Hello!
I've had Linux server/s at home for hobby and fun for years. My current "main" server is quite old, quite slow, and in need of an upgrade.
I acquired a used Thinkstation Mini SFF, which blows the old one out of the water, being like 15% of the size. The heaviest usage is a Plex server for my and my family. Current setup has worked well but it's unable to transcode properly, without a lot of noise and only some codecs/resolutions.
I installed Proxmox on this Thinkstation device and it works very well. I migrated my WP family blog from a Virtualbox to Proxmox VM, worked perfectly.
I then used the helper scripts to install Plex for testing. I got hardware acceleration working with the i5-8500T/UHD 630. Did some testing and it seems to work great.
I have yet to migrate the server and the data. The Thinkstation has ~320gb SSD disk which is way to small for my video collection.
So I'm what I'm wondering, what is the best next step? I can one or more similar devices for cheap/nothing.
I don't really understand the nodes function of Proxmox properly.
Should I:
A) Use my current one as a "main" node, install large SSD/HDD on 1 or 2 similar devices and connect them as storage nodes?
B) Add large USB SSD/HDD to my existing Proxmox device?
C) Setup a simple NAS device and connect Proxmox to that?
D) Something else?
After that's decided, I could then move the Plex installation/setup from my current server to the Proxmox setup.
The usage is not heavy, 3 concurrent streams are rare. Media is currently mostly 1080p.
My main concern is the Plex setup, but if one setup is more futureproof, smarter, handier, cooler, nicer than the other, I'd greatly appreciate your input.
Thanks for the input, sorry for the delayed answer.
I was looking into the replication feature, and it sounds cool. I can acquire used identical devices from work, which is handy for this.
These are my ideas now, feedback would be greatly appreciated:
A) Get another identical device, upgrade the internal storage to 1tb nvme and setup Proxmox. Move existing ct's /vm's to that while upgrading the storage on the other device to same kind of storage and reinstalling Proxmox, then joining them as nodes in a cluster with replication. Correct thinking?
B) Get another identical device, upgrade the internal storage to 1tb nvme and setup Proxmox Backup Server. Backup the ct's / vm's, upgrade storage on the the other device to same kind of storage and reinstalling Proxmox, then restoring the vm's / ct's and have it act as the main server.
In either case, there would be two identical devices, providing different types of backup.
I'd also add a third device, a simpler NAS with more storage for Plex and other stuff. This might or might not be backed up, as it's not that important. I might even experiment with something like GlusterFS, since the main cost for me is the HDD/SDD storage space. Electricity is cheap for me and SFF don't take up much space.
Any thoughts?