Access Files already on USB Disk

[kdm]

Hi.

I've been running ProxMox for a few weeks. I have a Home Assistant VM and a Linux (Mint) box running.

I want to add a NAS. I was looking at OpenMediaVault.

I have a FAT32 formatted USB drive which I'd like to attach and serve the files from it. Is it possible to attach it to ProxMox in such a way that these files can be accessed directly by a VM? What's the name of the feature I'm looking for? I usually find that one I get a hook, I can Google the rest.

Has anyone any experience adding OMV to ProxMox? I had a try and (apart from remembering to use a EUFI BIOS) it was fairly simple. The next question will be how to get OMV to see the drive, but that might be one for the OMV forum!

Thanks.

 

[leesteken]

USB passthrough to a VM is one way but it might be a bit slow. If you run your virtual NAS in a Linux container, you can mount the USB drive (via the Proxmox host) directly.

 

[kdm]

I've just read the USB passthrough bit and it looks to be what I'm after. Is it possible to pass through the one hard drive to several VMs? For example, if I want my Home Assistant VM to be able to write video files, which the OMV NAS can then serve?

I was planning to run the Virtual NAS in ProxMox. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to run it in a container in a VM running Linux.

Thank you!

 

[leesteken]

I've just read the USB passthrough bit and it looks to be what I'm after. Is it possible to pass through the one hard drive to several VMs? For example, if I want my Home Assistant VM to be able to write video files, which the OMV NAS can then serve?

Not at the same time. This is not possible with real hardware (at the same time) and the operating systems inside the VM won't expect it and you will lose your data.

I was planning to run the Virtual NAS in ProxMox. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to run it in a container in a VM running Linux.

I didn;t mean to suggest to run it in a container inside a VM on Proxmox. I intended to suggest running it in a container on Proxmox (instead of a VM). Proxmox supports both VMs and Linux containers. Files and disks can be directly shared between containers. For sharing files between VMs, you need a network filesystem like NFS or SMB.