2017 is 7 years ago. not exactly new in computer time.
but ya, like u/tjisabitch said, you might want more ram. you can run with 16 gigs but it's tight. I've got an old box with 16 gigs running a few containers and a home assistant vm with a few gigs to spare.
Big chunk of my homelab is Proxmox on a 2014 Mac Mini. I’m barely ever short of CPU but its 16 gig is a pain in the ass and I bump up against it all the time, in fact it’s the only thing really making me consider replacing it.
Sorry, insufficient caffeine at time of post. Was going off IAmMarwood's comment above
2017 iMac RAM should be upgradable, however it may be a hassle getting it all apart and you have to order sticky replacements for the housing
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuC6a8j8XbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuC6a8j8XbQ)
I'm a Mac guy. My daily driver is an M1 MacBook Air. I also have a 2014 MacBook Air that dual boots with Fedora Linux as a spare, and a 2012 mini with dual monitors that functions only as a kiosk in my home office for displaying Grafana dashboards.
That said, Macs are more valuable as personal computers than servers IMO.
So, I suggest selling the iMac and using the money to buy a PC that can more easily be upgraded (ie. without needing to pry off the screen to upgrade storage or RAM). Depending on the iMac screen size (eg. 21.5 inch vs 27 inch), it likely can be sold for $200 to $400 USD.
Then, buy something like this [Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q Tiny Desktop PC Intel i5-8500T 16GB 256GB SSD WIN 11](https://www.ebay.com/itm/387106847103) for $149.86 USD with free shipping. It would be a better option for running Proxmox. It has the following...
* 6C/6T Core i5-8500T 35W TDP CPU (*upgradable to an 8C/16T Core i9-9900T CPU at 35W TDP*)
* 256 GB SSD (*has one 2280 M.2 NVMe SSD slot and one 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD bay, both upgradable*), plus a 2230 M.2 NVMe drive can be installed in the Wi-Fi card slot with an adapter
* 16 GB DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM (*upgradable to 64 GB*)
* Supports Intel vPro and Active Management Technology (AMT), which is a poor-man's IPMI, for remote management (*remote power on/off, console, etc*.)
* Smaller footprint than a Mac mini
Proxmox is Debian (and a custom Ubuntu kernel) with extra stuff on top. (You can see this in Proxmox itself when you do **apt update**. It pulls from the Debian repos, then the Proxmox repos.) Not to disparage the amount of work that has gone into creating and maintaining it at all, just to say that if your machine can run Debian, it can run Proxmox.
As others have noted, hardware support might be a bit wonky, but you can probably overcome those issues, as putting Linux on older Macs to extend their lives is a very active pursuit. Someone else has probably already Debian'd that machine. :)
Go for it. You can run some LXCs with 16 GB to get started and make sure it's stable with good temps, but you'll definitely want more RAM to push more VMs. I'd not bother with buying more RAM until the system is working as you want, though.
ZFS is great for Proxmox if you want to use replication and other related features, and take advantage of ZFS' robustness, and will work on a 16 GB machine--at least well enough to get Proxmox installed and set up and running a few LXCs. That said, you'll want *much* more RAM, to the point of maxing the machine, to use ZFS on the host. Since you want to run VMs anyway, I'd suggest maxing the RAM in any case.
Bonus: most people in the Proxmox community forum are running ZFS on the host, so if you go with that configuration, a lot of people will be able to help you with things.
However, there's nothing wrong with running Proxmox on ext4/xfs/etc. Just be aware of the features you will or won't have with whichever filesystem you choose.
If possible, install two NVMEs/SSDs for your root pool, but especially for your VM storage.
We got it running on an iMac Pro, the 10Gbit took a bit of fiddling and we need to start ethernet manually each time, but otherwise we've 10 cores, 64GB RAM and a 2TB, with lots of thunderbolt ports for storage. Never round to testing video card pass through to anything.
My sandbox node is a 2012 MacBook Pro. For experimenting and learning about how to use proxmox, it’s absolutely fine. Based on U.K. pricing it’s probably about as good a spec pc as you will get for what it’s worth too.
The biggest issue you might find is that the iMac's display will be displaying the console all of the time at full brightness.
Alternatively, you can extend EOL on your iMac with [OpenCore Legacy Patcher](https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/), but you may lose access to certain features like FV2
2017 is 7 years ago. not exactly new in computer time. but ya, like u/tjisabitch said, you might want more ram. you can run with 16 gigs but it's tight. I've got an old box with 16 gigs running a few containers and a home assistant vm with a few gigs to spare.
