tl;dr: Proxmox or bare metal? Containers yes/no? What is your use case?
I used a Dell R710 when I first started self-hosting, it ran ESXi with one VM for each service I wanted. Restarting the server required me to first shutdown each VM in order and then the whole host. When setting up a new service to host I had to create a new VM (allocate RAM, disk etc), install the OS (I ran Debian) and then follow instructions for how to setup the service. This mostly was not a problem but one software I never managed to get working was Apache Guacamole.
Nowadays I have a Dell Optiplex I salvaged for parts, got a new case and all my HDDs from my R710. Because it has much less RAM and an old Intel i5 (6th or 7th generation), I decided to get into Docker. With Docker containers you write your compose file and it will just work. No more need to dig through documentation for which version of a dependency to use, how to handle if two services on the same host need different versions (this was part of the reason for one VM/service). With Docker, I can try out a software in seconds and have it configured to my liking in minutes.
Today I have NixOS (bare metal) and it comes with Podman which uses systemd. Hence restarting my OS (albeit not that often, almost never unless I mess up my config) is a no-brainer because Podman via systemd will manage everything. Adding, stopping or removing containers in general is easy. I have a script running as a service which will stop a container, create a BTRFS subvolume snapshot, start the service again and start borg backup to backup from the snapshot.
For me using Proxmox would just an extra layer of complexity I don’t need. I only have one server and I am the only user.
Questions:
- Do you use Proxmox instead of a bare metal installation?
- Do you use containers or do you install manually?
- What is you use case that requires your setup the way it is?
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Docker has its uses, but it has gone to far.
I already have a webserver with Apache, mariadb and everything. Why does your PHP based website only come as a docker solution? Fuck you.
When you go all in with docker, it quickly becomes a mess with rando NICs and containers named “random 32 character string” and dependencies up the wazoo. Ending up running ancient packages because the developer refuses to apt upgrade their shit.
Proxmox or any other hypervisor platform gives you control. Whereas you have to take it for docker and youre still at the mercy or the developers to keep your shit secure.
Ending up running ancient packages because the developer refuses to apt upgrade their shit.
Tell me you never really had to deal with dependency hell without telling me. That’s literally the main problem docker solves.
all the problems you expressed with docker aren’t real problems.
I think you may not like it because you don’t know how to use it.
don’t like how often a maintainer updates their images? build your own.
don’t like having multiple bridge interfaces on your host? configure and manage networks within docker and assign them to your containers.
don’t like having dozens of containers with random names? use docker compose. bonus, you can set up networking with it even easier.
Years ago I’d have one PHP app that required version X of PHP and another that required version Y and my distro often only had one of them (or you couldn’t install both simultaneously), so I’d have to either compile myself (or later use a 3rd party repo). All solvable of course, but then throw in MySQL version requirements and PHP extensions and it’s just extra crap that containers just take care of for you. I’ve had this kind of inter app requirements conflicts with stuff other than PHP, but I’ve had by far more of it with PHP. For a while I used FreeBSD jails to help, but jails was kind of a pain. I enthusiastically embraced docker for PHP stuff early on.
A benefit for application developers, particularly PHP is there’s a lot of differences between distros and how people install and configure PHP. Even like which PHP extensions are available and their settings. Other languages things tend to be more consistent at the system level and customizations are app are usually application level (contrast with PHP extensions and system level configurations). It really helps reduce support issues due to distro/user differences if a developer just provides a working dockerfile as a reference implementation and in my experience this is far more likely with PHP than other languages. I realize this is mostly applicable outside of PHP, but I actually personally see more benefit with PHP based on my past experiences.
Security is a big reason to use VMs. Containers share the kernel with the host. That means that any of the kernel vulnerabilities from this year (like DirtyFrag and CopyFail) could have been used to compromise your host. Once the host is compromised, the only way to be safe is to literally buy a new machine. Seriously. Viruses can bury deep and even infect the motherboard firmware to persist indefinitely.
Kernel vulnerabilities are frequent enough that I find VMs worth it. I still use containers in my VMs though.
Do you have any sources on motherboard firmware viruses? I’m curious to know more about them
That’s apples and oranges.
