I’m still running a 6th-generation Intel CPU (i5-6600k) on my media server, with 64GB of RAM and a Quadro P1000 for the rare 1080p transcoding needs. Windows 10 is still my OS from when it was a gaming PC and I want to switch to Linux. I’m a casual user on my personal machine, as well as with OpenWRT on my network hardware.

Here are the few features I need:

  • MergerFS with a RAID option for drive redundancy. I use multiple 12TB drives right now and have my media types separated between each. I’d like to have one pool that I can be flexible with space between each share.
  • Docker for *arr/media downloaders/RSS feed reader/various FOSS tools and gizmos.
  • I’d like to start working with Home Assistant. Installing with WSL hasn’t worked for me, so switching to Linux seems like the best option for this.

Guides like Perfect Media Server say that Proxmox is better than a traditional distro like Debian/Ubuntu, but I’m concerned about performance on my 6600k. Will LXCs and/or a VM for Docker push my CPU to its limits? Or should I do standard Debian or even OpenMediaVault?

I’m comfortable learning Proxmox and its intricacies, especially if I can move my Windows 10 install into a VM as a failsafe while building a storage pool with new drives.

  • tofuEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    Your CPU should be perfectly capable of that. I ran Proxmox with some VMs and containers on an i5-2400 with 16GB RAM just fine.

    You could run on bare Debian as well but virtualization will give you more flexibility. If you get a Zigbee Dongle or the like, you can pass it through to the VM Home Assistant is running in.

    I don’t know MergeFS but usually the recommendation is ZFS.