I’ve been using openproject to take notes. I created a project for different areas of my life…then tasks and sub tasks. There’s a wiki, calendar, attach files, associate tasks with other tasks. Then when I’m through with a “project” like testing Nextcloud, I close that project. It archives so all the data and hides it so it’s not in my immediate view anymore but I can still reference it.

The free version supports ldap and 2fa. So it should fit in with Authentik or something similar for SSO.

I’ve found this pretty effective for much of my home lab work, especially for keeping track of applications I want to try. OneNote was getting too cluttered with old projects that I didn’t continue for one reason or another.

Look at nextcloud. It can be mapped to use existing file structure. Has plenty of plugins to do file management, file routing, ocr.

Sterling PDF might be a useful tool as well.

I use proxmox with ceph and cephfs.

I have two ceph pools. One with ssd/nvme, and the other with slow rpm hdd.

The ceph pool with ssd holds my vhds for vms. I only install the os, on that drive…and any necessary programs…Docker, portainer, etc. Then I mount my two cephfs into each vm.

I don’t use lxc…they can’t be migrated between proxmox nodes. I just install Ubuntu server and Docker.

Since you mentioned a windows vm…cephfs can be mounted in Windows as well…no need to setup samba. No need to have data trapped in different vhds. Useful for mapping drives on laptops and desktops in your house too.

Cephfs is my central storage that all servers and containers have access too. If you want to have a NAS gui for users, just map your container to your existing files. I do this for nextcloud. I also run containers like sftpgo, filebrowser, syncthing, etc…all mapped to the two cephfs pools so I can expose and share single data pool via different methods and not have a single vm running samba that’s a single point of failure.

Cephfs and proxmox support clustering, so if you need to grow or upgrade on the future. If you use proxmox for the second server, ceph and cephfs can extend the pool to the second server and moving vms is seamless because the storage is one big pool now. Run some vms on the new server and some on the old…with a single storage pool.

Ceph can grow while online, and is fault tolerant like raid and zfs.

Proxmox will also provide a web interface and console access to your VMs.

I group my Docker containers by function. So I’ll have one Ubuntu Docker server for the Starr apps…then I have another with paperless, Nginx ubiquity controller, filebrowser, sftpgo…then another Ubuntu Docker for nextcloud because it spins up like 10 containers on its own. Another for Plex and jellyfin. Just trying to keep the chaos organized and because I have more than one server…I can move the one of the Docker servers to another proxmox node in my cluster to manually balance cpu and compute.

Then when it’s time to upgrade, I’m not rebuilding everything…I’m just adding a small node with a small cost (small IT budget at home too 😂)

I virtualized my router…opnsense. Just runs in proxmox with all my other vms. Have you explored that option?

I had a similar thought with my last upgrade. I went with proxmox hci and ceph storage. Somebody rise mentioned HCI…it’s been really great for me

I have 6 nodes at the present. I just bought them one at a time as the budget allowed. I started out with Lenovo tiny and now I use HP Elitedesk 800 mini g6. Same thing with storage. I have 2 storage pools, one of my ssd/nvme storage where I boot my OS vhds from and then my slow storage for media (hdds). If I need more ram or compute I just add another node to the cluster and spread out my VMs. If I need more storage, add it to one of the nodes in the cluster and ceph will redistribute the files evenly across the drives while online.

I map my 2 cephfs to all of my vms so the primary vhd has the os, Docker, etc…then if I need fast storage it’s already mapped and so is my slow storage. I map all my Docker containers storage to fast and slow cephfs. All of the data it’s stored at the hypervisor level with proxmox and all the vms, containers, and laptops/desktops access the cephfs.

You can run a windows vm, mount the two cephfs storages and run your favorite backup software and back all your data up off site.

Another benefit I was looking for is not having to rebuild this thing every few years when hardware ages out. Because hci uses nodes…I just had a new node with a newer used eBay computer and when the oldest one dies just move the vms…ceph cares for all the data migration.

Proxmox makes ceph and cephfs extremely easy to deploy. You can expose your file share via iscsi or cephs. Windows will need the ceph/dokan driver installed…or iscsi. That’s the only small inconvenience.

My two cents…hope he helps!

Plex is the only solution I know of. There’s some documentation out there where people have gotten fancy with their music videos in Plex and how it’s organized.

All in one was pretty simple to install…just did it yesterday. I have an existing nginx, so I didn’t use their reverse proxy.

They have a larger Docker compose example with maybe 15 environment variables that I used…the shorter compose examples didn’t let me customize as I wanted.

I didn’t understand port 11000 was the only port I needed open and I beat my head against the wall trying to connect to 80 and 443. Moral of the story, if you can read, it’ll be super simple…if your a moron like me…it’s harder 😂