Anyway, both podman and docker are extremely insecure. Safer to download signed ISOs to run in proxmox
trusting an oci repository is the same as trusting a distro repository, if its a dodgey unknown you got from god knows where and you cant verify, dont use it
Nope. You don’t need to trust a distro Repo’s publishing infrastructure because the packages are cryptographically signed.
Whereas the oci repo had a ton of vectors for delivering maliciously modified code because they include image layers that are totally unsigned.
Proxmox exclusively with unprivileged LXCs, which themselves host other docker containers/stacks managed with Dockhand (a more modern alternative to both Portainer and Dockge). I have a very tiny low power machine so I have to be kind with my resources, therefore no VMs. But LXCs are simpler anyway. I can easily pass devices like
/dev/tunfor tailscale and i forget the name of the iGPU for accelerated workloads (for Immich, Nextcloud).Reasoning: with containers it’s easy to make mistakes without dire consequences (just
docker compose down -vand start over). The LXCs are easy to back up and restore. They hold internal running state of whatever docker containers I run in them.Pro tip: don’t map host paths using the UI (
mp0etc), uselxc.mountinstead. This will let you continue to have snapshots of your LXCs whereas the other approach makes your LXC incompatible with snapshots.Good luck!
Proxmox with Kubernetes and containerization can allow you more easily manage your services and to have less downtime. But, as you said, it adds another layer. Is it worth the time to set it up? Over a long period, yes.
As a DevOps/Developer/Sysadmin, I’d probably use it if I set up a lot of services. If I just have some kind of file share thing, probably not.
Having to manually start and stop your VMs is very atypical, proxmox can absolutely handle that itself
Proxmox with VMs running Docker using Cosmos.
Pros: backups, easy VM management, easy disk management.
• Yes, but I also use podman on another machine.
• Proxmox server hosts LXC’s and a few VMs.
• Proxmox makes it extremely easy to run and manage containerised workloads. Set it up in a flash and it runs happily, no intervention necessary. Podman containers on the other hand can be tricky to set up, but I prefer the controls I have on that machine. If it needs to be secure I Podman it, if not I just stick it in a Proxmox LXC.
Podman sounds like a podcast about other podcasts
- No
- Manual only
- Because I’m old and crusty, and always rawdogged service setups. I’m sure containers are nice and all, I just never got around to learning them properly.
Proxmox with LXC’s and a few VM’s.
Often with Portainer as well.It’s just nice to use and easy to automate backups.
I used to run barebone on Debian, but I accepted that I’m not good enough in the terminal and to used to graphical solutions to go back.
It’s not an either-or scenario. Running services in Docker/Podman is great and makes a lot of sense, as you’ve found. But there’s no reason the OS running those Docker containers can’t be a VM on a hypervisor like Proxmox. Then you get the simplicity of Docker, in addition to the isolation and segmentation (network and process) provided by VMs, and snapshot-based incremental backups from PBS. It’s the best of both worlds. You wouldn’t have a VM per service like you ran before, instead you’d have a VM per group of related services with common networking and security requirements. For example, all of your publicly exposed services can run in Docker in their own isolated VM that’s walled off from the rest of your network, while your internal-only services also run in Docker, but on a separate VM on your internal network.
I run podman in proxmox vms
Install incus on your OS of choice to manage LXCs and VMs, it’s ideal!
No need to chain yourself to an OS that is rolling on the free branch, get stability and control!
As for LXCs vs Podman containers, seems it is preference of control. LXCs are little OSes you need to keep up to date, containers need to be rebuilt to keep up to date. (I think only Linuxserver images actually rebuild just for base OS updates, hopefully the reverse proxy and authentication images too)
Podman brings some nice networking, read-only features, and user abstraction with it, I think that helps it push ahead.
That said, LXCs are little OSes and that flexibility can be very useful. For instance, incus is able to make an LXC with a unique Mac from an Ethernet adapter - I haven’t cooked how to do that with Podman yet. So I run my DNS from there so it doesn’t mess with my server’s DNS port.
I don’t care much for proxmox but that’s because I live in the terminal anyway and have a lot of experience administering Linux systems. So for me it’s just an extra layer of complexity, the benefits don’t really apply when my setup has IaC, most of my containers are in Podman rather than LXCs, my backups are automated with my own scripts and cronjobs, and I only run a couple of VMs. Also it makes encrypting the base system more difficult than it is with a standard distro
