Biggest Server Upgrade - Proxmox Two-Node Cluster with Quorum Device

Another server upgrade but probably the last for at least a while. I decided to take it a bit seriously now since I have been reaping its benefits for years. AI also has been becoming not just a trend but a normal day-to-day tool nowadays and having a better server would give my agents a better environment to work on even if I'm not planning to host the LLM here since I don't want a machine with a GPU running 24/7 due to energy costs. Anyway, here is what my current setup looks like:

Yes, I have my drives on a separate dock on USB 3.0 which is very slow compared to SATA but find it enough for my daily use-case. But since I will have a rack soon, I could hook the HDDs on the rack and route the SATA cables to the motherboard.

I did an extensive research before I started buying stuff and with a huge help from homelabbing threads in Reddit and YouTube videos, I decided to go with a 10-inch rack which is recently gaining a lot of attention. Here in Japan, the only available I found that was easy to buy is the DeskPi RackMate T1. It was sale on Amazon for JPY 15,000. I bought extra rack shelves and patch panels along with it. One of the rack shelf is for mini PCs like the HP EliteDesk Mini which I am planning to use in this project.

For the EliteDesk, I found a great deal with a G2 model in Mercari so I immediately bought it. I also bought a dumb switch for now, since I'm afraid about compatibility issues when configuring VLANs on my cheap Elecom WiFi Router. Also, I live alone and the Elecom Router has a separate WiFi connection for guests which acts like a VLAN already.

I also bought a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that would act as a quorum device and PiHole DNS server.

Here's everything I bought and plan to use on my setup:

The Wifi/Bluetooth PCIe is for my desktop PC and the big thing in the middle is my old NEC which I plan to use as a backup wake-on-lan device

My plan was to have the EliteDesk as my main computer that would run projects and external services. While the old ITX build would be my media and storage server. I had my AI agents plot the plan in my selfhosted Outline server and even had them name my devices since I am really bad at thinking names. I decided to go with constellation names and finally settled with the cluster name lyra. While the 2 nodes are spica (EliteDesk) and deneb (old ITX) and the quorum was named proxima.

Initially I was thinking on using Kubernetes even if its an overkill since I have the knowledge but I don't want to feel like doing office work on this server. Yes, to me Kubernetes feels like I'm still in the office doing work and I want to get rid of that feeling so I decided to use Proxmox which is way more easier to setup.

I spent a lot of time finding the right rack setup to the point that I almost gave up with cable management.

I finally settled with this:

The bottom part is where storage devices live. During the time of that picture, the 2 drives that I would use for mirroring haven't arrived yet so it looks empty with those 2.5" drives temporarily installed. There is a piece of metal that could hold 6 HDDs on that last rack. For now, I tried to look for the best place on where to place it under my desk.

But it's almost morning so I let it sit there for now.

The next day, I finalized the networking. Connecting my desktop PC, the 2 nodes, the quorum device, and finally the router.

The drives didn't arrive yet so I decided to setup the EliteDesk today since it won't be using those drives directly.

After a day, the drives arrived so I removed the 2.5" drives I temporarily placed there for testing. Right now there are only two 4 TB 3.5" drives installed under that rack.

I took a picture of the final shutdown of my old server before I wipe it:

Finally, I was able to install Proxmox to everything, link them up together and even tested the tiebreaker vote of the quorum device and it works!

While I won't be sshing too much since I can manage the devices via Proxmox UI, I think its cool to design the MOTD welcome banners lol

It took a while to migrate all my services to it but after 3 days of setup and a week of testing and tweaking, it's finally back working. I felt the benefits of the upgrade specially file transfers since I used to have the drives on a USB 3.0 dock. And having these separate LXCs for my services has been really fun.

Now for backups, it was way more easier because it just takes LXC snapshots every midnight using PBS. My storage drive is mirrored and even have my most important files rsync'd to a separate drive that is on my old USB 3.0 dock away from the server where I could just pull-out and take with me incase of an emergency. I decided to not use the old NEC Mate as a wake-on-lan backup device since it would only add up to space.

Here's what my setup looks like before the upgrade:

And after:

I still have to deal with those wires on the left side of the desk though while the wires to the power strip face upwards and bent like that because my desk can convert to standing mode and I think it's better angled that way so that the wires reach the table properly.