6-30-2025 - seamlessly, privately & securely torrenting with a dedicated VM

yo!!

so recently ive setup a home lab, pretty basic - but it contains the following:

- 1x DIY built NAS

- 2x Proxmox servers

- Ubiquiti Gateway

- Ubiquiti managed switch

Ive got a few VLAN's and segregated networks so that my girlfriend can still use the internet safely and separately using a guest network on my gateway, but I keep all my servers on a single VLAN.

But the main feature i am taking advantage of using a gateway like the Ubiquiti's is the ability to add a VPN client - which gives the gateway and interface, in which any device assigned to that interface is routed through the VPN.

On my proxmox server's i setup a dedicated torrenting box - its running debian and has the full "ARR" stack (iykyk). However i dont want this traffic just exiting and entering using my ISP's public IP obviously!! And Id like to keep it all on the same server VLAN i had configured. The beauty of the VPN interface allows you to keep the same VLAN, whilst routing the WAN traffic through the VPN interface. Doing this, i can still have everything organized, attach my NAS storage for the torrented files, all while being under the cloak of a VPN.

ProtonVPN (which i pay like 10 bucks for) has a super easy to use configurator where you can generate a wiregaurd configuration file for your router/gateway, then on the gateway i just fking imported that file and now I have the interface where i can do whatever the hell i want. Great functionality, and the overhead on the gateway CPU is there, but with my network size its nothing bad and its certainly better than running a VPN client on the actual VM itself, or having a seperate VLAN already attached to the VPN interface, because honestly i dont feel like buying a second nic for my proxmox servers and theyre literally optiplex micros so theres no expansion for them honestly lol

This setup has worked extremely well for me - my torrent box dumps into the nas, and my jellyfin server reads from the nas perfectly. Very little configuration but its all extremely seamless and functions great.