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How should I setup my mini PC for being a router / NAS / Media Server? Advice appreciated (alien.top)

submitted 2 years ago by Pedrohpeters@alien.top to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum

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Hi everyone!

Recently I got a mini PC/router from Aliexpress with the following specs:

Intel Pentium Gold 8505 (5C/6T)
4x i226 2.5Gb NICs

and installed:

32Gb of RAM
3Tb storage:
- 1Tb Sata SSD, 1Tb NVME SSD and another 1Tb SSD using USB3.0

I’d like to turn it into an router / NAS / Media server

My initial idea is to install Proxmox and spin up 2 VMS

1º VM for OPNSense with 1P-core (2 threads) and 1 E-core and 8Gb of RAM
2º VM running debian and OMV to run containers (jellyfin, arr’s, nextcloud, pi-hole, etc…) with 3 E-cores and 24Gb o RAM

I’d use ext4 file system and LVM to keep it simple and flexible, because I’m still a beginner and it would be easier to setup and maintain.

I already have some familiarity with debian, OMV and containers because I’m running a similar setup on a raspberry pi 4 at the moment. As I researched more about what I want to accomplish, I stumbled upon some alternatives that raised some questions:

Should I look into TrueNAS scale for the OS of the second VM? I’ve heard it’s good but not beginner friendly
Should I use ZFS as the file system? I really liked the snapshot and deduplication features, but it seems that it might bring more problems than solutions if you don’t know what you’re doing (Which I don’t, at the moment, but plan to learn it in the future).
Is it better to run the containers directly on a LXC Container in Proxmox? I know that it would be lighter, but my biggest concern would be the security of the OPNSense VM. Can an privileged container mess with the VM? Are there other concerns? In my head a VM would be better at isolating things but I know very little of LXC containers.
Are there any better alternatives or something that I’m missing?

Any and all help is appreciated!

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[–] fakemanhk@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

I would just run Jellyfin or other stuff with LXC, of course firewall should be in VM, probably only needs 4G ram and it's more than enough.

[–] PermanentLiminality@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Try and run what you can in LXC instead of a VM. That said run the router as a VM.

I'm not sure how the p cores and e cores are handled, but don't give any p cores to the router unless you find that you need to. The e cores should be enough.

I chose just to use the turnkey file server. Truenas wants to be run bare metal or have disk controllers passed through to it. You can't really do either with your system. You can use truenas if you want. I just didn't see the point.