FC SAN cluster in proxmox

The official docs:
It is possible to use LVM on top of an iSCSI or FC-based storage. That way you get a shared LVM storage
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage
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And the specific documentation for LVM: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage:_LVM

Please note LVM, NOT Lvm/thin, they are not the same. LVM/thin doesn't work with shared storage like a FC san, LVM works.


Following writeups by storage vendor blockbridges @bbgeek17 is a little bit more detailed:
https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-lvm-shared-storage/

Following piece covers the new (still technology preview) support for snapshots and the caveats envolved:
https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-qcow-snapshots-on-lvm/index.html
 
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Hi @nbani,
@floh8 is correct. You can present the FC storage to all nodes in the cluster, configure the Multipath, and then layer the LVM that PVE can operate on as Storage Pool.

The reason the FC is not called out in those documents, is because the PVE can create storage pools for the other, listed, storage types to assist the connectivity. For FC you must do the prep work directly in Linux, and only the LVM layer is managed by PVE.
Cheers.

Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox
 
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In addition to the answers to your specific question, seeing you joined a while back but did not post a lot here: for many "is ... supported" questions, it is good to realize that Proxmox runs on top of Debian. Even if Proxmox does not provide a direct interface, if it is supported on Debian, it's available to Proxmox.
 
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wbk said:
In addition to the answers to your specific question, seeing you joined a while back but did not post a lot here: for many "is ... supported" questions, it is good to realize that Proxmox runs on top of Debian. Even if Proxmox does not provide a direct interface, if it is supported on Debian, it's available to Proxmox.
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Thanks for the replied.
We've vmware setup in multi DC, almost all are in thin provisioning.
So it becomes a problem for us.

Any workaround or alternative can you suggest?

Regards.
Banik
 
Hi,

Just for my curiosity, if you have enough time... why Fibre Channel and not pure Ethernet? Just because you already have this hardware, or do you find benefits in Fibre Channel over Ethernet?

I'm really just curious

/N10
 
wbk said:
In addition to the answers to your specific question, seeing you joined a while back but did not post a lot here: for many "is ... supported" questions, it is good to realize that Proxmox runs on top of Debian. Even if Proxmox does not provide a direct interface, if it is supported on Debian, it's available to Proxmox.
Click to expand...
Or Ubuntu since ProxmoxVE uses Debian userland and a Ubuntu kernel (with some modifications) as base. So if some hardware is supported by Ubuntu it most likely will work on ProxmoxVE too. In the end the kernel, not the userland is responsible for the hardware support
 
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n10ev said:
Hi,

Just for my curiosity, if you have enough time... why Fibre Channel and not pure Ethernet? Just because you already have this hardware, or do you find benefits in Fibre Channel over Ethernet?

I'm really just curious

/N10
Click to expand...
Hi n10ev,

Welcome to the forums!

While it's not my place to answer for nbaniks situation: if they're migrating from an existing VMWare deployment, the hardware is already in place. Replacing (high cost) fibre channel equipment with (lower, but still high cost for performance) ethernet equipment would impose extra (unnecessary) cost on top of the (perhaps complex, thus expensive) migration.

When starting out in 2026 with a new deployment, I'd say the cards are stacked against FC in many cases.
 
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Hi, wbk,

Thank you very much for your answer! The cost of replacing the infrastructure, especially when "it works fine", was one of my assumptions. Still, I never participated in such a project, so I preferred to "check" instead of "guess".

Thank you again!

/N10
 
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