1. Umbrel VM Installation

Umbrel can be installed both on bare metal as on a VM. However, as mentioned in the introduction we would recommend to store it as a VM on your Proxmox server. In this way you are not limited to the app store of Umbrel, you can use PBS to backup the whole Umbrel VM and you can still create other VM's, Backupfriends etcetera. As usual we always check if a Proxmox helper script is available for the installation to make it as easy as possible ;) And low and behold there is of course and you can find it here !!

Multicast DNS 

Now, once Umbrel is installed on your VM you can reach it by using the local dns name http://umbrel.local. Now, why does this work suddenly without a DNS entry on your home network ? Well it makes use of something called Multicast DNS(mDNS). This is quite some awesome technology since it allows non tech users to just plug in the device in their router and it just works !! That is some ease of use over there ;) It is not only Umbrel that makes use of this but many many routers, switches or other IOT devices that make it easy for users to navigate to the dashboard of their device. 

Multicast DNS (mDNS) works by allowing devices on a local network to resolve hostnames to IP addresses without needing a dedicated DNS server. It sends multicast queries to all devices in the network, and the device that owns the hostname responds with its IP address, allowing all devices to update their mDNS caches

Now, unfortunately this only works.