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Physical Hardware

Three identical (or near-identical) mini-servers form the Proxmox cluster. They are named after architects following a consistent naming convention.

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ando

node-1 · primary

  • 32 CPU cores
  • 1 TB SSD + 2 TB SSD
  • 2.5G NIC (uplink)
  • 10G NIC (backhaul, unplugged)
  • Proxmox VE host

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ban

node-2

  • 32 CPU cores
  • 1 TB SSD + 2 TB SSD
  • 2.5G NIC (uplink)
  • 10G NIC (backhaul)
  • Proxmox VE host

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corbu

node-3

  • 32 CPU cores
  • 1 TB SSD + 2 TB SSD
  • 2.5G NIC (uplink)
  • 10G NIC (backhaul)
  • Proxmox VE host
Component Spec Notes
CPU AMD Ryzen / similar, 32 cores Use TLP with explicit AMD config. Avoid powertop --auto-tune (known instability).
Storage 1 TB SSD (OS + VMs) + 2 TB SSD (data) Local storage only. Ceph is not used — stateless workers write to object storage.
Primary NIC 2.5 GbE Connected to managed switch trunk port. Carries all tagged VLAN traffic.
Secondary NIC 10 GbE Connected to an isolated switch (no routing). Reserved for future inter-node backhaul. Currently unplugged on ando due to thermal concerns with the Intel X540 card.
Hypervisor Proxmox VE (latest stable) Clustered. Single VLAN-aware bridge vmbr0 per host.
Out-of-band access DIY PiKVM Provides KVM-over-IP for remote console access without network dependency.

10G NIC thermal note

The Intel X540 10G NIC on the Minisforum 795S7 (ando) generates significant heat. The cable is currently unplugged while the card remains installed to preserve optionality. If you reinstall the 10G cable, monitor thermals closely.

Proxmox bridge configuration

Each host uses a single VLAN-aware bridge rather than one bridge per VLAN. VMs are placed into their zone by tagging their virtual NIC in the Proxmox UI.

# /etc/network/interfaces — each Proxmox host
auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet manual
    bridge-ports eno1
    bridge-stp off
    bridge-fd 0
    bridge-vlan-aware yes
    bridge-vids 2-4094
# Management IP for Proxmox UI (VLAN 10)
auto vmbr0.10
iface vmbr0.10 inet static
    address 10.42.10.1X/24   # X = node number (1, 2, 3)
    gateway 10.42.10.1

Recovery note

If a PCI NIC is removed, the vmbr0 bridge may lose its bridge-ports reference and fail to come up. Fix by editing /etc/network/interfaces manually (via PiKVM or local console) and running systemctl restart networking.