What

• Proxmox VE virtualization cluster on Raspberry Pi nodes, with some steps custom to my setup.

Why

• Run container, or even VM, ARM workloads that always need to be running in a home lab environment
• Low power consumption (compared to traditional server hardware)
• Simplicity & Familiarity - Another good platform solution for this would be k3s. I personally prefer Proxmox (my home lab hypervisor of choice), so the learning curve is low. K3s / K8s is on my list of technologies to learn, and this for me can be achieved more effeciently nesting on top of Proxmox
• Capability - this solution allows me to integrate Terraform and Ansible for provisioning and configuration, similar to how I’ve done prior with https://github.com/clayshek/homelab-monorepo

How

As Proxmox doesn’t natively support the ARM processor architecture, will be using https://github.com/pimox/pimox7 to install latest version of Proxmox VE on Raspberry Pi 4

Ras Pi Setup:

• Flash Ras Pi SD card with latest Raspberry Pi OS (raspios_arm64-2021-11-08 at time of writing) using Raspberri Pi Imager.
• Create an empty file named ssh in the boot directory of the SD card to enable ssh. Boot the Pi.
• Ssh to whatever DHCP IP the Pi received. ssh pi@ipaddr using raspberry as password
• Change default password using passwd
• Run, in order:

  sudo -s
  apt update
  apt upgrade
  apt dist-upgrade
  

• Optional: using raspi-config: Set time zone, set System/Boot to “Console”, disable Splash Screen
• Optional: if intending to use iSCSI storage, run apt-get install open-iscsi
• Run:

  curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pimox/pimox7/master/RPiOS64-IA-Install.sh > RPiOS64-IA-Install.sh
  chmod +x RPiOS64-IA-Install.sh
  ./RPiOS64-IA-Install.sh
  

  Provide required inputs when prompted. Pi will reboot when script successfully completes.

Proxmox Setup:

• Access Proxmox GUI at https://<IP entered above>:8006
• Add NAS storage: Datacenter -> Storage -> Add SMB/CIFS. Once per cluster.
• Add iSCSI SAN storage: Datacenter -> Storage -> Add iSCSI. ID=rpipve-iscsi, uncheck “Use LUNs directly”. Once per cluster. If necessary for LUN access, obtain initiator name with sudo cat /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi
• Add LVM storage on top of iSCSI LUN: Datacenter -> Storage -> Add LVM. ID=vm-store-iscsi, Volume Group=iscsi-vg
• Optional: Setup 2FA: Datacenter -> Permissions -> Two Factor

To-Do:

• Turn all of the above into an Ansible playbook