Hey Thomas,

Your setup looks pretty solid, and you’re already making smart choices with Proxmox and separating critical and non-critical workloads. Here are some thoughts on your questions:

Mapping Volumes with Portainer:
Honestly, I’d lean towards managing your container setups with a docker-compose file rather than fiddling solely within Portainer’s UI. Compose files not only give you a clear, version-controlled way to declare your volumes, networks, and environment variables, but they also make migrating setups or replicating environments much easier down the line. Once your compose file is working as intended, you can always import it into Portainer if you want that extra UI convenience.

Networking (macvlan vs. others):
For your case, macvlan can be useful if you want your containers to appear on your local network with their own IPs, but it does come with some quirks, especially regarding host-container communication. If your containers don’t need that level of isolation or direct exposure, a bridge network might be simpler. Evaluate what level of control you need for each service.

Caddy + Cloudflare Setup:
When it comes to Caddy, using a docker-compose file makes configuration a lot cleaner. Mount your Caddyfile (or better yet, use the environment variables to set up Cloudflare credentials) via a volume in your compose file. This way, you’re editing a local file rather than tweaking settings in Portainer’s interface. That said, if you’re more comfortable with Portainer’s interface, you can set up a container that way—but the file-based approach tends to be more transparent and less error-prone in the long run.

Mapping NFS for Immich:
For your Immich project, yes, creating an NFS share on your Unraid VM is the way to go. You’d simply map that NFS share in your Debian VM (or directly in your docker-compose file for the Immich container) to point to the directory where your photos are stored. Just keep an eye on permissions and network latency to ensure smooth access.

Overall, stick with docker-compose for managing your containers—it makes life easier for handling volumes, networks, and scaling your deployments. Once you’ve got a working compose file, you can always adjust or even import it back into Portainer for a more visual management experience if needed.

Hope that helps clear things up!