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Question: Best UI to manage VMs and containers? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 10 months ago by hperrin to c/selfhosted

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

At this point, I’ve got a lot of containers already running on my system, all in separate directories in my home directory. They’re each set up with a docker-compose file, and all of the volumes are just directories within those directories.

I don’t really want to change this setup, because it allows me to easily rip it all out and transplant it to a new system.

What I’d like is a web UI to see all of these containers, view their status, and potentially reboot them. It would also be great to be able to spin up VMs (not containers, but actual VMs) with it.

I’ve heard of Portainer, but haven’t had any experience with it.

What are your suggestions, and why do you recommend them?

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[–] hperrin 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So first, I’m not really looking to change operating systems. I’ve got my system set up the way I like it, where it closely matches the production systems I run for my company.

Second, why do you say the answer is Proxmox? What benefit does that have over other solutions that can be more easily integrated into my existing operating system?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Not many UIs can do containers and VMs

[Sorry for my not really well written reply, you really need to try different options, and in my opinion proxmox is like the only choice because of how many cool things you can do there]

Proxmox I just really good, and if you want to spin up VMs easily you will need to reshape your setup anyway

With proxmox you can do like everything with VMs, containers, etc. Not just managing only containers, or just showing status of the VMs

Also, proxmox is not really an operating system, it's a service on top of Debian (in many cases you start installing proxmox by installing Debian)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Can proxmox do docker containers? Last I checked it could only do LXC

[–] thirdBreakfast 3 points 10 months ago

Yo dawg, I put most of my services in a Docker container inside their own LXC container. It used to bug me that this seems like a less than optimal use of resources, but I love the management - all the VM and containers on one pane of glass, super simple snapshots, dead easy to move a service between machines, and simple to instrument the LXC for monitoring.

I see other people doing, and I'm interested in, an even more generic system (maybe Cockpit or something) but I've been really happy with this. If OP's dream is managing all the containers and VM's together, I'd back having a look at Proxmox.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I use Docker LXCs. Really just a Debian LXC with Docker and then Portainer as a UI. I have separate LXCs for common services. Arrs on one LXC, Nextcloud, Immich and SearXNG on another, Invidious on a third. I just separate them so I don't need to kill all services if I need to restart or take down the LXC for whatever reason.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yes it can, but not out of the box, and yeah, if you want the ui it will be that portainer again 😂

[–] hperrin 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks. I did check it out and it looks like it’s got some really cool benefits, like being able to cluster across two machines and take one down if it needs servicing, with zero down time.

I’m thinking about buying some rack mount servers and bringing everything I’m currently doing in the cloud for my business to on-premises servers. The one thing I was wary about was how I was going to handle hardware maintenance, and this looks like it would solve that issue nicely.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

For the system itself I would recommend nixos

Some people like it, some people are against progress and they think work should be manual 🤣

I'm using nixos and all my machines, even integrating my phone in it

You can automate and replicate unbelievable stuff with it. You solve a bunch of problems by using nixos

But it's a whole big rabbit whole, and it would take a lot of time to learn how to use it, then a lot of time to set everything up

But you could do zero downtime hardware maintenance without VMs or containers, just by using bare metal

Edit: or with VMs, containers, or k8s. Everything would be just cleaner and cooler