Neither Proxmox host had a single backup job, so the game servers, the k3s control planes and the workspace VMs had no backups at all. copenhagen-a has nowhere local to keep them (`local` is the root LV and already 82% full), so both hosts now back up to a new pve-backups Samba share on london-b, each into its own directory. VMIDs overlap between the two hosts, and retention prunes by VMID, so they can't share one. - media_stack creates a Samba-only pvebackup user on london-b, the share and the per-host directories. The password comes from SOPS and gets re-set if the login stops working. smb.conf is now checked with testparm before it's deployed. - proxmox_ve adds a backup-only london-b-backups CIFS storage, pushes the credentials again if the storage goes inactive, and fails the deploy if it still can't reach london-b. - Jobs are defined in host_vars. Each job keeps a hash of its settings in its comment, so the role only touches jobs that changed and removes ones I delete from host_vars. Jobs made by hand are left alone. london-a backs up the control plane every night. copenhagen-a backs up the control plane and game servers every night and the workspace VMs weekly, since every run is a full archive going over the WAN.
3.5 KiB
copenhagen-a
Proxmox VE hypervisor. Located at my dad's place in Copenhagen as an off-site location — the Copenhagen counterpart to london-a.
Overview
| Location | Copenhagen |
| OS | Debian 13 (Trixie) with Proxmox VE |
| Tailscale IP | 100.91.240.29 |
| Role | Hypervisor (Proxmox VE) |
| Form factor | Minisforum MS-A2 mini PC |
Hardware
| Component | Spec |
|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX (16 cores / 32 threads) |
| Memory | 64 GB |
| Boot disk | 1 TB NVMe (Kingston OM8TAP41024K1-A00) |
Minisforum MS-A2 mini PC. Small, quiet, and draws minimal power relative to its performance. This replaced the original Lenovo "tiny" desktop (Intel i5-4570T / 16 GB / 500 GB) that used to run the gaming servers directly on bare metal; the host was repaved as Proxmox VE on the new hardware.
Services
| Service | Port | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proxmox VE | 8006 | Active | Web UI — reachable via copenhagen-a.pez.sh (Caddy) or Tailscale IP |
| Tailscale | — | Active | Mesh networking |
| node_exporter, systemd_exporter, Alloy | — | Active | Observability baseline (Ansible-managed) |
Storage
Unlike london-a, this host does not mount london-b's /pve CIFS share — it's not worth the WAN/Tailscale hop from Copenhagen for VM storage. It does use london-b for backups (below). Only local storage is configured (proxmox_ve_mount_cifs_storage: false in host_vars/copenhagen-a.yml).
| Storage ID | Type | Backing |
|---|---|---|
local-lvm |
LVM-Thin | Local boot disk |
local |
Directory | ISO/template storage |
london-b-backups |
CIFS | london-b pve-backups share over Tailscale, /copenhagen-a subdir — backups only |
Backups
There's no room for backups locally, so they go to london-b over Tailscale. Every vzdump run is a full archive, so only the VMs that change daily run nightly. Jobs are defined in proxmox_ve_backup_jobs in host_vars/copenhagen-a.yml:
| Job | Schedule | VMs | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
daily |
03:00 | 100 (k8s-control-plane), 102 (minecraft), 103 (mangos-zero) | 7 daily, 4 weekly |
weekly |
Sun 04:30 | 101 (workspace), 104 (workspace-alpine) | 4 weekly |
VMs
Runs a mix of always-on VMs (Kubernetes control plane, a general-purpose workspace, Minecraft) plus Karpenter-managed Kubernetes worker nodes that scale up/down on demand.
Ansible
Part of the proxmox_hosts group alongside london-a, sharing the proxmox_ve role:
- Swaps the enterprise apt repo for
pve-no-subscriptionso updates work without a paid subscription - Patches
proxmoxlib.jsto suppress the subscription nag dialog - Restricts the web UI to the
tailscale0interface via UFW - Skips the london-b
/pveCIFS mount (proxmox_ve_mount_cifs_storage: false) - Adds the
london-b-backupsstorage and reconciles the vzdump jobs inproxmox_ve_backup_jobs
Networking
Connected directly to the ISP router's built-in switch. Symmetrical 500 Mbit connection.
History
copenhagen-a used to run gaming servers directly on bare metal: a Minecraft server (itzg/minecraft-server, Docker) and a WoW 1.12 (Vanilla) MaNGOS Zero private server (native systemd + local MariaDB). Both were decommissioned and the host was repaved as Proxmox VE — the Tailscale identity (and IP) changed as part of the reinstall. The old static public IP used for direct game-client connections (Minecraft server list, WoW realm list) is no longer needed since nothing here accepts direct client connections anymore.