Just to throw another option in: Lxc are containers too. And they are the other major option proxmox comes with.
It feels more like bare metal installations, but are more lightweight and share there ressources they do not use.
I never got why having Proxmox and one VM with several docker containers except I absolutly don’t want to deal with installations at all.
On the other hands I wanted to learn about linux and the basics of handling proxmox.
I have something to read for you :
It is a request of me from earlier this year. The boards I mention in the opening post are no good choice. But the Asrock J500x or J5040 (the one I picked in the end) are. For my needs it is enough of everything. Even if some users here think the celerons are “heaters that can do math” ^^
On the other hand, the cpu is soldered to the board. No upgrade without switching the board either… Even the SODIMM ram needs to be replaced when switching away from an itx-board…
On the other hand, it is less energy consuming than using an old desktop cpu etc.
The pico-psu is just sweet 😊
Edit: fixed link
You could create a fresh container, install docker, and create a new template image from it. This way the overhead of installing disapears. The overhead in resource usage for each docker installation would remain the same as before.
As mentioned in another reply, you could run several container in one lxc. For example with docker compose or podman. Since I have no experience with podman but with docker compose, docker compose is pretty simple.
But all in all, I prefer to install everything “bare metal” in lxc containers. The main reason is, I don’t want to mess around with the extra layer of configurating ports etc.