Right now I'm at 33 with 3 stopped I haven't used in a while. Also got 3 VMs running. A handful are duplicates eg redis/postgresql/photon/caddy
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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37 between ProxMox and CasaOS.
41 containers running on Rocky Linux over here
Portainer says 14 (including itself) 😅
3 that I'm actually using, on my "Home Server" (Raspberry Pi).
One day I will be migrating the work stuff on VPS over to Docker, and then we'll see who has the most!
I have about 15 trueNAS apps only 2 of them are custom (endurain and molly socket). They are containers but very low effort handled mostly by the system. I also have 3 LXC. And 2 VMs (home assistant and openWRT). I spend only few minutes a week on maintenance. And then I tinker for several hours a week, testing new apps or enhancing current ones configs.
None. I run my services they way they are meant to be run. There is no point in containers for a small setup. Its kinda lazy and you miss out on how to install them.
Small setups can very easily turn into large setups without you noticing.
The only bare-metal setup I'd trust to be scaleable is Nix flakes (which I'm actually very interested in migrating to at some point)
I've never even heard of NIX flakes before today. It looks like another soluion in search of a problem. I trust debian and I trust bare metal more than any container setup. I run multiple services on one machine. I currently have two machines to run all my services. No problems and no downtime other than a weekly update and reload. All crontabed, all automatic.
At work I have multiple services all running in KVM including some windows domain controllers. Also no problem and weekly full backups are a worry free. Only requiring me to checks them for consistency.
In short as much as people try to push containers they are only useful if you are dealing with more than few services. No home setup should be that large unless someong is hosting for others.
I disagree that Nix is a solution in search of a problem, in fact it solves arguably the two biggest problems in software deployment: dependency hell and reproducibility (i.e. the "It works on my machine" problem)
Every package gets access to the exact version of all the dependencies it needs (without needless replication like Flatpaks would have) and sharing a flake to another machine means you can replicate that exact setup and guarantee it will be exactly the same
Containers try to solve the same problems, and succeed to a somewhat decent extent, although with some overhead of course.
I'm not trying to criticize you or your setup at all, if Debian alone works for you, that's fine. The beauty of open source and self hosting is that we can use whatever tools we want, however we want. I do though think it's good practice to be aware of what alternatives are out there should our needs change, or should our tools change to no longer align with our needs.
All containers do that. Its nothing new just another implementation of the idea with its own idea about what is best. It only saves resources in the form of time if its a large scale operation and finally its just the last in a long line of similar solutions.
13 in a docker LXC, most of my stuff runs on 13 other dedicated LXCs
Four LXCs
Running 50 on one machine, four on my fileserver and another on a hacked up hp eliteone (no screen) which runs my 3d printer. Believe my immich container is a nspawn under nixos too.
Some are a wip but the majority are in use. Mostly internal services with a couple internet facing, I've got a good backlog of work to do on some with some refactoring my nixos configs for many too 😅.
From my Erying ES system:
Assuming Cloudflare Tunnels/Zero Trust, how does that run in a container. I was vacillating between installing traditionally, or Docker and decided on the former. So I've always been curious as to how it performed.
My services are quite small (static website, forgejo and a couple more services) but see no performance issues.
Awesome!