Backed by a thriving community of developers and tinkerers, there’s no shortage of fun projects you can build with a Raspberry Pi. From affordable weather stations and Flask web servers to makeshift NAS and personal clouds, the Raspberry Pi boards are perfect companions for DIY enthusiasts.

In fact, you can even install Proxmox on top of your Raspberry Pi and turn the SBC into a home server. Unfortunately, it’s just a fun project, and there are plenty of reasons why it’s a bad idea to use a Raspberry Pi specifically for a home lab centered around Proxmox.

4 Limited OS compatibility

The same holds for containers

Home labs, especially those built on a virtualization platform such as Proxmox, are primarily used to test different operating systems and run a multitude of self-hosted apps inside containers. But since the Raspberry Pi is powered by an Arm processor, you’re fairly limited in your choice of operating systems.

When I set up Proxmox on the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi, the SBC barely managed to run ARM64 operating systems. Likewise, the default container templates fail to run a Raspberry Pi-flavored Proxmox server, and you’ll have to make do with custom container repositories to self-host your favorite services.

3 UEFI requires its own storage device

Not to mention, certain drivers are broken

Like most SBCs, the Raspberry Pi lineup doesn’t include UEFI BIOS. Before you can set up Proxmox on your RPi board, you’ll have to relegate a microSD card for the third-party firmware. Next, you'll need a USB bootable drive containing the Proxmox image alongside another external storage device (preferably an SSD), where you'll install the virtualization platform.

On top of that, these UEFI images have their own set of issues. The firmware for Raspberry Pi 5, in particular, doesn't have proper drivers for Ethernet ports, meaning you’ll have to buy a USB-to-Ethernet adapter just to install Proxmox on your SBC.

2 Setup process is a nightmare

And so is troubleshooting

By now, you may have realized that installing Proxmox on a Raspberry Pi isn’t as straightforward as getting it to run on a normal x86 system. Besides requiring you to install UEFI files on your Raspberry Pi, the unofficial Arm64 version of Proxmox isn’t as bug-free as its first-party counterpart.

So, you should be ready to face some challenges when using this Proxmox port on the Raspberry Pi. Heck, accessing the VMs through the Console requires additional tweaks in the BIOS and Display settings. And that’s before you consider the lackluster performance of the whole setup…

1 Performance isn't its strong suit

Arm Cortex CPUs aren’t built for heavy-duty virtualization tasks

There’s no denying that the Raspberry Pi 5 is far more powerful than its brethren. But for home servers where core-count and memory are more important than anything else, the SBC fails to impress with its quad-core Arm Cortex A76 processor.

After sifting through a couple of operating systems, I managed to get the Arm variants of Debian, Armbian, and Ubuntu Server working on the Raspberry Pi, But it quickly became apparent that the two VMs were a lot more than what the miniature board could handle. As such, you’ll see major dips in performance when you try running more than two VMs simultaneously.

Nevertheless, it’s still a decent way to get started with Proxmox

Although I would never advise buying a Raspberry Pi just to build a Proxmox server, things are different if you’ve got one lying around and have run out of cool ideas for the SBC. Plus, if you’re on the fence about building a separate PC just for Proxmox, installing it on the Raspberry Pi can give you some much-needed hands-on experience with the platform.

However, if you’re not fond of janky projects, you can tackle a variety of useful DIY ideas with the Raspberry Pi. Whether you're a beginner looking for easy things to build with SBCs or a veteran with years of experience with complex projects, there’s something here for everyone!