Selfhosted @lemmy.world TedZanzibar @feddit.uk 2 mo. ago

Recommendations for running VMs on a headless server?

Quick overview of my setup: Synology NAS running a whole bunch of Docker containers and a couple of full blown VMs, and an N100 based mini PC running Ubuntu Server for those containers that benefit from hardware acceleration.

On the NAS I have a Linux Mint VM that I use for various desktoppy things, but performance via RDP or NoMachine and so on is just bad. I think it's ultimately due to the lack of acceleration, so I'd like to try running it from the mini PC instead but I'm struggling to find hypervisor options.

VirtualBox can be done headless, apparently, but the package installed via Apt wants to install X/Wayland and the entire desktop experience. LXC looks like it might be a viable option with its web frontend but it appears to be conflicting with Docker atm and won't run the setup.

Another option is to redo the machine with UnRaid or TrueNAS Scale but as they're designed to be full fledged NAS OSes I don't love that idea.

So what would you do? Does anyone have a similar setup with advice?

Thanks all!

Edit: Thanks for everyone's comments. I still can't get LXC to work, which is a shame because it has a nice web frontend, so I'll give KVM a go as my next option. Failing that I might well backup my Docker volumes, blat the whole thing and see what Proxmox can do.

Edit 2: Webtop looks to be exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again for everyone's help and suggestions.

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39 comments

I've heard good things about Proxmox, but I have no direct experience with it. That would be a separate box that manages the VMs and everything, and it has a remote GUI option (webpage I think?).

If you want something on an existing box, just use KVM directly, or a simple frontend like GNOME boxes. I don't know about remote configuration, but once it's set up, do you really need to check in on things remotely? KVM will do hardware acceleration (definitely CPU acceleration, GPU if you configure it properly), and it has no GUI by default.
- It uses some form of VNC (forget the name). Performance is fine for the VMs for non-video stuff.
  
  You can run whatever you want inside a VM too.
  
  No VNC
  
  No, it uses VNC
  
  (Joking)
  
  I typed it like that with the slim hope that someone would misinterpreted it, lol.

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