Home Network Upgrade... help needed

[GHanthorn]

Looking to mix up my home network setup to be more user-friendly... I currently have 4 rack-mounted PCs

 

• Machine 1: MSI A320-A PRO Max; Ryzen 7 5700X; 64GB RAM; RX 6400; ProxMox (1 VM: HomeAssistant & 5 LXC: Omada Controller, Pi-Hole, Scrypted, CloudFlared, and NodeRed)
• Machine 2: MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk; Ryzen 5600G; 128GB RAM; No GPU; TrueNAS Scale
• Machine 3: MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk; Ryzen 5950x; 128GB RAM; Nvidia 1080Ti Founders Edition; Windows 11 Pro
• Machine 4: MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk MAX Wifi; Ryzen 5950x; 128GB RAM; XFX RX 6650XT; Windows 11 Pro

 

Machines 2/3/4 are installed in identical 4U Cases. Machine 1 is in a 2U Case, but I have ordered a 4th of the same case as part of my upgrade.

 

I got my hands on 4 MSI X570-A PRO Motherboards and AIO coolers for all 4 machines (right now, all air-cooled with a mix of cooler/fan setups) and replacement fans with Noctua fans.

 

My rack is in a closet that shares a wall with my home office, and all the I/O from all the Machines run on 15' cables thru the wall to keystones on the office wall at each desk except the display outputs, Machines 1 and 2 are headless, machine 3&4 have 20' HDMI cables going straight to monitors at each desk (I have 2 desk setups) thru cable pass thru.

 

What I am thinking about doing (if possible) is making it so that all the machines are identical (Ryzen 9 5950X/128GB) running ProxMox but somehow in a way that I can pull up whatever OS I need at each desk depending on what I am working on vs having to jump between desk (I do Theatrical Lighting and Scenic Design for a living and use Vectorwroks and Unreal Engine for most of my workflow but also help run IT for the main theater I work at and have some stuff that I need to run Linux for and also have a MacBook Pro for some MacOS only software)... and also so I can game from either desk or have a 2nd setup for gaming with friends over. I also want all my self-hosted services to be high availability vs. right now,. If Machine 1 goes down, everything goes down. I think I will still keep the TrueNAS box not on ProxMox since the drives are in that box, and my last attempt at trying TrueNAS in VM was not fun and resulted in me building the TrueNAS machine I have now from spare parts I had on hand.

 

For what it is worth the case I am using is the Rosewill RSV-R4100U that can have 1-120mm front fan (I have sources Cooler Master MasterLiquid 120L Core 120mm AIOs for all 4 cases) and 2-80mm rear fans (I have sourced Noctua NF-R8 for all 4 cases).

 

Ideally, I would like to have the ability to switch between Windows 11 Pro, MacOS 14 (as a hackintosh... but not a deal breaker), and a few different Linux distros, as well as host all my current services.

 

Any thoughts and Ideas would be great...

[brob]

One option would be to run a Type 1 hypervisor on each box. You could then boot the desired o/s. You should be able to have multiple o/s running on the box so switching could be immediate.

[GHanthorn]

On 1/16/2024 at 8:23 AM, brob said:

One option would be to run a Type 1 hypervisor on each box. You could then boot the desired o/s. You should be able to have multiple o/s running on the box so switching could be immediate.

ProxMox is a type 1, but I am wondering if in a cluster I can have say 2 Windows VMs (Primary and Secondary) that I can access from either desk setup as needed (right now for example if I want to use my lighting control programming keyboard I have to be at desk 2 and but may have my pre-visualization program running at desk 1). One desk has more of the design peripherals, while the 2nd desk has more gaming peripherals (I play DCS World and Fight Sim with a full HOTAS and rudder peddle setup). So say VM1 is running today on desk 1 but tomorrow I want to run it on desk 2 (more of an issue when accessing some of the Linux stuff that simulates the lighting and sound networks of the venue for programing show automation)

[brob]

12 hours ago, GHanthorn said:

ProxMox is a type 1, but I am wondering if in a cluster I can have say 2 Windows VMs (Primary and Secondary) that I can access from either desk setup as needed (right now for example if I want to use my lighting control programming keyboard I have to be at desk 2 and but may have my pre-visualization program running at desk 1). One desk has more of the design peripherals, while the 2nd desk has more gaming peripherals (I play DCS World and Fight Sim with a full HOTAS and rudder peddle setup). So say VM1 is running today on desk 1 but tomorrow I want to run it on desk 2 (more of an issue when accessing some of the Linux stuff that simulates the lighting and sound networks of the venue for programing show automation)

 

If each VM is encapsulated in a file theoretically one could simply move the file to any machine for execution. You may find a type 2 makes this easier. Not sure of the implications with peripheral passthrough.