Docker Hosting

Introduction

All of the my lab & hosting needs are done thru various open source products. I like using docker engine & docker-compose for quickly getting products spun up. I’ve had a look at using k8s instead, but for home usage and my needs I think it is to much. In the setup I also have a external vps which is hosting this website as one of the products. Below I’ll run thu all the products I’m using.

Architecture Overview

Below is an overview of how I have done my setup. Basicly all vm/lxc’s are deployed with Ubuntu 22.04, then docker-engine and docker-compose, portainer ce for controling the environments from one central location and nginx proxy manager to control url’s, certificates (let’s encrypt) and routing to hosts.

proxmox-ha-cluster  
│
└───proxmox-host1
│   │
│   └───proxmox-vm
│       │   docker-engine
│       │   docker-compose
│       │   portainer-main
│       │   nginx-proxymanager
│       │   app-a
│       │   app-b
│       │   app-c
│
└───proxmox-host2
│   │
│   └───proxmox-lxc
│       │   docker-engine
│       │   docker-compose
│       │   portainer-agent
│       │   nginx-proxymanager
│       │   app-a
│       │   app-b
│       │   app-c
│
external-kvm-host
│
└───external-vps
    │
    └───external-vm
        │   docker-engine
        │   docker-compose
        │   portainer-agent
        │   nginx-proxymanager
        │   app-a
        │   app-b
        │   app-c

Proxmox

I use Proxmox as the hypervisor at home. I switches from VMware ~2 years ago and have not looked back since. One of the benefits I like with Proxmox is the ability to deploy LXC containers out of the box. I have 2 hosts at home, setup in a HA Cluster for failover.

Docker & docker-compose

I think docker is known to most people working with container environments. Together with docker compose, it is perfect for quickly deploying new apps in your infrastructure.

Portainer CE

Portainer is a container management platform. It comes in 2 flavours, a paid (business) edition and then the free one called portainer ce. In my own setup I have 1 portainer ce app running, and then the 2 other hosts are linked up thru the portainer agent.

Nginx Proxy Manager

Nginx Proxy Manager is (as the name states) a proxy manager similar to Traefik. I use it on all the docker engine hosts to control certificates, routing & all the url’s.

Links & Resources

Below you can find some usefull links and doc’s to get started on a setup similar to the above.

Screenshots

Portainer CE UI.