Walkthrough: Proxmox VE on a Lenovo Nano Cluster

With this lab effort, we wanted to create a tiny but powerful 3-node Proxmox VE 6.3 cluster. We’ve been impressed by the Lenovo Nano line of PCs, so we snagged three more for this experiment. Using Lenovo ThinkCentre m90n’s, we can demonstrate the amount of computational power and storage performance, that can be fit in an area half the size of a shoebox. While creating tiny clusters comes with compromises, we think this solution is an excellent combination of performance and price, which makes this Proxmox solution excellent as a learning/dev cluster or even a serious contender for lightweight edge/retail computing.

Why Proxmox VE?
When setting up a hypervisor cluster VMware ESXi and vSphere are usually the first choices, however, when consumer hardware comes into play complications start to arise. ESXi requires a supported Ethernet adapter to be present to complete the install, the I219-LM Ethernet card built into the M90n is unsupported by ESXi, but can be made to work with a custom ESXi image with additional drivers for USB NICs. Unfortunately, the NIC drivers that are not officially supported are unreliable at best so we sought an alternative.

Proxmox VE is an ideal choice for homelabbers who want to run hypervisors on consumer-grade equipment. It is also the solution to the unsupported Ethernet drivers in ESXi. Unlike ESXi, Proxmox supports the I219-LM Ethernet card making setting up our 3-node M90n ThinkCentre cluster a breeze. Proxmox VE was recently updated to version 6.3 as well. We’ve been a bit slow to check out the updated platform; this tiny cluster was a perfect excuse.

Full a step-by-step setup guide, check out our article:

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[jamiemcparland]

We bounced from VMware years ago and moved to proxmox for our production systems. Could NOT be happier with Proxmox. SO glad we made the switch.

[goldcastle]

What is up with the guy in the blue shirt. Be nice my guy, its doesn’t hurt, I promise.

[brink]

I was expecting more of a Tutorial vs a review of Proxmox. The video was good just a bit misleading.

[RichardBuckerCodes]

I flip flop between virtualized on-prem hardware and cloud hardware all the time. A meaningful cluster is requires tons of hardware even for a home lab... your cluster probably cost about $1000 per node if not more. Depending on how long you'd capitalize the expense you'd be better using DigitalOcean and writing scripts to automate startup and teardown so that the cluster is only running when you need it.