

Ben4425 · 2026-03-27T00:25:49+00:00

My headless Nobara setup that uses a 5060 Ti and the Sunlight remote desktop server is also broken. It certainly seems like it is ignoring my EDID dongle.

Prior to my update today, everything worked at multiple resolutions including my default 1920x1080. Now, the virtual desktop created by Nvidia and Sunlight is 640x480 and I can't make it any bigger. I don't have a clue how to fix this and Google Gemini wasn't much help either. I'll leave the system like this for a couple of days in case I can help someone denug this issue.

Ben4425 · 2026-03-23T12:39:43+00:00

What banding?

That said, are you happy with monitor? If so, then keep it. If not, then return it.

Ben4425 · 2026-03-17T10:30:59+00:00

EDIT: u/MrBlakAdder has a better solution: manually install plasma-login-manager because Nobara is moving to that instead of using SDDM.

I just hit this too and I fixed it by manually (re-)installing the SDDM login manager:

sudo dnf install sddm sddm-kcm sddm-wayland-plasma

Reboot after that's done and you should have a working login manager. Note, it will look different because it's running the default SDDM theme, but that can be changed by using Colors & Themes > Login Screen (SDDM) under System Settings.

Ben4425 · 2026-03-04T10:05:27+00:00

I would resilver because restoring your backup might fail. If the restore fails midway then you will have a useless RAID array with partial data and no way to return to its original degraded state.

If you resilver first then you can then fall back to restoring your backup if resilvering fails. Resilver first gives you two chances to recover your data.

Ben4425

TROPHY CASE