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Documentation Index

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Proxmox VE is the foundation of the homelab, acting as the single hypervisor that orchestrates all virtualised workloads. It hosts a mix of lightweight LXC containers for core infrastructure services and a full Debian 13 virtual machine dedicated to Docker-based applications. This separation keeps the platform stable, modular, and easy to troubleshoot — each service lives in its own isolated environment without competing for system resources at the bare-metal level.
Proxmox VE at pve.home.arpa is the single control plane for all homelab resources. Every service — whether an LXC container or a full VM — is managed, monitored, and backed up from this host.

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Host Details

The Proxmox host sits at a fixed IP in the hypervisor range and is reachable by its internal DNS hostname from anywhere on the home.arpa domain.
PropertyValue
IP Address192.168.1.20
Hostnamepve.home.arpa
RoleHypervisor (bare-metal)

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What Runs on Proxmox

All core infrastructure and application workloads are managed as guests on the Proxmox host. Each guest is assigned a fixed IP in the appropriate subnet range based on its role.
GuestTypeIPHostnameStatus
Technitium DNSLXC192.168.1.21dns.home.arpa✅ Active
Nginx Proxy ManagerLXC192.168.1.22npm.home.arpa✅ Active
TailscaleLXC192.168.1.23ts.home.arpa✅ Active
Docker VMVM (Debian 13)192.168.1.30docker.home.arpa✅ Active
HomelableLXC192.168.1.103homelable.home.arpa✅ Active

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Common Commands

The following Proxmox CLI commands are useful for day-to-day management directly on the pve host. 
# List all QEMU/KVM virtual machines and their states
qm list

# List all LXC containers and their states
pct list

# Display the installed Proxmox VE version
pveversion

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LXC vs VM Strategy

The homelab uses a deliberate split between LXC containers and full virtual machines, based on the nature of each workload. LXC containers are used for core infrastructure services — DNS, reverse proxy, and VPN. These services are well-understood, stable, and do not require a full kernel. LXC provides lightweight process isolation with minimal overhead, allowing them to start in seconds and consume far fewer resources than a full VM. Because they share the host kernel, they are also simpler to maintain and restart during updates. A full virtual machine (Debian 13) is used for the Docker platform. Docker’s interaction with the Linux kernel — including networking namespaces, cgroup management, and storage drivers — benefits from running inside a dedicated kernel rather than sharing the host’s. This avoids compatibility edge cases that can occur with nested containerisation in LXC, and gives the Docker environment a clean, isolated kernel to manage without affecting the Proxmox host or other containers.
The Proxmox host itself is kept minimal and stable. No application services, Docker daemons, or experimental software run directly on the bare-metal node. This ensures the hypervisor remains reliable and is always available to manage and recover guest workloads.

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