should we use an NFS share or run our VMs from our Host server

greavette

Renowned Member
Apr 13, 2012
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Looking for advice from the community for us since we are first time Proxmox users. We can buy an Ubuntu 12.04 server from ZAreason with either 3 raid arrays to run all VMs from the host or a server again from ZAreason with 1 raid array where we'll buy a Qnap NAS (10 drives in raid 6) so we can run VMs from the NAS.

What would be easier to setup for us.

We'll be installing Proxmox on top of Ubuntu 12.04 desktop.

Thanks.
 
NAS is still a single point of failure, so using it does not add reliability.

Using the NAS will be slower than local storage since you are limited by network speed.

So if you will only have one server seems like using local storage would be best.

Proxmox can be installed on top of Debian Squeeze but not Ubuntu.
 
Thank you for the reply.

The Server we are buying is our second server. We already own a Server with 3 Raid Arrays's and 4 Nics. My plan is to use Link Aggregation on both Servers, install a couple of managed switches and setup LAG on the switches as well. Would this still result in slower network speed?

It did occur to me that using a NAS results in a single point of failure and this does concern me. What do others do in this situation? Do they have two NAS in place?

Thank you for pointing out that Proxmox only runs on top of Debian Squeeze and not Ubuntu.
 
There are a couple of schools of thought.. Yes, a NAS is a SPOF but there are also advantages to be weighed up.. For example you get live migration.. Also some believe that using local storage means you are adding the storage processing load to the "compute" node where storage management could be offloaded to the NAS..

Its true that a NAS will never match the performance of local storage but at the same time what proportion of the time is the server using max throughput?

There is no right or wrong answer.. It largely depends on you servers, your loads and your requirements..

As far as NAS reliability is concerned, there are many ways to mitigate it depending on your needs.. The fact that all its doing is file serving, preferably on a dedicated network that's not connected to the internet, means that once set-up it should just work.. No need for updates or changes that aren't specifically required..
 
We used a single server as a host and storage for years without issues until we ran out of I/O on 4 VM's. They were very high disk utilization VM's and needed faster storage. So we built a NAS with 10K rpm Velociraptor drives and moved these VM's over to that and host them via NFS. Performance is MUCH better and we still can host our lighter-weight VM's on internal storage. We never hit more than 5-6MBps over the ethernet link sustained however the I/O is insane. Imagine hundreds of thousands of tiny files written 24/7.
 
I think it also depends on the environment; since I have a small, test lab environment, I don't mind using NAS. In this case, I'm using FreeNAS which has the added features of live migration and ZFS. Performance still seems on par with local storage. No complaints here.
 
Since you will be purchasing two systems, consider running Proxmox on both and using drbd. There is a good wiki page and plenty of help on the forum.

Zfs and nas are great but do not supply high availability.
 
For now the important things we need from the budget we have it to buy the second system, buy a couple managed network switch that supports Link Aggregation and bond 2 nics from our Proxmox Server to the Switches. Our Server has 3 Raid Arrays all running 15K SAS drives on it so I'll run our VM's from the Server storage for now (we'll keep our SQL Server database and temp files on serparate arrays). Our shop is small so I'll setup log shipping to our backup SQL image and perform weekly backups of the VM. I think this will work for our office and solve any potential network bottlenecks that might occur. We won't have HA, but we can make a DNS change to switch to our backup SQL image in a pinch.

Later when we can afford it, I'll look to buying something to run our VM's from so they won't be on local storage (and we can then have HA).

I'm not familiar with DRBD...I'll have to research this more. Thank you.

Now I'm wondering about Link aggregation on our Proxmox Servers...is this hard to setup? I see mention of it on the wiki, but are there any step-by-step guides to help me set this up.

I will be buying support for our Proxmox servers as well so hopefully they can walk me through how to set this up as well.
 

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