I want to set up a homeserver, however I currently don´t own any Hardware that I could use to install a Server on. What I do currently have is some spare time and my Laptop.

My Question is:

Can I setup the whole server enviroment in a VM on my Laptop and save it as some portable config? When I do have server hardware I just want to get it up and running quickly.

Thanks in advance

  • shrugs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    you sound like a beginner. trust me, don’t take nix. Nix is great but nix has a learning curve you cant climb as a beginner.

    linux is great as in, you can just copy a hard drive to another disk and boot it, after fixing fstab…

    If you are using docker to run your services you can copy your docker compose directories and the volumes to a new host and start them, So all in all, install the services on you laptop or inside a vm / as docker container and when you get dedicated hardware you can just migrate the services.

    And guys really, recommending nix to someone that doesn’t know how to migrate a service and asks about it. that’s a load of bullocks!

  • softotteep@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    If you copy the contents of the virtual hard disk used by to VM to a real disk, then you can just boot your server from that real disk. You’ll probably have to reconfigure some hardware and network stuff but it should be super simple.

  • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    Nix might be the answer for that, or ansible. You’ll still have to reinstall, but the second time will be super easy.

  • nek0d3r@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    I definitely recommend nix. In fact, I prototyped my NixOS server in a VM and then committed my config to a git repository to clone on the real server later