Supported way for a NAS across multiple nodes that supports thin disks, snapshots, live migrations, move disks, and HA?

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omgzwhitepeople

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Mar 21, 2026
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Coming from the VMware world, and deploying Proxmox 9.1.1 for the first time. Looking for the correct NAS setup to support the following

  • shared iSCSI attached storage across all nodes
  • Deploy Thin disk VMs
  • perform snapshots
  • live migrations / move disk (vmotion / storage vmotion)
  • HA
In VMware I was able to attach to the same iSCSI target on all hosts and all these features worked.

I am finding that it seems that Proxmox has some "gotchas" with the above.
Is it true that iSCSI attached storage does not support snapshots? Why? is it because QCOW is not the same as VMDK? We prefer to use iSCSI over NFS and would rather not have to shift all storage to a new protocol. Is that not possible? Reading a little about LVM/ThinLVM it seem you can make volgroups from the storage to accomplish the above. However I read warnings that you can only do it on a single node. Does that mean I can only attach the iSCSI storage to one node, and it is dedicated to it? How is it possible to live migraitons or HA with that?

Is there any possible way to do the above bullets with iSCSI attache storage in Proxmox?
 
Because it is a cluster file system like VMFS, multiple nodes can access the same disk.

Since there is no such file system, multiple nodes cannot access the same disk.

If that is a requirement, you can simply continue using VMware.

*I have never had any problems due to its absence.

You can freely use any storage where the “Shared” column is set to “Yes.”

https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesm.html
 
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omgzwhitepeople said:
In VMware I was able to attach to the same iSCSI target on all hosts and all these features worked.
Click to expand...
The greatest mistake one can make is to try and forklift VMware into a Proxmox environment.
You will forever be chasing your tail trying to get Proxmox to 'work' the same as VMWare.

Start the process with a clean Proxmox install and then look to the tools available to achieve what you require.
 
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Thanks everyone for the comments. It seems the only way to get all the features above is to use NFS. Guess we will need to use NFS going forward.
Seems that ZFS over iSCSI is a way to accomplish all the above, but the storage does not do ZFS, so for now, its NFS.
 
Hi, beside the thin layer (for VM disks & snapshots) the listed features are already available on PVE shared LVM and if your SAN supports thin provisioning the thick volume issue should not be a showstopper ... I have also read somewhere in the forum that the thin provisioning feature is work in progress for shared LVM storage
 
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alma21 said:
I have also read somewhere in the forum that the thin provisioning feature is work in progress for shared LVM storage
Click to expand...
Do you mean the qcow feature introduced in PVE9? It's limited to snapshots (although main developer @spirit mentioned at some point that in theory this might also be a possible way to implement thin provisioning, but afik nothing happened since then) , is still in technology preview and has some caveats see https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-qcow-snapshots-on-lvm/index.html and https://kb.blockbridge.com/technote/proxmox-lvm-shared-storage/
For some usecases the lack of snapshots can be mitigated by doing more backups to Proxmox Backup Server together with PBS live-restore and qemus snapshot mode (which doesn't need storage-level snapshots): https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Alternatives_to_Snapshots

These backups are quite fast and the live-restore allows booting up the vm and launching the services while the restore of the remaining data continues.

I also remember that Starwind has a third-party solution which implements snapshots and thin provisioning (see: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/proxmox-san-integration-services ). Afik it's free software but for a corporate deployment I wouldn't use it without payed support and I have no idea whether Starwind offer it or not (their page is not really clear on this).
 
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thx, valid facts .... therefore an additional approach which has all checkmarks on the requested features (and more):
-> get a SAN/SDS from a vendor with native integration (aka Storage Plugin) and who is committed to the Proxmox (VE) platform ... like Blockbridge - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox/
 
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