Advice on Server Purchase and implementation of system

[ignasi]

Hello and thanks for your advice.



I'd like to say I have an extensive expertise as a linux sysadmin, some, not much, in QEMU/KVM virtualization (with home/soho hardware only), but this is the first time I'm planning to use Proxmox (I've already done an install just to get familiar with the basics), so forgive me my lack of knowledge here.



I'm planning on buying an AMD powered ASUS RS500A-E11-RS4U https://servers.asus.com/products/Servers/Rack-Servers/RS500A-E11-RS4U for a customer's office, with 4x4TB nvme drives and 4x32GB ECC RAM. Initially this server will host 1 Windows server (remote desktop with aprx 8 to10 simultaneous users running accounting software) VM with 64GB RAM and 2 TB storage, one debian VC with 4GB RAM and 1TB storage (NFS and CIFS services), and another debian VC wih 4GB RAM and 0.5TB for their VoIP infrastructure.



My initial plan was to create a 2 raid1 pools, one for the system storage and the other for backups. However, for my peace of mind I also thought of using 3 drives for some extra-redundancy in a raid1 pool, and leave 1 drive only (no raid) for in-server backups, and do an install in the old server they're replacing of a Proxmox Backup Server with some NAS HDD drives for backup redundancy (not sure if having in-server and external backups is possible though, as I have no experience with Proxmox). I could really use some advice here. Does it make sense using 3 drives for the raid1 pool? Will it increase read speeds?

Finally, although here is very rare to have long power outages, I'm struggling to find some basic UPS solution (max 10 min service), that could notify Proxmox to shutdown if necessary. Could you recommend one?

I'd appreciate your suggestions, and again, please forgive my lack of knowledge.



Cheers,



Ignacio

 

[Nollimox]

Could you recommend one?

I use and like Cyberpower...however, I used a pfSense VM and Nut package. I would encourage to search the forum to find similar use case to what you plan.

 

[Anotheruser]

Regarding the storage setup, have you thought about using a raidz1 pool with all four disks?
This would give you the same one disk redundandency and you would only loose one disk capacity (12tb usable) or raid z2 which would give you 2 disk redundancy.
Raid1 with three disk is possible but not really a good idea in my opinion since having two failures out of 3 at the same time is very unlikely and you would litteraly loose 2/3 capacity. Also the ususally raid is not a backup thing.... so if you need that much security backup to a second server... and if you need that much availability that you want to be able to loose 2/3 of your disk also get two servers and do HA...

For the ups look for a smart ups that ether has network or usb control. Pretty much all of the big name use standardized protocols that should just work. I can recommend EATON or APC ones, they are more premium but have been very reliable so far.

 

[jdancer]

Just make sure the solid-state storage is using power-loss protection (PLP) [enterprise] otherwise going get real bad IOPS.

 

[ignasi]

Thanks so much for suggestions!!!