I recommend reading up on LXC within Proxmox. They are containers so run on bare metal but you interact with them a bit like normal VM. There are some prebuilt templates for a few different distros available for download too.
My current test proxmox setup is intel quad-core 10th gen i5 nuc with 32GB ram, 2 * 2TB nVNME, and 1TB SATA SSD. I have a few different LXCs for things like NVR, ZeroTier, TailScale, and a general docker one where I have plex, emby, jellyfin, and supporting apps. All LXC that need it have been configured for access to the iGPU and the host retains access.