My Proxmox homelab: how I went from a mini PC to my own server
For a long time I wanted to run my own server, but I was wary of the cost and the complexity. Then I came across Proxmox VE — and looking back, I wonder why I didn't do it sooner. Proxmox is a free, open-source virtualization platform based on Debian: KVM for full-fledged VMs, LXC for lightweight containers, and a web interface that genuinely makes day-to-day work easier.
The nice thing is that you don't need an expensive server. I started with a used mini PC (a Dell OptiPlex Micro) with upgraded RAM and an NVMe SSD — quiet, power-efficient and more than enough for 10–15 containers plus a few VMs. With electricity prices the way they are here, a mini PC idling at 10–15 watts makes a huge difference compared to a rack server.
After installing, the first thing I did was disable the enterprise repository and set up the community repos, secure SSH login with keys and install Fail2ban. Then came the first services: Pi-hole as a network-wide ad blocker, Nginx Proxy Manager and Portainer. That order has proven itself — start small, don't spin up twenty containers at once.
My most important piece of advice, which I had to learn the hard way myself: set up backups before you install your first service. Follow the 3-2-1 rule — Proxmox's built-in snapshot backups make it almost too easy. And by the way, RAID is not a backup — that's something I had to come to understand too.
Just start. One container, one service, and you'll learn more about infrastructure than in any online course. And if you just want to try things out first, a cheap cloud server works fine for learning, too.
Source: Homelab Guide
The nice thing is that you don't need an expensive server. I started with a used mini PC (a Dell OptiPlex Micro) with upgraded RAM and an NVMe SSD — quiet, power-efficient and more than enough for 10–15 containers plus a few VMs. With electricity prices the way they are here, a mini PC idling at 10–15 watts makes a huge difference compared to a rack server.
After installing, the first thing I did was disable the enterprise repository and set up the community repos, secure SSH login with keys and install Fail2ban. Then came the first services: Pi-hole as a network-wide ad blocker, Nginx Proxy Manager and Portainer. That order has proven itself — start small, don't spin up twenty containers at once.
My most important piece of advice, which I had to learn the hard way myself: set up backups before you install your first service. Follow the 3-2-1 rule — Proxmox's built-in snapshot backups make it almost too easy. And by the way, RAID is not a backup — that's something I had to come to understand too.
Just start. One container, one service, and you'll learn more about infrastructure than in any online course. And if you just want to try things out first, a cheap cloud server works fine for learning, too.
Source: Homelab Guide
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