My Server Setup

Intro

Until recently, I had 2 servers.

1 Ubuntu, 1 Windows 11 Pro.

It was really inefficient, but I had it setup so the Windows machine was running Home Assistant as a vm (mainly because I wanted to be able to rdp into it)

But then, I learned about proxmox from a friend and I had a new 1tb drive on the way…

Specs

The specs of this machine are:

CPU: i5 9400 (6 Cores)

RAM: 32GB DDR4

SSD: 1TB NVME M.2

HDD: Seagate IronWolf Pro 4 TB ST4000NE001 NAS Internal Hard Drive

OS: PVE / Ubuntu + HomeAssistantOS

Setup

First things first, I install proxmox using their OS which I flashed onto a USB using Balena Etcher. I then plugged this into my server and started the installation

Little problem I had

Unfortunately the drive I wanted to install PVE on was an NVME drive, but my server only supports SATA M.2 Drives. You can see the drive you are installing on through the first interactive screens of the pve setup. Be careful and make sure you check the specs of the motherboard you are using supports the drive you want to install :D For mine, I had to purchase a PCIe adapter which let me use my drive. (I say purchase but I had my amazing sister pick it up free from amazon for me)

Settings & Post Setup

The base setup of PVE(Proxmox Virtual Enivoronment) is very similar to any other operating system. If you have completed Windows preset it should be similar. One thing I would recommend is to make sure your ethernet is plugged in and active, as it will then autofill the IP Address, default gateway etc… Make sure the IP Address is available first (although it should choose a free one anyway). It might also be worth choosing your own. Quite often, your router will only send out addresses between a certain range, i.e. 192.168.1.50 to 192.168.1.200. This leaves you with a decent chunk of addresses you can statically assign with no issues. For example, I set mine to be 253 so it is easy to remember and next to the routers own address which is 254. Make sure you check this though! It is normally in the advanced section for home routers. Make a note of this address as you will need it to manage everything.

Once you have completed the setup, I recommend viewing this webpage There are a bunch of scripts, including a post install script. I recommend running this so you make sure you are licenced and get access to new features. Of course, please consider buying a licence.

The community scripts page also has scripts to install other VMs, which is where I installed Ubuntu and Home Assistant from.

Ubuntu

Make sure to install the Ubuntu LXC, as this will be the one you need. When you run the script, it will give you the option for basic or advanced setup. I recommend choosing advanced, as it will give you the option to choose the specs you want to assign to it. By default, as it says on the script page, it will be 1 vCPU, 512MB RAM and 2GB of storage space, which is nowhere near enough if you want to use Ubuntu for your server needs. I used 5 vCPUs, 30GB (of my 32GB) RAM, and 64GB of the drive (which can be expanded to my needs later on). Choose an appropriate IP Address also.

Once ubuntu was up, I installed docker, and on top of that, portainer. I fully recommend portainer if you want to use docker, as it provides an amazing Web UI to manage full stacks and individual containers. While I could give an in depth tutorial, there are better resources out there, including the official documentation - so please read this for help!

From Portainer, available at https://[ubuntuip]:9443, you can add stacks. You can add anything here. Just search for [service you want to host] docker compose on Google. I have my minecraft server (crafty controller), cloudflare dynamic dns (so my services will always be available through my domain), uptime-kuma, traefik as a proxy, and a homepage so I dont have to remember all the addresses and ports.

Recommendation

One other thing I recommend is ‘Watchtower’ this will auto-update all your containers. Have a quick google for this!

Home Assistant

For me, home assistant is a must have. It allows you to manage all sorts of devices that you have at home. If you have any smart tech, it’s worth a look! I was using Google Home previously, but decided to switch to HA just because of how useful it is.

Setup

Home Assistant’s setup is pretty straight forward. It has very useful instructions which you can view at https://homeassistant.local:8123. You can create a home, designate rooms and add other users.

Once you are set up, it will offer Home Assistant cloud through nabu casa. I recommend this as it gives easy access to your instance while supporting the developers, and giving you 5gb of cloud backup.

Integrations

Here is a list of all the integrations I am using. One major plus side of Home Assistant, is that there are many integrations you can download from the community. This means if a device isn’t officially supported by Home Assistant, it may still be maintained by the community. There is an amazing tool called HACS please view their page and download it - trust me it is worth it!

Automations

You can create automatons using the UI, which is useful if you haven’t done much programming before. Here is an example: There are a tonne of options so you can always do what you want to.

Conclusion

All in all, a server actually isn’t that difficult to manage! You can add a media server if you want to dump your DVDs, add other game servers you want to host, host your own websites and more. If you ever have a spare old PC lying around, I recommend it!