My Proxmox Setup: Virtual Machines and Game Hosting
How I use Proxmox for game server hosting with Pelican Wings and a Windows VM for trialling software, and why the panel sits on a separate VPS.
Prox1 is the second server in my homelab. It runs Proxmox VE 9.2.5 on an Intel Core i7-11700K with roughly 64 GiB of RAM, using 8 cores and 16 threads. Its job is virtual machines.
Why Proxmox
Proxmox lets me carve one machine into several isolated systems. If one misbehaves, the others carry on. That suits game hosting, where I want servers kept apart from everything else.
The virtual machines
Pelican Wings runs the game servers themselves. It works together with Pelican Panel, which I use to manage them.
A Windows machine handles software that only runs on Windows. It is also where I trial new software in a secure, contained space before I trust it anywhere else.
Where the panel lives
Pelican Panel does not run at home. It sits on a remote VPS behind a proxy. That keeps the management side of game hosting off my home network, so the part exposed to the internet is not on the same network as my other machines.
The games
I currently host Palworld, Project Zomboid, Enshrouded, Minecraft, Valheim and Eco for my community. The list changes as people's interests change.
Lessons so far
When a game server fails with a vague error, I go back to the logs, and often to adding more logging, before changing anything else.
What is next
Faster networking between the machines is on my list, and I am looking at 10Gb.
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