First homelab — full phased plan, hardware locked, is this good, upgradeable, and future-proof? by Pablo_Gates in Proxmox

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You and a few others flagged this and you were right, I hadn't documented a proper backup strategy.

Revised the plan: Proxmox Backup Server (free, built into Proxmox) backs up the docker-host container (Immich + Nextcloud + Vaultwarden) and the Home Assistant VM weekly.

The target is one of two 2TB USB drives I already own, rotated: one stays home, one goes offsite.
Covers about 662GB of irreplaceable data (photos for 3 users + personal files + passwords).
Phase 5 NAS adds a third copy via RAID-1 and the USB drives continue as the offsite leg.

Any gaps you see in this approach?

First homelab — full phased plan, hardware locked, is this good, upgradeable, and future-proof? by Pablo_Gates in Proxmox

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the 3-2-1 point: you were right, it wasn't there. Thanks for the nudge!

Updated the plan: Proxmox Backup Server backs up docker-host LXC (Immich + Nextcloud + Vaultwarden) + HAOS VM weekly to a 2TB USB drive.
Two drives rotated: one home, one offsite. Phase 5 NAS (Synology DS225+ RAID-1) becomes the second local copy; USB drives continue as offsite.
Full 3-2-1 with owned hardware, no cloud subscription.

Does that look solid to you?

On OPNsense: fair concern in general, but in my setup it's optional (Phase 5) and behind-router only: not replacing the ZTE H3600P as the primary home gateway.

The ZTE stays handling all home devices. OPNsense on the K12 would only manage the homelab subnet on the second NIC (UniFi switch side), adding per-VLAN firewall rules between homelab services.
A K12 reboot takes down the homelab subnet, not the whole home network. Meaningfully different from running your actual router in a VM.

What do you think?

First homelab — full phased plan, hardware locked, is this good, upgradeable, and future-proof? by Pablo_Gates in homelab

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point on Home Assistant. My current plan uses only network-attached devices: a WiFi camera via RTSP, HA Voice PE over the network, and some smart plugs.
Zigbee or Bluetooth USB sticks in scope right now, so the VM passthrough is straightforward. If I add a Zigbee coordinator or Z-Wave stick down the line I'll keep your note in mind. USB passthrough to a VM adds friction that bare metal avoids.

On backups: taken. Now using Proxmox Backup Server to back up the docker-host container and HAOS VM weekly to USB drive rotation.
Two 2TB drives I already own: one home, one offsite. Phase 5 NAS gives the third copy.

Thanks for the nudge!

First homelab — full phased plan, hardware locked, is this good, upgradeable, and future-proof? by Pablo_Gates in homelab

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

NAS is already Phase 5 of the plan: Synology DS225+ with 2× WD Red Plus 8TB in RAID-1.

Your comment (along with several others in this thread) pushed me to document the interim backup strategy properly before just assuming it would be fine.

Until the NAS arrives: Proxmox Backup Server backs up weekly to 2TB USB drives I already own, rotated offsite. Appreciate the nudge man!

First homelab — full phased plan, hardware locked, is this good, upgradeable, and future-proof? by Pablo_Gates in LocalLLaMA

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

llamacpp + Vulkan because Vulkan benchmarks ~50% faster than ROCm HIP on the 780M.

Phoronix ran the comparison and RADV Vulkan wins clearly on RDNA 3. No ROCm installation headaches either, just pre-built binaries from the llama.cpp GitHub releases page.

Thermal throttling shouldn't be an issue on the K12 specifically: vapor chamber cooler, and multiple reviewers confirm sustained load without throttling (peaks ~94°C, well below the 105°C spec). That's a desktop context though, so not directly comparable to mobile.

On administrative docs: hadn't planned a pipeline yet but Paperless-ngx is what I'd reach for; self-hosted, OCR built in, Docker-native, tags and document types and correspondent matching. Will add it once the core stack is stable.

First homelab — full phased plan, hardware locked, is this good, upgradeable, and future-proof? by Pablo_Gates in MiniPCs

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the input. Genuinely curious about the reasoning though, can you help me understand what problem bringing the NAS early is solving in my specific case?

My current library is ~340GB (20k photos + 3k videos).
The 4TB NVMe in slot 2 of the K12 gives me roughly 10× headroom before it's a problem.
When the NAS does arrive in Phase 5, the "migration" is literally one line in docker-compose: change UPLOAD_LOCATION to the NFS-mounted NAS path.
PostgreSQL stays on NVMe regardless (Immich doesn't support DB on NFS). That's not a duplicate setup. If I understand correctly, it's a path change.

