Curious to know what the experiences are for those who are sticking to bare metal. Would like to better understand what keeps such admins from migrating to containers, Docker, Podman, Virtual Machines, etc. What keeps you on bare metal in 2025?

  • a1studmuffin@aussie.zoneEnglish
    2·
    12 hours ago

    I’m curious why you feel these are easier to run on bare metal? I only ask as I’ve just built my first proxmox PC with the intent to run TrueNAS and Home Assistant OS as VMs, with 8x SAS enterprise drives on an HBA passed through to the TrueNAS VM.

    Is it mostly about separation of concerns, or is there some other dragon awaiting me (aside from the power bills after I switch over)?

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      Anything I run on Proxmox, per my own requirements, needs to be hardware-agnostic. I have a 3-node cluster set up to be a “playground” of sorts, and I like being able to migrate VMs/LXCs between different nodes as I see fit (maintenance reasons or whatever).

      Some services I want to run on their own hardware, like Home Assistant, because it offers more granular control. The Lenovo M710q Tiny that my HA system runs on, even with its i7-7700T, pulls a whopping 10W on average. I’ll probably change it to the Pentium G4560T that’s currently sitting on my desk, and repurpose the i7-7700T for another machine that could use the horsepower.

      My NAS is where Im more concerned about separation of duties. I want my NAS to only be a NAS. OMV is pretty simple to manage, has a great dashboard, spits out SMART data, and also runs a weekly rsync backup command on my RAID to a separate 8TB backup drive. I’m currently in the process of building a “new” NAS inside a gutted HP server case from 2003 to replace the Mac mini/USB 4-bay drive enclosure. New NAS will have a proper HBA to handle drives.

      or is there some other dragon awaiting me (aside from the power bills after I switch over)?

      My entire homelab runs about 90-130W. It’s pulled a total of ~482kWh since February (when I started monitoring it). That’s 3x tiny/mini/micro PCs (HP 800 G3 i7, HP 800 G4 i7, Lenovo M710q i7), an SFF (Optiplex 7050 i7), 2014 Mac mini (i5)/loaded 4-bay HDD enclosure/8TB USB HDD, Raspberry Pi 0W, and an 8-port switch.