A small datacentre downstairs.

What Proxmox is, briefly

Proxmox VE is a type-1 hypervisor: it runs directly on the hardware (not inside another operating system) and manages both full virtual machines (KVM) and lightweight containers (LXC). A single web interface to create them, move them, snapshot them and back them up. Open source, with no mandatory licences.

How I organised the machines

The architecture is hierarchical: hardware at the bottom, Proxmox in the middle, and the services above it, split by function.

• Home automation — the Home Assistant VM and the services around it.
• Private cloud — files and data sync with redundancy, at my place.
• Automated backup — scheduled copies of data and configurations.
• Web hosting & reverse proxy — the Nginx front end acting as doorkeeper and the sites behind it, enricoder.com included.
• AI assistant — a dedicated environment for the local models.
• Linux development — a sandbox where I can try things and break them without fear.

The architecture diagram

A map of the environment: physical server, hypervisor, VMs and containers organised by function. Click to enlarge.

Why two separate tiers: front end and back end

Requests from the web reach an Nginx acting as reverse proxy: it handles HTTPS, the security headers and the routing to the right server. The site itself is served by an Apache behind the scenes, on the local network. Separating the jobs makes the whole thing sturdier: I can switch off or upgrade one piece without taking the rest down.

Is this overkill for a personal site? Absolutely. But it is exactly the kind of overkill you learn something from.

Curious about how a specific VM is put together? Just ask.