# esh-ml1

GPU LXC for the ESH home lab: **CT 110 on esh-pve**, holding the **NVIDIA RTX
2000E Ada** (16 GB, 50 W, `01:00.0`). It serves the fleet's embedding and
reranking models locally at ESH. Built 2026-09-24.

| | |
|---|---|
| **IP** | `10.0.50.80/24`, VLAN 50, gateway `10.0.50.1` (static, outside the UDM's `.150–.250` DHCP pool) |
| **DNS** | `esh-ml1.esh.internal` |
| **SSH** | `ssh esh-ml1` → `infra-ops@10.0.50.80` (NOPASSWD sudo) · from the host: `pct enter 110` |
| **OS** | Debian 12, unprivileged, `nesting=1,keyctl=1` |
| **Size** | 6 cores, 16 GB RAM + 2 GB swap, 80 GB rootfs on `local-lvm` |
| **Boot** | `onboot: 1`, `startup: order=30` — after esh-scale (1), esh-vm-db (10) and esh-vm-docker (20), so a GPU fault never delays ESH's DNS or mesh route |
| **Backups** | **None, on purpose.** esh-pve's vzdump job lists vmids explicitly and 110 is not one. Everything is rebuilt from the playbooks and the stack; models re-download. |

## What it serves

`stacks/embed-rerank` (`/opt/docker/compose/embed-rerank`):

| container | model | port | gateway name |
|---|---|---|---|
| `vllm-embed` | `Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B` | 8001 | `qwen3-embedding` (order 2) |
| `vllm-rerank-bge` | `BAAI/bge-reranker-v2-m3` | 8013 | `reranker` (order 2) |

The same models, vLLM version (`v0.24.0`, digest `251eba5cc7c1`) and flags as
fv-ml1's `vllm` stack, so the two sites are interchangeable. In LiteLLM they
are the **order-2 failover** behind fv-ml1: fv-ml1 serves every request while
it is up.

**Parity, measured 2026-09-24** (11 texts incl. CJK, code, a 6k-char passage;
2 runs per site):

| | median | min |
|---|---|---|
| embed cosine FV vs ESH, same text | 0.999908 | 0.999772 |
| noise floor FV vs FV | 0.999927 | 0.999791 |
| noise floor ESH vs ESH | 0.999911 | 0.999809 |
| negative control, different texts | 0.232 | 0.071 |

The cross-site difference is inside each site's own run-to-run noise; this
method cannot resolve a cosine gap below ~2×10⁻⁴. Reranker scores differed by
at most 0.000145 (FV-vs-FV floor 0.000181), with identical ranking.

**VRAM:** 0.20 × 16,380 MiB each; 4,823 MiB in use with both loaded, ~11 GB
free.

## How it is built

1. [`playbooks/esh-pve-nvidia-host.yaml`](../../playbooks/esh-pve-nvidia-host.yaml)
   — driver **580.178.04** (open modules, DKMS) on the **hypervisor**, the
   `nvidia-persistenced` unit that creates the device nodes before
   `pve-guests`, and removal of the old VFIO/blacklist config.
2. [`playbooks/esh-ml1-lxc.yaml`](../../playbooks/esh-ml1-lxc.yaml) — the CT,
   `dev0–3` GPU nodes, the NVIDIA userspace from the **same `.run`** with
   `--no-kernel-modules`, fleet ids (infra-ops 850, docker 851, vh 1000),
   docker-ce and nvidia-container-toolkit with `no-cgroups = true`.
3. `scripts/deploy-stack.sh esh-ml1 embed-rerank`, then `docker compose up -d`.

Both playbooks are idempotent; re-run them to repair.

## ⚠ Driver version lock

The kernel module lives on esh-pve; the libraries live in this container. They
**must be the same version**, or every CUDA call fails with *"driver/library
version mismatch"*. To upgrade: bump `driver_version` + `driver_sha256` in the
host playbook and `driver_version` in the LXC playbook, run the host one, then
the LXC one, then restart the stack.

A PVE kernel update is handled by DKMS (`proxmox-headers-6.8` pulls headers
for each new kernel). Moving esh-pve to a different kernel series (6.14 opt-in)
needs that series' headers meta-package installed first, or the module will not
build and this CT will fail to start at the next boot.

## Not yet wired

- **Homepage**: the compose carries labels, but esh-ml1 is not in
  `stacks/homepage/conf/docker.yaml` (it would need dockerd on tcp/2375 like
  the other hosts).
- **Beszel**: no agent yet.
- **ESH consumers** (Open WebUI RAG, Paperless) still go through the gateway
  at ana-docker, so they do not survive a mesh outage. See persistent-memory
  for the open decision.