I recently got some new hardware to upgrade my home lab. Most of the hardware was picked up used, except for the hard drives. In this post, I’ll walk you through my setup with Proxmox, detailing my server specs, network configuration, and a brief overview of my virtual machines.

The Server

  • CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11700K @ 3.60GHz
  • RAM: 32GB
  • Storage:
    • 2TB Samsung 990 Pro (Main)
    • 1TB Samsung 840 Evo (Secondary)
  • NIC: 4 port 2.5GB

Network Configuration

/etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface enp0s31f6 inet manual
auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.5/24
        gateway 192.168.1.1
        bridge-ports enp0s31f6
        bridge-stp off
        bridge-fd 0
# Bridge for enp6s0 (WAN)
auto vmbr1
iface vmbr1 inet manual
    bridge_ports enp6s0
    bridge_stp off
    bridge_fd 0
# Bridge for enp4s0, enp5s0, enp3s0 (LAN)
auto vmbr2
iface vmbr2 inet manual
    bridge_ports enp3s0 enp4s0 enp5s0
    bridge_stp off
    bridge_fd 0

vmbr0: This is set to a static IP for accessing Proxmox. It’s the port on the motherboard

vmbr1: This is a bridge for the WAN. It is on the first port of the 4 port NIC

vmbr2: This is a bridge for the LAN. It connects the other 3 ports on the NIC

Virtual machines

pfSense: Firewall and router.

Server 2022: Active Directory Server with Splunk.

Ubuntu Server: Running SWAG by linuxserver.io.

Windows 11: My daily driver, accessed remotely.

Internet Connectivity

My AT&T modem (BGW320-500) is set to passthrough mode, connecting to the WAN port for internet access. I pay for a gigabit service but AT&T overprovisions their lines, allowing me to achieve speeds of 1250 megabits both up and down.

      Server: Consolidated Communications Inc - Antelope, CA (id: 17510)
         ISP: AT&T Internet
Idle Latency:     8.07 ms   (jitter: 0.27ms, low: 7.94ms, high: 8.71ms)
    Download:  1251.94 Mbps (data used: 1.0 GB)
                 14.93 ms   (jitter: 1.95ms, low: 7.17ms, high: 21.15ms)
      Upload:  1247.81 Mbps (data used: 1.2 GB)
                 11.38 ms   (jitter: 0.88ms, low: 7.92ms, high: 14.14ms)
 Packet Loss: Not available.
  Result URL: https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/7fef795b-bce9-4973-8c65-066e3e30ebb9

Backups

I run the command below to backups my virtual machines to an external server that syncs with OneDrive for cloud redundancy rsync -av /var/lib/vz/dump/ /mnt/win10-e/backups/proxmox/