My desktop became a Proxmox home server

I turned my unused desktop into a Proxmox home server, and I don't miss having it as a desktop. My MacBook had already become the computer I used every day. The more capable machine sitting there could do something useful instead.

The previous server had started with an old i5 and OpenMediaVault. It had become something I used all the time. Moving to the spare desktop gave it more compute, but getting there meant breaking some of the things I depended on.

A day or two of things being broken

The move took me a day or two. It was the whole “my services are down, my DNS is broken” thing again, slowly transferring things and getting them working. It was a bit painful.

There was also something I hadn't saved the configuration for properly before wiping a drive. I can't remember exactly what it was now, but I remember having to redo it manually. “Ah damn it, lost that.” A huge pain, though it wasn't the end of the world. It ended up being fine.

What the desktop runs now

Proxmox lets me run separate virtual machines on the same physical computer. The primary host is an i7-9700K, with around 40 TB of storage available through OpenMediaVault. Its usable memory is consistent with the 64 GB specified in July. These are October checks, rather than a record of exactly what was connected on moving day.

OpenMediaVault is now a VM. Docker runs in another guest, with services such as Plex and Home Assistant inside it. Komodo, which manages container deployments, has its own VM too. There is also a Windows VM. I spun that up at one point to do something, which was nice: I could have a Windows machine available without making the whole computer my Windows desktop.

The Proxmox resource tree lists four running guests on gluesoup-0: OpenMediaVault, Komodo, Docker and Windows. — The primary host’s actual Proxmox resource tree, captured on 6 October 2026. This shows the setup now, not during the migration.

The current setup also has a second Proxmox machine with another Docker guest and the alternate Pi-hole. Separating the guests doesn't remove every shared dependency. The primary VMs still depend on the same physical machine, and the media services depend on storage from OpenMediaVault.

The primary Proxmox host contains separate OpenMediaVault, Docker, Komodo and Windows guests. A second host contains a Docker guest running the alternate Pi-hole. — Current layout, checked on 6 October 2026. The boxes are separate VMs; the four guests in the upper group still share one physical host.

It has been nice to have more compute and to have things work quicker. That is how using the setup has felt.

The laptop is the computer I sit down with

I have a work MacBook and a personal MacBook, a desk upstairs with two monitors, and a desk downstairs with one. At either desk I can plug in a couple of cables with whichever laptop I fancy using. It charges, the monitors work, and the peripherals I need work.

That arrangement suits me. I don't miss having the desktop.

There have been a couple of times when I've thought it would be nice to play a game and haven't had that desktop available anymore. But I don't miss it enough to go back, or think a dedicated gaming computer would be worth owning for how little I want to use it.

I don't miss having a dedicated Linux machine either. I've moved away from the terminal and I'm using AI heavily now. That includes using Codex to operate the home server. A MacBook, AI, and an AI desktop app is my ideal workflow. The stationary machine still gives me the capacity to run things; it just doesn't need to be the computer I sit in front of.