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Comment by jjangkke | Hacker News Reader

im using proxmox but struggling to setup subnets and vms

should I be using terraform and ansible?

im using cursor to ssh and it constantly needs to run commands to get "state" of the setup.

basically im trying to do what I used to do on AWS: setup VMs on private network talking to each other with one gateway dedicated to internet connection but this is proving to be extremely difficult with the bash scripts generated by cursor

if anyone can help me continue my journey with self hosting instead of relying on AWS that would be great

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> im using proxmox but struggling to setup subnets and vms

That is a pretty broad target. I would say start by setting up an opnsense vm, from there you can do very little to start, just lock down your network so you can work in peace. But it can control your subnet traffic, host your tailscale, dchp server, and adguard home, etc.

As somebody who was quite used to hosting my own servers, before I first set up my homelab I thought proxmox would be the heart of it. Actually opnsense is the heart of the network, proxmox is much more in the background.

I think proxmox + opnsense is great tech and you should not be adding in terraform and ansible, but I am not sure that using cursor is helping you. You need a really good grasp of what is going on if your entire digital life is going to be controlled centrally. I would lean heavily on the proxmox tutorials and forums, and even more on the opnsense tutorials and forums. Using cursor for less important things afterwards, or to clarify a fine point every once in a while would make more sense.

I've found a lot of docs (Proxmox and TrueNAS are both guilty of this) assume you have existing domain or tool knowledge. I'd recommend checking out some videos from selfhosting YouTubers. They often explain more about what's actually happening than just what buttons to select

Also, I found TrueNAS's interface a little more understandable. If Proxmox isn't jiving with you, you could give that a try

I agree Proxmox default networking is lacking/insufficient at best. If you have VLANs or want to do LACP, anything more advanced than a simple interface you'll run into the limitations of the Proxmox implementation quite quickly.

I think the networking experience for hosts is one of the worst things about Proxmox.

You don't need any scripts to do that.

Read the docs!

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Network_Configuration#_choosing...

Handle subnets on your router, then in ProxMox make the primary network interface you'll be passing to VM's or Containers VLAN aware, with the VLAN tags that it'll support defined and you're good to go.

Try using Proxmox's web UI to create a Linux Bridge for each subnet, then attach VMs to appropriate bridges and configure a VM with two interfaces as your router between networks.

Do you really need proxmox ? Would some docker not enough ?

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