When I first heard about Proxmox VE, I knew I had to give it a try. As a tech enthusiast, the idea of creating and managing virtual machines and containers on my own hardware sounded like aa great thing to play around with. So, I set out on a mission to find the perfect device to run Proxmox VE on.

After scouring the internet, I stumbled upon a mini PC on AliExpress that seemed to fit the bill. The device was powered by an Intel Celeron N5105 processor, and I added 16GB of RAM and 256GB NVME storage, that was sufficient enough to run a few virtual machines. Actually. my initial idea was to by this device only to run pfSense, but with sufficient amount of RAM and storage why not play around with virtualization.

I also could move my Home Assistant server from Raspberry Pi to VM on Proxmox and maybe even some more containerized services such as mqtt broker (for home automation), maybe a PiHole or AdGuard.

The devices itself turned out to be perfect as it was small enough to fit into my electricity closet. However, there is a word of warning, due to the housing constructions it tends to run a bit hot. I have replaced the thermal paste, but it didn’t help much, so I ended up installing 120mm fan runnning on low speed. Now my CPU temperature is around 50C even during high loads.

The process of installing Proxmox VE was very straightforward:

  1. Download the Proxmox VE ISO file from the Proxmox website: https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads
  2. Create a bootable USB drive using the ISO file. You can use a tool like Rufus to create the bootable USB drive.
  3. Insert the bootable USB drive into your device and boot from it.
  4. Follow the prompts to install Proxmox VE on your device. The installation process is straightforward and will guide you through the process.
  5. Once the installation is complete, you will be prompted to log in to the Proxmox VE web interface. Use the default username (root) and the password you set during the installation process.

Now that Proxmox VE was up and running, it was time to create some virtual machines. I decided to set up two VMs: one running pfSense, a firewall and router software, and another running Home Assistant, a home automation platform. I allocated 8GB of RAM and 4 cores of CPU to the pfSense VM and 1 vcpu and 4GB of RAM to the Home Assistant VM.

The performance of the VMs was great, I didn’t have any issues and everything was working smoothly. I was able to use pfSense to set up my home network and Home Assistant to control my smart home devices. I could also monitor the resource usage of both VMs using Proxmox’s built-in monitoring tools, and make sure that they had enough resources to run smoothly.

Overall, my adventure in virtualization was a great success. I learned a lot about virtualization and Proxmox VE, and now I have a powerful tool at my disposal that allows me to create and manage virtual machines and containers on my own hardware. I highly recommend giving Proxmox VE a try, whether you’re a tech enthusiast or just looking for a way to make the most of your hardware.