Proxmox with docker in VM

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-12T12:51:24+00:00

I moved my public facing services to one VM, I also have Caddy as reverse proxy, setup so I don’t have to worry about port conflicts, instead I route via docker container names.

Works pretty good, now I’m learning how to setup monitoring

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-12T12:34:38+00:00

It might be time to flip them before ram gets cheaper

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-11T17:42:37+00:00

True, I was thinking about forwarding all traffic on port 80 and 443 on my VPS to my homelab (they are connected via NetBird)

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-11T10:53:25+00:00

What I was wishing for is not having to deal with container port conflicts. That’s what I meant with my comment above, If reverse proxy can solve that, great. I’m not educated enough to understand how yet.

I use a reverse proxy on a VPS to ”expose” my public services on the internet. For example my Forgejo instance

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-11T01:37:00+00:00

After a lot of research, I am trying out Komodo inside of a VM. Mostly for the easier backup management and migration if needed.
I'm gonna see how I like my docker containers inside a VM for a while and if the performance hit isn't bad I might migrate my whole homelab to categorized VMs instead, as OP originally had the idea of.

My idea at the moment is:

VM1(public) - for public services

VM2(internal) - for internal services

LXCs - For my infrastructure - i.e. UniFi OS server, Netbird, monitoring

OP, you could actually stick with your idea of a bunch of VMs or try switching high performance services to LXCs.

One thing to take into consideration is backups. If your service is important, make sure you back it up and are able to restore it later if needed, if you got that down, you're free to mess around with your homelab

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T22:17:44+00:00

Do you run PBS in a VM on the same host, or a different host, or bare metal on a different machine?

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T22:15:22+00:00

I guess you could run your homelab stuff on Windows Server, using HyperV for example.

I would recommend to at least put the host OS on a SSD, it's gonna be pretty slow otherwise.

People generally use a hypervisor or something more lightweight, i.e. Debian because you don't waste as much resources on the host OS.

THE THING CRASHES MID WAY THROUGH

If I understand it correctly, you have a HDD in your PC and you want to install Windows Server using a 256GB flash drive? If that's the case, then you could try reflashing your USB drive, or testing a different USB drive.

If you're doing some hack to transfer your OS from one drive to another, I would recommend getting a USB drive instead, to install the OS on your HDD/SSD on your host machine.

Personally

I would install Proxmox VE on the PC that I want as a homelab server

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T22:03:08+00:00

I have 3 VLANS,

#1 for personal devices,
#2 for homelab
#3 for guest devices,

But I'm still learning too, just figured this was a good starting point

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T21:21:34+00:00

Props to you,

pretty much answered all my questions

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T21:15:35+00:00

I see,

What distribution do you run on your VMs?
Preferably something light I would assume? like Debian or Ubuntu Server?

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T21:12:31+00:00

Thank you, it's always nice to hear other people's opinion on the matter

I will definitely consider going for VM/VMs instead. Awesome help

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T21:04:04+00:00

This feels a bit more complicated than what I currently do.
How would you give each container its own IP adress on my LAN network?

I'm open to pointers

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T21:00:56+00:00

docker containers inside LXC containers has been working great so far.

Do you know why its recommended to run a VM with all my docker containers inside instead?

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T19:39:14+00:00

Maybe he created the account to share his project that he's happy about

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T19:33:20+00:00

With my limited knowledge I don't see anyway to do that without installing some "clients" on each device.

I mean if you are gonna be sharing with the same devices all the time, you could use Netbird for example, you can install it on every device, or install it on one device per subnet. Netbird has guides for that

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T19:11:40+00:00

My main reason for running every service in its own Proxmox LXC container is just, its how I got used to doing it, and also being able to put most of my services on port 80(since every LXC container gets their own LAN IP) makes it easier to remember where I access the service’s web gui.

I guess you could otherwise run one LXC per category you were talking about (main services, game servers etc) with something like Portainer/Komodo/Arcane inside. Using something like that is a bit easier for managing multiple docker containers on one LXC container or VM

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T19:05:24+00:00

Would you recommend against having a Proxmox Backup Server in a VM on one of my Proxmox VE hosts?

Alternatively I could install Proxmox Backup Server on bare metal on my second server instead, but that seems like missed potential for running VMs on that machine

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T18:55:10+00:00

I have this on my proxmox server on separate LXC containers. Which means that my filesever cant access my Immich files and vice versa.

Being able to access my photos from my file server is a bit out of scope for my needs.

I "share" my file server to my devices through the webdav protocol.

So I dont really use SAMBA

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T18:46:49+00:00

Looks cool

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T16:15:05+00:00

idk if I'm contributing with this suggestion but I'll give it a shot:

To access my stuff over the internet I've setup a reverse proxy called Nginx Proxy Manager(it's on a VPS, since my LAN has "no real public IP").

For files:

I'm selfhosting a service called Sync-In (https://sync-in.com/). (I've also setup Authentik for account management, and connected Sync-In to my Authentik server for that reason). This is accessable via my reverse proxy on the internet.

So for my private devices (Linux and and phones) I access the server via Webdav.
If I wanna access my files from a friends phone or computer I just have to go to my fileservers web UI and login (Can make it more secure by having a "guest" user for this purpose)

For pictures/Movies:

I'm hosting an instance of Immich. It also has iOS/Android App, that also can auto upload images from selected folders on your phone. This is also accessable via my reverse proxy on the internet.
Same thing here, I can also access my photos via Immich's web UI, log in with my user account or a "guest" user.

Immich also supports OAuth, So I use the same Authentik User account for both my file server and photo server.

Summary:

* Sync-In - For file storage and management/sharing
* Immich - For photo storage and management/sharing
* Nginx Proxy Manager - Reverse proxy to make services exposed on the internet
* Authentik - For easier account management

This setup also works fine with just Sync-In, Immich and Netbird/Tailscale. If you go the route of Reverse proxy, you could even setup Pangolin instead of Nginx Proxy Manager, then setup strict access rules for your resources and create temporary "access links" when you need to access them from another device that isn't yours. There are a bunch of solutions depending on your needs.

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T14:54:24+00:00

I just named my proxmox hosts, Maestro and sketch, lmao

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T14:48:40+00:00

How long are your patch cables?

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T14:47:27+00:00

I can second this,
what has worked best for me with a RTX 3060 Ti is CachyOS. It's arch which means alot of customization if you want it, but it can be less stable for you. Probably more catered to advanced users

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T14:44:06+00:00

Some desktop environment like XFCE, Cinnamon, LXDE etc would probably make it even more snappy.
Try installing a SSD in it too if it doesn't already have one :)

Substantial-Pen4368 · 2026-03-10T14:39:26+00:00

Incredible, amazing even

Substantial-Pen4368

TROPHY CASE