optimizing my cluster setup

Rxunique

New Member
Feb 5, 2024
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With help from community here and reddit, and lots of tutorials, I got my 2-node + pbs cluster working with live migration, next phase is getting HA on replication working and optimizing my setup,

I couldn't help but feeling what I have now is a bit clunky, I should be able to reduce some drives, and reduce power consumption. I would love to hear some experience form gurus out here.

Power optimization

I can get my R730 with mirrored boot drive, single CPU, single psu, down to 50W idle PVE with no VM running, or 60W with 2 CPUs. I know modern 8th-11th gen i3 & i5 would be lower, but does any one know how much lower?

And my VMs each take 5-15W average. Biggest 8vCore 16gb ram, smallest 4vCore 4gb ram. Again, modern CPU will be leaner, but by how much?

Data drive I find 2.5 SAS SSD is 6-7W, SATA about 5W, 3.5HDD about 10W+, there's really not much can be saved apart from reducing disks.

Now with all 8bays filled in both R730, one with 2xE5-2699V3 running VMs @ 140W, one with 2xE52620V3 for backup and replication @ 120W,

If I replace all CPUs with E5-2650LV3, I'm expecting around 100W average per node, would there be much power saving if the cluster is replaced with consumer gear?


Drive optimization


My 2nd node is a bit headache mostly due to PVE prefer to use root level ZFS pool as storage rather than folder level, in my tiny cluster this is not that efficient, what can I do to improve?

There're 8 bay total, of which 2x for boot, 1x for replication of vmpool from main node

Originally I was hoping to use larger boot drive double duty for as replication of vmpool, I only have 2 VM need HA, but PVE require the pool name to be same. I know it's possible, but the setup is above my current knowledge, and my gut feeling this could be problematic somehow down the road.


With 4x HDD in Raid Z1 as backup pool, leaving me 1 drive for cache being single point of failure,

This pool is used in PBS running as package alongside PVE. Originally I was thinking double duty this pool as shared remote storage to CCTV VM, I don't think its possible, best I can think off is double purpose this pool as disk to CCTV VM, but that means the files inaccessible outside the CCTV VM.
 

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