Am excited about learning and using ProxMox with ZFS and to this end recently bought a DELL PowerEdge R710 with 96GB Ram, 6x1TB Drives (Hitachi Ultrastar HUA721010KLA330), 1xDVD drive, a pass-through HBA controller for ZFS, and an iDRAC6 Enterprise Mgmt module. I've updated the R710 to latest 6.6.0 BIOS and the firmware of the R710's subsystems as well. The latest ProxMox 5.4 CD boots perfectly into the configuration setup.
My goal for this machine is initially as a lab server, but should ProxMox prove as flexible as I've read I could easily envision using a ProxMox server or cluster to host websites, email servers, etc. for some or even all my clients.
I was originally thinking of replacing the first two drives with 1TB SSDs (Crucial MX500) and configuring them for OS booting, ZIL, swap, etc. and then configuring the remaining four drives as a 2TB ZFS Raid 10 pool.
However I've been advised to consider using all 6 original drives as larger ZFS pool and instead use the R710's internal USB adapter, internal SD flash or SATA-based DVD slot as alternative devices for booting, ZIL, logs, etc.
What's not at all clear to me is:
1) Whether I can (or should) use ZFS for the boot, swap, ZIL, Logging and ARC or whether those should be separate from ZFS storage proper.
2) Are there any ProxMox best practices or tech notes for using SSDs, SDs, Flash for caching, ZIL, booting ProxMox, etc?
3) What are the trade-offs between the ProxMox iso install vs installing ProxMox on latest Debian 9.9?
Any suggestions or relevant pointers to documentation, tutorials, would be welcome.
My goal for this machine is initially as a lab server, but should ProxMox prove as flexible as I've read I could easily envision using a ProxMox server or cluster to host websites, email servers, etc. for some or even all my clients.
I was originally thinking of replacing the first two drives with 1TB SSDs (Crucial MX500) and configuring them for OS booting, ZIL, swap, etc. and then configuring the remaining four drives as a 2TB ZFS Raid 10 pool.
However I've been advised to consider using all 6 original drives as larger ZFS pool and instead use the R710's internal USB adapter, internal SD flash or SATA-based DVD slot as alternative devices for booting, ZIL, logs, etc.
What's not at all clear to me is:
1) Whether I can (or should) use ZFS for the boot, swap, ZIL, Logging and ARC or whether those should be separate from ZFS storage proper.
2) Are there any ProxMox best practices or tech notes for using SSDs, SDs, Flash for caching, ZIL, booting ProxMox, etc?
3) What are the trade-offs between the ProxMox iso install vs installing ProxMox on latest Debian 9.9?
Any suggestions or relevant pointers to documentation, tutorials, would be welcome.
