Tiny PC for Proxmox server / VMs

[noxidjkram@hotm]

I'm looking to build a ProxMox server that will host a couple of VMs (mainly for isolated connectivity to work), plus maybe some other things that shouldn't tax it too much.

Been reading around "Tiny PC" Lenovo solutions that are pretty cheap second-hand.

Anyone have any experience of this sort of solution and any watchouts?

Cheers,
M

 

[nst68]

I’ve got a Topton N100 mini pc from Aliexpress, it was a barebones one so added 16GB Sodimm and m.2 drive.
It was about £120, there’s now one with a N150 chip for not much more.
You can get different specs of network, HDMI ports.

I run a Home Assistant VM and 3 LXC containers, it’s been on for nearly a year with no problems.

 

[decto]

I have a few Lenovo Tiny. Mostly 6400T / 6500T 4c 4t but I think one might be 6100T 2c 4t.

Two are desktops running Linux and perform well.
I also have proxmox on one (32GB) with a few VM's for testing and runs fine.

These are similar performance to N100

Newer are obviously better but anything 8xxx up is still windows 11 compatible so not that cheap yet.
I paid about £40 for the base units and then memory. Note these only take SATA M.2 or 2.5 but the later ones are NVME if you need bandwidth.