New Intel N100 mini PC added into my inventory! And my debut to Proxmox!

Lately, I’ve been looking for a lightweight, low-power machine to complement my main NAS/server. The goal is to offload certain tasks like monitoring and management, and potentially host a firewall to segment and protect my network better.

Why add Another Machine?

While my main NAS (formally my gaming rig) handles all the workloads I use. And I realized:

• It should not be responsible for monitoring itself. (Especially when it shutdown accidentally, obviously)
• I want a more modular and fault-tolerant setup for my home network.

That's where my new Intel N100 mini PC comes into play. It is power-efficient (only 35 watts in full load), and still powerful enough to handle VMs for services like OPNsense, monitoring dashboards, or even a small GitOps CI/CD agents.

Choosing Proxmox VE

Talking about VMs, you can't miss Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE).

There are a few reasons I chose PVE:

• It’s free, open-source, and battle-tested for virtualization.
• It lets me easily create and manage Linux containers (LXC) or full VMs.
• I can snapshot VMs, manage backups, and control resource allocations.
• It’s perfect for experimenting with stacks like monitoring, automation agents, or isolated test environments.

Installing Proxmox on the N100

The installation was straightforward, but here's a quick walkthrough for anyone curious:

1. Prepare the ISO:
   1. Download Proxmox VE ISO from here.
   2. Flash it to a USB drive using Rufus.
2. Boot from USB:
   1. Go to BIOS by pressing Del when booting (depends on the machine, sometimes it's F2)
   2. Select USB as primary boot drive, and disable secure boot and fast boot.
   3. Plug the USB into the N100 and boot into the installer.
   4. Proxmox’s installer is very user-friendly. I just selected my NVMe SSD, set hostname, timezone, and network settings.
3. Static IP Configuration:
   1. After install, I made sure to give it a static IP (e.g. 192.168.10.50) so I can always reach the web UI (https://192.168.10.50:8006).
      1. Pro tip: The IP should be similar to the router's IP (like 192.168.10.xxx) to make sure it is in the same subnet.
4. Post-install tweaks:
   1. Disabled subscription popup using a small patch.
      1. I followed the setups here to do it.

What's Next?

I am planning to run Firewall with OPNsense on it, and migrate my monitoring stacks from my main server.

After that, I want to centralize all the managements through automations like GitHub Actions and ansible.

These should be quite exciting to play with!

Final Thoughts

The N100 mini PC might not be a powerhouse, but in the world of home labs, it’s the perfect utility node. With Proxmox running on it, I can safely experiment and scale my infrastructure — without disturbing my main server.

If you're building a home lab or want to start playing with network segmentation and service monitoring, I highly recommend picking up a similar low-power device and trying Proxmox!

But until then, see you next post!