Migrated

It didn’t take long before I got the itch to set up something a little more powerful than the Pi 5. I was originally going to upgrade my old gaming PC and use that hardware as a server, but I really wanted something small and out of the way, and there just isn’t much you can do with an ATX motherboard to take up less space. Seems like the best you can do with a midsize tower is a 16"x16" cube, unless you want to shell out for some expensive minimalist cases and wait several months on backorder.

I’ve been getting endless recommended videos on YouTube for mini-pcs like Minisforum and Beelink, which keep having deals and come decently recommended in various forums. I got one with 64GB of memory and a Ryzen 9 processor that put my gaming box to shame (don’t worry, I upgraded it anyway), and it was pretty simple to set it up with Proxmox, create a new Debian VM, and get Portainer up and running in a couple hours.

I moved over a few containers like PhotoPrism that would benefit from the better CPU, left some lightweight ones like this blog on the Pi, and now I have a happy little ecosystem of Portainer server and agents with room to spare. The main trick is managing the proxy server that directs hostnames to the appropriate box, I have to remember which IP is which when setting up the redirects.

Next up is sorting out the upgraded PC. I got a CPU/MB/RAM bundle that is pretty high end, just going to keep my case, GPU, and storage from before. I realized I could just buy an extra set of the same RAM from Amazon for $100 and double the memory, but I’ve been through two sets that just won’t boot when I put them in. I suspect someone has binned a bad batch (maybe counterfeit? I didn’t want to remove the metal casing to compare) at the Amazon warehouse, so I am returning both and ordering from another site entirely. Crap like this really makes me miss just being able to go to Fry’s and get what I needed. 375 words

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