Hey GZers,
I currently have an Ubuntu 12.04 headless server running on an Intel i3-2120T with 4GB RAM. It runs a load of different apps and services including Freeswitch for VOIP, dnsmasq, and various home automation systems (mainly openHAB + mosquitto), plus MySQL and InfluxDb and a small web server.
I have a reasonable backup strategy in place, backing up all config files to a local external HDD and to the cloud using Crashplan.
However the complexity of the server is growing as I add more bits and pieces, and it is at the point now that if it crashed and I had to rebuild from scratch I can see it taking me weeks to get it back to its current state.
So I am looking into some better disaster recovery options and have stumbled across Proxmox VE (after a recommendation). So having done a load of reading I have come up with the following strategy, and just wanted to see if any experts out there had any advice or suggestions about what I am planning, and if there is anything I should be doing differently.
* buy a new box for hosting Proxmox VE
- i5-4590 CPU (quad core with VT)
- ASUS H97M-Plus MOBO
- 16GB RAM
- 2x1TB HDDs in RAID1 (toyed with the idea of SSDs but too expensive and not needed for this low-IO box) - this drive will just be used for the VM OSs and local storage.
* install Proxmox VE on this new box
* create a series of OpenVZ containers (not KWMs since I don't need multiple OS's - linux is fine)
* have a container for databases (MySql, InfluxDB, redis), media (Squeezeserver etc), apps (openHAB, mosquitto etc), monitoring (collectd and other scripts), web (apache2 web server w/ ownCloud etc).
Having built all these and tested the snapshot/backup/restore of the containers to make sure I am happy with the recovery process I will then decommission the old server and turn it into a stand alone NAS running Freenas.org.
It already has a 2TB WD Green HDD so I plan to buy two more 2TB WD Red HDDs and configure all three in a RAID5 array to give me 4TB of storage. This will be the main data store area and all my VMs will be configured to access these via NFS.
There is also a 160GB HDD in the old server which I will use for the NAS OS.
This is my first attempt at a proper server config with RAID and VMs so I am reading a lot at the moment and trying to take it all in before spending all this money on the new box.
Therefore I wanted to run my plan by you guys and see if I am doing anything stupid, or if the hardware I have selected will give me any problems.
Also want to make sure it will be easy enough to do live snapshots/backups of the various VMs and file away using Proxmox so that if there is a disaster situation I can rebuild the server relatively quickly, without having to do complete re-install/re-config on all the apps and services.
Sorry for the long post - wanted to get as much detail as I could - but please fire away with any questions or suggestions.
Many thanks!
Ben