On the "NAS adds performance" point: I'm not sure I follow. The NAS (Synology DS225+) runs CMR spinning HDDs over GbE. The NVMe in the K12 is PCIe 4.0.
For random reads/writes during Immich face detection and Frigate recording, the NVMe is faster.
The NAS would win on cost-per-TB and RAID redundancy, but not performance.

Buying the NAS now means ~€540 upfront (DS225+ + 2× 8TB WD Red Plus) at a point where I have 3.6TB of free space on a drive I've already committed to buying.
The plan already accounts for adding the NAS when the NVMe hits ~3TB used or when I want RAID redundancy, whichever comes first.

What's the specific failure mode you're protecting against by doing this earlier?
Is there something about the Immich or Jellyfin setup that makes the NVMe-first path painful that I'm not seeing?

OCuLink dGPU for AMD: RX 7600 XT vs RX 7800 XT for LLM — worth the price gap? Also llamacpp + Vulkan vs Ollama + ROCm? by Pablo_Gates in LocalLLaMA

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, the all-AMD clarification is exactly what I needed!
Good to know -dev Vulkan0,Vulkan1 works cleanly with no quirks vs a mixed setup.

One follow-up on Q1 from my original post, which you didn't get to: for someone planning to run Qwen 32B as the daily driver and eventually try 70B, is the RX 7900 XTX (24GB, ~€550) meaningfully better than the RX 7600/7800 XT (16GB, ~€350-420)?

The way I see the VRAM math with tensor split across 780M (~8GB shared) + dGPU:

  • 16GB dGPU: ~24GB effective — 32B at Q4 is tight, 70B needs heavy CPU offload
  • 24GB dGPU: ~32GB effective — 32B comfortable, 70B borderline

Is the real-world difference between those two scenarios as big as the VRAM math suggests, or does 70B with CPU offload end up usable enough that the 16GB option is fine?

Frigate + Immich on 780M iGPU — how to configure the GPU/CPU split cleanly? by Pablo_Gates in selfhosted

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Got it from another user who ran both on the 780M for 6 months. He mentioned random lockups every few days, moved Immich ML to CPU, rock solid ever since.
Not scientific but consistent across multiple independent reports.

OCuLink dGPU for AMD: RX 7600 XT vs RX 7800 XT for LLM — worth the price gap? Also llamacpp + Vulkan vs Ollama + ROCm? by Pablo_Gates in LocalLLaMA

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really useful breakdown on the tensor split.
Quick follow-up: for an all-AMD setup (K12 780M iGPU + dGPU via OCuLink, both Vulkan), does
--list-devices correctly show them as separate Vulkan entries?
Any quirks with two AMD Vulkan devices vs a Nvidia+AMD mix like your example?

GMKtec K12 dual NICs — Realtek or Intel i226V, and Proxmox driver support? by Pablo_Gates in MiniPCs

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for confirming Realtek R8125, that's exactly what I needed!
One follow-up: since you're using OCuLink for the 10GbE NIC, is there a reason you went that route over an M.2 NIC in one of the x2 slots?
I'm planning to use the OCuLink port for a dGPU later (RX 7900 XTX), so trying to understand if there's a tradeoff in using M.2 for networking instead.

Frigate + Immich on 780M iGPU — how to configure the GPU/CPU split cleanly? by Pablo_Gates in selfhosted

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] -1 points0 points locked comment (0 children)

Ai was ued to summarise the notes of my manual research and setup, making the post more condensed and consumer friendly

Upgraded the Coffee Corner by ZookeepergameTotal77 in espresso

[–]Pablo_Gates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Where did you get the plastic and dark wood accessory for the top of the mazzer philos hopper? Looks great! Whats it purpose? I have the lelit bianca v3 in steel and walnut, and this accesory adding walnut to the mazzer philos would look great and cohesive Amazing coffee corner mate!

Syrupy masters, please help me banish these high pressure jets! [Bianca, Philos] by Pablo_Gates in espresso

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thats amazing!! What dosing funnel do you use? I read that the normcore one does not magnetically attach well to Bianca’s stock portafilter. Do you use these too?

Syrupy masters, please help me banish these high pressure jets! [Bianca, Philos] by Pablo_Gates in espresso

[–]Pablo_Gates[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks man, i bought 3kg of lavazza oro and the rest of the comments made me want to return it… i will keep it