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.
2.5 KiB
london-a
Proxmox VE hypervisor. The platform for any VM workloads I want to run on owned hardware.
Overview
| Location | London (NW9) |
| OS | Debian 13 (Trixie) with Proxmox VE 9.x |
| Tailscale IP | 100.122.180.98 |
| Role | Hypervisor (Proxmox VE) |
Hardware
| Component | Spec |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel i7-4790K (8 threads) |
| Memory | 32 GB |
| Boot disk | 1 TB |
Old gaming PC. Runs Proxmox VE on bare metal.
Services
| Service | Port | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proxmox VE | 8006 | Active | Web UI — reachable via london-a.pez.sh (Caddy) or Tailscale IP |
| Tailscale | — | Active | Mesh networking |
| node_exporter, systemd_exporter, Alloy | — | Active | Observability baseline (Ansible-managed) |
Storage
Proxmox is connected to a CIFS share on london-b (100.84.65.101 /pve) for ISO/template/backup storage. The mount is configured by the proxmox_ve Ansible role:
| Storage ID | Type | Backing |
|---|---|---|
local-lvm |
LVM-Thin | Local boot disk |
hdd |
CIFS | london-b /pve share |
london-b-backups |
CIFS | london-b pve-backups share, /london-a subdir — backups only |
Backups
vzdump jobs are defined in proxmox_ve_backup_jobs in host_vars/london-a.yml and applied by the proxmox_ve role:
| Job | Schedule | VMs | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
daily |
02:30 | 101 (k8s-control-plane) | 7 daily, 4 weekly |
Karpenter worker VMs and the Karpenter template are not backed up.
VMs
| VMID | Name | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | Mac-Server | Stopped | macOS Sequoia VM (OpenCore bootloader). Intended for occasional macOS workloads. |
The VM list will grow over time — this is a general-purpose hypervisor, not a single-VM appliance.
Ansible
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 - Mounts the london-b CIFS storage
- Adds the
london-b-backupsstorage and reconciles the vzdump jobs inproxmox_ve_backup_jobs
Networking
Connected via Cat 5 to the Ubiquiti switch alongside london-b and london-c.
History
london-a used to run FreeBSD as a single-purpose monitoring host (Prometheus + Grafana). Monitoring moved to Grafana Cloud, the box was repaved as Proxmox VE, and the FreeBSD-specific Ansible has been removed.