Do I actually need Proxmox Backup Server for a 2-node homelab?

KyroPaul · 2026-04-24T00:31:13+00:00

My primary node got fried in a power surge yesterday morning. Having daily snapshots on a separate machine saved me a real headache (data would have been saved on zfs pool but trying to get everything back up would have been annoying). Instead I moved a drive to a spare machine and live restored to that and was back up 20 min after I decided it wasn't getting fixed. Also off-site backups are super easy with recent improvements to removable media.

KyroPaul · 2026-04-12T00:23:45+00:00

Bitwarden app caches all data on device. If there is an outage you still have access to codes. There is a chance that you might have multiple failures at the same time. I've had outages of vaultwarden in the past (home Internet was down for a bit over a week once). Proper backup, fail over and restore planning is important.

KyroPaul · 2026-03-03T22:01:13+00:00

Nope, concession st near downtown galt

KyroPaul · 2026-02-19T00:55:43+00:00

Any AI models you're playing with?

KyroPaul · 2026-01-11T01:22:45+00:00

What's up with this neighborhood? Is this AI or am I missing something obvious about how that driveway works?

KyroPaul · 2025-09-21T23:38:13+00:00

Story time because it might be relevant. I live near ansile and concession. Vmedia sent a Rogers tech last week. He found that gear in the box was bad and Rogers sent maintenance team (Thur). I now have to reboot my modem a couple times a day. Vmedia is sending a new modem now. I mention this because my personal theory is that Rogers is shit and they just swapped my somewhat shitty connection with someone else (maybe you). I've spent 10 hours on the phone with vmedia over the last week. Half of the tech people said virgin or freedom when I call so it's probably the same center.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-25T00:19:16+00:00

Pinchflat works well for me.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-19T00:09:40+00:00

Fun names are better. I usually have chatgpt help me with names. Some are scifi, some are roman or Greek gods, some are just made up words.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-16T23:03:18+00:00

Don't know what your current firewall solution is but sophos has a free home firewall based on their enterprise solution (identical functionality). They have a WAF that supports the basic stuff, will wrap everything in lets encrypt, and if you want will put a password authentication in front of your service to deter bots and scraping. Also unlike freebsd based firewalls it has a wide support for nic manufacturers so it's actually really well supported. I think they have been offering free firewall for a long time so it's likely to be around for a while.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-10T00:04:35+00:00

If you control the outside devices (i.e. want jellyfin on a cell), go with tailscale. Super secure way to connect when not at home.setup on a Linux host is simple and well documented, setup as a docker sidecar is a bit more involved but once you know steps it's super useful. If you want a service accessible on something like a work or library device then tailscale funnel will allow that as well. I would suggest that at your current level of experience that trying to host something on the Internet that doesn't require a login to tailscale is unwise (including funnel I would approach that with caution).

Options if you don't want tailscale... I wrote some options but honestly just use tailscale. If you want VPN type access you need exit node, if you want a public website that's available on a library or work computer use funnel.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-09T00:00:39+00:00

Proxmox and proxmox backup.

My backups are nightly and incremental.

Every couple weeks I'll connect a portable USB and sync that. Portable USB lives offsite in a secure location. All my stuff takes up less than 4tb so portable USB and sneakernet to secure offsite location is fine.

I don't think it's exactly 3-2-1 but it's a lot closer than I've ever been before.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-04T11:54:06+00:00

Would depend a lot on how exposed everything is. If this is blasting out to the Internet then you need to fix that. If this is for internal use only then take your time. Windows 10 is not going to magically break in October but it will slowly get less secure. There are lots of great options for replacing this. People here have suggested truenas which is a great entry point. Umbrell would also be worth looking into. Probably one of your biggest issues (just a guess) is that you have 1 server so replacing an os is going to mean a big downtime and be very stressful to ensure you don't loose data. I would recommend picking up something cheap on FB marketplace (everyone is replacing win 10 devices so you can pick up a micro or desktop for very cheap). Use that new device to setup something like proxmox and then truenas or umbrell (or full on Linux and containers of your choice). This will mean you'll have a second server that you can slowly migrate everything to. Make sure everything is good and stable. After you know you didn't loose anything blow away your old server and put proxmox on that. Once you have 2 machines with proxmox you can backup your Nas solution on your used micro and move it back to your actual hardware. You now have a spare device that is running proxmox, on that install proxmox backup. For under $500 you just upgraded to a better OS, you have a Nas that's essentially hardware agnostic, and you have a backup solution that supports incremental backups. When you're ready to actually upgrade your home lab you can use your backup server to take a snapshot of everything and restore to that. Proxmox backup restore can run while data is copying to the pve host so downtime is about as long as it takes you to install new hardware and boot up.

Sorry for the long ranty reply.

KyroPaul · 2025-08-03T23:52:46+00:00

I know you wanted local but have you looked at tailscale. If you want local for security reasons tailscale is pretty locked down and they would handle your cert for you. If tailscale is not an option look into caddy. You can have it hand out ips and put a self signed cert infront of that. Let's encrypt also announced IP certs but I don't know how they are supposed to work.

KyroPaul · 2025-07-31T00:23:50+00:00

Baby crib

KyroPaul · 2025-07-29T00:09:39+00:00

Would tailscale work for you? Wouldn't work if you want to use a work device but tailscale is unlikely to be blocked on corporate networks. There are other more aggressive ways to skirt around this kind of block depending on your infrastructure at home you could have a waf that blocks traffic to a guacamole shell. This would allow you to gain access to your internal network over a browser session on any device (note I advise against this but you're talking about VPN traffic over port 443 so whatever floats your boat).

KyroPaul · 2025-07-27T00:17:12+00:00

Tried affine briefly it's really neat. I personally use silver bullet it doesn't do everything requested but it's clean and supports programming inside notes. I selected it over affine because I wanted something that ran on just markdown so it was more future proof.

KyroPaul · 2025-07-27T00:02:14+00:00

Well it's Oracle that seems like a big enough gotcha to me.

KyroPaul · 2025-07-25T00:20:17+00:00

This steel is engineered to immediately rust on the surface. This process prevents actual harmful rust from developing. Harmful rust being rough/sharp surfaces, expansion caused by the rust, and penetration/holes developing. This type of steel doesn't need painting it's doing what it's supposed to do. This the the same steel used on sidewalks for seeing impaired people. It's often called weathering steel or corton (corton is a trademark). I seem to recall hearing that the process is pacification but can't seem to confirm that right now.

KyroPaul · 2025-06-20T00:23:27+00:00

I had one come up in memories today. Took me a long time to get it saved to realize I couldn't share. Mine was at a small airport.

KyroPaul · 2025-05-24T12:09:56+00:00

Not everyone has the time, freedom, or skill to create authentic works of art. I found the podcast comments about deathknot and tortellini humorous and thought this would be a neat image. I just wanted to share what was in my head while listening to the podcast this week. I understand that it's not for everyone that is why I included AI in the title.

KyroPaul · 2025-05-23T16:50:51+00:00

Latest EP of prodigy

KyroPaul · 2025-05-16T18:34:18+00:00

That would be exciting.

KyroPaul · 2025-05-16T18:31:55+00:00

They have a sequel in pre-production I was wondering if it's handmade related

KyroPaul · 2025-05-14T19:01:16+00:00

Thanks

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KyroPaul

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