Need to renew home server / homelab installation, advice needed about topology

Hello all,

In my home I have a file server based on Ubuntu 20.04 (upgraded from 18.04 about half a year ago) that has been running for about 3 years now serving files, running Docker containers and one or two KVM virtual machines.

I've been pleased with it however, when root ran out of drive space and I ran an update, something broke and I can't fix it. Whatever I tried to fix it: I can't run updates and Docker is broken. So it is time for a reinstall.

The main asset on the server is a 30 TB BTRFS drive array, about halfway filled. I would like to keep the data on there.

Now I have to decide on the topology. There are some things I would like in a new setup:

1. Having some kind of indexed content-based file search
2. Web based VM management
3. Docker

I could just reinstall the installation I had, however I have read about Proxmox being a nice hypervisor with web based management. So I thought of the attached possibilities: A: have a decoupled system using a small ARM64 SBC that I have already running, putting the BTRFS RAID array in a external enclosure and reinstalling the main server with Proxmox, or B: keeping everything in the current system, installing Proxmox on the server, spinning up a VM for file storage and somehow connecting the bare metal BTRFS array to that VM.

I can't decide yet about what is the best thing to do, all while preserving the data on the 30 T BTRFS array. (I do have a backup server and I have a third copy of the most important data on BD-R but I really would like to preserve 2 copies of all data just in case the most unlikely happens .. just because it then probably will).

Thanks for any help!
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