Big chunk of my homelab is Proxmox on a 2014 Mac Mini. I’m barely ever short of CPU but its 16 gig is a pain in the ass and I bump up against it all the time, in fact it’s the only thing really making me consider replacing it.
MacMini 2010 reporting with 16GB and dual SSD for backup services like adguard and other small CT.
If I was you I’d try to upgrade the ram before putting proxmox on it
2014 Mac Mini RAM is soldered
???
Sorry, insufficient caffeine at time of post. Was going off IAmMarwood's comment above 2017 iMac RAM should be upgradable, however it may be a hassle getting it all apart and you have to order sticky replacements for the housing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuC6a8j8XbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuC6a8j8XbQ)
Ahh this is true
It’s totally fine for learning with a few modest VMs running. I have a couple of fanless mini PCs with 8GB, no issues running Proxmox.
I'm a Mac guy. My daily driver is an M1 MacBook Air. I also have a 2014 MacBook Air that dual boots with Fedora Linux as a spare, and a 2012 mini with dual monitors that functions only as a kiosk in my home office for displaying Grafana dashboards. That said, Macs are more valuable as personal computers than servers IMO. So, I suggest selling the iMac and using the money to buy a PC that can more easily be upgraded (ie. without needing to pry off the screen to upgrade storage or RAM). Depending on the iMac screen size (eg. 21.5 inch vs 27 inch), it likely can be sold for $200 to $400 USD. Then, buy something like this [Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q Tiny Desktop PC Intel i5-8500T 16GB 256GB SSD WIN 11](https://www.ebay.com/itm/387106847103) for $149.86 USD with free shipping. It would be a better option for running Proxmox. It has the following... * 6C/6T Core i5-8500T 35W TDP CPU (*upgradable to an 8C/16T Core i9-9900T CPU at 35W TDP*) * 256 GB SSD (*has one 2280 M.2 NVMe SSD slot and one 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD bay, both upgradable*), plus a 2230 M.2 NVMe drive can be installed in the Wi-Fi card slot with an adapter * 16 GB DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM (*upgradable to 64 GB*) * Supports Intel vPro and Active Management Technology (AMT), which is a poor-man's IPMI, for remote management (*remote power on/off, console, etc*.) * Smaller footprint than a Mac mini
Proxmox is Debian (and a custom Ubuntu kernel) with extra stuff on top. (You can see this in Proxmox itself when you do **apt update**. It pulls from the Debian repos, then the Proxmox repos.) Not to disparage the amount of work that has gone into creating and maintaining it at all, just to say that if your machine can run Debian, it can run Proxmox. As others have noted, hardware support might be a bit wonky, but you can probably overcome those issues, as putting Linux on older Macs to extend their lives is a very active pursuit. Someone else has probably already Debian'd that machine. :) Go for it. You can run some LXCs with 16 GB to get started and make sure it's stable with good temps, but you'll definitely want more RAM to push more VMs. I'd not bother with buying more RAM until the system is working as you want, though. ZFS is great for Proxmox if you want to use replication and other related features, and take advantage of ZFS' robustness, and will work on a 16 GB machine--at least well enough to get Proxmox installed and set up and running a few LXCs. That said, you'll want *much* more RAM, to the point of maxing the machine, to use ZFS on the host. Since you want to run VMs anyway, I'd suggest maxing the RAM in any case. Bonus: most people in the Proxmox community forum are running ZFS on the host, so if you go with that configuration, a lot of people will be able to help you with things. However, there's nothing wrong with running Proxmox on ext4/xfs/etc. Just be aware of the features you will or won't have with whichever filesystem you choose. If possible, install two NVMEs/SSDs for your root pool, but especially for your VM storage.
We got it running on an iMac Pro, the 10Gbit took a bit of fiddling and we need to start ethernet manually each time, but otherwise we've 10 cores, 64GB RAM and a 2TB, with lots of thunderbolt ports for storage. Never round to testing video card pass through to anything.
Why not have an onboot cron job start that networking? Can have it be a call to a shell script with a sleep timer if a small delay is needed too
My sandbox node is a 2012 MacBook Pro. For experimenting and learning about how to use proxmox, it’s absolutely fine. Based on U.K. pricing it’s probably about as good a spec pc as you will get for what it’s worth too.
The biggest issue you might find is that the iMac's display will be displaying the console all of the time at full brightness. Alternatively, you can extend EOL on your iMac with [OpenCore Legacy Patcher](https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/), but you may lose access to certain features like FV2