I’m a Machinist, Not IT: The Raw, Frustrated, Brilliant Reality of Wiring CNCs Into a Proxmox Server

There’s a certain kind of person who ends up becoming “the IT guy” at a machine shop. Not because they asked for it. Not because they trained for it. But because the actual IT department is three buildings away, doesn’t answer emails, and treats the shop floor like it runs on magic. So you do what machinists have always done. You figure it out yourself. That’s exactly what happened here . An old workstation gets repurposed. An old Asus router becomes the backbone. A private LAN is born. No WAN access. No corporate oversight. Just raw necessity. Two CNC mills. File transfers in the megabytes, not gigabytes. FileZilla Client doing FTP duty. But only from the one PC that’s physically wired to the machines. And that’s the breaking point. Because walking files around on USB sticks in 2026 feels ridiculous. --- ## The Real Problem Isn’t Proxmox On the surface, the question sounds technical: > Should I spin up a Windows VM to run FileZilla? > Or is there a better way? But that’s not really the core issue. The real issue is this: How do you stop a CNC workflow from being physically tied to one machine? Right now, the flow looks like this: - CAM software on PC - Export program - Transfer to USB or directly wired PC - FTP into the mill - Run the job It works. Barely. But it’s fragile. It’s manual. It’s slow. And when you plan to add Mazak lathes later? This won’t scale. --- ## The Shop Floor Reality This isn’t a data center. It’s a machine shop. There’s oil in the air. Chips everywhere. Someone’s running a horizontal that sounds like a jet engine. And somewhere in the corner is a beige PC that’s the only thing allowed to talk to the mills. Other people chimed in immediately: > Tired of using USB sticks and floppies on the old ones. That line hits different. Because this isn’t just about Proxmox. It’s about dragging legacy manufacturing workflows into something resembling modern networking. Some even suggested floppy drive emulators — Gotek-style solutions that let ancient machines read USB like it’s still 1998. That’s the spectrum here. From floppies… To Proxmox virtualization clusters. Welcome to manufacturing IT. --- ## So Should You Run FileZilla in a Windows VM? Short answer? No. Not if you don’t have to. Running FileZilla Client inside a Windows VM just recreates your current problem in a fancier box. You’d still be: - Logging into a specific VM - Using a specific interface - Acting as the middleman That’s not centralization. That’s virtualization cosplay. What you actually want is this: A central FTP server that all CNC machines can connect to, and all shop PCs can access. That’s it. Not a client. A server. --- ## The Quiet Answer Hiding in the Comments Someone casually mentioned: > If all you need is FTP access, Proxmox helper scripts have FTP LXC options. That’s the direction. Instead of: - Windows VM - FileZilla Client You spin up: - A lightweight Linux container (LXC) - Install vsftpd or another FTP server - Create shared storage - Point all CNC machines to that central FTP server Now every PC on your private LAN can: - Drop programs into a shared folder - The mills pull from the same source - No more sneaker-net USB shuffle Simple. Clean. Industrial. And because it’s on a private LAN with no WAN access? Security is manageable. --- ## The Frustration Boils Over But here’s where this story gets real. The conversation turned tense. Someone asked about architecture. Protocols. Wiring. Data flow. And the response came back sharp: > Sorry for not being an IT Admin with 5 years of Proxmox experience. I downloaded Proxmox 4 days ago for the first time in my life and I'm learning it all as I go. That line says everything. This isn’t an IT professional building a lab. This is a machinist reverse-engineering networking because no one else will help. When someone says “basic questions,” that’s relative. Basic to a sysadmin isn’t basic to someone who runs a vertical mill all day. And the comparison was perfect: > That’s like you walking into my machine shop and I get pissed off because you don’t know the names of basic tools. Exactly. Every field has its “obvious.” Until you’re new. --- ## What’s Actually Running on the Mills? Another critical piece slipped into the thread: The mills run Fanuc controls. They’re not conversational machines. They likely use FTP. That’s huge. Because if they support FTP natively, then your architecture becomes straightforward: - Static IP for each CNC - Central FTP server on Proxmox - Shared storage inside that container - Permissions per machine or operator No Windows VM needed. No GUI dependency. Just network plumbing. --- ## The Future-Proof Angle Remember the edit at the top: > Down the road, I will need other VMs to connect to other machines. I’ll be adding Mazak lathes later. That’s why Proxmox makes sense. You’re not just solving today’s two-mill problem. You’re building infrastructure. Later, you might want: - A VM for monitoring - A database for job tracking - A web interface for program versioning - Backups - Network segmentation Starting with virtualization gives you runway. Even if today’s workload is just megabyte-sized NC files. --- ## The Right Way to Think About This Don’t think “How do I run FileZilla?” Think: “What does my data flow need to look like?” Right now, it’s: PC → Machine (directly) You want: Any PC → Central Server → Any Machine That’s the shift. Once that’s clear, the solution stops being about Windows and starts being about services. --- ## What I’d Build in That Shop If this were my machine floor? Here’s the playbook: 1. Create a Linux LXC container on Proxmox. 2. Install a lightweight FTP server (vsftpd). 3. Mount storage inside the container. 4. Assign static IPs to all CNCs. 5. Configure each CNC to connect to the central FTP server. 6. Give each operator credentials. 7. Map that same FTP share to every shop PC. Now: - CAM exports go to the central share. - Mills pull programs directly. - No USB drives. - No walking files across the floor. And because it’s a private LAN with no WAN? You’re insulated from corporate firewall drama. --- ## The Bigger Story This isn’t just about CNCs and Proxmox. It’s about what happens when the shop floor modernizes itself. When machinists stop waiting for IT approval. When someone who downloaded Proxmox four days ago is already thinking about scaling infrastructure for Mazak lathes. That’s not amateur. That’s initiative. And honestly? That’s how most small manufacturing IT systems are born. Not from policy. From frustration. --- ## The Emotional Undercurrent There’s something raw about this thread. You can feel it. The pride of building your own server. The irritation at vague questions. The exhaustion of juggling trades. The stubborn refusal to stay stuck in floppy-disk purgatory. And underneath it all: A machinist teaching himself infrastructure. That’s not small. That’s the future of shop floors. Because the line between manufacturing and IT isn’t a line anymore. It’s a blur. And sometimes, the guy who knows feeds and speeds better than anyone in the building is also the one racking the server. That’s not a problem. That’s evolution.