So I have rebuilt my Production rack with very little in terms of an actual software plan.
I host mostly docker contained services (Forgejo, Ghost Blog, OpenWebUI, Outline) and I was previously hosting each one in their own Ubuntu Server VM on Proxmox thus defeating the purpose.
So I was going to run a VM on each of these Thinkcentres that worked as a Kubernetes Cluster and then ran everything on that. But that also feels silly since these PCs are already Clustered through Proxmox 9.
I was thinking about using LXC but part of the point of the Kubernetes cluster was to learn a new skill that might be useful in my career and I don’t know how this will work with Cloudflared Tunnels which is my preferred means of exposing services to the internet.
I’m willing to take a class or follow a whole bunch of “how-to” videos, but I’m a little frazzled on my options. Any suggestions are welcome.
I’m trying to get into self hosting but I’m really completely lost. Do you have some advices about where to start from?
I stared a year ago, from scratch. Fumbled around with a Raspberry for a few months and then bought a mini PC for 100 euros. (Lenovo tiny m73 with 8GB of RAM and a 500 GB ssd) That’s all you need.
Proxmox is a great way to go because it’s quite easy to create and delete virtual machines. You’ll be starting over quite a bit in the beginning.
I recommend documenting your stuff so you can easily start over. Claude.ai has been a great help for me to troubleshoot. AI is awesome to get the typos out of your config files.
Just a tip for hardware: don’t buy anything unless you really know what you need. Just start tinkering with some old computer/laptop. Most services will run fine on anything up to ~10 years old stuff
The only thing I bought was a switch and a NAS, both second hand. You can spend a lot for nothing in return.
Once you have stuff running on an old computer you’ll get to know what you actually need and can spend your money more intelligently. If you do buy anything, buy an ~8 year old corporate desktop. They’re cheap as chips because they’re close to ewaste, but 4/6th Gen Intel systems have enough performance to really do a ton with in the homelab scene
I would say figure out what you actually want to do. Do you want to host a website, run a media server, have a wiki, document storage? Then find the application thats appropriate for it. See what the possible installation methods are and choose whatever you are comfortable with.
As you dive more into it and get comfortable with things and your needs increase you will eventually fall into the hole 🙂